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| A GOOD week in the mission field! |
July
13, 2014
G.,
our 90 year old investigator) came to church today! We had to help her get a ride with a member who lives close
by because she is old and almost blind.
She loved church! I was walking with some members and they said that she
already wanted to be baptized. She
told us that she was feeling this great feeling of love at church. Just imagine how many things that she
has experienced in her 90 years of life.
She was telling us that this was the first time in five years that she
has felt happy. She said that we
were an answer to her prayers.
July
14, 2014
P-day
was AWESOME today! We basically
spent all day at the church training boxing, ju-jitsu, things like that. It was
really nice to actually exercise, and send emails on and off without any
pressure. Elder Moleiro has me
convinced to start do MMA when I get home. Nothing serious, but I would like to learn a bunch of
different martial arts like Muay-thai, jiu-jitsu, and even wrestling and
boxing. I ended up buying some
boxing gloves to practice with. My
comp and I are going training everyday to get in better shape.
In
the afternoon we visited less-active members. We became instant friends with one married couple, but the
husband will be really hard to convince to come back to church. He has been less active for about 9
years now. Prior to that he was in
calling in the stake leadership.
It was Elder M. birthday today so I bought him sushi for his birthday
treat from me! This transfer is
going to be good.
July
15, 2014
So
I know that I have a problem with humility. I have always had a hard time accepting advice from people
without having something to say back to them. My new comp is helping me with this by training with me in
the mornings. I had forgotten how
much starting a new martial art leaves you very VERY humble. I am definitely learning to swallow my
pride and realize that I am wrong.
(Now if we could just figure out a way to teach this to my
companion.)
We
had a chance to teach G. today and she loves to talk! She like to tell us a bunch of life stories and it’s really
incredible how much life there is in 90 years. She was raised Catholic and she was even a nun for 6 years
from the time she was 17-23 years old.
Then she was disillusioned by the church and started
church-hopping. It only took her
67 years to find our church. She
says that this is it and she has never felt so happy in any other place. It has really been a great experience
to be a part of.
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| Elder Arruda! Finally I'm living with a missionary who's younger than me! |
July
18, 2014
Today
I went on splits with Elder Arruda.
He has been in the area for 4 days. We struggled to find our appointments, but by some miracle,
we were able to make each one of them.
Unfortunately, as we found our way around, almost all of them fell
through. Elder Arruda is pretty
cool. He also studied martial arts
before his mission, but he wants to study to be a neurosurgeon after his
mission. He’s not your typical
meathead aggressive fighter type.
We also get the chance to play basketball together sometimes which is
fun for me.
July
19, 2014
G.
is super ready to be baptized, but her kids keep trying to talk her out of
it. She has a strong testimony
that the church is true. She was
telling us about her prayers, revelations, visions, dreams, etc. and it really
seems that God wants her to hurry up and get baptized. I guess that when you are 90, you don’t
have much time left on earth so everything that needs to be done, needs to be done
quickly. She is really excited for
her baptism tomorrow and is keeping firm in her faith. She has been telling us how she has
been preparing for this time for her entire life. She even asked us what she needed to do in these last couple
of days so that she can stay strong and return to live with God. I know that she’s been prepared for
something big. She dreams and
feels like God has a big mission for her, in this life or the next. She is so great.
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| This is Geralda! And the family that the other elders baptized in our ward! |
July
20, 2014
G.
was baptized! Okay, this Sunday
was entirely crazy so I’ll start at the beginning. We had our usual meetings with the ward council in the
morning bu when we were going to lunch we called to confirm our appointment,
and the woman who was making our lunch said everything was ready for us. We asked if there would be another man
present for our lunch appointment because she is a single woman and it is
against the rules for us to be there without three men present. She was very rude to us and told us
NO. We asked if it would be okay
if we brought someone with us, and again she rudely said NO. Okay….so we
arranged to pick our lunch from her house and take it to our house to eat. So we walked 30 minutes to her house
and, SURPRISE, she wasn’t there. So, no lunch for us and it’s the Sabbath so we
can’t buy anything. Oh well, we managed to scrounge stuff up quickly at our
house before racing back to church.
We
left early so that we could make sure that G. would make it to church too. She was already there waiting for us
when we got to her house. She said that her son threatened to kill her if she
went to church, but she decided to come anyways. Her kids are monsters to her. We also passed by a recent-converts house. The strongest member of the house
didn’t want to come because of some personal problem, but we ended up bringing
her mom and nephew to church. (or rather they walked with us.) I 
The
baptism afterwards went really well.
G. was baptized by Elder. M. and Elder Lopes. They both did it just to help her and make it a little
easier on her. She came out of the
water crying. It has been really
special working with her.
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| Everyone in white!!!! Except for me..... haha we'll just have to baptize more people next time! ;) |
Recently
I have had more than a few people ask me how I feel about my mission and what
it is like here in Brazil. I love the mission and I love the country. It's
great, I just miss some little things from back home. About Brasil, I love
the fruits, and the fact that there's basically no natural disasters here.
Also, it's always hot here. That's good, but bad at the same time. Also, I love
the way people are here. They're super happy, super open, and they love people.
Especially American gringos. Haha, I think that the only city where I would
live here in Brasil would be Curitiba, because it's the model city for Brasil.
It's clean, advanced, and safe. It's also in the 'cold' part of the country, so
it's always nice there.
I was
remembering this week what my last companion Elder Lemos told me one time. It
was a question that really made me reflect on my spiritual well-being. Here it
is: “Do you think that Jesus Christ would be able to trust you?” Whoa. He asked
that for an investigator who kept saying that he would come to church, but he never
came. This guy was able to recognize his fault and replied that no, He wouldn’t
be able to trust in him. That got me thinking, how much is our word worth? Can
it actually count for something? This is a part of our personal integrity and
honesty with God and with other people. If other people can’t trust us, how do
you think that God would be able to trust us? I don’t know about you, but
God’s trust is something huge. Just imagine. Someone that you love, wouldn’t
you hope that they would be trustworthy? Wouldn’t you want to be able to give
everything to them? Christ gave His own life for us. He gave everything.
Doesn’t he deserve to trust us? In order to do that we need to be completely
honest with Him, AND with ourselves. Trust in God, trust
in yourselves, and He will trust in you! Tchau!
~Elder
Colvin
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