I'm doing absolutely great!!! This
past week was awesome and by far the best week that I've had for a long time!
February 2, 2015
Anyway, we taught N. and it turns out that he is going to
be able to go on the special Youth Carnival Campout. We are going to baptize him on Saturday so
that he will have the Holy Ghost when he leaves. It was the ward’s idea, and they are really
working hard at fellowshipping him.
February 3, 2015
This is the last week of this transfer, and man, things
are really looking up! We have people to
teach, a baptism, lots of referrals, and everything is as should be (for
now). We just need a little bit more
time and effort to bring things together.
I am hoping that we do not get transferred! M. came to church and loved it. She read the Book of Mormon and the materials
that we left with her. Sadly, it is hard
to teach her during the week because there are no other men who live there and
we have rules about needing a third man present in order to teach a single woman. We taught a TON of lessons today and I am
super tired (in a good way!) N. is still super excited for his baptism and we
are teaching him or really just basically studying the scriptures with him because
he knows everything he needs to.
February 4, 2015
We taught a blind lady today and that was very
interesting. She is and evangelical and
she was not very interested, but one of our recent converts (of 7 months)
helped us teach her and he did and awesome job!
He studies “Preach my Gospel” almost every day and he really knows how
to teach, AND he is only 14 years old! He is the reason that we found N. to
teach! N. is having some struggles at
home which is delaying getting his parent’s signature. But N. is very positive that things are going
to work out.
Our activity this week at a member’s house had 49 people
present. That is a ton for this
area! Now that we have some good
fellowshipping within the ward, we are going to try to get them to invite their
friends. The activity was at R.’s house.
Yesterday she told us her very sad life story. It is really really sad. She has a handicapped son who was injured in
an accident when he was a little boy.
She was washing dishes while he was speeding around on a little plastic
bike. He crashed into a cabinet and some
plates fell on his head. He started having seizures so she took him to a doctor
who said that he was okay. As he grew older he had learning disabilities and
then in the 5th grade he stopped progressing. She took him to the doctors again and when
the boy heard his mom tell the doctor his history, the got very angry at his
mother and blamed everything on her. “It
is all your fault, you have ruined my life, you should have been watching me
better!” After that, the mom felt
terrible and was not able to forgive herself, UNTIL she joined the church and
then she told us of the understanding that the gospel gave to her. I was touched by her sad life, but also by
her resolve to keep working to do better.
This activity that we did was in celebration of her 40th
wedding anniversary!
February 5, 2015
We taught K. today about the law of chastity which is a
very hard law for young Brazilian men to obey, especially men who do not know
anything about God or the commandments. It
is almost always a very serious problem for our investigators.
Today N. passed his interview for baptism and everything
is set for Saturday.
February 6, 2105
Sooooo, we cleaned the font today, but the pump didn’t
drain the last 6-8 inches of water from the baptism that was held one month
ago. Yeah, it was stinky pond scum. So, we took the last of the scum out by
bucket method. As we were doing this I
heard a big SPLASH! Elder F. slipped and fell in, getting totally soaked. It took a while to finish getting the water
out, but in the end it looked good.
We taught our family with the Mom who had foot
surgery. She is still very excited about
the church and taking the lessons, but she wants to come to church on her own two
feet….yeah, that is going to take a while longer. After that family, we taught a new
investigator. He is a very nice devout
Catholic and he told us that there was no way on earth that we could ever
convince him to change. I invited him to
pray and ask God because He is the only one who can change us.
February 7, 2015
Today was AWESOME!
First of all, the baptism went great.
It started late (that is just normal for Brazil), but a ton of people
showed up. Sadly, none of N. family
came. Thankfully, the ward family is very loving and supportive of N. and he
feels that love. I was blessed to be
able to perform the baptism – a privilege that I don’t often get.
 |
| BEFORE smiles! |
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| AFTER even bigger smiles!!! |
February 8, 2015
We had 5 people come to church today. Well, actually 6, but one is not actually our
investigator yet. Today was just
great! We passed by one of our
investigator’s house to pick her up for church.
It turned out that her little 10 year old sister got up early to go to
church and had been trying to wake her older sister up to go with her, but
couldn’t. So the 10 year old came by
herself. She is REALLY sharp and pays
very careful attention to the speakers.
She has already read the Book of Moron and even marked passages that she
likes. She ALSO has responded to the
questions in the back of our pamphlets.
We are going to try to focus on teaching her entire family so that she
can continue to progress. Unfortunately,
her family is rarely home and if they are home, they are usually sleeping.
This week has turned out to be a great week for us and we
couldn’t have ended the transfer better.
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