Opa!!!!
So first off, it sounds like you all had a great week! With the Chinese women and at the Grand Canyon, and with the West family, which couldn’t have been the same without Tanner and I ;) And I got pretty worried when I heard Dad hit his head on the ground, luckily he’s fine, and that’s crazy how Brad is got the same surgery so close to dads, hopefully they both go as well as planned.
As for things here this week it was pretty hard but we worked and worked and didn’t get the baptism that we had hoped for Saturday. Right now we are working with Ianara, Angelica, Vanila (and her two kids), Israel, and a girl named Maila. I wish I had more time to talk about them but I’ll save the details for next Monday. What we really are sure about is that we should be baptizing 3 of them within the next two weeks and then a couple others in around 3 weeks. They all have their different problems that we are trying to sort out but all should be well. We did a lot of contacts this week but because of carnival that’s coming up and just people that don’t want to hear the things we have, it’s been hard but improving.
The weather has also been getting better. We got a little rain this past week which has cooled things down and I’m still sleeping with a huge wool blanket and pajama pants which is weird because I’m in northern brazil and that just shouldn’t be possible. We went contacting in a place called Cohabe 3 on Wednesday, which is pretty dangerous so we can’t stay there past 5 (dark). We found a nice man who we soon realized was an atheist. What...that doesn’t happen here! Brazilian missionary’s weakness is the atheist, because normally everyone believes in God, Christ and the bible, so the normal routine is to pull out the only weapon we have (the bible) and unload a few rounds. But when the Bible is out of the picture, and they say they don’t believe in God, everyone just kind of looks at each other like what?....is this guy crazy? But we were touched and decided to explain to him the proof of a God (the bible). The only hard proof (not talking about faith) that we have. But have you ever seen anyone win a court case with only 1 witness? No, the Church of Jesus Christ has found and been given the 2nd witness and proof of a living God, an ancient record prepared and set forth as a witness of our Savior...the Book of Mormon. The lesson ended a lot better than is started and hopefully started the end of his incredibly low faith in God or any type of Creator.
It’s funny how obvious it is when you have found someone ready and prepared to be baptized. What is the difference between the people that don’t and won’t accept anything we say and the people that know it’s true and desire to be baptized the first lesson? Humility, an open heart, divine preparation. Way cool. This work is awesome, hard and sometimes really lonely, but great!
Today we are going on top of this huge hill that has a big cross on it in our area with all the elders in our zone which will be fun. And also going to this smoothy place called Amazonia Mix, which is so good. It’s way different being in this zone than the others. I have to admit that we speak a lot of English because the Brazilians speak English and there are a bunch of Americans here, but I still feel like my Portuguese is improving. Oh and technically I hit 1 year on Feb 1st! Whoo! The mission technically has written that I started Feb1st even though I left the 21st because of all the weird changes in having me wait at home for three weeks at the last minute, but yes it was a great 1 year mark. We walked a bunch of hills, sweat a bit, taught a few lessons, made a few contacts, all the great stuff ;)
Love you all and so happy that you all are well at home :) It makes me so happy to see how well everyone is at home.
I love you all!!!
Elder LeSueur
No comments:
Post a Comment