Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Brasil - Week 22

SO THIS WEEK WAS GREAT!!

Tuesday- We visited Adrielli and talked about baptism with her, trying to find out if she really has a desire or not. She said she wants to be baptized but not yet. So we are going to work with her on this. We then left her house and found a family with 3 women and we taught a short little principle lesson with them. It went well and they want us to come back. We then visited with Luci-mar with Irmâ Jacqueline it was good, we started teaching the commandments. Today was the Word of Wisdom. It was really amazing. She drinks coffee every morning but when we taught her about this she was like "Yeah okay that's fine. I will buy cevada instead." Like no problem at all! It was great!!! 

Wednesday- Today we had a district meeting that was really great too!!! Elder John told us "Okay now I want everyone to sit in a different part of the room away from each other where you can receive revelation and bring a pen and the paper I gave you and something to write on. Now the Savior commanded you to write a letter to a future missionary, Sisters write to Sisters and Elders write to Elders. And write them about missions and bare your testimony and share a scripture that has helped you." We then wrote the letter. Mine talked about the importance of not losing your faith, because missions are super hard, but they are also filled with joy. I shared Moroni 7:33 and I also quoted Gamme " Pray like it all depends on the Lord, and work like it all depends on you." We then gave the finished letters to Elder John and sat back down. He then had us all facing front and he went to the back one by one and took our tags and put them in an envelope with the letter and told us not to look at the front, and to sit back down. After we all did this he went up to the front and pulled out a mission call packet and told us "Imagine that this is the day of the call and your letter is in it." He pulled out our call from the prophet and called us up one by one and we read the letters, that were really to ourselves and a part of the call. It was a really great experience because you were building your self up. Like a self pep talk! We then left and went to visit Luci-mar and we took her to the church and taught her there with Irmã Marbe about the Law of Chastity. After that we walked an hour to another neighborhood and taught a 15 yr old girl whose family is all members except her and her parents want her to get baptized. But we were talking with her and really she just wants to be a 15 yr old girl. But we are working with her now on prayer, so she can have that connection with her Father in Heaven. The rest will come on day but as we explained to her and to her mom, the choice is hers. If she doesn't want to come back, "okay. we'll see you the next time we have lunch with your family." But we also told her that we want to be her friends too. And she agreed to let us come back. But we are going to try and teach her alone, we think it will help her better not to have her mom hovering during the lesson so she can really talk about her problems. We then walked BACK to the neighborhood we were in (1hr away) and visited with this new investigator family. Adriana, Mailo, Breno, and Samuel. We didn't have a lot of time to teach so we taught an "intro" to the restoration lesson. It was really great and we think they are really interested. :)

Thursday- We visited with Grizielle, who actually is an inactive member that wants to come back and she has 3 kids (Ana Carolina 14, Samuel 11, and Marcos 9)and wants them to be baptized. She found us Monday in the street and called to us from the other side of the road and told us all this and to visit her this week. So we were like "Uhhh yeah! Okay sure!!" So we met with her and her 3 kids and her mom (also inactive) and her niece (Rebecca, who is like 8) and so we taught the restoration to them and they all (all 4 kids) accepted baptism!!! So we marked 4 dates today!!!! 8o It was great!! We then visited with Luci-mar with Irmã Yasmine and talked about tithing and she was SOO excited to pay tithing!!! Seriously this lady is GREAT!!! She said that someone in her family should. It was a great time. We then met with Heloiza with Irmã Kethy (Kaite) and we were going to teach about the gospel of Christ but instead Kethy helped resolve some of Heloiza's problems. Turns out that Kethy was Catholic and had the same questions that Heloiza has when she was learning about the gospel. It really helped having her there!!

Friday-So today we visited with a recent convert, Maria Teresa, and taught her about the Plan of Salvation. It went really well but she only is like 13 so to really understand it will take some time. But after that we visited with Maria José and talked about the Book of Mormon. During this lesson we asked her if she believed us and she said yes. She said "I have this feeling at the top of my stomach but it is way deep in my body and it just tells me that everything you are saying is 100% true. And I will read this book." We then asked her to be baptized and she accepted. :) It was a great lesson. We then visited with Luci-mar and finished off the commandments. It was really great. Then we tried to visit this referral from a member but she wasn't there so we did contacts and actually found this lady, Rosie, that was actually taking the discussions from the Elders before us that they didn't tell us about or put in the area book. So we talked to her a bit and share a scripture and a prayer and marked a day to visit more with her. Thank you Holy Ghost! 

Saturday- So in the mission we have whats called a "Padrão Semanal" (according to Google translator: Weekly Standard) where you need 25 contacts, 15 lessons with out members, 8 with members, 3 baptism dates, 3 investigators at church, and 10 new invest, so we were talking Friday night and we realized that we were actually really close to beating the Padrão. So our goal for today and tomorrow was to get all the contacts and lessons we needed. SO today we left our house a little bit earlier and taught a man in the tire shop next door to our house a mini lesson, we then went to lunch and did contacts at just about every house we could, then after lunch we did the same thing as we went to visit Rosangela who was a referral from the Patriarch here and he met us there and we taught her, her husband Valmir, and her 3 kids Lucas, Liciela, and Ligrecia. We taught the the restoration and invited them to be baptized and all 5 agreed...we then left and went to visit Luci-mar again but with Bishop this time. We really just had a mini lesson and get to know Bishop time. We then left and our next appointment canceled on us and so did the one after that. SO we did more contacts and mini lessons and then at 7 we went to Núbia and Marcelo's house for his birthday party and then went home! 
 
Sunday- SO today we ran out of minutes on the cell phone so we really couldn't call our investigators to remind them about church so we were super stressed!! BUT 9 came!! AND after church WE HAD A BAPTISM!!!! WOO HOO!!!! Luci-mar!! It was super great! Afterwards we asked her how she feels and she said "Free." It was super special!! We then went to lunch and tried to teach after but no one was home but we got more contacts in. We then went to Luci-mar's house and had popcorn with her and her family and gave her a picture frame with a picture of all of us in it and then had a mini lesson with her and her family. After that our next lesson fell through so we did more contacts and mini lessons. SO when we got home and closed our numbers we had......11 baptism dates, 9 investigators in sacrament, 10 lessons with members, 15 with out, 20 new investigators, and 26 contacts!!!! :D We were SUPER excited!!! We met the Padrão Semanal!! 
 
Monday- So our District leader called and she that he was really sorry but he didn't know last night but there is actually a new rule in the mission that you can't count baptism dates 2 weeks in advance so because all of our dates are for 10/13 we can't count them until next week. So we actually didn't get the Padrão Semanal. It was really heartbreaking. We were....still kinda are....really sad. Like disappointed sad. But we know that we just need to get back up and try again next week!! 
--
Sister Emma Marion

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