February 24, 2014

February 24, 2014 From Lauren

 

The weeks are just flying by now. Oh my gosh. I can´t believe that this week I will make six months of my mission. Holy Cow!

Anyway, we worked really hard this week. Our sister trainer leaders came to our area and we had splits with them. It was a great oportunity to learn more from more experienced sisters and get a whole boat load of work done. I really enjoyed it. Finally, we have a pretty good size pool of investigators. The majority are from references from members, not from knocking doors, but I know that they are blessings from the Lord because of all our hard work. One thing I learned in California from my companions is that knocking doors shows that we have faith that the Lord will put those who need to hear the gospel in our path. If we´re doing our best, and working hard, I know the Lord will bless us. And actually I have an experience about this.

I didn´t want to say anything last week, because I wasn´t sure if everything was going to work out, but we had something of a miracle happen. We have a rule in the mission that we have to have investigators in Sacrament. If we don´t have investigators there, then we have to go and get them and miss the class part of church. Well, last week I was super worried about this because we didn´t have many investigators then. We showed up at church and none of our investigators were there. So, I started thinking were we could go to grab someone for sacrament. Just as we were about to leave, one of the counselors came up to us and said that there was a man looking for us. This man, Marcos, had just moved to Poços, already had several lessons with the missionaries were he used to live, the first thing he said to us was, "When can I be baptized?". I seriously could not believe it. So yeah, the Lord really does bless up when we do our part.

We´ve been teaching Marcos for the past week and he is all set for baptism on the 1st of March. He´s origanally from Rio and his family was killed in a land slide that happened there. So, he moved to São Paulo and started having lessons with the missionaries. The gave him a BOM and he started to read it. I don´t know exactly what happened, but he got really frusterated with religion and threw the BOM in the trash. A couple days later, a friend of his told him that he had a gift for him and gave him a BOM. Well, it turns out that it was the exact same BOM that Marco threw out. This really got Marcos´s attention and one thing led to another and now he´s being baptised this saturday. I love the gospel!!!!

The batista family is doing well. They´re really busy so it´s hard to see them, but we´re trying.

I love working here in Poços. The ward is finally warming up to me and I´m starting to have a greater love for the members. Also, Sister C. Silva is great. She reminds me so much of Hannah (our cousin). So just think about that. Being compaions with your cousin. She is so dang hilarious and every day is so much fun with her. Missionary work is the Best!

I hope you all have a great week! The church is true!

Sister Whitney