4/13/09
The work here is . . . out of control! We are just working so hard. After church, Elder Newby and I realized we had ten people we could work with this week to baptize. Well since Sunday we hit the ground running! We have two girls, who live by Ramon and Rená who are just going crazy to be baptized. However, they live so far away from the church and we are nervous that the members will stop going to pick them up so it will almost be impossible to retain them. We got some advise from the pres.´s assistant and he told us we can't deny them from baptism just because of a situation like this. We need to give them at least the chance to be baptized. So we marked them for this Sunday... they are so excited. They love church. They are always huggin everyone there... I really think it's because they feeled so loved at church- a love they don't feel when they are at home. Also, we have a family who we marked their baptism last week. They have gone to church about five times already. They didn't go to church, and so I was really worried they had given up on being baptized. We visited them last night and they told us they didn't go to church because they were visiting their relatives for Mothers Day. We asked if they were still planning on being baptized and they said- "Yes, this Sunday." So we are so excited for that. It's a family of three. A dad, and two kids, a girl and a boy. The girl, Juliana, is going to be turning 12 this Sunday, the same day as her baptism. We also just got done teaching a girl named Jennifer. She went to church on Sunday and we taught Monday morning the first lesson. She understood the first lesson better than anyone I had ever taught. We taught about how God will always call a prophet. And then when we got to the part about Joseph Smith, I said . . . "Remember how we talked about how God will always call a prophet? Well that is what he did in 1820 . .. he called a new prophet to bring back the true church." She started nodding her head and said... "Joseph Smith." We hadn´t said his name yet but she had heard his name at church and wondered who he was. And when we explained everything, she had already put everything together. After I said the first vision, she looked at us and said "everything just makes sense." We just got done teaching her again. She is a girl who has her doubts . . . as everyone does. She wants to know everything without a doubt. So we taught her about faith and how faith is not to have a PERFECT knowledge of all things. And that she needed to show her faith to be baptized, to follow the feeling she felt when she prayed. She started talking about how she doesn't have much faith. So we talked about when we push or trial our faith, our faith will grow. So we invited her again to be baptized, but used our words differently. "Will you trial your faith and prepare to be baptized?" She accepted because she wants her faith to grow. We know she knows the church is true, i'ts just Satan is trying to confuse her by putting doubts in her head. So pray for her!!! We also passed by Larissa´s house (a girl who went to church on Sunday) We were going to teach her but then saw that her sister was busy. It looked like her sister was married (which is a miracle because everyone just lives together here). She was wearing a wedding ring. So we marked to go back tonight to teach everyone together. Last Sunday we baptised Kerolainy. She was nervous for her baptismal interview, when she found out she was ready to be baptized, she started crying! Her mom loved church as well, but she isn't married. We hope that one day her husband will actually marry her so she can be baptized. Also Kerolainy took a vacation to Recife last year. We told her that Recife has a temple. She started thinking about her trip and then she started crying again . . . "I saw it, I saw it, I remember, I tried to take a picture but we passed by so fast." It was so funny, because she got so excited because she had seen a temple. It's weird to think... that she saw a temple, and then a year later she was baptized into the church. So when she saw the temple she had no idea what it was, but she just thought it was pretty. She is a special girl.
Well I don't have much time.
I love you all. I love being a missionary. I´ll work my very best until the end because there is nothing better than missionary work!