"Fourth Floor Last Door"

After lunch with DJane and her husband

Hey Everyone-
Happy 4th! This week was good. We focused on Jaqueline a lot this week. We are having some challenges. She is having a difficult time making the commitment. She is letting fear take over. We are doing everything we can to help her. We set up progress interviews with the LZs, took members there for every lesson that are of her type of personality to try and help her make connections with the members. had the sisters come with us for a Family Home Evening, as well as accompanying her every day by phone. Members also visited her without us just to see how she is doing. We are running out of ideas. Really it boils down to her overcoming her fears of change and making the decision and commitment. We emphasized to her that Heavenly Father wouldn't take her agency from her and make the decision for her. She has to make it and then bring her decision before Heavenly Father and He will then confirm it whether it is right. So on Saturday when we spoke with her she committed to letting us know on Sunday what her decision was but she did not end up coming on Sunday. So I think we are going to have to step back until she makes a decision whether she wants to move forward or not. I hope she listens to the spirit and makes the commitment.

Our Zone with a few new members after transfers

With Elder Ricarte

Piracicaba Soccer Jersey - a great gift from a friend

We spent most of the our time this week trying to find people to teach. When Elder Ricarte and I were on a division we found a guy named Leonardo. Just imagine this. That day everything had fallen through the whole day and we were not finding anyone that would even answer the door. Those who did were not interested. Just an example. We taught a lesson that was SUPER powerful, the guy was answering everything and seemed super interested . Then at the end we invited him to pray about the Book of Mormon and the guy said simply "no I am good, thanks though" and sent us out the door. We also found a less active member when we were knocking doors who was pretty argumentative so we answered some of his questions and then invited him to pray again asking the right questions to find his answers. Then came the moment. It was 8:49 at night. We were ready to go home but we felt "lets just knock a few more of these doors" so we knocked like 8 more and no one answered. So I was thinking I was done...we left and when we were walking down the hill I felt like we should knock this door we were passing, So I followed the prompting and we knocked. They actually answered. A guy named Leonardo answered it. He seemed a little rough on the edges but I just started to talk with him and before we knew it he had opened up and started joking around with us. We then spoke with him about prayer. He accepted for us to start to teach him. We had a great lesson with him that night. At the end of the lesson he told us " I feel I need to be one of those disciples of Christ that just drop everything and follow Christ " We found a diamond among the coal. We marked to go back there this past Sunday and had a great visit and will visiting him again tomorrow. He owns three companies so he is very busy. Man he is just the best. That reminded me of a talk that my dad recently sent me from Pres. Uchtdorf "Fourth Floor, Last Door". He told about two missionaries who served in Europe in a place where doors were not opened to them very much but they did not let that discourage them. They did not give up just because there was little chance of getting in. They kept going. One day they knocked all the doors on the first floor of an apartment building, no one let them in. Then the same thing happened on the 2nd and 3rd floors and all of the fourth floor until they got to the last door where a girl answered the door and she begged her mom to let them in. The missionaries gave the mom a Book of Mormon and she read it in a couple days. She and her daughters were baptized. The daughter that begged her mom to let them in is Pres. Uchtdorf's wife. So when it is 9 at night when we are knocking doors IN SAO JOAO DA BOA VISTA I want to be knocking on that last door. When it is raining and everything is going wrong we got to keep it going. I try to remember the Fourth floor last floor story. I know the blessings will be there! When it feels like we are climbing uphill and things seem to get more difficult the harder we try we just need to know that is when the greatest blessings are in store. That is when we learn the most and can draw close to Christ and strengthen our testimony in Him. We just need to continue on the right path.

Have a great week.
Elder Davis

Intense game of Uno on PDay with the District

Out working with Elder Bahia