This week was a good one! Every week I feel like I am always saying the same thing but it was a great week! I guess it is okay to repeat things if the only thing that changes is the miracles that the Lord does in our work as His representatives! It is always good to see how He uses us for good as we work to serve Him.
We are trying very hard to work with the members here because like it says in the scriptures, Zion isn't just one specific place, it is a place made by the people who are pure in heart. So we are trying to help the members have the DESIRE to do the work, not just do it because we ask but help them have the experiences that they need to so they will have the desire to do the work by themselves. It's a lot like what we do with an investigator. We teach/review with them what is the spirit, and how to feel it or recognize it, and after that we help them experience all of that and then give them opportunities to do it themselves. They are starting to give us references and we even got a calendar made of divisions for December! This month will be a good one!
Monday we did a Family Home evening with a few of our investigators and it all worked out well! Igor and Eliane will baptize this week on Saturday! Everything is set. They will be married in the Cartório at 9:45 and then be baptized at 4:30! I am very happy for them. We are also teaching Maria which is Yasmin's grandma but her health really stops her from doing a lot of things such as going to church. She wants to be baptized and said that she feels that it is the right thing to do but she hasn't been able to go to church because of her health. Through fasting and prayer we know the Lord will bless her.
We also found 2 awesome people this past week. Luiz and Francisco. We are working in a neighborhood called Virigilio Viel. It is a neighborhood that has a lot of members, actives and less actives, as well as investigators. We started working in the street of our investigators, Igor and Eliane. Igor goes with us as we make contacts and teach. He and Eliane are awesome missionaries already. Anyway, we were working in their street and as we were passing by a house, we looked over and saw a man that was all tattooed and looked kind of rough. Initially we passed his house and then we both stopped afterwards and looked at each other and said at the same time "lets go back and talk with that guy". So we went back and talked with him, he invited us in and we talked a little bit and marked a date to come back and visit him (Saturday at 3). We came back on Saturday and we taught him the first lesson (Restauração) and he loved it. Although he had a lot of questions because he had heard a lot of bad information about who we worship and what the Book of Mormon is. After answering his questions he said he felt he now was learning what the truth was and he knew what he had been told before was not true. He said it is unfortunate that people say those things without finding out what is really the truth and he was glad we had come to talk to him. He also said he doesn't like making promises or appts but he said he would make one with us to go to church. At the end we told him that we were sent by God to teach him and that we had been prompted to come back and talk with him. He then said "Yeah, I saw you guys pass by and look at me then continue forward without coming over to talk to me. I thought that it was probably because of my appearance but then you guys returned after a minute and started talking to me. I was thinking why you passed by and then came back to talk and I think it was God that prompted you guys to talk to me because I need the truth". We were amazed when he said that. It is so important that we do not make the judgement in our minds of who we think will accept the gospel; our office and duty as missionaries and as members is to preach to all people equally. He kept his promise and he came to church on Sunday and LOVED it. It was fast and testimony meeting and then we read the scriptures and talked about Jesus Christ in Gospel Principles class. Then we went to the Elders quorum and we taught about desire to do the right and how to strength our testimony through 7 things:
1. Desafiar (challenge)
2. Ensinar (teach)
3. Sacrifício (sacrifice)
4. Estudar (study)
5. Jejum (fasting)
6. Oração (praying)
and the seventh is all of the first letters of the words together, desejo (desire). He loved the class so much that he asked to take a picture of the whiteboard to study at home and he asked us if the book we gave him had the Doctrine & Covenants in it and everything that we studied in the classes. Said that he cant promise to be there every Sunday because sometimes he has to work on Sunday but he will come the next two weeks when he is not working. And then to top it off he took Luiz home, our other investigator that came to church that lives on his same street! How awesome is that right? What a great person he is and how grateful I am for the prompting Elder Aruajo and I both had to turn around and go back to talk with him. We need to always be careful about making judgments about others. That experience reminded me that appearances can be deceiving but the Spirit ALWAYS guides. How grateful I am for the still small voice that can bear testimony of truth and guide us in our lives if we will listen.
Have a great week!
Elder Davis
P.S. Sorry I did not get any pictures uploaded this week. I got a crazy slow computer in the LAN house this time.
No comments:
Post a Comment