"The Future is as Bright as Your Faith"

Sumare Zone with our Banner of Goals

Hope everyone has had a good week. Elder Silva and I are doing great! He is awesome and I am grateful for the chance we have to work together. He works hard and has a great spirit! Had some awesome experiences this week. On Thursday we went to some appointments and everything fell through. So we knocked some doors. The whole loooooong street, and didn't have any success. Elder Silva said, "Man, how did we knock the whole long street and not one person was interested in a message about God? As he said that I remembered that we had skipped a house because the person left in their car just as we were at the house next door. We had assumed no one else was at home so we passed by. So we went back and knocked there. A guy, David, came out of his house and we talked to him and scheduled to teach him on Saturday afternoon. Once again the Lord shows that we have to go to the "fourth floor last door" like Elder Uchtdorf said. It requires us not to give up and to seek out all opportunities to find His sons and daughters prepared for the gospel message. It was cool - a definite blessing.

With Elder Mansell at our service project

On Saturday we were in divisions with the Elders from Ward Vila Flora. I was with Elder Mansell who has 4 months in the mission. I got him up and out the door at 6:30am to get to this appointment at 7:15 in the morning! He probably will not want to do divisions with me again! haha This guy could only be visited at this time during this week so we made it happen. It went well. Then we went back home and got our studying in before going to a service project. We were helping a sister with her garden and lawn. Talk about a funny thing to see. Elder Mansell was tearing out a bush and I swear to you that every 5 seconds I heard "Oh, ants stung me!" There was a big struggle going on in that garden! Brought back memories of living in the South with red ants! Haha   After the service project we went to David's appointment. He was not at home yet so this other guy opened the door and invited us in. We thought he was a stepfather. We shared with him why we were there and he said he was interested in hearing our message too. Then David arrived and we started the actual lesson. While we were teaching, the guy we thought was the stepfather, said that we were answering many of his questions before he had time to ask them. I think he said during our lesson 'Wow, what a coincidence!' 7-8 times! I am grateful for the spirit giving us guidance in the things we needed to teach and say. In the middle of the lesson he said, 'Do you want to go to my house and say a prayer there too?' I was thinking "isn't this your house?" but we agreed and went even though when we left the house we had no idea where we were going! Well we went next door! hahaha This guy is dating David's mother but does not live in the same house. Here that is very unusual - like this never happens. When dating they usually live together and sometimes do not ever marry. So we were excited to see that that would not be an challenge. You can see how much God prepared this man to receive us with His message. As we shared the first vision we saw him shiver and he spoke up that he felt a strong feeling pass through him. David also said he felt a feeling of peace. The older guy said that he prayed to Heavenly Father yesterday to receive the Holy Spirit and to be touched by him to show him the right path. We were thankful that we arrived at the right time. The Spirit truly does inspire us to find those people who are in need. As we read from the Book of Mormon and then he prayed his eyes filled with tears as he told us the feelings he was having were nothing like he had ever felt before. That opened the door to speaking about recognizing the promptings of the spirit. He said that he felt Jesus Christ was sitting next to us. What a powerful lesson and experience! He does have some challenges and needs to make some changes in his life but we are on the right path now. Imagine if we had not chosen to go back and give that one last door a knock!

We have been teaching a woman who has suffered from strokes which keeps her from walking without a lot of pain or assistance. When we were with her this past week we felt prompted to share the account of the Priests crossing the Jordan River with the ark of the Lord in Joshua 3. We talked about how they needed to step into the river first and come in to show God that they had faith in Him that he would part the waters for them to cross. We told her that it is that way with us sometimes what seems impossible becomes possible if we have faith. That if we are baptized and seek to follow Christ miracles can happen. She called us later in the week and said with great joy that she walked to the end of the street and came back alone and said she was almost running for joy! We were very very happy to hear that she had planted her seed of faith.

One last one. We felt prompted to knock a door down a street from an appointment we had and a woman came out(Ana Lucia). She talked to us a bit and then called her son to come talk to us (Clayton). He said lately he had been very sick and that he had not improved after 3 days, going to the hospital even took an injection and nothing helped. I felt prompted to offer a blessing so I offered and explained what it was. He accepted and invited us in. We went in, we talked a little bit and you could see he was having a hard time just standing. He was not well. So we gave the blessing. We came back the next day and he said he felt completely healed. We explained that it was through God and the authority that we have as representatives of Jesus Christ and his faith that his happened. We will continue to teach him and his mother.

We had a great week and I am grateful for the tender mercies of the Lord. Remember to keep the faith. As Pres. Monson used to say the future is as bright as your faith. The Lord has great blessings in store for those who follow Him.

Love you all!
Elder Davis