Dear family,
Whelp, this week became very different very fast. Last Monday Elder Kenning and I returned home from sending emails and started relaxing. We slept a little, played some coin soccer, ate some food, and then the phone rang. THE ASSISTANTS. I let Elder Kenning get it since he~s pretty good friends with one of the assistants. Well, it turned out that they were calling to let Elder Kenning know that he was getting emergency transferred to the other side of the mission. It~s because a group of American missionaries who received their visas finally got to the mission, and President Cascardi had to switch some missionaries around so that there would be a place for the new missionaries. Anyway, Elder Kenning was pretty happy to be transferred and finally be called as a senior companion. He~s finishing the training of another American. That should be fun for him. Well, I got a surprise, too! I got one of the Americans that was arriving! And guess who it was? It was none other than Elder Robison from my MTC district in Provo. He~s been serving in the Colorado, Colorado Springs mission for the last 14 months, and finally got here! It~s been pretty fun. We have a lot of mission story swapping to do, and he~s very excited to be down here and have so much work to do. It~s been a little strange, too, because now he~s the one learning Portuguese, and I~m the ´expert´ on speaking and understanding the language. Yikes! Anyway, we~re doing great, and he doesn~t get stressed out that he~s not understanding or speaking that much. It~s been pretty fun to do contacts now. We walk up to someone, introduce ourselves, and Elder RObison starts talking a little bit about our message. When the people give a weird look like they didn~t understand that well, we laugh, and I start summing up everything that Elder Robison just said. It~s been great!
On the investigator front, things are going well. We had a little bit of difficulty working this week because of the emergency transfer, but we are definietly going to work better this coming week. Unfortunately, Matheus was not baptized this last week. He works for a distributor to supermarkets, and they are gettign ready to open a new supermarket this week. Anyway, he didn~t have any time this last week to meet with us. HOwever, it proved to be a miracle in finding other people to teach. We got there one day, and he wasn~t home when he said he might be home. His aunt let us in so that Elder Robison could use the bathroom. She was getting ready to leave for São Paulo. I asked her who she was going to visit. She said that she was going to visit her dead husband~s brother. I didn~t hear it exactly, so I thought she said she was going to São Paulo for the funeral of her husband~s brother. I said something like ít~s hard´. She responded about how after 4 years it still is hard (I realized what she had really said before). She then began to talk about how she lost both of her parents and her husband within a few months of each other and how it was the hardest part of her life. I decided it was the perfect time to start a gopsel conversation. I pulled out Mosiah 16:7-9 and shared it with her. It was amazing how the spirit entered the room. The moment was perfectly created. We began to talk about the hope of resurrection and of eternal families. We also talked about the temple and marriage sealing. We bore testimony about the truth of the restored church and restored gospel. The spirit was so setly penetrating in the space. There was something very sublime about the moment. We asked to set up a return appointment to share a message with her, and she accepted readily. It was a great thing. Because of Matheus being gone, we also got the chance to talk to his brother, Tadeu. It was so cool. Tadeu is 20 years old, but a lot less confident than his brother. At the end of the Restoration lesson, we invited him to pray about the Prophet Joseph Smith. It was so cool because he said the exact same thing that Matheus said, that he already believed Joseph Smith was the prophet he said he was. We invited Tadeu to be baptized this next Sunday with his brother Matheus. It will be great!
Well, I have been thinking a lot about progress this last week. I have thought about how much more I want and need to progress on my mission and in this life. I also thought about how I don~t know exactly to help this district progress and achieve higher goals and successes. If anyone has any ideas for me, that would be great! I love you all!
Love, Elder Parker Ayer
P.S. I found out today that my trainers, Elder Colligan and Elder Stechnij, are now serving together again as Assistants to the President in WV. How great!
PPS THis last week a local padaria came out with a new line of confections...DONUTS!!! Let~s just say we bought them while we could. YUM!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment