Elder Spencer Christofferson: Every week on a mission is a unique one!

District Selfie

Hi everyone!

How are you all doing? I'm sure all is well! I hope everybody had a great week! Our week here in the Imbuí ward was a little slow compared to some of our other weeks, but we still saw miracles and had great experiences! Every week on a mission is a unique one!

This week is the last of week of the transfer! Crazy right?! For me this transfer went faster than any other one on my entire mission I think!! It is crazy! I seriously can't believe it! I think I am going to get transferred which is sad because I really like this area! Like a lot! It is great here! The members, the area itself, our house, etc. My guess is I will be going to the interior again! Who knows though? Transfers are always exciting times! J

Tuesday afternoon we went and visited Suely! She is doing great. We had a special experience with her. It has been a while since we had taught her since she went out of town last week. So we started talking with her about how she was doing spiritually. She got a little emotional and said she wasn't doing too well. What followed was me and Elder Pereira totally in-sync and we both started to read scriptures about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Spirit was really guiding the lesson. The Spirit was really strong and I just felt such a love for Suely. On the outside, she is a closed, tough person to talk to. But when she opens up, you can tell she really has a desire to follow Jesus Christ. We focused a lot of that lesson on faith and repentance because that is what she was needing most. And focusing on her needs, helped her feel and learn by the Spirit better. And that leads to my next topic…

Wednesday morning we had a district meeting and the training I gave was about focusing on the needs of our investigators and adapting our lessons on-the-fly when needed! It was a great meeting! I felt it went well! We did a lot of great "praticas," which in english means practices! I think it helped a lot! I love my district! After this week, all of our district will have had a baptism during this transfer and we are still going strong! That is what happens when you work hard!

Wednesday night was also great! The Sunday before we had a lady in the ward named Renilza, come up to us out of nowhere. And she said,"Elders, I want to do a family night this week at my house. I am inviting some non-member friends. That means you guys need to be there!" Of course we gladly were!! It is not everyday that members come up to us to invite us to a "noite familiar" as it is called. It was a great evening! Irmã Renilza invited like 5 non-members! Plus some of her daughters are inactive, so they also participated. Of course we were the ones with the message. We watched a church video from Elder Godoy of the 70. It was on the talk he gave in Portuguese at General Conference a few years ago! It was great and we had an awesome time! We got the numbers and addresses of the non-members and we are planning to go visit some of them this week!

Friday we had another adventure! We went back to Brotas, the Assistants area, because I had to do a baptismal interview for Elder Castlemain and Elder Souza! We did a mini-split and Elder Castlemain and I headed to the girl's house where the interview was. So the girl actually wasn't home when we got there! We waited and waited, and she never showed up. (It wsa all good in the end because later that in the day she got interviewed by Elder Prado, the other Assistant because we had left. And she was baptized on Saturday and confirmed Sunday.) After we left, we met back up with the other elders and Elder Pereira and I headed back to our area. That was when the adventure started because we got lost going home. Salvador has a recently-constructed metro train! We decided to take it. We have previously used it and it was great! This time we had planned to get off at the station that has the name of a part of our area. We figured since the station had a name of a part of our area, we could take that train to there, and figure out where we were when we got there! There was a ton of traffic on the freeway as it was Friday night, so the metro seemed like the right decision. But when we got off at our stop, we didn't recognized ANYTHING! After asking a ton of people and waiting for another bus for an hour, nothing had shown up. Things were not looking good. I decided to say a silent prayer. The second I finished my prayer and looked up, a bus going to our area showed up!! It was really a miracle.

Saturday morning we headed over to our new recent-converts, Viviane and Anna Beatriz. Usually during the week we can only meet with them Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. But this week we could only meet with them Saturday because the other days their visiting and home teachers were doing visits!! That made me so happy! That is how a ward always needs to be! We had an awesome lesson with them about family history and the temple, and talked to them about making a goal to go to the temple! They accepted and are excited already! I really feel that they will stay very strong in the church. Their house is already looking like a LDS home. They have scriptures, pamphlets, and church magazines everywhere. One of the brothers from our ward went to the temple in Recife last week and brought back a image of the temple at our request! We are looking for a place to get it framed and then we will give it to them! I really feel the Spirit with them and I know that because of their joining of the Church, lots of others will too!

Saturday we also had another great lesson with Suely! We read Ether 12 with her and during the lesson I had one of those, "what the heck, I'm on a mission" moments. I love being a missionary!

One quick thought! At the family night on Wednesday there was a part from the video that I really liked. Elder Godoy posed a question "Are we living in a way that ALL the blessings of our Heavenly Father are being given to us?" I loved that! It made me do a lot of thinking! Everyday we can get better! We can become closer to Jesus Christ! We just have to act!

I love you all more than you know! Have a great week!

Elder Spencer P. Christofferson