"I know all these things to be true."

Suely and Reginaldo and their combined family at church on Sunday

Hello everyone!! 

How are you all doing? I hope all is well with you guys! Everything here is going great! These weeks are flying by and we are working hard and having fun! I love being a missionary! There isn't anything better. It just makes you so happy! 

So this week was good! It started with a great Tuesday! Tuesday night we went to visit Reginaldo and Suely! When we got there Reginaldo was a little confused. Last week we did splits/exchanges. If I haven’t explained this before this is when my companion and I have more than one appointment at the same time so we split and each take another ward member to our appointment with us and last week this happened so I didn’t visit them, my companion did. Anyway, last week my companion, Elder Tavares and our ward mission leader, visited Suely and Reginaldo and talked to them about marriage. Reginaldo asked me when I got there why I didn't come to the lesson about marriage. He seemed a little mad about it and I was worried and promised him that whether it was me there, or the member, we would have talked about marriage and that him and Suely need to get married. He seemed better after he and I talked and we then had a great lesson with them! We read Moroni 7 with them and wow, I forgot how AMAZING that chapter of the Book of Mormon is! We all were feeling the Spirit so strong and it was awesome! We then had a great discussion about the Book of Mormon and the things that we learned watching General Conference. It was great and Reginaldo is progressing well! And Suely… WOW!! It is amazing to see how much she has changed. She is going 100% back into the Church. It is just awesome! It really humbled me to see because I realized how little we do and how much God prepares people and places the Spirit in their lives so they are ready when we come. All we do is present the eternal truths of the Gospel and the rest is the Spirit. It is really cool and I was thinking a lot about that the rest of the week. 

Wednesday we had an interesting visit with Regina, the lady who has been going to church for about 2 years and still isn't baptized. According to her, she could be baptized at any time, so we challenged her to be baptized on the 7th. So earlier when we had talked about that she had accepted the challenge and said she wanted to pray about. Wednesday we got there and she was asking a lot of questions about the actual baptism. We talked a lot about it and got her pretty excited! She was ready and excited! Then I had the prompting to make sure she understands and is living all the commandments so we started to review them a little bit and we found a problem. We started talking about the Word of Wisdom and found out that she drinks coffee everyday! We explained about the blessings she would get by obeying this commandment! She kept saying that it will be easy for her to give it up and had a good attitude about it! Then we asked her to commit to stop drinking coffee. She said, "Wait! Like today?" We said yes and she realized that to be baptized you actually have to be living the commandments. I was hoping she would be completely on board and use her baptism as motivation to help her give up coffee so she could get baptized sooner. Sadly she ended up not taking the news so well and became angry and sad. So for now her baptism is postponed. We still have faith and know she will one day be baptized. The good news is that even after being disappointed that she couldn’t be baptized and continue to drink coffee, she still came came to church on Sunday and everything! We are hopeful! 

Friday we had an awesome night! We had scheduled a family night with Thailane! The Young Women's President was there with her daughter and it was awesome! Our main purpose was to help Thailane get more involved with the members by getting to know them better so she can feel more comfortable after she is baptized! She was so close to becoming a member at the beginning of this transfer but got a little scared off for some reason. We were really praying that this would help her feel better and get her to church again as it has been a while since she came! Our ward's YW president is the best! I have so much respect for her and she has such a nice spirit when she talks! She gave a message about faith using some Bible stories and it was awesome! She then shared her conversion story with Thailane, which was PERFECT!! She talked about how she had been the same age as Thailane when she joined the church. She explained that the thought she had when the missionaries challenged her to baptism was, "what is there to lose?" I liked that! With the Gospel we won't lose anything so we can give it our all and in the end instead of losing, we gain eternal life! It was fantastic and Thailane was at church on Sunday! We are going to visit her and her family tonight! 

Saturday we had another great lesson with Reginaldo and Suely! We read Mosiah 13 together and talked about the 10 commandments! We figured that we, with Reginaldo, since we have lots of time while we wait for their wedding day in December, can take things slower. We decided it will be best to finish teaching him the commandments, then just focus on the Book of Mormon and with time he will start to change without us asking him a ton. The same strategy we had with Suely! That seems to be the most effective way to teach and help some people I think. Teach them at a pace they understand, let them internalize when they learn and slowly, over time,  the spirit changes their hearts. We are really excited with the progress that they are both having and the ward is like really excited for the idea of having a wedding haha! It is funny and everyone is willing to pitch in! I love to see how with some people, timing is different than with others! It’s all in the Lord’s timing.

We also had a great visit with Viviane this week! She is doing great and LOVED Conference! Anna is doing great too! Viviane is already in 2 Nephi on her personal study of the Book of Mormon! We went to answer some questions that Viviane had about things she heard during conference! The best part of our visits with them now is that every time Viviane tells us of some missionary experience she had that week! It is so cool! So this week she was really worried about one of her patients and wanted to help her patient not be so sad all the time! So she has been helping this lady with her problems by using Gospel Principles! It is so amazing and it just makes me so happy to see them sharing the gospel now! I love those feelings! 

Sunday was a great day and I bore my testimony since I might be leaving this area soon, as the transfer is next week! I talked about how much I love the Lord, that I know the Book of Mormon is true and how as a missionary I get to bare my testimony everyday and from doing that my testimony has grown stronger. I talked about how I know we have church leaders who are called of God and the messages they shared with us at General Conference are the exact things that our Heavenly Father wants us to hear at this exact moment! I know all these things to be true! 

I love this work! I love my Savior! I love you all! 

Have a great week!

Elder Spencer P. Christofferson

District Meeting this week 

Our Bishop and his wife. He's the BEST!!! I love them!