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| Look at all those chairs piled on that truck behind me. Very typical Brazil! LOL! |
How are you all doing?! I hope everyone is doing great and had a fantastic week! Our week was really awesome and is going to be followed by one that's even better.! This week that is starting now is going to be crazy! Wednesday we have council meeting which I am pumped for because the leadership councils are always so awesome and we learn so much and I get to see all my old mission friends! And then the big news is that on Friday we have a meeting with ELDER DAVID A. BEDNAR, one of the Twelve Apostles!!! He is traveling through some parts of Brasil and will be stopping by Salvador! Last time an Apostle visited our mission was about 3 years ago so everyone is pretty excited. The sad thing is that the rest of the mission won't get to see him in person. We are going to be joining with the other mission too, all the missionaries in both missions won't get to actually be here in Salvador. So the missionaries who aren't in Salvador will watch via satelitte trasmission in their areas! But where am I? SALVADOR!!! WOOHOO! I will get to see Elder Bednar in person with all the other missionaries in Salvador. We are so excited and I know I am going to learn a lot.
Tuesday we had a great day. One of the highlights was our lesson with Marcos! Marcos is the man! He is so sincere and just asks us a bunch of questions and isn't embarrassed to ask. So on Tuesday we got there and he started asking a bunch of questions about life after death and heaven and hell and all that stuff. We decided to not teach the full plan of salvation but just to read Alma chapter 40. It is a really great chapter. It talks a lot about the spirit world and the ressurrection. The best part was when we talked about the ressurrection. Marcos was so intrigued by the fact that everyone will ressurrect. We explained to him that because of Jesus Christ, all of us will ressurrect. He asked us why and we explained that because we all chose before this life to follow God's plan. I said to him, "Marcos, you already chose this plan once. You have heard these teachings! You just need to have faith and follow it again." He really thought about that one!! It was awesome but he just doesn't get why he had to forget all of it when he came to here to the earth. All in all we had a great conversation with him!
Wednesday was another full day for us. In the morning we had interviews with President Bangerter and then we had our district meeting. The interviews were awesome. President Bangerter is the best! He was a little hard on me this time because our Zone hasn't had any baptisms in awhile, but he really helped me learn what I can do to improve and help my zone improve in our efforts. I got to see how I can be a better missionary myself and a better leader. At the end of the interview he asked if I was okay because he felt like he was a little harsh. I said, "President, you weren't harsh! And any interview we have just makes me excited." It is crazy. Anytime we have a district, zone, or council meeting too, I just get all pumped up afterwards to get out there and put into practice what I have learned at the meeting. It is the same thing as the interviews! It was awesome and it was followed by a great district meeting.
Wednesday night we went and visited Marlene! She is an amazing woman. It is so humbling for me to see someone who has so little and is so happy at the same time. It is awesome to see. AND every time we go to visit her and her family she makes us a small dinner. So Wednesday we went and talked about how she was doing. She now has a calling at church and it is so awesome to see how much she has grown and changed in my time here. I remember way back when I got to this area and she was an "investigator" and had not told us that she was already a member haha. Her daughters are doing great too. They aren't very interested in the church right now it seems like which is sad. Especially because Evely got so close to being baptized in my first transfer here. But it was an awesome visit with Marlene and she is a wonderful example for me.
Thursday we had another lesson with Marcos. We had decided to teach him the whole Plan of Salvation this time. It was an awesome lesson. Marcos was so quiet the whole time. It was so weird. It seemed like he was really thinking about all that we were teaching him. At the end of the lesson he asked us about how the Spirit communicates with us, or how we feel the spirit. We told him of our experiences. I shared the story about the beginning of my mission when I was in Itabuna and me and Elder Santana talked with that guy Jonathan, which ended up in us finding Patrick, who was a large part of my first area. I also shared about the story that Mom tells about how when she was driving in a storm and started to drift and went to put her foot on the brake but felt a strong impression not to press the brake. It was cool and then Elder Loureiro shared about how he didn't listen to the Spirit and the result was him getting robbed! It was cool and Marcos seems to be understanding little by little.
Friday was a fun day because it was Elder Loureiro's birthday. He was getting calls throughout the day from people wishing him happy birthday! It was really cool to see him so happy. Birthdays on your mission are interesting days but for Elder Loureiro it went great! Friday afternoon we headed over to another area in the zone to do a baptismal interview. I was the one who did it. The interview was with this man named Samuel. He is 20 and a great guy. The interview was going great and he knew everything and seemed ready for baptism. But when we got to the last question, to ask him if he felt ready to make this sacred convenant with God, he said "And that's where I get stuck." So we talked and he explained how he doesn't feel ready and says that all this process has been happening to fast. He said he felt that he hadn't gotten his answer yet. So I did everything I could think of to try and help him get his answer. We read scriptures, we prayed, and I was so certain he would get his answer! BUT, he still felt unprepared. I left pretty sad because I felt like I couldn't help him get his answer and afterwards I was talking to Elder Loureiro about it and he helped me feel better. He said, "Elder you did all you could. You brought the Spirit to the doorstep at his heart, but you can't open the door for him, he has to open it." I thought that was so cool because we had been studying about that during the week and I had forgotten so that helped me feel better!
Saturday was a great day and at night we had a little surprise party for Elder Loureiro at Ingrid's house. It was a lot of fun and he was happy. It made me remember my birthday and the surprise party that the members and Elder Estevam did here for me!
So that was my week! It was a great one and flew by but I felt the Spirit of God so strongly during the week and I know that God lives now more than any other time in my life. Jesus is the Christ and because of Him we can all live with God again!
Love you all! Have a great week!
Elder Spencer Christofferson
#itsalltrue
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