#20 - The General Conference 5K (10/2/23)

 

Bom dia todos! Como vocês estão?! Espero que vocês tiveram uma semana maravilhosa especialmente com Conferência Geral!

Geral Conference work be like...

To first explain the title of this email, General Conference works a little bit differently here on the Brazil Curitiba mission. I think most if not all missions will have the missionaries bring investigators or invite people to watch conference and they will watch it all together. We do the same thing! ...except not😅 Conference is a time to really hasten the work so instead, during conference hours we run around knocking doors telling people about conference, showing them the livestream, and inviting all we can to participate! I will explain a little bit more further down but for now, I still haven't seen any conference!🤣 But once they are uploaded to Gospel library, I will be watching!

In other news, here is an update on this past week:

Monday - CHURRASCO!!! (for those that don't know, a churrasco is pretty much barbeque in english) We went to do a day division with our ZL and afterwards we went to this Churrasco restaurant. IT WAS SO GOOD! Apparently one of the deserts Elder Hall grabbed was made with wine so within the first bite, his face went all crazy! He had rice pudding instead.

CHURRASCO

Tuesday - We had a zone meeting today to help prepare ourselves for Conference week! We learned how to best explain conference and did some practices! (I even got to be an investigator for some!) Something else I thought about is how easy it is to teach when you know the answer. For this past week, it was watch conference. But then another thought came to me, "isn't the answer to everything Christ?". I kinda realized that as missionaries, we may not know all the answers or what to say in lessons, but if we focus on what Christ taught and what he would you, that's the direction you should go in your teaching! 

Wednesday - ZONE DEVOCIONAL! First things first, I LOVE our zone devocionals. Literally everytime without fail I will learn something new. This last week we talked about recognizing the Spirit. In Moroni 7 it talks about recognizing the spirit. Verse 13 mentions that if something invites you to do good, its of God. Verse 16-17 go into more detail of knowing good between bad. I honestly think that the Spirit speaks to us more than we realize, we just may not have realized it's the Spirit! I also found out today that "Elder" is an actual name for people in Brazil. So I guess my name is literally "Elder Fisher". Pretty cool!

Zone!

Thursday - During language study today, Elder Hall and I were reading in O Livro De Mormon (Book of Mormon). As i was reading somewhere in 2nd Nephi, I came across a passage that I translated to english as "eat me". Elder Hall just busted out laughing. Little by little the portuguese is getting better 😆 We also joined a family for a Jantar (dinner) and IT WAS GOOD! The father also used to have bad relationships with the missionaries but after that night he said we can come over whenever! WOOHOO!

Friday - HIT 4 MONTHS ON THE MISH!!! The strangest thing happen during personal study today. Elder Child (1 of our AP's) sent a few scriptures to our zone chat and I had read the exact same scriptures 15 minutes before him! creepy! I also thought a lot today about something one of the CTM Presidents said. Elder Beck mentioned that we have missionaries because sometimes families don't have access to the gospel or it was never taught in the home. For this reason, he said that missionaries are practiaclly like parents for all the children of God. It helps put into perspective the importance of the family and how we are all of God's children! 

 Horse outside the house

(Also had a fly fly into my eye while contacting someone in public... still got the number and we are going to visit them next week!)

Saturday - Started the morning with early morning volleyball with some members of the ward! It was a lot of fun especially when a random dog came over and just sat in the middle of the court! 😆 After volleyball, we prepared for conference. We probably texted like 100 people within Saturday and Sunday and during each of the sessions, Elder Hall was on one side of the street and I on the other, knocking doors as fast as we could. We literally got home that night and just fell to the ground!

WE GOT A NEW SHOWER (AHAHAHA!)

                         [Mom note: this means no more using a bucket and boiling water]

Sunday - Same thing as Saturday! While knocking doors, I felt like one of the Newsies from the musical "Newsies" during the song "Once and For All". I felt so psyched to continue knocking doors and showing them conference! We ended up bringing 63 people to watch conference!! YEAH BUDDY! The only part I did get to watch was right at the end with President Nelson when he mentioned a celestial mindset.

LAST DISTRICT PIC

Overall, it was an awesome and tiring week trying to bring people to watch conference. One of my take aways is actually from Russell M. Nelsons talk last conference, "Peacemakers Needed". I love this talk how it mentions the importance of not having contention. Contention can be as simple as having an ill will thought towards someone else and contention is never of God. In 3rd Nephi 11:29, it talks about the spirit of contention is not of Christ. And so I would like to invite you all to have more charity, be a peacemaker to look past what may be on the outside and look at the child of God that is in front of you. When you have eyes to see someone as God does, you want to do all you can to help. We may not be perfect, but we can try to be perfect in our love.

Scriptures:

2 Nephi 22:2

3rd Nephi 12:3-12 - Blessed are the...

I hope everyone is doing well and that everyone enjoyed conference! I look forward to being able to listen to it and hearing all of your thoughts on it. Until next week!

Ate mais!

-Elder Fisher