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| New tie! (Thx mom) |
Hey everyone! As one week ends, another begins and this week was full of blessings, laughs, and LONG bus rides🤣
Heres the update from the week:
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| Golden hour smolder |
Monday - We traveled to Curitiba today for a new missionary training meeting the next day. We arrived and stayed at the staff house with some other missionaries that were going to the meeting and we decided to play UNO. Thinking we were playing with normal rules I was stunned when people started doing things I didnt understand. It was honestly really funny cause us Americans were like, "WHAT THE?!" And then the brazilians would explain a rule they use. Note to self: when your in a different country, you need to play with the rules of the country🤣 (ill win next time)
Tuesday - TRAINING: Honestly got a lot of insight today from President Bikman. It feels like he always knows how to make us think, "wow, i have so much to learn and do to be a good missionary". Some of my biggest take aways were as missionaries we "Help and invite", NOT CONVINCE. The Holy ghost and Book of mormon do that. We just live in a way to a company the Holy ghost to the hearts of men. I really like this way to think about missionary work along with the verse in Mosiah 28:3 to have this desire to help others. After our meeting Elder Salmon and I had some time to explore Curitiba and make some contacts. We ended up visiting a few stores to buy socks cause Elder Salmons socks already ripped and we ended up meeting a lot of people and sending their information to other missionaries. We then headed home on the bus and it took FOREVER! Traffic was really bad so our bus ride was 3 hours instead of 1 hour 30. We literally got back to Palmeira and had to head back to the house.😆
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| Walking in the road |
Wednesday - Found something funny in PMG (preach my gospel). On page 115 in the portuguese and spanish versions, there is a duplication of the scriptures we use to teach the first lesson. (this just blew my mind during my personal study🤣) Directly after finding this we had a mission devocional about the Book of mormon and really my biggest take aways from our President is not to say "If the Book of mormon is true" or "If the church is true" because we know they are true. the "If" comes from the agency of the other person such as "If YOU know this book is true". Truly the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion and will always give us answers to the questions of our souls. Another cool moment is when we were inviting our friend Olivir to be baptized and a hummingbird flew right into the house, waited a second, and then left! It was really random but really cool... and also Olivir accepted to be baptized so we are first going to help him marry first and we will see after that.
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| PMG duplication |
Thursday - ANOTHER MEMBER LUNCH TODAY! We had lunch with some recent converts today and it was delicious! The highlight was when they brought out a parrot for us to hold. And guess what.... I had a parrot on my shoulder! It was awesome! After a while the parrot did bite me but it was still cool. Another funny part today was when I was doing a division with Elder Cardoso and the people we were teaching asked for more rain and so, I prayed for more rain. Literally a minute after I finished the prayer, "BOOM", thunderstorm! Guess I prayed too hard.. my bad.
BIRD (that bit me)
Friday - It has been raining a lot these days and while we were walking around, Elder Salmons umbrella broke! A part of his umbrella dettached and he quickly picked it up before he got too soaked! We also had a very powerful lesson with our friend Alexsander. Alexsander is really searching for the right path and he has told us he is searching for wisdom and has asked us to pray for him always. He watched the Joseph Smith film and had some questions about it so we went into depth about the Restoration, the apostasia, and all these things and slowly but surely, we are helping him to know the truth. Please keep him in your prayers. And now to explain the title, while talking with Rosa (the aunt of our recent convert Laysa) and she told me that Laysa is reading the Book of Mormon every night and reading with Rosa! That honestly really touched me to see the influence we have had on them, the fruit of our labors.
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| Cool storm pic |
Saturday - We had a party today to celebrate Gabi who just started her mission today! She will serve in Reciefe sul as a missionary for The Church just like me. It was really special to hear the testimonies that were shared about the importance of the work we do and the blessings that come. It reminded me of when I started the mission about 8 months ago. Another funny part of the day, we went to go visit Juliana in the plaza to teach her a little and we were talking about the Plan of Salvation (God's plan for us) and we were sitting at this table eating Pastels. When the other elders arrived, Elder Cardoso asked me for the menu thinking that the Plan of Salvation pamphlet I had was the menu!🤣 i asked him which kingdom he wanted to order😂
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| Teaching italo piano |
Sunday - This is the day when I saw the fruit of our labors. Not only were we studying about Lehis dream of the tree of life being the love of God for us, but I had a truly remarkable experience. I had been fasting to help bring people to church but hardly any of the people we were going to visit with the van were going. Feeling a little down, I saw God answer my fast and prayer with "inner peace" (as kung-fu panda says, good movie). First moment was when Rosa explained the peace that came to her house after we started visiting her family and even now while we continue to visit. The second moment was while sitting in the front (since I play piano) I got to see Luiz, our recent convert, pass the sacrament for the first time! I couldn't help but tear up a little to think about how the direction God gave us to these people, is going to make such a big influence for others. Luiz helping others renew covenants each week, and Rosa inviting others to church. I sat there, staring at everyone and could feel the Spirit telling me, "thou hast done a good work, my good and faithful servent". To top it off, we also had the baptism of our friend Vinicius who I had been teaching for over a month and our friend Alexsander, he was there! It was a remarkable day, all thanks to God!
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| Vinicius baptism |
I think there comes a time in every missionaries life when they question if what they are doing is right and are waiting to see the fruits of their labors and sometimes, we don't see these fruits in ways we think but what we need to realize, God knows better than us and he will show us these fruits in his due time. We are to just keep moving forward with faith to acompany the Holy Ghost to the hearts of men.
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| Pizza table tower |
I truly hope all of you are doing well and are finding this inner peace each day by searching for the Holy Ghost in your life. I know God is always trying to help us, and is blessing us in ways we may not think about. Alinge your will with his. Let God prevail!
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| shopping? |
Ate mais!
-Elder Fisher