November 14, 2011

Sorry, a bit late getting things updated.

November 14

This week was a pretty good week (i~ll share two stories here that you need to share with dad)

1 - I hate it when people say - this is the ONLY true church on the face of the Earth.

I hate it for a lot of reasons. One I think it orients our thoughts toward the fact that our church is different and the away from the purpose of church in general. I also think it is a little prideful and can be a little combative as well. Also, my understanding of the attonement and the love of my Heavenly Father is that they are not going to send anyone away just because they weren~t memebers of this church. The church will not save anyone. (they love to say that here there are a ton of evangelicals)

I was doubting my testimony pretty hard. We ran into a lady whose church also had a prophet in the states and they follow the teachings of him. I started thinking why this church? Why should I be telling people to join this church othere churches have profets as well. I was praying about this while we were tracting and this one lady said we could talk to her. we were talking to her and her husband when she said, (Deus é um só) basically it means that there is just one God and your church doesn~t matter. I have always had a hard time responding to this phrase because I don~t know what to say. But this day it came clearly to my mind. If there is just one God then there is just one way to him. And if there is just one way to him only one church has that way. I testified to her that that way that path was in our church. After her we had the chance to teach the first discussion 3 or 4 times to people who just let us in to talk. It was such a good chance for me to strengthen my testimony.

Heavenly Father gave me a chance to share my testimony and thus help it Grow. It was a great day.

2 - I am scared of this lady in my ward.

She is crazy. I love her and she is hilarious but she is crazy. haha and she gave me a reference 2 weeks ago and I did nothing with it. I didn~t have confidence in the reference and didn~t want to waste the time going to talk to her so I didn~t. (pretty bad of me) We had lunch at this ladies house yesterday and I was scared. I was scared for my life to be honest with you haha.

I was thinking about this the last three days before this lunch and had a revelation. The spirit helped me come up with a plan about how I could use this family to teach her so that it wouldn~t be just the missionaries but rather the family teaching.(I told her that before my mission giving references to the missionaries was like lighting a firework. You drop it and run away and that I didn~t want that to happen here) At one point during the plan she shook my hand because she was so excited that a missionary understood this relationship.

It was such a blessing to me that insteading of losing the confidence of the member we gained it. I am really excited to work with this family.

My companion is Elder Barros. He is from Campinas, São Paulo. He is a lot different than my other companion and drives me nuts a lot at home but on the street he is amazing. He loves to teach and follows and knows Preach My Gosple. It is a good relationship.

The food is good. A lot of rice and beans. And stroganoff (made that today) the stroganoff is just tomato sauce and cream with corn and chicken or beef. The lasagna here is with lunch meat and white sauce its a lot different but really good. They eat spaghetti but spaghetti is always with the sauce never separate. The food at the bakery is really cheap like 30 cents for a cinamon roll thing but in general food is more expensive. Milk is 2 reals for one liter but vegetables and fruits are really cheap.

I am learning to cook brazilian food so that I can share it when I get back :)

We eat with members everyday except p-day which is hard because It takes a lot of time and sometimes is more stressful to me and less efficente but its ok.

I know that we are procted because we walk in some pretty crazy areas in the dark with people doing crack right next to us and nothing happens :) love you !!!!