14 November 2016 Sou de Rússia

Dear friends and family,

The title is "sou de Rússia" (I´m from Russia) because that´s what I say when people ask me if I´m from the US. I do so to avoid the shmogus bogus that can come up in conversation. I´m here to talk about the gospel, not about politics haha.

No, its not a huge problem here, but every once in a while people want to bring it up. We had a meeting with our branch mission leader, Simão (featured below). He´s really funny, and has an enormous testimony. The first words that came out of his mouth were about the elections, but we had a good meeting anyways. Afterwards he said "hey, but dont worry, your guys´ real president is in Utah" (referring to President Monson, of course.) So, it got me thinking about how I really am focused on another task now, preaching the gospel. Its so nice because I literally dont have to worry about anything else, just myself, my companion, and our area.

Anyways, it was a good week. We worked hard, met some new people, taught some too, the usual.

A quick little story. We were walking at night towards the end of our day earlier this week and this guy who was smoking, said "ey Elders!" A thing we here a lot. We were on our way to visit somebody, but we stopped and talked to him. His name was Luís, and turns out he´s a member, he was baptized 20 years ago as a teenager. We chatted with him for a bit, and he gave a list of reasons he stopped coming to church, life, work, problems, family, business, etc etc a big list to describe why he stopped coming to church 20 years ago.

Surprising or not, this happens quite a bit. There are a decent amount of people who are baptized, make those covenants, go to church for a little while, but fail to endure to the end... And usually they dont feel like coming back around. So, I thought about what I could say to him that could make a difference, make him have a desire to return.

I shared with him 1 Nephi 3:7 (I will go, I will do the things the Lord commands...), a classic that everybody knows. I talked about the experiences that Nephi was going through at that time. How his family was journeying in the wilderness, etc. We explained that the circumstances that he was in weren´t exactly easy, and yet the Lord still asked more from him and his family. I shared that with Luís and then explained to him a bit more the attitude that Nephi had. I continued sharing my thoughts, and how the words of this prophet can apply to him when suddenly he interrupted me and said "wait when does church start again?" I stopped, closed the Book of Mormon, and smiled, a bit surprised to be honest. We shared such information and he responded "I oughtta go back, sometimes I miss it."

He then had to go, he had to go back to Lisbon. He lives there, and stays the weekends in Beja once in a while. We took his number, and tried to get him to come this last sunday. Unfortunately no contact with him and no cigar, but what matters is that he felt the need in that moment. In that moment I felt honored to be a tool in the hands of the Lord. Such a simple conversation in the street with a scripture from a prophet changed the heart of Luís for a moment. Maybe his heart has already hardened a bit since, but I really felt like the Lord wanted us to be there at that time to do something so simple for him.

I share this becuase I learned that the Spirit can really touch the hearts of mankind. I was just sharing a scripture and my thoughts and encouragement, but I know that it was the Spirit that made him have the feelings that he did, enought to say that he misses church.

So yeah that was cool.

Thursday we had a divisão with the AP´s. It was pretty fun, I served the day with Elder Cabreira, a brazilian. He´s a cool guy, and we enjoyed the day, talked with a lot of people. We talked with a romanian man, well we tried, and he just suddenly fled. We shrugged, and continured walking, but then he came back to us with his friend, who was holding a bible. He seemed excited to talk with us, seeing that we were had "Jesus Cristo" smack on our chests. We talked in very rough communication, but they led us to a little neighborhood with a bunch of romanian families. We talked with a those two men for a bit, tried to teach, but it didnt work very well, we just couldnt communicate. A few spoke spanish, so through the portuguese to spanish to romanian to spanish to portuguese we communicated a little. To sum it up, we plan to come back with a bunch of books of mormon in Romanian.

The people I mentioned in previous emails unfortunately have been hard to get a hold of or they havent been keeping up with the invites we give them, so not a ton of progress there. But this week we ran into new people who we have taught, so lets see how they progress. Elder Cottrell, during that divisão found a young man who accepted to be baptized. We still need to meet with him again and teach more, but lets hope he has potential and that we can help him progress.

This week I also really got to defend the name of Christ. We had a couple of encounters with people... let´s say, against religion. For example, one evening, we ended up discussing such topic with 5 college students on their doorstep. They made a lot of arguments, some towards atheism, others towards fraud in the BoM and Joseph Smith, all that good jazz. We kinda talked in circles, I explained a lot of things, trying to help them understand why God is God and just all sorts of stuff. I explained the BoM, how they can read it and ask God if its true. I explained how they can ask God if he flat out exists, etc. I admittedly got a little hooked (it wasnt an argument, they were quite respectful), I just really wanted them to open up a little bit and just listen and act so they can know for themselves. They still proved a bit reluctant. However, in the end, we testified boldly that Christ lives, and that his church was restored to the earth once more by the Prophet Joseph Smith.

We walked away with the address of one of them. She asked us to stop by later this month. I also felt a bit frustrated afterwards, I tried so hard to explain to them that all those things were true, but they just didnt swallow it... With this hint of frustration I then realized that I actually cared for each one of them personally. I was standing there talking to them because I wanted all of them to experience the joy that the restored gospel brings, and I walked away a bit frustrated, sad, and disappointed because, welp, they turned down good news. But I learned that I do actually care about the people here, I desire their spiritual well-being.

This was just one example, similar situations happened twice more this week haha.

We also got to do a bunch more travelling this week. We drove after the divisão south to Faro (faro is 3 hours by bus, 1.5 by car) for a Zone Conference. It was pretty darn good, like always. We then returned to Beja after a 3 hour bus ride and stayed here one day, then we went back once more to Faro bright and early sunday morning for a District Conference. A recent convert, Nuno (baptized about 3 months ago), gave us a ride. He is an mechanic in a mine an hour outside of Beja, and he had just gotten off a night shift when he gave us a ride at 7am to Faro. So, we asked, and he had been awake for almost 2 days already because of work, but he still wanted to go to the District Conference. He stayed awake the whole meeting, and then drove us home too, and then he went home to finally rest. What a guy.

This week I also learned a lot from Elder Cottrell. Neither of us are very seasoned missionaries, but with him I have learned a ton. At times when I may be frustrated or a bit down, somehow, he is always very calm, positive, and relaxed. He is a very dedicated missionary, and loves the work. He´s setting a very good example for me.

But yeah, I think that about sums it up. I had a bit of time extra today to write, hence the large letter. I hope you all enjoy! I would assume there are more people than just my family reading this, so any of you lonely back-seat spectators can feel free to send me anything — questions, candy, comments, food, I enjoy such things!