Getting started, we had a good week.
We tried to meet up with Diego all week, but he was so tired and busy that he hardly picked up the phone. So, we didn´t get to meet up with him until saturday night (a solid week after his baptism). We had a good lesson with him. We printed his photo from his baptism and we put it in a little frame and we gave it to him. He was awfully happy to receive it.
Diego fortunately made it to church the next day and was confirmed. It was a good experience. Diego should do well.
Unfortunately Ivanilson didn´t make it to church. He can go, it´s just really difficult with his work, he works a lot and only has sunday to rest, so he gets home destroyed saturday night and has a lot of trouble getting up and making that sacrifice. So I decided it was time to visit him. In all these months that I´ve known him, we actually never visited his house. So we headed there sunday afternoon and we actually woke him up from a nap, but he gladly let us come in. We gave him a baptismal photo too, in a little frame and he liked it a lot. We had a good lesson with him. We didn´t have to push much for him to admit that he´s been failing a bit. He recognized that he needs to do better, and he was very convinced to come to church this next sunday. His testimony is still strong as ever.
So the whole week we worked really hard but we were seeing few results. Even so, we kept up our pace and did our best, but many of the days were just walking talking and knocking for the entire day and full of rejection. But so be it, it´s the bread and butter of our work.
But I think we were rewarded for our diligence. Saturday afternoon we were contacting when I saw this girl sat on a curb. I have a lot of trouble guessing ages but she actually looked to have about 15 years. I talked with her, and I noticed she had a bit of trouble understanding. After talking for a little bit, we learned that her name is Adelina. She actually is 18, and is visiting the Algarve for a month or so. She lives up in the northern half of the country and is studying there, but came down here to work for a bit. She came from Timor, a small island just above Australia, close to Indonesia. She speaks a decent chunk of portuguese though because I hear that there used to be a portuguese colony there. She is a simple christian, her family back home is protestant, but she has been going to an Evangelical church lately. I dunno why, but I invited her to walk with us to see the chapel. She obliged. It was about a 5 minute walk, so we got to know her on the way.
We showed her the chapel, and she was impressed. We sat down and taught her the restoration too. She seemed to have understood well. She accepted the Book of Mormon (in portuguese for now, but we´ll get her one this week in indonesian). We invited her to be baptized, but she said she will have to decide after coming to church and such...
She came to church the day after and enjoyed it quite a bit. She read the chapter that we left with her and she said that she wanted to keep reading. We will be meeting with her more this week to help her progress. She said to us in our lesson that she had been praying lately to find a church where she could find and feel the "presence of God".
Of course we were sent to find her. She was sat down on that curb and I asked her what she was doing, she responded "uh, nothing..." We´re excited to work with her more.
We´ve had little contact with César. He came to another Self Sufficiency class on saturday, and came to church for the third time in a row. It´s kinda funny, he didn´t respond to our messages or calls all week, but showed up with no hair pulled to that class. We showed up afterwards, but he had already left. We caught one of the members who was in the class with him and I chatted with him. He said "wow that César is great. How long ago was he baptized Elder?"
"Oh, he´s not baptized! He´s our investigator but we´ve only taught him once, he´s always so busy!"
"Really? He shared his testimony and talked a bunch during the class about his experience in meeting the church..."
"He has a testimony?!"
So yeah, it seems like César is learning to be too Self-Sufficient, he doesn´t even need us missoinaries! Nah, a joke, but really he seems to be doing well, he just couldn´t meet up with us this weekend because his mother went to the hospital and stuff, but we still hope to teach him more soon haha.
Anyways, I think that´s it. Tranfers next week. Ive been here for 4 now. In our mission it´s super rare to stay more than 4 in an area. So, it´s basically garaunteed that I´ll be transfered, so let´s see.
Ciao,
Elder Ward
The brazilians are the ones with their tongues out.
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