Dear
family and friends,
This was an interesting week for sure. Elder Rodrigues and I
traveled Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to District meetings to give a big
training thingy. It ran well, we were able to help the major parte of the zone
to better some specific teaching skills. However, we lost a lot of time with
the traveling and these meetings. Each day I got back to Odivelas and Elder
Gunnarsson and I got right to work.
In spite of some of our best efforts, we had very poor results
this week. I think it was a test of our patience and diligence. It has to
happen every once in a while, I think it´s the way that the Lord make´s sure
that we know that we´re not in charge. Sometimes when you have a lot of success
it´s easy to think that your own skills and experience are making it, when
really it´s the Lord blessing us.
Basically the whole week was just rejection, liars (people who
said that we could pass by but gave a false address and number), and lot´s of
appointments that fell through.
On Saturday we finally had our first lesson of the week. It was
with a young man named Dény from Angola, 18yo. He is from another church...
After explaining the restoration we invited him to read the Book of Mormon and
to ask God if our message is true. He replied simply "no".
Surprised, we talked with him more, and he showed a lot of doubts.
He said "there can´t exist another book, only the bible" "if you
guys believe that baptism is essential for salvation, what about those people
who were never baptized by the right authority?" He was a really smart
kid, and we responded to all of his questions, but each one that we responded
to brought more questions... and after a little bit we realized that he was
being politefully aggressive. We stopped the lesson and said "look, you believe
what you have heard now for years in your church, but we´re just trying to tell
you that there´s more. This "more" may appear different, but you just
have to open your heart and ask god with real intent... will you read the book
of mormon?"
"No, your religion doesn´t make any sense. You all believe in
crazy doctrines created by false prophets."
I replied, "yes, it may appear different. Imagine an
Israelite, accustomed to making animal sacrifices... what would he think if he
saw the future to find out that future followers of God would eat bread and
drink water instead of animal sacrifices... he wouldn´t make much sense of it,
would he?"
"That´s different. There was a continuation, a line of
progress. Your religion is completely off track from the bible."
"no, we already explained to you our beliefs and their
biblical roots. Maybe it looks like we have different interpretations, we just
want you to humbly ask god if by chance we have the everlasting and restored
gospel of the last dispensation"
Yet again, he denied. He asked us to show him, to prove to him
that it was true. We bore testimony, and after Elder Gunnarsson bore his
testimony, Dény said that he felt the sincerity of his words, and finally
accepted the invite to read. He will ask god too, but I dunno how far his real
intent will get him. We await a call from him. I don´t have a lot of desire to
chase him down to follow up.
I told him that I too would pray about the BoM to verify once
again. I told him that on pday we wanted to go to a nearby mountain, and I told
him that I would read, kneel, and pray there to ask again, just to be fair.
It was an exhausting lesson. Probably wasn´t worth it in the end,
but we gave it our best shot.
!!!!
And literally just now (no, as I´m sat here on the computer) Déry showed
up at the church. He rang the doorbell and I was super surprised to see him. He
said that he was ready to go to the mountain with us. He had his bible and a
notebook with him. He said he had nothing better to do. I was surprised. We
actually changed our plans for the Pday today, I was hoping to go with some
other missionaries, but nobody wanted to go with me. So it didn´t work
out.
Déry said that he took my comment on saturday as an invite. He was
convinced that we were going to go to the mountain to pray together to see
who´s right. Man, I´m a bit floored. I thought I´d never see him again. I asked
him if he wanted to go with us, and he said yes. So, I told him "welp, if
you want, I´ll give you a call when we go." And that was that. Headache. I
dunno if we´ll go now. I will ponder. I just don´t know if it´s worth talking
with him any more, he really was lacking humility in our lesson.
So we got working afterwards and had a lot of disappointments. But
then late that night we knocked on a door of this brazilian lady we met in the
street a few weeks back. She was taken by surprise but let us in and gladly let
us share our message. She is named Lediane, and her husband Leonardo live
there. They have been in portugal for about a year now, and have 3 children,
12, 7, 2. They are baptists, but were awfully open and heard the restoration
well. They said "wow, I never heard about his book. We´ll give it a read
for sure."
Leonardo plays in the band at his church, and works a very busy
schedule. It will be really difficult to meet up with them in the future, but
they accepted to read and pray, they will think about baptism.
A week or so ago Elder Gunnarsson and I were walking in a rush,
when suddenly this african lady from a café stood up and stopped us. I think
she was a bit drunk to be honest, but she gave us our address and asked us to
stop by. She said she likes the church a lot.
So we went, and after a few tries, we found her at home. Her name
is Hilda. She seemed to be normal, so we chatted with her. Turns out she was an
investigator a few years back, but lost contact with the missionaries. She
already has gone to church many times and read the book of mormon quite a bit.
She has a lot of problems in her life right now, she wants to resolve family
problems and stop drinking for example, and we hope to help her out. We started
talk about Alma 36, but she said "guys, now I´m not feeling to well. Come
back tuesday." So, we took her word for it, and we ended our visit leaving
her the BoM with that chapter to read. She is an interesting situation, but
we´ll see what happens.
Earlier this week we talked with this old lady from Cape Verde in
the street. She was super nice and is a bit famous in town, that typical
"grandma" that everybody knows. Her name was Júlia and after chatting
with her for a bit we invited her to church. She started by saying "no no
no I go to another church," she then continued in a little monologue that
ended with "okay okay, I give you boys my word, I´ll be there on
Sunday." We didn´t even insist that much. She just changed her mind.
And waddyaknow, she showed up. It was a pleasant surprise.
However, she is still that old stubborn lady so didn´t want to mark an appointment
with us, but we´ll stop by anyways and surprise her.
But yeah, that is basically everything that happened this week. Im
doing good. Elder Gunnarsson is growing and adapting more and more to the
mission. He stopped complaining about the walking finally haha. He´s growing
more courage to talk with people now.
Ci
vediamo,
Elder
Ward
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