Dear
family and friends,
So last week I mentioned Hilda. We came back on that Tuesday and
we visited her. We basically discovered that she is a bit... distracted. We
tried to teach her, but she wasn´t all there, if that makes sense... she talked
during the prayer and everything, wouldn´t stop talking about her husband who
left her, stuff like that. She asked us to say a prayer to bust open a door in
her house that has been locked ever since her husband left and took the key...
We were a bit confused, Elder Gunnarsson´s face was pretty funny.
In situations like this, we usually just invite the person to come
to church and then we politely leave (it was a really awkward situation) but we
didn´t because there was this african fella of about 50 years there named
Sebastião.
Turns out that Sebastião, 27 years ago, in the Algarve, met the
missionaries and learned with them a little bit. He says that he liked it, but
doesn´t remember much. Since then he´s studied with other religions, the only
thing that he remembers from the Elders is "head, shoulders, knees, and
toes". We gave a laugh when he showed us. It´s really interesting that he
remembered that, and in English too... It quickly proved that he has already
had contact with us, but we will have to revive the contact haha.
Sebastião is pretty normal, a calm guy. So when Hilda was acting
strange, he just kept his cool. We found that he had some potential because he
accepted to come to church with us. Unfortunately he has an injury, so he can´t
walk well, so we tried to get him a ride, but when we called him on saturday to
work things out, he said that he was out and about looking for a new place to
live, he said he was sick of living there with Hilda and will get a new room
because he "wants to study with us". So yeah, we´ll se what happens
this week with him. He had back pains on Sunday, so didn´t make it to church.
We found another nice lady from our area book named Nadini. Her
name was written in the area book with only "was marked for baptism
once" from like a year back. We showed up, she let us in, we chatted with
her, and she was super nice. She is about 30, african, and unfortunately very
stressed and worried. She has some sort of sickness that is causing her to lose
her sight. However she said that she had been praying a lot for help, and her
vision was staying, even improving, and she said that we were an answer to her
prayers. We talked about the book of mormon and it´s teachings about happiness
through Christ, and with the short time we had we simply shared a scripture
about he resurection, and she was pleased with what she heard. She swore she
would come to church, but ended up going to the hospital on saturday, and since
then we lost contact with her. We will try to find her this week.
In the hunt for an Ex-investigator we found we found a lady who
was pretty cool. Her name is Linda. Her daughter investigated the church, and
actually a year ago in a division I taught her with Elder Kaelberer, but I
don´t remember anything, I just recognized the house when I got there. Linda
answered the door, and let us in. Apparently, when her daughter was being
taught she always heard the lessons but never came to church. We showed up late
at night, we taught only about the Sabbath Day, and she agreed to come to church
with us the next day. We then talked about how obedience to the commandments
prepares us to become true followers of Christ, so we invited her to be
baptized. She said, "ok, I was never baptized."
We marked a date for her, and we actually walked with her to
church the next day, she was awake and ready, which was a good surprise. She
liked it a lot, but didn´t stay for all the meetings, just sacrament meeting.
She had to go to visit family afterwards. We´re going back tonight to se what
happens. She showed a lot of potential, people who come to church are
automatically much much more capable of being baptized, church on sunday is
generally the barrier.
That brazilian family from last week, Leonardo and Lediane
"read" the book of mormon. When we went there to visit we started to
follow up with them and we asked them what they concluded from the Book of
Mormon. Leonardo pulled out a little notebook and said "yeah, I made some
notes here, your book doesn´t agree with the Bible at all." He said
"here in Doctrine and Covenants is says that yada yada"
I said, "oh, okay. Where did you find that scripture
again?" He picked up the Book of Mormon that we gave him and started to
search the titles for DnC and I spared him the shame and said "you guys
talked with you pastor, didn´t you?"
"Yeah, we wanted to know what he thought of it. He gave us
this list of scripture that show contradictions."
I realized that they weren´t really searching with real intent.
They asked their pastor instead of God, and because of that, they weren´t open
to try again. I told them that if they wanted, we could come back with
explanations for each thing with biblical roots, but in the end we would always
invite them to just read the BoM. Above all they were super nice and super
respectful, but just didn´t show the potential and the honesty in searching.
We taught a few other random folks this week, but they were
lessons super fast, each person just had ten minutes or so, and Elder
Gunnarsson is still adapting his teaching skills, so the lessons had to be cut
short instead of simplified. We are practicing every day and we´re getting
better.
Things are going well. We hope to find some more good work this
week. I think that´s it for this week.
Take
care,
Elder
Ward
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