Chapter 27: The Youth Album in Portuguese is Quasi EDM

 

 

1/21

Today was freaking amazing. We went to visit one of our contacts and the conversations we had were the absolute best thing ever. We sat down to talk about the restoration, and he started pulling out sincere questions from verses he had memorized in the bible and he really liked our answers. We got very in depth into the restoration and prophecies in the bible, and to conclude, he told us about the difference between convincing and converting and that he wasn't interested in being convinced because he was trying to be converted to Jesus Christ and I got so excited it probably scared him, but he was a really cool guy. After we got taught by out new investigator, we went over to Mateus's family to give them a message and visit with them. As soon as we enter, the air changes, these people prepare themselves to be taught, we walk in and everyone pulls out their copy of the Book of Mormon, and then we all study together. We probably have our most in depth studies with that family, they are so cool! Our messages always end up being an hour or more (sometimes more sermons than messages) but this family is prepared to hear us: they have a little girl who can barely read regular words, and still she pulls out her copy of the scriptures and tries her very best to follow along with what we're reading. What great people. 

1/22

Today was great! We taught a lesson to Cleide's husband who told us that he had been bragging to his friends that "the Mormon church (he pronounced "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints" in a weird way) is the best church there is", which was great to hear, he's a super great guy and going to be baptized next week. We taught him a lesson about tithing and all the good that comes out of it and he was like, "Elders, I'm going to have to stop you there", so Liljenquist and I sighed sadly, and he continues, "It's easy to see that tithing is good, of course we'll pay from now on" which kind of blew our minds, this is a really cool guy, and I love it when people understand our lessons! We also had lunch today with a lady who managed to talk for literally a half hour without pause. Liljenquist warned me to fill up my plate beforehand, if you eat fast enough, she doesn't realize it's not physically possible to understand half of the things she says because she's speaking so fast. The Irma did give us an amazing reference though: Her daughter who lives pretty close to us. We visited her and she's in a pretty low place right now, but was very accepting of the Gospel, so we gave her a Book of Mormon, and we're heading back tomorrow. We also had another zone reunion today. I gave a training on finding happiness in the mission and I got a lot of very nice compliments on it. Everyone here seems to be falling into depression, but afterwards some said they were feeling better, I really hope it made a difference.

1/23

Even if I do the rest of my mission wrong I'll know that I did today right. Today we got a reference, which was cool because this was one of the first times we got a reference from this ward, it led to a less well off family, we started teaching the family but the lesson got kind of weird: We talked about Joseph Smith and Elder Liljenquist asked them if they wanted to see evidence he was a Prophet and they just started shaking their head, "no, no" and Liljenquist paused like, "no, you don't understand, this is evidence that Joseph was a prophet" and again they were like, "no, we don't want to see it" before finally relenting. The wife has the gift of dreams and visions  but didn't feel ready for more responsibility, she said that she felt like locking herself in her room to escape but that God told her to go listen to the message of the two boys, before we came. She also told us she knows that there is a long work ahead (an eternal one, in fact). We went and visited an investigator with the relief society pres which was super spiritual and an amazing thing to do because now her whole family's goign to come to church.

1/24

Six months! Today was really cool. I realized we had been robbed, probably by a kid because of what they took: Two MP3 players, 4 packages of cards, two tie clips, two cans of Pringles, and 100 R$. So we spent a good part of our morning talking to the owner of our house where he told us how irresponsible the missionaries were and that two other sets of keys exist to our house that have been lost, so that's comforting. Today was definitely the most Manaus day I've had yet. as today we enjoyed hiking through mud and forest, as well as handling animals, insects, and soccer. The soccer match was awesome, I scored like, four times, that's how you make contacts. We found some cool people today, one dude is less active but married and now we're going to start teaching them, one family is an older lady who goes to the universal church (which after she mentioned she looked at me and asked, "you have a problem with that?"), her son Nataniel, and her other son, Nataneil. We gave them the restoration today with the invitation to pray and they're like, "wow. That's really powerful. Yeah, we'll do that" which was awesome to hear! Then one of our investigators maybe got kidnapped (we'll see tomorrow) but the relief society assured us that she was not, in fact, kidnapped. We'll see tomorrow. My district grew in size when it absorbed that district leader of the other district in our zone, which means I am now responsible for the interviews of almost everyone in the zone, as I'm the only district leader. We'll see how that goes. We're also giving talks Sunday.

1/25

Today was rather annoying, we spent all day walking around and all of our commitments fell through. Liljenquist and I spent our time this morning madly rushing to put together the talks that we would give the next day and we have a lot of hope for them, we prepared them well. We taught some new people today which was cool, they were very concerned about the Earth and how we're destroying it, they recounted how 15 years ago you could drink the water collected on the ground without worries but now it's impossible to do that, so I shared with them the section of Revelations that talks about the third angel sounding his trump, Wormwood, and all that, which seemed to hit them pretty hard. We talked about the second coming of Christ and then finished it off by giving them a contact card. Then they surprised us and asked about sacrament meeting and when it is. It's a little bit of a walk for them, but if they come, it would be awesome! The only other thing that worked out was that we were able to take Cleide's husband to our quorum churrasco. I was really grateful that worked out though, because that was the only thing that we've done to relax all week, and it was a great opportunity for Cleide's husband (his name is Auderval or something, but I'm American and can't pronounce it), he got to know people from the quorum and eat a bunch of amazing food, so win-win. The only thing was that it took them forever to get started, an hour and 10 minutes of waiting before they were like, "um, Missionaries, you guys can eat now because you guys have to leave in 2 and 1/2 minutes to make it home on time", it was still really fun though.

1/26

Today was cool. Liljenquist and I made food today, he learned how to make pancakes and I made an "award winning sauce", according to Liljenquist, for dinner, which turned out pretty awesome. Liljenquist and I gave talks today. I prepped 19 sources and when it was my turn to talk I saw that I had 19 minutes to speak, so if I just read really really fast and explained it all in a language I'm not nearly fluent in, I would finish on time. I got through about seven. The talks went really well though. I got to do lots of studying today which was absolutely amazing and hyped me up for missionary work before we went out and talked to this investigator who destroyed my hopes and ambitions:

Us: What do you know about prophets?

Cara: We're all prophets, you're a prophet, I'm a prophet.

Us: That's not quite right, take Christ, for example, when he was on the Earth, he was the only prophet-

Cara: See, lots of people think Christ established a church. He didn't.

Us: Wait, what?! No, that's not-

Cara: Religion already existed, the only thing Christ did was save us all.

Us: Christ did give us the opportunity to be saved, but-

Cara: So I'm saved, I don't need to worry about church because I am my own church.

*internal screaming*

I have been thinking a lot about Peter 4:8

And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.

This command to have fervent charity, actively displaying the pure love of Christ that we have is the only way that we can ever hope to save our lost brethren and sisters. How will you fervently show that love?

Elder Anderson

Chapter 26: Attractive Americans

1/13

Pday was sweet! We went down to the central part of Manaus to get a bus pass for me as well as to get all of the items we could be reimbursed for that our house didn't have (like an iron for clothes). We got to see some older buildings, one was an actual haunted mansion, and another was the Theatre that was the whole start to Manaus.

1/14

Tuesday was less fun, Liljenquist and I spent a long time in hospitals because Liljenquist had a bunch of red dots showing up on him, he might have Zika, but we can't find out for another 15 days because he hasn't been suffering for long enough

1/15

Wednesday was great! I gave my first training as a district leader which went great! People participated that had been declared clinically dead, but came back to life to help out in that training, something I had never seen before, it was a very spiritual experience. Then we started splits, I cooked dinner and breakfast for the three other missionaries I was living with and for myself, something that caused much envy among others. I really have not been that social on the mission, yet everyone seems to know me; Turns out cooking among Elders isn't very common. 

1/16

Today was our biggest day for lessons as we knew we wouldn't have much time to do them Friday or Saturday. We had lots of amazing moments with people who really made big commitments, and even had someone tell us they wanted to be baptized which would  be amazing! This would be the first investigator we would baptize without any help from other missionaries.

1/17

Friday was the day of Papito's baptism, Elder Liljenquist baptized him and we had a very spiritual reunion. Papito is the first investigator we've taught who's really understood what was going on, not many people understand the principles we teach, but Papito was really smart, listened to what we said, and loved us for it.

1/18

Saturday was the day of Emily's baptism. She's 19, very kind and loves to talk, she also really wanted to be baptized, but had a terrible fear of being dropped in the font; She asked me to baptize her and I promised her I wouldn't drop her. Her service was also a very spiritual experience.

1/19

Sunday we saw both of our former investigators confirmed. We also got to give several blessings. One, in particular, was to Cleide, a recently baptized lady who taught us the power of our Priesthood when we explained to her what a blessing is, how it's performed and then laid our hands on her head to relieve her of her suffering; At the end of the blessing, she was crying, she said that she had felt her problems leave her as we gave her the blessing, and was able to start feeling normal again.

Muito amor,

Elder Anderson

Chapter 25: Gringos Gettin' Robbed

1/7
Today was exhausting. We spent the whole day walking around, we taught some lessons, but because carrying a conversation in another language isn't one of my strong suits, all of our lessons were super fast. I should clarify that transfers happened, now I'm with Elder Liljenquist, he's super cool, and we both love to work, but today we worked hard. They don't have many investigators, so today we went around doing contacts. The weirdest contact we did was with this guy who sells fish, he gave me an old knife he doesn't need anymore, so I bought fish from him, they were like, 7 for 10 reais, really cheap, but we talked to him about the Gospel and our purpose here, he was a really cool guy. The coolest lesson we taught today was probably to this guy, Marcelo; He was super intent on us throughout the whole lesson, even with an action movie going on in the background, he was completely fixated on the message. We also had a member pass a reference to us, the reference was one that Elder Liljenquist had already taught, they had progressed until the point of baptism, and then she lost interest, but a member said that she had started coming to church again, so we passed by her house taught her a lesson and challenged her to be baptized, and she responded, "yeah, I would like to be baptized", that was really great to hear, especially after a really long day. So today we got lots of new people to teach, a bag of fish, and a person on date, life is very interesting up here.
1/8
Today was way better, the lessons we taught, the people we talked to, it was all just way better. We had lunch with the first counselor's wife, and she had the cutest daughter who told us about all the fruits in the world and ranked them for us based off of how likeable they are. After lunch we taught lessons for the rest of the day, until an appointment that fell through, and then the stake Patriarch called us and asked if we wanted to drink Terere (cold herbal tea) with him. That was honestly the best Terere I've ever had, the Patriarch is really practiced in the "art of Terere", which made it really good. Terere is something that all the missionaries love, so they all would have been very jealous if they knew what I had gotten to do tonight. The lessons we taught today were really great, there was one that we taught to this baptized kid, Mateus, a less active kid, and Mateus's mom, who isn't baptized, but she's incredibly religious. We spent an hour just testifying and expounding the scriptures to them, and they treated our lesson like it was gold. Now the less active boy committed to coming to church, and the mom told us she wants to be baptized, just like her son. We had talked a lot about the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and I think everyone really learned why it was so important, and why it is that we have baptism. We also taught this girl, Giovanna, who was recently baptized. It took a little bit of convincing, but now we're going to teach her Sister, too! Tonight was the first time I've gotten to teach an English class, it was an awesome experience but kind of weird, it didn't feel like missionary work, but that was how we convinced Giovanna's sister to let us teach her. Afterwards, we walked home and this one girl was incredibly snakey with me, but I survived and nothing happened, so we're good. This member also invited us to lunch, which was awesome, because lunch fell through for us tomorrow, so now we won't have to worry about making lunch here, and it was all because of that English class, English classes really are so cool. Then the ZLs called and told me I wasn't doing a good enough job, but Liljenquist and I laughed it off, we know how hard we're working. Also, a guy who runs a shop gave me a sucker today because he believes in the missionaries and wants to be kind to them, and now we're talking about setting up a visit with them, what a great day.
1/9
Today was good, we're lacking in investigators but still had some awesome lessons. People are very impressed by my ability to use scripture; I don't think they know my secret: I'm a fubeca missionary who still studies in English sometimes, Liljenquist and I got to be in a trio  today, we were walking in America do Sul, which we've had to adopt as our area since we're running so low on  missionaries, when we saw a street dog. Neither Lijenquist nor I thought this was strange, as there are street dogs everywhere, but this dog thought we were pretty special, because she followed us  around, and waited for  us outside of our appointments for like, two hours. I named her "Scott". There was one  point where  we were walking down a residential road, and it turns out house dogs don't like street dogs, and so, probably 10 of them decided to gang up and attack Scott. They ran at her and I just stomped in there direction and they all stumbled, came to a stop, and started backing up, still barking at Scott. Apparently, I'm very intimidating. After that, Scott stayed very close to me, until we finally   lost her at an appointment. Today we taught Giovanna's sister, Gabriella, who came to our English class yesterday. We also taught some venezuelanos  about the Priesthood they had recently received. The Venezuelanos only speak Spanish, but still really liked our lesson, and want us to come back every night. The coolest lesson was to this guy, Papito, he's getting kind of old, and everyone here knows him, but he's easily our best investigator, he understands the principles of the Gospel!
1/10
Today was awesome! Liljenquist and I sat down for our planning session today and were like, "do we really not have anything planned for the day?" followed by a lot of dread, but Liljenquist and I still went out, intent on finding new people,  and we taught two lessons  to completely new people; It kind of reminded me of the Nephi  scripture, "I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things I should do", because those people were prepared, and we were led for the entire day, one thing to the next, talking to everyone we felt we should talk to knocking the doors we felt we  should knock. I can't believe we're knocking doors out here, but people here in the North Zone of Brazil are so closed off, there's absolutely no one in the streets, it's incredible. The other incredible (good incredible) thing that happened today happened as we were leaving our second  lesson, we were walking away and heard  a voice call, "Elderes", it was Emily! We had cancelled her baptism because she had left on a trip, but because she was feeling sick earlier today, she came back and changed the date of her trip, now she's going to be baptized tomorrow! By far, the weirdest thing that happened though was when some guys pulled up, one guy with half his body out the window and shouted, "What's  up, Gringos! You guys are going to get robbed!" A Turkish guy speaking English pulled up to us in Brazil with his friends and we had a conversation in English about what our purpose here is, which was such a weird feeling, multiple times I caught myself switching to Portuguese to explain our purpose. The guys were pretty much just in Brazil to party, but thought what we were doing was so cool. What funny guys.
1/11
Today was great! Today we did Emily's baptismal interview, and she passed! She wasn't able to attend a baptismal reunion today though, so we planned her baptism for next Saturday.  While we were waiting for one of the ZLs to finish up the interview, Liljenquist and I heard a bunch of comp horror stories, and I have a newfound appreciation for all of my comps. Lunch was great (because I made it), but our lessons were awesome! We  taught the family of one lady that we street contacted about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and they loved it! Now we're  going to have another family to share the Gospel with! We also might get to help them build a house, which would be awesome, we'll see, we taught two boys, they weren't super interested, but one of them was  still very friendly and accepting. We taught Papito today, which was a  ray of sunshine-well, figuratively speaking, he lost power while we were teaching, so he was a pretty dark ray of sunshine. The power outage didn't bother him, he kept gesturing in the dark to show the relative sizes of fish here which was not very enlightening. We taught a Venezuelan family which was also great, we got to resolve some relationship differences with the scriptures, and our family home evening fell through, but that was okay because then a  member was like, "come on! Let's go drink some Acai!" It was a great end to a very, very busy week.
1/12
Today was awesome! I'm back to 8am church, but we also went to 10:30 church, so it almost made up for having to get ready so fast for 8am church. Our lunch today was great, we had a banana feijao and  the bananas were just like potatoes, so yeah, that's a thing. Then, a if that wasn't enough, the Irma gave me potato bananas so that I could make my own banana feijao. Our class today was really good, we studied a talk that I have on my MP3 player, which was cool because I got to hear the same talk but in a different language. Today was the first time I've done any work on Sunday we didn't do that much, we only taught one lesson, and the rest of the time was spent talking to members, which was more like relaxing than working, but it was still great. One of the members we talked to spent a while telling us about his mission, which was really cool to hear about, but his Sister (I thought she was his wife at first, thanks for clarifying before I said anything embarrassing, Liljenquist), his Sister was a really nice lady: I turned down soda so she went into the other room and blended up some mangos to make me juice, she was a really thoughtful lady. The lesson we taught was great too, we taught a recently baptized firme's husband, he got distracted super easily and really likes movies, so teaching him was interesting, but he has a good heart, I hope he and his wife can be sealed.

As for a spiritual thought: This week we talked a lot about the joy that we have as Saints, which is defined really well in D. Todd Christopherson's "The Joy of The Saints". We can only truly receive joy through obedience to divine laws, the commandments. In Portuguese, the topical guide references "joy" as, "Alegria, Ver também Obedecer, Obediência, Obediente" (Joy, see also "to obey", "obedience", "obedient"). As saints, we define true joy as obedience. Obedience is not restriction, it is liberation that gives us access to the fruits of the Gospel and qualifies us to have Eternal happiness.

Muito amor,

Elder Anderson

Chapter 24: Transferred to Santa Marta

A zone conference

A district conference

A farmer's market outside of Elder Anderson's house

12/31

Today was awesome! We had a zone reunion this morning which meant that I got to see Gardner and Steed, and it was awesome to catch up with them. It was an awesome chance to talk about our likes and dislikes of the mission (dislikes being all the things that won't exist when we're mission presidents someday), and all of the new things that have happened for us. Everyone is giving me a lot of pity: "What's your area? Oh, Grande Circular? I'm sorry." I don't like pity. We have so many investigators and lots of them are progressing, so I have no complaints against this area. The message that our district leader and the zone leaders (because we were lucky enough to have the zone leaders with us) gave today was awesome, there haven't been many messages that I've really loved, but today we talked about persevering and loving the work, and I participated a lot, enough that afterwards I realized that the gift of tongues had really been working, because I was able to share the thoughts I wanted to in another language. Since today was December 31st lots of people were celebrating the last day of the year and lots of people were selling stuff in the farmers market, I even found a Christmas present for Williams as we were trying to navigate the market. It was a Christmas present since we're joined at the hip and can't do anything without the other person there, we planned to do presents after divisions when we could buy stuff with another person as our comp but I saw the sandals he really wanted for a good price so I told him to stand where he was and not turn around for 30 seconds while I got him his gift. He didn't listen, surprise killer. But he was happy, so it was worth it.

1/1

Today was fun, we had a little more success than when we tried to work on Christmas. There were tons of fireworks last night, I set my alarm for 11:53 so that I could pretend I was a cool kid who was physically capable of staying awake past 10:30 and when I woke up to take pictures of fireworks, there was another guy in our house who thought our house was the greatest viewpoint around for fireworks. I really wish social boundaries existed here. Also, equally big as the 12:00 celebration was the 6:00am celebration, happy 6am! (I have no idea why that's a thing) One of our lessons (our only lesson actually because no one wanted to celebrate with us) was with Elioni, we challenged his son to be baptized and we're going back tomorrow to hear what their family wants to do, their son could be baptized, or they could all wait and try to get baptized together, so it's an exciting time! Because we basically just walked around aimlessly since people cancelled on us one after another, we decided to stop by the house of the Matoses so that I could steal water from them, and I'm very glad we did because Elana wasn't having a great day, but we made it a little bit better, I prayed to know what I could share with Elana who was struggling with a Son who didn't want part of the church and one of the scriptures I had recorded in my booklet fit perfectly, I'll share it at the end as a Spiritual thought because this was definitely the best thing that happened all week. Also, Elana taught me what my beans and rice were missing so I'm finally a true Brasilian.

1/2

Today was kind of disappointing. We passed by the three most interested families we were teaching to leave baptismal invitations with them. The first guy we passed by has a pastor for a dad, which we found out when he would interrupt us after every sentence of our lesson as if he was trying to show how much more he knew than us. Williams and I made awkward eye contact many times trying to figure out the quickest way out of the situation. The Pastor's son was still interested in our message, he's a gentleman with ~50 years and spoke to other missionaries before, super cool guy, so we invited him to the baptismal reunion, he was scared at the commitment, which we knew would likely be the case, but we've at least got to try to help these people. We gave a summarized lesson of The Gospel of Jesus Christ to Elioni and his son before we extended the invitation for their son to be baptized. He didn't accept which was sad, because it looked like it crushed Elioni a bit. We also extended the invitation to be baptized to Mara and her family. They've progressed so much, Mara has really taken an interest in the Gospel, but tonight she said that she wasn't feeling baptism yet. Then she invited us to dinner and after much more protesting on her part than was necessary, we got to do the dishes.

1/3

Today was awesome! Everyone's already looking at me like a dead man: "you guys have how many transfers here?" everyone asks, so we tell them, "we have two together here", and then comes their dreaded response, "oh yeah, Elders never stay together for three transfers, that's wrong, one of you's getting kicked out. Which one of you has been here longer?" To which I'll angrily respond, "I do." I'm already ready to respond if we get a call tomorrow: "Elder Anderson, you're going to be transferred to *censored*", and I'll respond, "no thanks" and hang up the phone. Today we briefly did splits; Alves and I went off to teach lessons while Lopez and Williams stayed behind so that they could waste Williams money on an ungrateful person. Most of the lessons that Alves and I tried to teach fell through, but we did have a cool one with this lady we'd never talked to before, but opened her door for us today; She told us that she was really interested in the Gospel and our message, she'd lost contact with the Elders but already knows a lot about the Gospel and has been to church a couple of times, we'll definitely have to come back to visit her (because she's already ready for baptism) We also had dinner with the family of an Elder who came back to show his family where he served, he speaks English pretty well so everyone told me to ask him something in English, so I asked, "does it bother you that the toilet seats are always warm here in Manaus?" The best thing that happened by far today was William's thoughtful gift of a speaker, that was an above and beyond thing to do for a "late Christmas Present".

1/4

Today was a wild ride. As the last day of the transfer, we tried to work extra hard, we actually woke up our investigators, so much for building trust (it was 10:00, who sleeps that long?) It was at lunch today that the fun began: Elder Williams was stirring a pot of jam-in-progress, and knowing that today was the day we'd receive the call about transfers, I was ready to take over for Williams at a moments notice. Well, Williams got a call, he left, and after a while was like, "Elder Anderson, come." I was like, "No thanks, I prefer to not die", unfortunately I lost the battle of wills and Williams made me talk to the AP on the phone: "Are you hearing me, Anderson?" I replied, "unfortunately." Alves asked how I could possibly want to stay in this area, but I love the people here. Now I'll be in Santa Marta, senior comp, District leader. Then we had to tell everyone the news. All day long I was stuck dealing with being overemotional, probably because of all the people telling me how much they love me, who wouldn't cry at the leaving of those people? Sister Matos even sewed my name onto a towel, beautiful cursive as a birthday present, which she totally didn't have to do, but it's the coolest thing ever! We passed by a bunch of investigators to tell them goodbye, we wanted them to all know how much they mean to us. Then we did a family home evening with Irma Joyce and Shirley while Presidente Matos got stuck in traffic for two hours, with the Souza family, and now the Sisters are going to help with the marriage!

1/5

Today was incredibly busy. We had church this morning at 9 (finally), I liked it so much more than church at 8; When you're trying to establish contact with investigators and bring them to church, 8 is just too early. I got to bear my testimony since today was a fast Sunday, and I accidentally told everyone I was leaving over the pulpit when I talked about working in Grande Circular as past tense. Then I started tearing up, my ward member friends started tearing up, we were all just having a blast. After church, we started passing around houses to say goodbye, Irma Matos decided that she hadn't given me enough and gave me lots more to cook with, including the "Matos Mix of Herbs", essential to everything she makes. We passed by Joyce's family, they told their daughter who loved to play with me that I was going; She started crying, now I feel like I'm leaving my siblings all over again. Karey's daughter wasn't sad, they're following me to my next area. We talked to all of our investigators, I shared my testimony about God's love and plan for them and they all made me promise to stay in contact. Elioni even made a cake so that I could enjoy his expertise one last time. I told Elioni I loved it and his wife was like, "great! Now he's going to get a big head!" Moises and Sara were also very sad to hear I would be leaving, they wrote me a really nice note: "We love you, Anderson. We will miss you (heart) Venezuela-EEUU (heart)". All of the little girls in our ward drew me going away cards with nice messages too. Oh, how I loved serving in Grande Circular.

I mentioned something about a spiritual thought, I felt like my emails have been missing something, however horribly long they are, and I realized that many times they don't share, at least in the same way I see them, my spiritual moments, and so, this is the great one that happened with Elana this week:
Irma Matos has a son who's fallen away from the Gospel, and though he's a terrible influence, how can a mother forget her child: "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee." (Isaiah 49:15) That was the verse that I shared with her, and the message is this: Even should we have family members that treat us wrongly, that cause us tearful nights of remorse, yet still we love them because that's all we can do, God likewise will never forget of us. As the divine creator of our souls, God will always be there, to bear our burdens with us until the day that they're taken from us.

Muito amor, 

Elder Anderson