2/4
Today was awesome! Liljenquist and I are back full
swing into work, and we absolutely killed it today. We taught 5 lessons
which was great after the annoying setbacks we had, and put 5 people on
date for baptism. Those baptismal dates are huge, because I'd never
successfully challenged somebody to be baptized before. Actually, there
was one man in Grande Circular that accepted a baptismal invite, but
that event was singular, so to have 5 people put on date in one day was
huge! Liljenquist and I went to a reunion today about marking dates, and
it was pretty great to feel like I was learning something. It is really
important that we help our investigators have the same vision that we
have for them. Yancey reminded us that Presidente said that the first
presidency is considering closing our mission and gave us a war pep
talk, now if the first presidency wants to close our mission, they're
going to have to go through us. The lessons that we had today were
phenomenal, we taught a lot of people who had never spoken to us before,
and we were able to invite the Spirit enough to have statistical
success. Baptism isn't everything, but everything starts with Baptism.
Really I just can't get over the immediate success that we had, it was a
really big blessing to meet so many people who were truly prepared. I
also drank close to a liter of cupuacu today, so that's another reason
I'm so happy. I also ran in the dark, in the pouring rain, with an
umbrella in hand, which was the perfect height to launch water into my
eyes, further obscuring my vision. A dog started chasing us for a bit,
no one in Brazil runs voluntarily, so seeing two gringos running really
scared it.
2/5
The last page in my first journal,
today is a big day. Copies of "Brian 1" should be appearing on the
market early fall of 2020. Today was probably an even bigger day for the
Mission President of Sao Paulo, though, he was assaulted by some
ex-missionary, a full report where our church is misidentified as the
evangelical church, and where the CTM is clarified as a building that
isn't for cult purposes is available here: https://g1.globo.com/sp/sao-paulo/noticia/2020/02/05/homem-invade-centro-de-missionarios-de-igreja-evangelica-com-faca-e-e-baleado-em-sp.ghtml
Elder
Liljenquist and I both have a skin disease, he thinks it's Ebola. We
taught our English class tonight, which was awesome. I taught everyone
how to say, "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" to help them with their
pronunciation; As you can tell, we're a very productive class. Today's
other highlights involved walking two hours for a single appointment. I
felt like I was living the song "I Would Walk" by The Proclaimers.
Liljenquist and I also blew off divisions today, we decided that we
would rather work in our area than lose more time on splits with people
who just wanted to mess around. We didn't teach a ton of lessons today,
but the ones that we taught were pretty awesome. We did try to do a
trust building visit with some members and it ended up turning into a
Terere session for a half hour before we had to leave: "Aw, you guys are
already going?" I do love now that the members want to be around us so
much. The daughter of that family concluded that I was crazy after I
told her the reason that we all drink from the same straw: It's a part
of the Terere experience to share a straw, plus, it makes it so much
easier for us to share our sicknesses too. That family also promised us
food for the rest of our missions, so we're set.
2/6
Oh
my goodness, today was difficult. All of our commitments fell through,
except for two; So our whole day was spent making contacts and teaching
brief introductory lessons. There were a couple of lessons that LilJ and
I taught today that were really cool, we've been out here for long
enough that we've started to get in tune with each other, so our lessons
have become even cooler as now our investigators think we have the
ability to read minds. The keen reader will notice that I said that two
appointments didn't fall through; One with Doralice, and a community
bible study session with our friend, Irmao Jose. The lesson with
Doralice was interesting, we entered, I shook her brother's hand, and
that was the moment that our lesson went downhill, yes, before we had
even started. We sat down and this guy who had already started telling
us about every single thing that exists in the world that he thinks is
bad and needs to be changed. We literally could not get a word in for
the first 30 minutes. That guy must be fun at parties. After that, it
still wasn't until minute 45, when I shut my scriptures, having lost all
hope of sharing a message that Doralice went, "No, no, no, you be
quiet, it's these boys' turn to talk." Thankfully, that message still
went pretty good. The other fun event was our bible study. Irmao Jose
had invited us to study the bible with him and his group, we showed up
late after the above mentioned fiasco, and then the rest of the time
ended up being "gloria"s and "hallelujah"s. There was a lot of clapping
but we did manage to sneak a message from the Book of Mormon in.
2/7
Today
was also not very fun. All of our appointments fell through again,
which meant that we spent a long time walking around, talking to new
people. Today it felt like we were serving a mission in the States,
because we got straight up rejected like, five times: "Hi, nice to meet
you! We're representatives of Jesus Christ, our mission is to help
people become closer to him. Could we share a message about Jesus Christ
with you?", and we got the eloquent reply, "no." this confused us,
we're used to hearing "because, I'm busy right now" or "because, I'm
going to leave in a few minutes" (every lame Brazilian excuse starts
with "because", so every time that we give our spiel and someone replies
back "because" Liljenquist and I just look at each other while we wait
for them to think of what they're doing that excuses them from
repentance). The nice little reminder I got today that I'm not the crazy
one was when we went to do a baptismal interview for Sanchez and
Graham. We told them about what was happening and it was great to hear
them go, "what? How is that possible?!" because that's exactly what we
had felt. Then I interviewed a girl for baptism, she passed with flying
colors, so we made an accord to tell her family and her missionaries
that she wasn't ready to be baptized. Turns out my Portuguese has gotten
a lot better than when I first got here, Sanchez believed me, then I
hit him with the "just kidding" and he couldn't believe an American had
just messed with him.
2/8
Today was interesting.
This morning we built some walls for a house. I got to mix concrete and
lay some rows of bricks, so that was fun. Turns out, you don't even need
a high school education to build houses here. As was confirmed by our
recent Venezuelan convert, you don't even need most of the communication
skills necessary for living in Brasil, as long as you understand
pointing and grunting, you're set. After the service project and a
lunchy of chicken heart, we were off to start our daily work as
missionaries. Today was a very successful day for missionary work here.
We taught a ton of lessons, told lots of people their baptism isn't
valid, encountered missionaries for another church (but unfortunately
did not get to talk to them) and worked on reactivating members. We
started a new thing where now I'm texting people prayer reminders (to
ask about the truth of our message) and things are going so much better,
our lessons are getting a lot more sincere. We also got to see a three
day old baby which was pretty awesome. I don't know how the mom's going
to feel, we're stealing her husband for church tomorrow. We also got to
talk to the man who's gate we washed a week and a half ago. Tonight he
told us he really wanted to read the Book of Mormon (he had loaned away
his copy the last missionaries gave to him), so Liljenquist pulls our a
Book of Mormon, "this?" and the guy got super excited. -1 BoM +1
Salvation Point for that guy.
2/9
Today was a really
cool Sunday. Shoutout to Skyler Lykins, we didn't get anyone in
sacrament meeting last week and I felt like we were kind of struggling,
so that RM who served in my area and baptized probably 25% of the
people there very patiently helped me with some ideas of what we could
do to help people. Today we tried out one of his ideas, Liljenquist and I
went on splits with guys from the ward so that we could have one Elder
in our Sacrament meeting, there to help out, while the other went out to
find all of our investigators and try to help them come to church. I
went out with the Bishop's son and we passed by as many investigators as
we could in the short time that we had. After laboring with all of our
might, we were able to share our reunion with Ana, an experience she
loved, which made all that walking worth it. After Sacrament, we found
that we had a lot of threatenings on our phone. They were written in the
language of a 13 year old, but he mentioned burning down our church
building so we made sure to ask the other good group of missionaries in
our zone what they recommended that we do. We sent him a nice breakup
message, complete with the Bishop's number, and our love and best
wishes. We had a pretty mellow night, Sundays are a little hard to
proselyte on amidst all the drinking and smoking around us so we passed by some
members houses for longer than we normally would. We ended up
strengthening a lot of relationships and even found out that Brazil
isn't safe from the effects of the hoverboard, one of the members has
one. We gave him our condolences and advised him to seek counsel from
the Bishop.
A passage I read recently in 1 John struck me:
22
And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his
commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.
23
And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his
Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment.24 And he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.
We have the divine potential to become like our heavenly
father, something that is dependant on us accepting his Spirit. How do
we accept his Spirit? As verse 23 says, we believe on the name of
Christ. This faith leads us to act, to repent so that we can be
sanctified, accept the will of God, and to receive his blessings. The
point it all starts with is faith, if you don't feel that you can have
faith, have hope, and let that hope work in you, until you see how truly
sweet the Gospel is, and then you will be able to believe, you will
have faith.
Muito amor,
Elder Anderson
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