Chapter 35: It's The End of The World As We Know It, And I Feel Fine (Mostly)

The Elders at Henrique's baptism!
 






Elder A's long grocery shopping receipt.


























 
3/17
Well today WAS great. We had a district but it was a super small reunion, just the four of us. It was still a great, uplifting experience and helped us all to bond more, so I'm glad we did it. Then everyone else found out that I like to draw which somehow bonded our district more than the interviews or  anything else we've already done. Interesting. After the reunion we had lunch with the sweetest family ever. The wife is the ward's relief society Pres. and the husband disarms bombs. Another classic example of a great husband/wife duo. They have the sweetest daughter, Laura and a little baby boy that's super chubby. They were such a good family, they gave me hope for the people  of Manaus again, since we mostly just talk to people who don't understand all day. After lunch we had some interesting lessons, we taught Renata and Camille together today which didn't go that well. Renata seemed like she was trying to impress her friend  with the "I'm  too cool for salvation"  attitude, which I'm worried will corrupt Camille. Camille was still pretty interested though, so I was glad things worked out for her. There was a lesson that went far better though: We taught Henrique today, turns out this kid  is the golden child. We taught him and his brother tonight and after the first lesson we taught, he invited us to stay and  teach another lesson to his  brother. During the lesson Henrique was  like, "one thing you guys explained really well for me was apostasy, but I don't  think my brother understands. Do you understand what apostasy means Gabriel? *Gabriel shakes his head no* Could you guys explain it again for him?" So yeah, we're going to really focus on Henrique this week. Today WAS great until they reduced our proselyting hours tonight. Now I'm not freaking feliz [happy].
3/18
Today was the first day of working our new, horrible hours for proselyting, Presidente purposely chose hours when  he knew there would be minimal contact with  people on the street,  thereby  drastically  decreasing the chance  of  us getting  the  Coronavirus; That's a good  thing, until you consider how  missionary work  is a social work and actually completely dependent on talking to other people. Needless to say, work today was very annoying. We spent a long  time walking around  but  not as much time actually talking to people. We did  get Henrique's  baptismal interview done  today, though. He  passed with flying colors;  the interviewer  said that Henrique taught him  during the interview,  so I'd consider that pretty  prepared. We also shared the lesson "The  Gospel of Jesus  Christ" with a family today. During that  lesson we always pause when we get to the part that talks about baptism  because the part about authority  is  always difficult for people to understand. Well, Kawany took  over and started explaining. Then she  told a dude that his baptism wasn't valid.  Kawany  barely opened  her mouth  the first  time we  taught, so to hear her explaining  the hardest part of the lesson with ease, as well as taking the courage to call someone to  repentance was great, it made her trainers (Young and I) very  proud. Young, Kawany and I are super excited about Henrique's baptism, our first success in this area!
3/19
Today was awesome! Despite the lack of work we were  able to do today, we prepped Henrique for his baptism,  which left us feeling great. Another son of God will enter a divine covenant by  the  authority of the Priesthood. We also taught Henrique about the plan of happiness today. Lessons  with Henrique  are always  the best because  he understands so much, it's kind of weird to go from slowly explaining every concept one by one with all of our other investigators to flying through the  whole lesson and finding out that somehow Henrique's retained all of that  information.  We also kind of have a dilemma  about  Henrique's baptism: We're not supposed to have more than five people, but his family wants to see the baptism  which is really  important  for both building trust with them and for  missionary work because 100% if they're there they'll  feel  the Spirit. The other fun thing we had to  do  today was to buy  our  food storage. Caetano gave all the missionaries extra money  to  buy our food storage. Caetano seems to be expecting that we're all going to be stuck inside soon because of this horrible virus, so  today we were told to go stock up on food. We went to the Brazil version of Costco today and spent a ridiculous amount  of money on food (almost 500 reais which, sure, is only $100 but food is cheaper in Brazil, so it was a LOT). I was proud of our receipt, it looked  like one of my  mom's receipts (shoutout to my mom for shopping for our small army) and now I can cook food, so hopefully  the apocalypse won't be too bad for us.
3/20
Today was probably one of the best days on the mission so far.  We didn't really have time to do anything  but Henrique's baptism, but  it was worth it. The first thing we did when we woke  up was to go clean and fill up the font. We messed around a bit, but where's the fun of  janitorial work if you don't? After a rushed lunch we ran back to shut off the font. It was good that we hurried back to the chapel because this is  the first font I've used that has really  worked; The font was almost  overflowing when  we arrived. Normally we have to  wait  for ~1/2 hour for  the font to finish filling up but this time  we had to  use that half  hour to wait for the water to drain back to  a normal level. Then we  ran over and I did an interview for a Venezuelan lady for Parque 10. parque 10 probably isn't very happy  with me  because I didn't pass her, but she didn't meet the time requirement for church. After  the interview we  ran  back to our  area  as fast as we  could  ( we did actually run which  probably scared a lot of people to see two Americans trying to  spread the Coronavirus as fast as their legs would carry them) Henrique's  baptism was amazing,  the Spirit was  stronger there than  any other baptism I'd ever been to. I even got  to confirm Henrique  which  was an  incredible experience. Afterwards I also got to be the mouthpiece  in a blessing for Tiago. The ability we've had to touch people this transfer, this week, has been greater than any other time in my  mission so far.
3/21
We're kind of freaking out; Today amidst our attempts to  work we  heard from the members that the missionaries of Mozambique went home. That kind of put a damper on the whole "mission" thing. Young and I started freaking out: "They can't just send  home missionaries, what are they going to do? Pull all the missionaries in the world?" It didn't help that we talked  to Kawany and she gave us more information on what was  going on in the missionary world; She told us that the CTMs are completely closed  now and they're considering doing online prep  for missionaries. She has no idea how she's going to prep for her mission  now. Between  making food since we can't go to restaurants and a Trump  questionnaire we had to do listing  out where we're serving at, we had a solid two hours to try to work and prep people for Sunday even though we aren't  having  reunions anymore. We  were able to talk to  Irma  Solonge which was  good to  establish contact with her.  We found  out  that  yesterday was her birthday  and  she  informed us  that  she  had a "mountain  of cake" We found out just what  kind of  excess of cake she  had when  she brought out the fourth  cake  in a row and demanded that we eat. Then Young and I went home and felt bad for ourselves (because proselyting is over, not because of the cake).
3/22
The missionaries here are now officially on house arrest.  We can't leave, and we're all  without  hope. We aren't allowed to work with the members at all. The mission is  saying  to make the largest reserve of food possible so that we can stay in quarantine for an extended period of time. Today the President of  Brazil informed everyone  that  all public places (restaurants, shopping centers, super markets) would  be  shut  down because of the spreading Coronavirus. Earlier this week there  were two cases confirmed, Thursday it went up to about four, now we're up to 26. I've been downloading  a plethora of  general  conference  talks, and today I was very glad for them, since  we're now  locked inside. The members have been very sweet, still trying  to bring us food, and  we  have a small food storage, so we'll be fine for a while. The  most devastating part of  all of this is that we really aren't supposed to be working during this time.  We were told by our ZLs today that the ideal numbers for us to pass next week would have 0s for everything; No contacting, no  meeting new people, no helping people get on date for baptism, no preparing people for sacrament, and  no baptisms. We were able to  take the sacrament today, so  that was a positive. As a side note, we just got a call that we're going home so that's errado.


This week Elder Young and I listened to a talk from Elder Bednar. Because it was so applicable to us, I decided to share some parts of it today:
"Each mission call and assignment, or a later reassignment, is the result of revelation through the Lord’s servants. A call to the work comes from God through the President of the Church. An assignment to one of the more than 400 missions presently operating around the world comes from God through a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, acting with the authorization of the Lord’s living prophet. The spiritual gifts of prophecy and revelation attend all mission calls and assignments.
Bednar then shares a section from Doctrine and Covenants that talks about the specific assignment of one of God's missionaries:
D&C 80:3 "Wherefore, go ye and preach my gospel, whether to the north or to the south, to the east or to the west, it mattereth not, for ye cannot go amiss."
I do not believe that the phrase “it mattereth not” as used by the Lord in this scripture suggests that He does not care where His servants labor. In fact, He cares deeply. But because the work of preaching the gospel is the Lord’s work, He inspires, guides, and directs His authorized servants. As missionaries strive to be ever more worthy and capable instruments in His hands and do their best to fulfill faithfully their duties, then with His help they “cannot go amiss”—wherever they serve. Perhaps one of the lessons the Savior is teaching us in this revelation is that an assignment to labor in a specific place is essential and important but secondary to a call to the work.
When a missionary is reassigned to a different field of labor, the process is precisely the same as for the initial assignment. Members of the Quorum of the Twelve seek inspiration and guidance in making all such reassignments."
Elder Bednar spoke to the hearts of my comp and I, when we heard this talk we knew the Lord was mindful of our fears about being transferred into another mission. The Lord cares deeply for our personal interests and for His work, and His work will continue.


Muito amor,
Élder Anderson

Chapter 34: The Return To Decent Living Conditions

Elders Anderson and Young were joined twice last week by Kawany, a member of the Church in the ward they are serving in who will be leaving to serve her own mission for the Church in Washington, D.C. later in the spring. They visited a really amazing beverage restaurant and got to help make their own smoothie!

3/10

Today was awesome, Elder Liljenquist got assigned to work with Elder Young and I for today, so I learned what it's like to be in a trio. We had a district reunion today which was a great opportunity to meet the other Elders in my district. The assistants didn't show up though, so it was just the five of us. We got to see the area a little bit before the reunion today, and it is super nice, Young was like,  "yeah this used to be a Sister area" and LilJ and I were like, "hmm, yep, I can definitely  see that." Some stuff was almost as nice as the States, which is crazy. Same for our house, it's a little bit small, but easily one of the nicest houses I've ever lived in. Lunch today was in a restaurant. It's been a while since I've been in a restaurant. We got to have churrasco which involved grilled pineapple. This area  is ridiculously nicer than Santa Marta, but I feel bad about that,  because LilJ is going back there tomorrow. One other thing that's super cool is that this area is big, and there hasn't been  a lot of hardworking missionaries here yet, so there's a lot of opportunity here. Today we also had two girls tag along with us for a bit to  teach lessons, so I ended up leading an  army of five down  the  street to convert everyone in our  area boundaries. One  of the girls had  a  mission call to Washington DC,  and NONE OF THEM WERE SNAKES [girls that only like the missionaries because they are handsome]! I  love this area. 

3/11

Today was an awesome day! I was still on the rush of being in a new area so we spent most of the day focused on trying to get to know the area. Young  just barely left training and also has almost no time in this area,  so we're trying  to figure it all out together. The ZLs tonight wished me good luck on  opening  the area, so that was a nice vote of confidence. We also all had our hearts broken  when the ZLs told us that our temple trip time was changed to 1pm. The hearts of  my district were broken because it effectively destroyed their Pday, and our hearts were broken because we needed  that time  to  talk to our investigators. Today was also crazy  for contacts, most of what we did in Santa Marta was chasing people down  in a desperate attempt to talk to them quickly, but today we had so many people put  into our path, it was crazy. A sister even called from Sao Paulo  saying she had a reference for our area. The Sister  helps run the church media site under the Portuguese division and said that someone had requested that we contact them because they had been interested in what the church  had been posting online.  Social Media is an effective way of getting the message out. We also talked to some members  today, recent converts, who felt like they were being forgotten. They had been praying that people would be friendly with them and want to talk to them, involve them in  the ward. Well, it just so happens that last night they  were the family that we ran into, and wanting to get  to know the members, we asked if we could visit them. I'll never forget the happiness on their faces that we saw when we visited them.

3/12

Today was amazing! We went back to the restaurant that we went to on my first day here which was amazing. The lady who owns that place is a saint, that's the best food I've had in a long time. Kawany, the girl who's going to serve in Washington DC asked to tag along again which means she must have liked a lot, because we had a lot of success in the short time we were with her. After so many great  moments in such a small amount of time we were all pretty excited to keep working. UNFORTUNATELY those dreams were  dashed to pieces when Elder Young said, "hey! We're on the road Famosa! That means we're right next to acai do profeta!" I was confused because I didn't know that Russell M. Nelson [the President and Prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] makes acai, but apparently all of Larangeiras has accepted another man as the prophet because he receives revelation for acai. Only slightly blasphemous. Kawany got really excited and exclaimed, "I want acai!" and she and Elder Young ran off with me struggling to tag along (since I'm the responsible one of the group, smh [shaking my head]) "so much for working..." I lamented, to which Elder Young laughed and assured me the break would be worth it. Well, it was definitely the best acai I had ever tried before. I love this area. I also started studying Spanish today, there are a TON of Venezuelans in this area and tomorrow I'm doing a baptismal interview in Spanish so that should be interesting. 

3/13

Well, today was interesting. We got a call early today saying that we wouldn't be having church anymore which for us was bad because of the requirement to have investigators in church twice before baptism, so we were freaking out for a while. Thankfully it got resolved by saying that we could meet in the homes of members, but this does make life a little more difficult. I also spent all day reading my little Spanish Book of Mormon which has started going surprisingly well. I know the stories in English and recognize most of the words because of Portuguese, and so far that's been enough to try to learn this new language. We had a lesson today where we talked about Baptism and the Gift of the Holy Ghost; A lot of pastores here claim to have the gift of tongues, which turns out to sound like Parseltongue, maybe they can speak to snakes, because that's definitely not a human language. On the other hand, Elder Young and I are foreigners who never took a Portuguese course in our lives, yet somehow are able to teach these people in their language. I had another funny conversation today with someone who was interested in what we as missionaries do, he asked what our goal was and I told him "to become like Christ" he scoffed and said that wasn't possible, but I assured him it was, I told him we can receive "grace for grace" (D&C 93:20) until we're perfected. The man thought for a second and said, "hmm... good answer, that's almost doctrine."

3/14

Today wasn't quite as fun as some of our usual days. We woke up and got ready early today because we had an interview to do for Parque 10 early. We ran out of the house only to find out a large tropical storm (idk [I don't know], probably not) had hit Manaus because it was dumping rain. More miraculous though, was the fact that it somehow dumped rain all day. My umbrella has long since been destroyed so today was very wet for me. Lunch we went into a member's house who had A/C so that was the moment that I went from being wet to a human picole (popsicle). The trip to Parque 10 this morning wasn't as fun because the intervistee wasn't there and so the long walk in the rain was rather fruitless. Oh well. Work was pretty great today, we got to teach Renata and Camille, two mocas  [girls] who are interested in our message. Renata always acts uninterested but is somehow retaining more of our message than any other investigator, while Camille is the sweetest 14 y/o you'll ever meet. We were talking to Camille about gifts of the Spirit and asked her, "what are things that you would want in your life?" and she replied, "well, I'd like more peace in my life since my mom and dad separated. That made my heart melt a bit, I was like, "Well Camille, do we have a message for you." She really likes our visits.

3/15

This Sunday was interesting. We had lunch with a great member today, she talked for a long time about the Coronavirus which seems to be the only topic as of late. All of our work for this whole week in trying to get people to Sacrament was for nought because our Bishop decided we wouldn't have any Sacrament meetings, members and investigators were strictly to meet in their own houses for the Sacrament which, obviously, doesn't work for investigators. Hopefully all that changes next Sunday and Bishop let's us do sacrament together. Fortunately, we were still able to bless the Sacrament ourselves which was a huge blessing. We spent the rest of the day trying to take the Sacrament to those members who didn't have a Priesthood holder in the home. It was a good Sunday, but I'll still be glad when this whole "deadly pandemic" thing passes...

Today's message is about the reassurances I've had during the week: 

1 Nephi 22:17 Wherefore, he will preserve the righteous by his power, even if it so be that the fulness of his wrath must come, and the righteous be preserved, even unto the destruction of their enemies by fire. Wherefore, the righteous need not fear; for thus saith the prophet, they shall be saved, even if it so be as by fire.

And as to what "saith the prophet"; “These unique challenges will pass in due time. I remain optimistic for the future. I know the great and marvelous blessings that God has in store for those who love Him and serve Him. I see evidence of His hand in this holy work in so many ways.”

That's a promise from our prophet that these things will pass, and if we hearken to the Prophet's voice, we will be protected.

Muito Amor,

Elder Anderson

Chapter 33: Emergency Transferred

Video Clip - Fanta in Santa Marta (~30 seconds)

3/3

Today was the first time I've done a real district reunion. We're not supposed to meet as a zone, sometimes the Zone Leaders get permission so that we could establish goals as a zone, but I got the feeling that it was happening a lot more than it should have been, so I decided to be a pain in the posterior and tell the rest of the zone that we were breaking off. I asked one of the older Elders to give a training today and share their wisdom with the rest of us which went really well. After the reunion we looked around for areas close by to get food because our ward hadn't marked anyone for us to eat with today. Apparently they had asked someone from a different ward to make lunch for us though, which we found out at 12:00 when they called to find out whether we were close to their house or not for lunch. Because of the horrible bus system, it was almost an hour until we were able to get to their house. I felt bad about being so late but we had no idea we would have lunch with anyone today. Today we were complaining to an Irma about the intelligence of some people we talk to when two power transformers exploded, destroying the power lines and plunging a massive part of Santa Marta (our house included) into a blackout. I'm on splits with Elder Ketchum right now and joked with him for a while that he's really lucky to have power in his house since most missionaries live in primitive societies here that haven't discovered electricity yet, and good heavens, he believed me. I fear for him.

3/4

Today was fun. I worked with Ketchum which was really cool. Ketchum was quite shocked when I gave him a pancake bigger than his plate this morning. Turns out that having a giant pan has its advantages. Lunch today was the first time in three weeks of being here that Ketchum had tambaki, something must be wrong with his ward. I might die when I go back to the States and they don't have tambaki with farinha and vinagrette. The lessons Ketchum and I taught today were... interesting. Ketchum doesn't know how to talk, like, at all, so our lessons today were mostly just me going ham on our investigators while Ketchum got some practice listening to people talk. I always asked him to bear his testimony but other than that, there was not much that he was able to do. I felt bad, he was so slow, even with his testimony that people would always cut him off in the middle of him talking and ask how long he had been learning Portuguese for (to me, they would just ignore him like he wasn't there and hadn't been talking), which is a horrible thing to do to someone who is still trying to learn Portuguese and lacks confidence in basic speaking. It sounds like the methods we used to teach today were pretty new to Ketchum, so hopefully he feels like he learned a lot from our work together despite all the horrible things he had to go through.

3/5

Today I returned to working with LilJ he was excited to work but feeling pretty sick, that's a hard combination, I felt pretty bad for him. Terra Nova called and requested that we do an interview for them so we had to cut our work short today to help them out. We taught a new lady today, we asked her name and she told us her friends call her "white". We never really figured out why. It was a really good lesson and she loved hearing our message, but while we were at her house it started dumping rain, so we ended up getting stranded in her house for an extra hour. I never knew how much small talk was possible to do in the space of an hour, now, unfortunately, I've been educated. Because of all the rain it dumped, we had a small river become a very large river, the water level rose at least seven feet, which was no exaggeration, the water came up to my knee and was pretty forceful, One lady started freaking out when I entered the water talking about a hole nearby, or something unimportant like that. Ater our soggy walk through the river we were quite a sight, carrying our shoes and socks in hand while walking barefoot on the road, which is probably the least clean my feet will ever be in my life. Fortunately we only ran into all of Bishop's kids so now they'll pass along to their dad the weird fashion choices the missionaries here make.

3/6

Today wasn't super fun, LilJ and I are pretty sick. Today we went out to try and teach a couple families with members. Tuesday we received a training about using members to get investigators to church so we decided to give it a try today and take members with us so that they could make friends with our investigators. The first person that we went to visit was our investigator, Bia, a 17 year old girl, so we brought one of the young women with us to teach Bia about the Sabbath day. When we got to her house Bia insisted that we stay outside today because, "inside is a disaster", so we were like, "sounds good" and taught on the doorstep; At least, the young woman and I taught Bia, LilJ became occupied when a man tried to engage us and talk about having us over some time, in the middle of our lesson. So LilJ was busy talking to some guy on the road, and I was teaching a 17 year old girl with an 18 year old girl as my comp, trying to pretend like I couldn't feel "the spirit of Presidente" whispering, "não pode..." Other than disappointing Presidente in that moment, we had a pretty good day. We went to teach Ana Clauja and she told us about what a blessing it is that her husband who was in prison is now out on parole (? ...we think, I don't know these words in Portuguese), so we were like,"oh... that's cool..." then, at Presidente's recommendation, we bought "miracle drops". I'm not really sure what they do, but we have them now. We're going to try mixing medications.

3/7

Today was interesting. We ate in our house today because the lady that we had lunch with said that they were busy working. I'm not sure how they ordered food because Santa Marta has nothing, LilJ and I have never been able to order food before. It was nice to eat in our house because when we were done it gave us more time to study. Well, I sat down to study (in a hammock, of course, you can't study anywhere else) and of course the phone immediately starts ringing (it's a universal law; as soon as you relax, your phone will start ringing in another room). It was the APs, strange, because the APs only call for transfers. Well, I picked up and said, "this better not be an emergency transfer" which is probably not the most respectful thing ever but the AP tried to play it off, "what? Who said anything about you guys getting ET'd? And what if it is?" The APs won that one. Now, Monday, I'm heading to Larangeiras with Elder Young to be their District Leader. We tried to help as many people as we could get ready for Sunday, we taught lessons to firmes, new people, and everyone in between. We decided to put Aidukaitus's promise to the test, he promised that if we made appointments the way it taught in PMG we would have an 80% success rate, instead of the mission wide 20% success rate we had been having. We didn't have too many promise they would go today, but we did have enough. We also taught a new lady in what was probably one of the coolest proofs of what I learned with LilJ: We committed her to baptism on the 21st on her first lesson. LilJ and I have done that dozens of times here, but when we got here, we could barely do contacts, so it's cool to see how much we've grown.

3/8

Today was really sad. We had ward conference (we had a lot of people in Sacrament!) which was an awesome experience. Bispo Gomes was released after six years of service, and Bispo Souza was called which we're super excited about! He used to be our Quorum President, he's an awesome guy! After they had sustained the Prophet, the Apostles, stake officials, etc. Bispo Gomes asked me to stand and everyone gave me a vote of thanks for my service in Santa Marta, which was honestly a really cool moment since missionary work is often a very thankless work. As it was the last day before being transferred, we tried to visit as many members as we could before tomorrow to say goodbye to them and express our love to them as well as our investigators. We were really blessed to run into so many people, so many things just worked out, like the Fanta that we found in the gutter. It was a good day.

Today's message is more of a plea than anything else. The adversary attacks us with so many things in our day, and one of the biggest ones is fear. Russell M. Nelson simply stated, "faith is the antidote for fear", all that we need to do in our day to stay focused and not be fearful is to have faith. The prophet Elisha was known for many things, but one of the greatest was that he was fearless. 

15 And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do?

16 And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.
17 And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. (2 Kings 6: 15-17)

To view heavenly hosts, you have to have a lot of faith. Does that mean that Elisha never had fears? Of course not! All of us learn line upon line, and we can handle fear the same way that Elisha did. Pray that your eyes may be opened, for there are more heavenly hosts hoping for our daily victories than many of us realize.

Muito amor,
Elder Anderson

Chapter 32: Power to Overcome the Adversary

 

2/25

Today was carnival. If you don't know what carnival is, ask your parents. Today was also our day for interviews with Pres, so we got ready extra early so that we could be sure to be there on time. Well, we were a lot more worried about timeliness than Pres; An hour and a half after interviews should have started and still no sign of Pres, so we call up the executive secretary and he wasn't super helpful so we were like, "well, that's great" and then we all went home. Then the Mota's invited us to lunch which was amazing because our lunch cancelled on us. After lunch we went out to teach lessons, which didn't work very well. We were able to teach someone new, but in the spirit of Carnival she wasn't interested in our message. Other than that we just talked to members who thought that Pres was crazy for having us work today.

2/26

Today was great, we had conference with Pres, he taught us a lot of the basic stuff LilJ and I should have been doing but had no idea because no one taught us so that was fun. Afterwards we went to work in our area, but today wasn't the best since our area is still experiencing the effects of carnival. The one really cool lesson that we had to day was with a contact named Bia. Bia is ~17 and somehow NOT a snake [a girl who only listens to the missionaries because they're handsome] which blows my mind. She's really interested in learning more so we accidentally tried to give her the entire Gospel in one night, but she loved it so we were really excited about that contact.

2/27

Today was interesting. We had a fiasco trying to receive our washing machine: We heard from the secretary of houses that our washing machine was coming today (thanks to Sister Caetano), and that we had to stay in house all day until it came. We weren't too worried because it was supposed to come at 9:00 so we weren't too worried. Starting at about 10:00 we were calling him every hour and ended up having to cancel our lunch so that we could continue staying in our house until 4:00 when the Secretary called us up like, "bro, my bad, I thought today was the 28th" so we only got like, four hours to work because of that and how long it took us to walk to an investigator's house who lives incredibly far away. I was very annoyed.

2/28

Today was a repeat of yesterday, just reread 2/27 and it's a pretty accurate representation of what happened today. We waited for a washing machine that didn't come, went to work briefly and got way less done than we hoped to. The one cool thing is that three of our investigators passed interviews for baptisms tomorrow: Priscilla, Gabriela, and Maria.

2/29

Today was the baptisms for our three investigators, which was a really cool experience, and I even got to baptize Maria who was only eight years old. It was a really special day though.

3/1

We didn't have investigators in church today, it's honestly a really big testimony builder to me about the importance of working. It was really sad that we weren't able to have people in church but LilJ and I committed to working way harder next week, and now that this whole washing machine disaster is over there's nothing (hopefully) stopping us. I feel like that's what someone who wants to get kicked down by bad luck would say.

Today's spiritual thought comes from a couple things I've been studying this week:

From Peter M. Johnson's talk "Power to Overcome the Adversary" he identifies three tactics the adversary uses to try to mislead us: Deception, distraction, and discouragement. As Latter Day Saints we strive to see as God sees, to not be deceived, and understand the importance of persevering to the end, to not be discouraged, but distraction is something we are all very much subject to: Distraction is anything that takes away from our opportunity to do God's work. To some degree, we all allow distraction into our lives, sometimes just so that we can relax. In Uchtdorf's talk "We Are Doing a Great Work and Cannot Come Down", he recounts the biblical story of Nehemiah, who was permitted to oversee the reconstruction of the destroyed walls of Jerusalem. This incredible task was completed in 52 days, because Nehemiah united the hearts of the people to their task, even amidst countless threats Nehemiah did not allow others to sway his focus from his goal. Nehemiah recounts his response to one of those threatenings in Nehemiah 6:3, "And I sent messengers unto them, saying, I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you?" 

I have seen missionaries exhausted from working, those who have already served for a long time and don't feel that they have the strength to go on. I have also seen those who somehow keep working, even when they're exhausted and feel that they do not have the strength to continue. When we are on the Lord's errand we are not alone, of this I testify because I have already received his strength to continue many times. I have walked on blistered feet and without enough sleep and continued not because of my strength but because the Lord will strengthen his servants.

It is possible to serve God with single heartedness for your entire life. Our experience in mortality is not to learn our strength but to learn God's. God will strengthen you to do his work as much as you allow him, and if you will not be distracted from the tasks he gives you, refusing to come down from his great work, even amidst mortal weakness, you will learn God's eternal strength and the Joy of the Gospel. you will echo Nehemiah's cry in verse 9, "Now therefore, O God, strengthen my hands" because there is no greater joy than in working with God.