The Work is Moving Forward!

Well it is hot here. 
I have only been slightly impeded by the extreme heat, but hey its not like I died. (although I'm pretty sure that Elder Calvacante was thinking that i was dying) but I got a blessing and after a blessing I headed back to work.

This week we worked hard. I love the members here, we had very few lessons without members this week because we always had members saying stuff like "yall are going to visit this person this week, call me and I'll go with you" or "hey could I go with y'all today" or "hey I have a friend I want to visit with y'all" 

The members here are member missionaries, of all of the people i have taught here, 3 have not been referrals

. 

We are teaching a woman and her children, we want to baptize them together, but seeing how the mother is still having problems with the word of wisdom, and the children have gone to church upwards of six times, we are planing on holding the baptism this week. The mother is working hard to stop smoking and using drugs, but it's slow going because she is constantly surrounded by other people using them. We have encouraged her to get away, but she is really poor and so its hard for her to move.

We are also teaching a couple whose children are grown up, and the youngest (20) is the only one at home. They are doing really well, they have worked out all of their problems and are ready to be baptized this week.

We are also teaching their sons, the younger one we just started teaching this week, and he is doing well! He has yet to have any problems with any of the commandments we have talked about with him, and he is liking church.

the other son is legally married! He has two children, he is doing well, but isn't yet as firm as his parents, even though he is starting to have a testimony, and his wife has a firm testimony of the Book of Mormon.

The Lord is reaching to lift us up, if we will but take his hand we can become more then we ever could on our own.

I love you all

Elder Lindsey

1st Transfer! Elder Lindsey Headed for Volto Redondo, and it will be HOT!

Well transfers have arrived. This morning at about 8 Presidente Cascardi called and said Elder Lindsey you are being transferred to Volto Redondo your new companion is Elder Spears.

So I am leaving the Royal City to head to the hottest zone in our mission (and its during summer!!!) 

This week was pretty slow. There were few people on the streets so it was hard to do contacts, and since everyone was partying all week knocking doors wasn't all that fruitful either. 

So on Tuesday at night  we went to Amazonas to talk with some investigators there, and since we had spent the day in Independencia we grabbed an onibus so we could get there without wasting an hour and a half walking, and crossing the highway in the dark is always sketchy. As the bus pulled up to the first stop in Amazonas I noticed that it had started sprinkling, and by the time the onibus arrived at our stop (the second) it was raining pretty hard. We got out of the bus and ran to the covering there at the bus stop, and waited there for about thirty minutes for the rain to pass.

I will start with the wind. 

Even standing up on the benches, the wind drove the rain into us and we still got pretty wet. It was raining so hard that the street next to us looked like a river, and the current went about 2/3 of the way up the wheel of a car.

And I can't forget the lightning.

The wind was bad the rain was awful, and  the lightning made me feel like I was in a castle under siege. Looking out, there was two directions I could see the sky. and there was always lightning visible in them. The thunder didn't stop for about 15 minutes, and there were several blasts that made me feel like I had been shot. Then they echoed in the valley like a machine gun for about a minute.

It also rained every other day, but nothing like Tuesday.

We had several investigators at church, and we had more contact with an investigator that lives in Cremerie. He is a professor in Rio, and he is a spiritual. Generally missionaries don't get into the house of spirituals and less often in the houses of professors, but he invited us in (even though he had several guests over and was having a churrasco. We had previously talked to him on the street, so he recognized us and invited us in, and we talked a little about religion and he invited us to eat some barbecue with him. It is really interesting  many of the views he has about God and religion, and I often learn more about my own as I talk to him.

It's amazing to see the perfection of the plan of salvation, there are no holes, nor fallacies,  It is designed to bring as many of us back to the Father  as possible.

Remember that the Lord is forgiving, that He wants us to repent, even if it takes several tries, or several hundred. And He will help you.

I love you all,

Elder Lindsey