Monday, March 2, 2015

The Work is Growing Fast!

Well February flew by, and at this rate I feel like I'll be home in another month or two.
This week I literally walked through the entire city, from one end to the other, and out to a farm nearly in Bananal. Nothing to worry about but one of my pairs of shoes already has holes in the bottom of them (as in my socks were destroyed by the pavement) but thankfully it doesn't cost too much to get them repaired, only about twenty dollars. 
Anyway, this week was great, and we are preparing a white Saturday.We have 11 baptisms planed for the 21st. We are mainly working in three areas right now, Sinderlandia, Vila Independencia and Villa Maria. Sinderlandia is where about 8 of our baptismal dates are, so daily someone is there visiting all of them, and somebody else visits Vila Maria or Vila Independencia. (in case you were wondering its really easy to do divisions with ward members in a trio because we only need one member in order to do the divisions so we do them almost daily) Vila Maria is a area that has no members, and records of missionaries working there are non-existent. I have yet to talk to someone who has seen the missionaries in Vila Maria, so we are all but opening there.
On Friday we were working in Vila Maria, and for a while nothing was feeling right. We were talking to everyone but not giving any lessons, and I had a feeling that the next person with whom we should talk would recognize us as ministers. We walked for about 10 minutes, and due to the heat we stopped to eat some açai (its like ice cream, but without cream and açai flavored) and the woman who owns the shop asked us if we were from the church, we responded yes, and she accepted a lesson.
Yesterday I was with a young man in the ward when he said his grandfather had just gotten out of the hospital and I asked him if he would like to visit his grandfather. We went there and briefly shared the Restoration and the Plan of Salvation, and the young man asked if his grandparents would like blessings, so I had the opportunity to give them blessings of comfort. Afterwords they warmed up a lot and we were able to make an appointment to return and visit this week.

Here is his testimony of the gospel in Portuguese :) 
Sei que Jesus vive, sei que ele é o meu Salvador, e que por meio dele podemos ser limpos, e livres. Sei que a Igreja de Jesus Cristo dos Santos dos Últimos Dias é a igreja guiado por Deus, e Seus santos profetas. 

I love you all. 
-Elder Lindsey