Well its already been another week, and I cant believe it! I don't really know what to say about this week. haha Like I said last week I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and really try to do everything I could to find more investigators and find some people that really would be able to progress. And I really had been studying a lot about this and really praying for help. I also gave a training on finding from chapter 9 of PMG for district meeting. We came up with methods of finding that have worked best for each of us. And we made a goal to find 30 new investigators, 15 in each area. we are a couple days away from our week long goal, and we still need to find 15 more as a district. But I have faith we can do it! We had some crazy miracles happen that same day we made that goal actually.
We found a lady, Rosilleni, at the old lady, Allysi's house. She was way solid and said she would read and pray, and accepted a soft baptismal invitation too. Then we were just walking down the street and this lady comes out of a store and chased us down because it looked like she was hesitating to talk to us or not. But she chased us down saying, "Wait are yall with the mormon church?" (I dont really think they have the word "yall" in Portuguese but thats how Im choosing to remember what she said) And we were like "yeah!" She then discribed that practically all of her family is a member of the church but they are from São Paulo, and she moved into town pretty recently and she promissed her family she would visit the church to see what its like. She said she couldnt this sunday and that she was busy all week until next Sunday. So we werent able to set anything up, but we got her number and she said we could come by next week. So I am excited about that too. There were other mircale too that we received as we looked for more people to teach, and really put ourselves out there.
The sad thing is we can't control everthing. A lot of our miracles had some sad endings already, most of which happened on Saturday. Rosilleni, we visited her again and we walked way to the end of our area, about a 40 minute walk to teach her. It was another great lesson, but we came at an hour when her husband would be home. But he didnt want to sit in. So at the end of the lesson we comitted her to be baptized in about 2 weeks. And she said she knows she wants to, but needs to feel worthy first and one is to get married first...WHAT?! She caught us by surprise because she referred to her husband in muitilpe instances like they were already married. So obviously that was fine, and we said that marrage is a great first step to baptism. Then still happy, yet a little disapointed at the new challenge ahead, the husband came out after we left and step out the gate and called out saying they know where our church is so we dont have to come back there. Yeah.....it wasnt in a rude way, but esentially he told us not to come back. Gah.....at that point I knew, even though she said she would, that Rosilleni would not be at church the next day. Which turned out to be true.
Then another family we found and were really excited to get to know better werent home at the appointed time....luckily we found the 2 kids in the street getting ice cream later that day and talked to them really quick, but they said they could come to church either, And didn't know when we could come by again. So we will just have to try again this week. But this kind of thing happened all day Saturday, even our apointment with a member giving us dinner that night fell through when we showed up, she had forgot and was really busy. It was just a rough day, and it was followed up by Sacrament meeting with only 1 investigator and he had to leave the last hour too....and he only came because we went to his house and woke him up. We had made plans for 4 other investigators to come to church and the members that were to have taken them either forgot, woke up late and didnt have time, or the investigator wasn't ready in time. Yeah...and then it rained all day! hahaha It was rough on numbers and spirits. Its just really hard when you try so hard, put yourself out of your comfort zone talking with poeple that you can't even fully understand and still end up falling on your butt, and not seeing the results you wanted to see.
But the important part is this...I still have 4 more weeks here. And I am not giving up, if anything, Im going to just try to do more until I start to see this area change. And always remembering that I can't control everything.
We still had fun things happen this week, even with these challenges. Elder Carmargos, one of the other Elders in Vilhena, had his 20th birthday and I made brownies and we went over there to their apt. during our dinner hour and had a good time. eating and playing Uno! I have pictures, but this computer is not allowing me to attach pictures. These computer houses here in Brazil often have weird restrictions that make it really hard to upload photos. But I will try next week.
And Also Sunday I gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting. Between district meeting and church I am getting a lot of practice at giving talks in Portuguese. Often times we teach the youth when the teacher is gone, and gospel principles. So yeah, that is good practice for me for sure. We also have a younger couple that are way cool Viviana and Eliezer. Eliezer is a recent convert of a little over a year, and she was inactive for a while until he was baptized. But they were married a few years ago, but this january will be sealed in the temple. They are pretty excited. They had us and all of the youth over for lunch after church yesterday. It was a lot of fun, and great to get to know the youth better. They like to have me say difficult words in Portuguese or tounge twisters in portuguese, like "sally sells sea shells by the sea shore". One of them was recording me try. It was pretty funny. But I only know it was funny because I had them try to say "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious". And that was pretty funny! haha
But yeah, I know things are only rough because my father in heaven wants me to grow and learn something. And he still continually blesses me with many great things. I am so greatfull for his strength and comfort.
Thank you all for you strength and comfort as well.
Love yall!
-Elder Swalberg
No comments:
Post a Comment