October 27, 2014

bom dia!! 

 

Every single preparation day I can´t believe thats it's prep day again! The weeks go by so fast...only 7 more of them now, but who´s counting?! :) This week was an adventure as always! 

 

Monday we went to Aldeota, the part of Fortaleza that has all the good, cheap shopping! I bought some cool stuff...but as dad would say ´´don´t ask questions before Christmas´´ :) When preparation day ended we were getting ready to leave the apartment, and Sister Vicente was not feeling well, so we ended up staying in our apartment to help her all night! It's weird to be the old, ´´experienced´´sister helping the other sisters now!

 

Tuesday we went and taught Maria, the lady we met last week who was praying the morning before we knocked on her door. It was an awesome lesson! She apologized for not going to church due to an important conflict and said that she would go to church this Sunday. Sadly we tried visiting her every day since Thursday and she hasn't been at home, so hopefully we´ll find her and be able to help her more this week! After lunch we taught another lady. We had planned on teaching the word of wisdom since she has a baptismal date and we need to know if we need to help her with anything specific. Well when we got there she only had a few minutes so we decided to just share a scripture and follow up with her reading the Book of Mormon and everything! We had a member with us and she was talking with the lady and all of a sudden out of the blue she was like ´´do you drink coffee´´  She said "no" that she doesn't drink coffee or smoke or drink! It was so cool that we still were able to figure out exactly what we needed that day! Members are great! After that, we taught another lady the Plan of Salvation and it was such a powerful lesson. She appreciated the message as she has so many struggles in her life. I loved sharing that she is not alone! At the end of the lesson, she committed to be baptized! She chose the date of November 2 but she didn't come to church yesterday so she it will be the week after now! That night we taught another investigator and he told us he quit drinking coffee! This was a huge struggle for him so we were super happy to hear it!

 

Wednesday was really good. I finished my fourth journal of the mission!! woohooo! My future family better be grateful for all I´m writing, haha. In the morning we had District Meeting and it was awesome! We talked about the struggles we have and how to help overcome them. We also watched this awesome clip from a talk that President Eyring gave. It was so amazing! He was talking about the power and authority we have as missionaries and how we really won´t know how much of an impact we made on our missions until the next life when we see and talk to all the people we taught on our missions. It was so cool! It was a good reminder to just keep going, even when its really hard! There are days, weeks, transfers on the misison where you really wonder if what you´re doing is making a difference for anyone. The answer is always YES! Even if it's just for your future family and future life...this time makes such a big difference! That night we had a little time before our meeting with the Ward Mission Leader so we decided to do contacts on the street of the church. We saw this lady passing by staring at the church, like she wanted to go in and so we talked with her. She turned out to be really great! She has a religion, but she was teling us how she thinks missionary work is so awesome and asked us to teach her more about the church. After the meeting we had a lesson with one of investigators. He is having a really hard time giving up coffee so we made plans with him to get a blessing the next day. He said he can be baptized Saturday, so that was awesome to hear! We made an appointment to talk to his mom tonight, so please pray that everything will go well! 

 

Thursday we weren´t having much luck! All of our appointments were falling through in the afternoon. But we had a member with us and she asked us if we wanted to visit her brother, who is receiving treatment for brain cancer. It was such a nice visit! We shared scriptures and just talked with him about life in general. He is only 49 years old which is so sad. It was a really cool opportunity to serve him! In the evening we taught another investigator and just helped him come up with ways to quit drinking coffee and things he can drink instead. Afterward, the Young Men's President gave him a blessing and it was so cool! They were having mutual that night so all the young men were there. They all sat in on the blessing and one of them who had received a blessing last week shared his experience. Afterwards all of them gave him a hug. It was so awesome to see that he already has so many friends in the church! 

 

Friday and Saturday were trials of my faith..haha. It can be discouraging to be the new sister in the area because 1, you don't know all the members and 2 your comp has already been working a ton in the area and knows what she's tried and what hasn't worked or what has worked. So I spent a lot of time just praying silently that I could stay excited and keep doing the work and to see miracles! These past few weeks of the transfer have been teaching me so much about what sincere prayer is and that Heavenly Father truly listens and helps us, But it is always in His timing! Saturday I went to bed feeling a little discouraged and just praying to know what to do the next day. Sunday we didn´t have anyone in church because of the elections here! There were tons of members who weren't even at church becasue everyone has to vote in a certain area, so some of them have to travel. It's a way bigger deal than it should be! But next week I know we will have people there! Sacrament was so awesome for me yesterday. In my prayer I just asked the Lord to help me know what to do and to help me feel more positive about everything. As soon as I had taken the sacrament, I really truly felt all the weight of my worries being lifted! I know that the sacrament isn´t just a ritual that we do every single week, but it´s something that we really need! After that, the rest of our day was really awesome! We taught a couple we met last week. We asked them in the beginning of the lesson if there was anything we could ask for in our prayer that they were needing. The wife started talking about how her husband has problems with drinking and sort of went off on a tangent about that. So it was a litte tense at first, but by the end of the lesson he admitted that he honestly wants to quit drinking and that he wants our help! That night we had weekly planning and me and Sister Machado just talked for a long time about our missions and about our companionship and everything. It was so good! It was exactly what I have been praying for. Once I understood how she was seeing things, it became so much clearer what we can do to work even closer together. I love my companion!

 

I´m super excited for this week! I´m gonna rest up today so I´m all  set and ready for the work! We have interviews with the Mission President on Friday, which will be awesome! I love you all tons! Thanks for the prayers and for being so easy to love.   :)

Love,

Sister Pehrson