October 7, 2013

This week started out great! I got mail again! Every time we have a zone conference, I think, is when we'll get mail.

Mail is great to get, but my responses will take a while (around a month) to get to y'all. And so feel free to email if you'd like to communicate more rapidly!

Anyway, this week I finally started to cook a lot. I threw a bunch of stuff together to eat for breakfast. Cornbread, potatoes with onions and eggs, roll-up pancakes. Yeah I ate pretty well J I love eating, still.

One thing that everyone needs is food. And to eat.

Anyway, here's some scriptures for the week:

I was studying a lot about our 3 core lessons---The Restoration, Plan of Salvation, and The Gospel of Christ. All of these really fit together into one big lesson called life. We left the presence of God, came to earth to learn, grow, and follow Christ's example. We have prophets to guide us. After this life we can return to God if we were faithful in completing all 5 steps of the gospel- Faith, Repentance, Baptism, Gift of the Holy Ghost and Enduring to the end.

Also, I liked these scriptures (Portuguese, because that's cool)

João 7:17 se alguém quiser fazer a vontade dele, pela mesma doutrina conhecerá se ela é de Deus ou se eu falo de mim mesmo. [translation from Google Translate: if anyone wants to do His will, know of the doctrine whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself] 

Basically, if we want a testimony, we have to do the will of God. We can't get a testimony just because we read the scriptures. We have to live the doctrine in order to know if it's true or not. For example, we can't get a testimony of repentance unless we are repenting. The same thing applies to all parts of the gospel. We can only gain testimonies if we are living righteously.

Alma 13:24 Anjos estão preparando pessoas. [translation from Google Translate: Angels are preparing people.]

All around us, people are being prepared to hear the gospel. I see this a lot personally in our investigators. We baptize people really quickly because they really are ready- pre-prepared by angels.

D&C 123:12-17 Nosso lei é trabalhar. Nossas obras vão mudar o futuro. [translation from Google Translate: Our law is working. Our works will change the future.]

The people we touch will touch other people. It's like a big tree. It grows exponentially. Every person that we help is really thousands of people.

Baptism symbol

At the beach with other missionaries

Our branch president at the beach

Anyway, more about this week. We went to a beach on Monday for P-day. In the attached pictures, you'll see that it was super super foggy. No one was there, so that was nice. It was really mind blowing to think about where I was. At the edge of Brazil!

our baptismal font!

Marcia (Elder Angus on right)

Rita (Elder Angus on right)

Elder Angus came in on Tuesday. He's pretty cool. I don't have any pictures of him except of those of our baptisms from yesterday.

We've been working a lot to find new people to teach because we've baptized pretty much all of our other investigators!

Watching General Conference was pretty cool! We watched the sessions on Saturday at the house of Carlos Martins. He is super helpful for us. We watched the first session with English subtitles, and the other without. On Sunday, everyone in our branch picked a bus for Capão da Canoa to watch the sessions there. That was nice, but it was really crowded and noisy. And only in Portuguese! Haha I liked how a lot of the talks were about helping missionaries. I'm learning how essential members are in conversion.

We baptized Rita and Marcia this week. Rita is super cool. She is always super helpful for the missionaries, giving us references, and cake! Even though she doesn't have much, she gives everything.

Marcia wants the best for her family. She is always working (at a supermarket here), and it's hard to find her in her house. But her family is super awesome and we're excited for all of them!

I love you all! Have awesome weeks!

Elder Jasperson