August 4, 2014

Alma 37:38-46 has a great message. I really like this analogy that Alma makes. We often stop doing the little things just because they are so easy that it seems like we're fine without them. But we shouldn't stop enduring to the end just because it's easy. We can't be negligent. We have to continue doing the easy stuff so that the hard stuff is easy

Anyway, this week passed pretty quickly. But it ended well with the baptism of Cassiano. He's Alberson's Cousin. We'd passed by at Alberson's and we asked him if he knew anybody else that he'd like to have at church with him, and he pointed us to his cousin. Cassiano is a lot like Alberson. He's more serious and he likes to learn. He reads everything that we give him!

On Wednesday, we did a division with Carlos and Alberson. They are only members for 1 month, but they already are happy to be able to help in the wonderful work of the Lord. I went with Alberson to one side of the city and Elder Hortêncio went with Carlos to the other. We had a great day and lots of success. At the end of the day, Alberson kept saying "just one more visit, just one more!"

We were searching for the house of one of our street contacts one night when we found a house full of young men. They were all in their 20s and we thought it was pretty sketch. They invited us to enter and so we did, but we had our guard up. Anyway, turns out that they were a music group called Nova Era. They were recording a new rap that night. I told them that I'd never heard Rap in Portuguese so they did a bit for us. Then I attempted rapping in English, which was kind of cool, but I didn't exactly have Jason there to give me a beat. (Wish you were here dude). Anyway it was cool and we marked a different day to teach one of the guys there who had interest.

On Sunday, we gave a training to the Branch about how to be good member missionaries. We talked about how the purpose of a member missionary isn't to teach, but just to invite. Morôni 7:13 teaches us that we can be inspired to make invites. Anyway, we gave some ideas to everyone and made a goal for everyone to receive a "no." Why? Because lots of time we feel unsuccessful and desist when we receive "no"s. But we told them that the success of the missionary isn't when he receives a "yes." It's when he invites. So everyone has to go out and try to get a "no." Because that's easy. And then when you get a "yes" you'll be super happy! Anyway, in our rush to put together a training and stuff, we forgot to fill up the baptismal font. So we got to the baptismal meeting and everyone was like "Wait... the font is empty!"

A lot of the members wanted to go home and just do the baptism on a different day, because it takes lots of time to fill up the font (about 4 hours because of bad water pressure), but I asked them to stay and I promised everyone that if we all worked together we'd fill up the font in 15 minutes. So we made lines of buckets and water pitchers and even a blender to pass water from the kitchen and the bathrooms to the font. We got a hose too, and with everyone working together, (even Cassiano was helping, already in the baptismal suit) we managed to fill the font in 15 minutes! And then Cassiano was baptized after a beautiful service. I played the organ! (Who knew that I could do that?!)

Have a great week!

Elder Jasperson