Monday, January 19, 2015

January 19, 2015

This week I the finished Book of Mormon. It is always good to finish it because it helps me remember when I first prayed to know if it was true and received an answer. Since then I have continued in prayer, asking and receiving answers that it is true. The Book of Mormon is a testament that our church is true and that our faith is true. I love it.

We've been teaching a young woman called Katiele. She received a response to her prayer this week and bore her testimony to us (and to her grandma who is also receiving our lessons) that she knows that our church is true. That was pretty cool. Sadly, her Grandma frequents a different church, and doesn't really want to change, leaving Katiele all alone. She wasn't able to visit church this week, but we're hoping that she can have the confidence to take the first few steps alone. I know that she will never repent for being her family's pioneer.

Along with her, we're currently blessed with several progressing investigators. Valmor, who even came to church this week is a man who loves to read. He's been reading the Book of Mormon a lot and believes that it is true. He smokes, but is stopping and feels the peace of the scriptures helping him.

Maria Helena is also reading a lot! Her problem is that her husband doesn't support her progress in the gospel. Meeting people like her show me how important it is that we choose our spouse well- sadly, many people are blocked from progressing eternally because of their spouse.

This week we received a huge blessing- a recent convert in Campo Bom (a city close by) gave a bus passage card with 500 royals to the missionaries there. But the card only works on Novo Hamburgo busses, so they gave us the card. So that means the bus is basically free now! We still have to walk a lot because the bus doesn't go everywhere, but in just this week, this little blessing has saved us about 30 royals each!

On Friday, we put up a ward activity, which we called the Night of Laughter. The turn-out wasn't as high as we wanted, but the reason we did the activity is because we're trying to animate the members here. We'll continue with Friday night activities until we do that! We did a bunch of fun jokes and games and it was pretty fun. Ângela and her family went and liked it so much that they decided to come to church on Sunday!

Ângela has 11 kids, but only 5 live with her now. We are teaching the family and preparing her sons for baptism next week. Ângela and her daughter are preparing to be baptized two weeks from now. They love the gospel. We found them because her youngest son (Lucas, age 11) was biking in the street and called us to go to his house. A week later, we went!

This week it rained about every day. The worst day was Wednesday. We think that the storm was brought up by the enemy to keep us from contacting a woman named Nicamara. We've been trying to contact her for the past two weeks and we never find her. Anyway, we'd planned to go there that day. We arrived in her street, and a huge storm blew up out of nowhere- it even hailed! We had to seek cover under a building. When it stopped being dangerous to go out, we went to search her house again. But before we'd gone 50 feet, another huge tempest blew in! Well we waited that one out too, and then went to find her house. We searched the whole road and couldn't find her house number. We walked up and down about 4 times, and didn't find it. So we decided to leave. Leaving, we realized that we'd been drawn into the wrong road by the storm. So we went to the correct road and searched out her house, and guess what- she had left just before we got there. Oh well, maybe we'll finally find her this week!

Love Y'all!

Elder Jasperson

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