February 9, 2015

This week passed by so quickly because it was a busy one! We had the baptism of Valmor and Alessandra. So we prepared them all week. Valmor was baptized on Saturday. It was a great service. Elder dos Anjos and I prepared a musical number (I sang 'Behold tis Eventide and he played the piano). After we sang, at the end of the service, we asked Valmor to share his testimony. He bore a wonderful testimony, talking about how good it was to get to know the church and how he'd learned for himself that the gospel is true. We helped him stop smoking and his life is a lot better now. He said that whenever we had a marked visit at his house, he'd feel us arriving from far away because he always felt so good when we visited. He then shared that he started to feel that way when we weren’t there too when he read the scriptures and stuff. In the end, he said “I know that this is the Church of Jesus Christ, and mine too!" That was really cool! He was confirmed on Sunday.

Alessandra was baptized on Sunday, after the meetings. Her baptism was also really special because her cousin, Marlon, baptized her. For her baptism, we made a chocolate cake. During the week, we'd promised her that we'd make her a cake for her baptism. But one day, at Valmor's house, Elder dos Anjos confused himself and said to Valmor that we'd be bringing his chocolate cake to the baptism. "What cake?" Valmor asked. Well, then we got ourselves in a fix and we made a cake for Valmor too! His was a carrot cake. After his baptism, we cut it up and then Valmor told us that he doesn't like cake! So he didn't eat any of it. Afterwards we thought that maybe he didn't want to eat it because eating cake makes him want to smoke. He stopped smoking last Sunday (1 week ago) so it's still really hard not to give in to the urge. But the rest of the people there (and us) liked the cake!

On Friday, we went to a different Burro of Novo Hamburgo to get the missionaries to come and do the interviews. Well, they were taking a while to show up at the bus stop, and a member called us asking us to help him in making a visit to his Nephew in the hospital. So we went with him. His nephew was in a motorcycle wreck and was all broken up. We gave him a blessing and got back to the stop before the other missionaries finally got there! Mormon Standard Time functions in Brazil too :)

We got the transfer news today, and we're both staying here in Jardim Alcântara!

Love y'all

Elder Jasperson