Oi pessoal,
For those of you who missed my email last week, sorry. I took what I thought would be a short call from an investigator and didn't get back to the computer before my time expired. With the little time I have today, I will try and mix the email from this week and last week together... Vamo lá!
Well it's official, we have two sets of missionaries here in Ala Barreto!! Along with me and Elder Cassimiro, we now have Elder Le Sueur and Elder Klein. Both of them are from Texas, Le Sueur has over a year in the mission and Elder Klein just arrived in Brazil. They are awesome guys and are great missionaries. It's been a pretty crazy week getting everything settled in the area, moving houses, dividing the proselyting area and orienting the other missionaries with the area and work. It's been a bigger sacrifice for me than I thought it would be giving some of my favorite investigators and members to the other half. But all of this is so worth it.
Thursday (the week before) we had an activity here in our ward called "Capela Aberta" where all the missionaries came to our area, inviting everyone in the close neighborhoods for a tour in the church. It was a day full of miracles and we have found a great group of new investigators, even with baptismal dates!
This week we had zone conference. It was such a powerful meeting, and I walked out with many ways to improve my work and efforts in the ward. The conference focused on personal revelation and making the most of the Lord's time. Between this conference and my experiences with investigators, I have learned a lot about free agency and the power of living in acordance with the will of God. For example, there is a young man here, about 14 years old that has been attending the church for a long time now. He lives with his aunt and cousin who are members (the cousin is active in the church and the aunt isn't), and he has many friends in the church. In the past, he hasn't shown any interest at all in being baptized. But after some good lessons with him and powerful experiences with the book of Mormon, he will be baptized the coming month! It's awesome to see all the joy and change that is coming into his life because of the decisions he is making to live and accept the gospel of Jesus Christ!
It's incredible how quickly things are changing here for the better. Literally twice as many lessons are being taught here and there is so much excitement. It's a great blessing for me to be part of all of this. I love this work to much.
I've got to run.. Tchau!
Élder Hamilton
Missionário de A Igreja De Jesus Cristo Dos Santos Dos Últimos Dias
Ala Barreto - Missão Brasil Rio De Janeiro
Look who I met this week: Hamilton!! Yep, that's really his name, only he pronounces it exactly how everyone tries to say my name here, not pronouncing the H and putting more enphasis on the ILT. Small world.
Quaresma and Cristiane came to church yesterday!! They are a family in our ward who has been inactive for about a year. It has been a struggle for them to change their perspective and return to church. Our persistence and the help of the ward resulted in their return yesterday. It is sure a sweet blessing to see families returning to church, partaking of the blessings that can only be claimed with weekly Sunday attendance.
