Monday, March 4, 2013

Awesome investigators, Nilton and Lucas; 35 new missionaries coming in!

Hello Family :)
It was so exciting to get the pictures of the baby blessing today!!!  You all look great, and Celecta Rose is adorable as ever.  It´s so crazy to see how much she is growing every week you send pictures.  She´s going to be so big by the time I get home.  :) :) :)
Exciting news this week  - 30-something new missionaries will be arriving in Londrina this transfer, 5 of them sisters!  That´s an incoming group quite a bit bigger than average - the group when I arrived had 7 missionaries, and me, the only sister.  :)  So yeah, it´s going to be a crazy transfer.  And that´s just the beginning of the surge of missionaries that will be arriving here over the next few months.  So cool!  :D
This week has been different than usual, as Sister Passos and I have been going in to Londrina 3 times a week for my physical therapy.  It´s nothing too crazy - exercises and stretches and stuff - but it sure takes up a lot of our time and we´ve both been feeling less productive as a result.  But I have to keep reminding myself that if I don´t take the time to take care of my feet NOW, missionary work could get a lot more difficult for me in the future... So I´m following the doctor´s orders, and I´m sure it will make a big difference.  :)
 
The time we´ve been able to spend working this week has been focused on our most promising investigator at the moment - a 9-year old boy named Lucas.  He is a reference from the Young Men´s president in the branch, Irmão Natalino.  He is a great president and you can almost always find him in the lot behind the church playing soccer with the young men.  He´s not exactly young, but he sure acts like it.  :)  He has been a big help to us as many of our recent investigators have been young men, and it is so great to have members who are so good at helping people feel welcome and excited to come to church.  That can be especially hard to do with teenagers, so we´re for sure grateful for Irmão Natalino.  :)  Anyways, Lucas is a neighbor of his who he has been bringing to church the last few weeks.  He is excited about the church and already wants to be baptized, but Irmão Natalino told him that he had to receive the missionary lessons first, haha.  :)  So we´ve been visiting him and trying to help him be able to be baptized.  The only problem is his grandma, who he lives with...she is not too open to the gospel, but has been softening up a little bit because of a lot of things that have been happening to her son, Lucas´ dad.  Apparently he´s gotten in to a lot of problems and she doesn´t want Lucas to follow the same path as his dad, so she´s a little bit more willing to let him be baptized.  We´re still going to have to talk with her and help her to see how much it will bless his life!
We have another awesome investigator that we taught yesterday, Nilton.  He is the husband of a lady who was taught by the elders a loooong time ago, and though she still isn´t too interested in the church, Nilton has been reading the Book of Mormon like crazy.  He loves to read and learn, and he really wants to understand the gospel of Christ.  However, he is a very, VERY devoted Catholic.... We taught him the Restoration yesterday, and it was a great lesson.  I´m not sure he completely understood everything, but we did our best to teach very clearly so he could recognize the truth of our message.  He gave the prayer at the end of the lesson, and it was so sincere...it´s always so amazing to hear your investigators pray for the first time, before they get into the mechanical routine of prayers that we all end up in sometimes.  The first few prayers are completely from the heart.  :)
Anyways, times up again.  I love you all so much and pray for you every day.  I´m always amazed by how fast the time flies here in the mission.  March already!  Is it going as fast for you guys??  :) :P  
Oh, and thank you for the Valentines cards and candy!!!  It was soooo good to get everything, and I felt so loved.  <3  :)   And yes, I already finished all of the chocolate. hahaha.  :D
Until next week!
Love,
Sister Gee

Citação da Semana!  - This is from the monthly email I got from the Edgemont stake presidency, a SUPER awesome quote from last General Conference :)
"'If ye love me, keep my commandments,’ Jesus said.  So we have neighbors to bless, children to protect, the poor to lift up, and the truth to defend.  We have wrongs to make right, truths to share, and good to do.  In short, we have a life of devoted discipleship to give in demonstrating our love of the Lord.  We can’t quit, and we can’t go back.  After an encounter with the living Son of the living God, nothing is ever again to be as it was before ... To all within the sound of my voice, the voice of Christ comes ringing down through the halls of time, asking each one of us while there is time, “Do you love me?”  And for every one of us, I answer with my honor and my soul, “Yea, Lord, we do love thee.”  And having set our ‘hand to the plough,’ we will never look back until this work is finished and love of God and neighbor rules the world.”   - Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

No comments:

Post a Comment