Monday, May 5, 2014

Atacar ou Apoiar (Attack or Support)

Oi família!

So, portuguese is cool.  It´s actually super legit that I can speak another language now.  The other day I was looking in my True to the Faith for some more information about the Kingdoms of Glory.  As I was searching I couldn´t seem to find it.  Then I realized I was looking for "Reinos de GLoria" in my english True to the Faith.  Afterwards, I had trouble remembering how to say "Reinos de Gloria" in english.  Long story short, "porgacheese" is taking over my mind. It´s kind of awesome.  Weird.  A little unnerving.  But super cool. 

But this week was cool.  We worked super hard and saw some awesome miracles.  We´ve decided that this week we´re going to strive to work even harder than before and really go for the gold, so to speak.  We have a baptism this week and we´re working to find even more.  I know you´re all praying for me and we appreciate it like you would never believe.  We´re working hard and we´re going to kill it this week.

But the experience of the week was rather eye opening.  Though it might just be a little short, it was quite impactful for me.  We have an investigator that her boyfriend loves the gospel.  He´s eating it up and wants to be baptized right away.  Because they´re living together we have to marry them before this can happen.  Marriage here is delayed about 3 or 4 weeks.  During this whole time, though his girlfriend (Leila) has always been present for the lessons, she hasn´t really taken to the gospel as much as he has.  Her biggest problem?  The Book of Mormon.  She couldn´t get over the fact that we have other scripture.  We´ve been praying and one day I decided to study specifically for our lesson with them.  I began thinking "oh yeah.  I´m going to break out my Bible and prove to her 100% that the Bible talks about the Book of Mormon and that this stuff is true."  But as I did so I felt I needed to go the other way around and show how the Book of Mormon testifies that we need to read the Bible and how they work together.  Though a little odd, I went with it.  We headed in and read parts of 1 Nephi 13 with them.  We testified of the power oif the Bible and the Book of Mormon together, especially that "the truth [of the Book of Mormon] shall establish the truth [of the Bible] (1 Nephi 13:30something)."  Leila seemed more open, but still unsure about what we had taught.  We returned two days later and she said "well, I started reading the Book of Mormon, and it´s actually not too bad.  It teaches the same thing as the Bible, just in a different way."  We testified that this is true because God is the same, always.  THerefore, the truths in the Bible will be the same as the truths in the Book of Mormon.  It was amazing to see that as we strived to support and expand her beliefs, instead of attacking and proving, how much more open she was to the beautiful message.  The Book of Mormon is truly this wonderous evidence that the gospel was restored to the earth by our loving Father in Heaven through a living prophet.  There is no greater witness we have that Jesus Christ is our Savior than the Book of Mormon.

I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God.  I cannot describe in numbers or words how many time the Book of Mormon has helped me to understand things that I couldn´t understand before.  I know that the Book of Mormon is a second witness that Jesus Christ is our Savior, and it is truly a miracle that we have such a wonderful and beautiful record to help us.  I know that the Book of Mormon brings miracles into all the lives of all the people who read it.  It is truly "the most correct of any book on earth and a man will get closer to God by abiding by it´s precepts than by any other book."  The Book of Mormon is truly a blessing and it is such a privelege to have it in our lives.

For those of you that haven´t read the Book of Mormon, or those of you that have read it many times, I invite you as an ordained servant of our Lord and Savior to read this amazing miracle for yourselves and ponder it´s truthfulness.  As you read daily from The Book of Mormon, the Lord will pour out miracles upon your lives that you never thought were possible.

Até o Dia das Mães!


Élder Evans   

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