Monday, May 12, 2014

Dude, that Spirit thing is cool....

Oi família!

Despite what it may have appeared, speaking in English with everyone yesterday was actually a grand effort.  But, the Lord blessed me with the gift of tongues to speak in my native language (you laugh, but really, it´s extremely hard to speak in English).  It´s just that when you speak in Porgacheese all day every single day, it´s a little difficult to form words in English.  Fortunetely, I don´t have a super thick accent yet, though I make no promises when I get home.  But, I don´t want to think about that.

So, awesome news. When I was transfered from the Parquelândia ward, the APs sent themselves there.  So, the APs are serving in my old area. So last night one of them called us while we were planning and then handed the phone to a man named Dante, who is the Elders Quorum president in Parquelândia.  He began "Élder Evans, how are you?  You won´t believe what happened!  Remember the Vasconcelos family that you baptzied?  They went to the temple this week and took thousands of pictures." (They´ve only been baptized about 2 months so they still can´t be sealed) But then it got even better.  He said "Élder, we´ve done all of their family history together and they have a huge number of names to take to the temple in July and they´re going to do proxy ordinances for almost all of they ancestors that we found!"  and a small number of other things.  Basically, it was awesome to hear this.  A family, baptized only two months ago, is 100% engaged in the gospel, on this side of the veil and the other.  This is why we serve.

But the real experience of the week was something that happened with a man named Cleiton.  Cleiton was riding his bike one day for work and stopped in the street and said "hey, I want to talk to you."  Sure it´s easier to find people in Brazil, but still, no one does this.  So, we took down his address and marked to visit with him the past week.  We headed over and began talking a little with him.  At the beginning of the conversation we asked, "so Cleiton, why did you want to talk with us?"  and he began relating this story about a friend of his and how they were having problems.  To be sparse with details, I´ll suffice it so say it was a rather complicated problem.  To conclude he said "so I wanted to talk to someone who´s close to God to give me guidance.  What do I need to do?"  I had absolutely no idea what to do.  I was praying like crazy to know what to say and then the Spirit whispered "teach him the gospel" so we began teaching him about the Restoration and how it blesses families, how God called prophets and how Jesus Christ was a prophet himself.  WE were teaching and the Spirit was strong.  As we were teaching about our Savior Jesus Christ he said "Sorry to interupt, but just one thing.  Although you haven´t answered my question, I feel like what I need to do is this...." and explained the solution to his problem.  He than siad "wow.  I feel so much more secure now.  I feel a security that I haven´t felt in years."  We testified strongly of the power of the Spirit and that this is a witness that what we were teaching was true.  It was amazing to me to see the power of the Spirit of God.  I had no idea how what we would teach would help him, but God did.  Our Father in Heaven knew that the message of the Resoration would bring him the peach and happiness he needed in his time of difficulty.

Because of this experience, and a number of others, I know beyond doubt that this is truly the exact same church that Jesus Christ established.  Only the true church of Jesus Christ will truly have the power of the Spirit to change the hearts of men and to produce such miracles as we saw with Cleiton.  I know that Jesus Christ lives and just as He worked miracles in Jerusalem and in the Americas, He is working miralces among us today.  I have seen His hand more in my time as a missionary than ever before and I know that He is looking over each and every one of you every day.  I know that Jesus Christ personally called Joseph Smith to restore His church on the earth and that Thomas S. Monson is our living prophet today. 

Até o próximo acontecimento,


Élder Evans

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