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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