Oi família!
Well, I got the good news!
Sending a shout-out to Trev and Kenz for getting engaged! Parabêns noivos! Marriage is a cool thing. Here in Fortaleza it´s a common practice to
just move in together and be "married". So sometime we have to get
people married before they can be baptized.
I´ve been party to two marriages now and both have been such happy
ocasions. But every time I´ve felt the
Spirit touch me and explain that these marriages are only for this life. I feel so blessed to know that when we are sealed
in the temple, the holy house of our Father, it is truly marriage for
eternity. There will be ups, there will
be downs, but in the end, death doesn´t terminate anything. So, that´s my dois
centavos about getting hitched. Parabêns
de novo! Send me a piece of cake! (or
maybe not. It´ll probably be a rock by
the time I receive it.)
Other cool news, I was in the mission office today and was
looking through the materials and letters for my last zone. President Souza sends letters to all of the
recently baptized people in the mission and I was looking to see if he had
already sent one to a couple we had baptized.
As I was looking I saw one for a girl Élder Bradley and I had been
teaching named Andressa. It was so fulfilling to see this letter because we
prayed, and studied, and thought, and debated for a long time about how we
could help her accept the baptismal covenant.
Then, we were transfered and I didn´t receive anything else. But just to recieve this news filled me with
this inexplainable joy. We contacted her
one day sitting on a bench and now she´s a member of the only true and living
church on the face of the whole earth.
What a privelege to know that our efforts in talking with everyone
honestly worked out.
For information´s sake, the world cup here is probably like
the super bowl in the US. We have to be
in the house 30 minutes before the game and can´t leave until 30 minutes after
the game. But this is only for games of
Brazil, and games here in Fortaleza. So,
not a ton. You can always know when
Brazil scores a goal though because the street sounds like and explosion. There´s huge fireworks and a lot of
yelling. It´s like Todd yelling at a
swim meet, only 100x louder.
But I placed "fique simples" as the title for a
lesson we had with a womon this week named Elene. Her husband, Luiz, is a recent convert of a
few weeks that just recieved the priesthood yesterday. My companion, Élder Tamanho, has a real way
with people and as he talks with them all of their defensiveness seems to just
melt away. But this past Thursday my
companion got sick and couldn´t leave the house. So, we did a quick in-house
exchange and Élder Freeman and I went out to cover both of our areas for a few
hours (it´s the same ward, just with two sets of missionaries). We´d been teaching Elene for a little while
and our last lesson had been about the word of wisdom. She really likes her coffee and was very
hesitant to give it up. When Élder
Freeman and I passed by she began talking about how much she loved her coffee
and how she didn´t want to give it up. I
began throwing out reasons like crazy about why she shoud stop drinking coffee
(Élder Tamanho is also very smart and has a heap of scientific proof about how
coffee is bad for you as well, and I got this from him) though I didn´t do it
quite the same way that Élder Tamanho does it. She didn´t like what I said and
began to get a little defensive. But
then Élder Freeman cut in and simply said "Elene, I know that God lives,
that Jesus Christ is our Savior, and that They called Joseph Smith to be a
prophet..." and just bore his testimony.
Instantly she callmed down and began to accept what we had to say. It was amazing to me to see how just a simple
testimony can really totally change someone´s view. The next time we passed by she said to us
"well, I didn´t drink coffee this morning". Wow.
The Spirit rocks. So, challenge
of the week, bear your testimony to someone.
It´s simple. It´s easy. And it´s works miracles.
Até o próximo!
Élder Evans
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