So why is the subjest line cheers? We met a foreign exchange student here in my area that is from New Zealand. He lives in a small twon outside of Wellington the capital. It was a lot of fun to teach in English (not to mention really hard). The kid is turning 18 this week. He was explaining to us that the two main reasons he decided to come to Brazil as a foreign exchange student was to learn a language and learn about religion. He told us that the religious atmosphere in New Zealand was a lot more low key and he wanted to come here to experience it more. I bet he didn´t think he would run into two American missionaries did he?
This has been an awesome week all around. Last week´s district meeting, my companion Elder Hepworth made a challenge to focus a lot more on marking baptismal dates. We decided that even though we hadn´t had any investigators in Church these past few weeks we would still mark dates with people. We met our goal of 5 marked dates for the week and we were blessed to get four of those 5 to Church on Sunday. We were so blessed this week. We met a group of kids that are all super excited to get to know the Church. I don´t think I´ve ever encountered so much desire in youth before. There is an 18 year old kid Marcelinho who is already baptized but was inactive that told his friends about the Church. We met Rodrigo and his sister Raiane. They are truly elect children of God. Rodrigo is the kind of guy you wouldn´t expect to care about anything we have to say. He is all tattoed up and has gauged ears. But he completely accepted the commitments even of baptism in the first day we taught him. His sister Raiane is amazing as well. She was already participating just like everyone else in Church on Sunday and said a prayer inour lesson Sunday afternoon exactly like youth kids do. She learned super fast. We are planning to baptize them next Friday or Saturday. There are also some little kids that are relatives of Marcelinho that we took to Church as well.
I really learned this week how the Spirit can touch people and influence them to seek the right path. Raiane told us an interesting experience of how she felt that the Church was true. She said her alarm clock failed to go off but her dad woke her up to get to Church on time. This came as an answer to her that the Church is true because her dad usually wouldn´t be up at that time of day and wouldn´t usually care about them going to Church. Rodrigo was asking alot of questions about needing to take out his ear gauges. We also were think about how we would need to ease them into the idea throughout the week of walking themselves to Church. We were a little nervous about that, but out of the blue yesterday afternoon he was asked if they could go alone. He didn´t want to take up car space for other people. Me and my companion just looked at each other and were rather stunned. It was an awesome experience. And we just barely met these kids on Friday of last week. We just need to focus this week on teaching the parents of all these kids and hopefully bringing the whole families into the Church.
We helped one of our ward members this week practice English for a job interview. He wants to work in the garment factory in São Paulo and they require that he knows basic English. We taught him some of the lessons in ENglish which was a major chore. It´s so weird how teaching only in Portuguese makes it difficult to teach in English. It was kind of fun too. We were mixing our phrases in English Portuguese like crazy. it had to be funny to watch. And the good news, he passed his interview. It was fun to be of help to him.
So, to sum up the week. The more we show our faith in doing everything in our power to further this work, the more the Lord will bless us. We dedicated ourselves to marking baptismal dates, and not only did we mark the dates, we got people to CHurch for the first time this transfer. We went from being the only companionship in the Zone not getting anyone to Church to the companionship´with the most investigators at Church. We were so blessed this week. I hope all goes well for everyone of you this week as well. Do everything in your power to do the Lord´s will and He will see your readiness for the blessings and give them to you.
Until next week!
Elder McLelland
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