Week 46

This week was full of water. I don´t think I´ve seen this much water in my life. In the past 8 days, it´s rained non-stop 7 of them! A few days we woke up to what seemed like a hurricane, the rain and wind were so strong and they were occasionally accompanied by hail. The only day it didn´t rain was Sunday, and I took a few pictures of the roads in the aftermath. Needless to say, just as they were beginning to finally drain and dry, the rain started up again today!

 Despite all the water, we continued to work all week as we were preparing 2 more investigators to be baptized this week. Their names are Natã, and his older sister Vanessa. We had visited their house early in the week to find their father Ricardo home, without a job. During the lessons that we taught, he was very interested and asked some really good questions. He understood everything we taught him and was super touched during the First Vision. When we came back the other day to teach his wife, he told her just before we taught the First Vision to her, "You have got to pay attention to this part, it´s super important and the truest thing I´ve ever heard." We really felt the Spirit during the lessons and we always left in awe at their receptiveness. One time before we left he told us he´d read the part of the Book of Mormon that we´d left marked for him and he would have some questions for us when we returned the next day.

When we taught Ricardo´s family about the Word of Wisdom his daughter Vanessa left the house right then with some money and returned 10 minutes later with milk and chocolate powder to make chocolate milk. She announced, "From now on we don´t drink coffee." I´d never seen someone so determined to follow the Lord´s commandments. The change in her heart was very quick and we saw that she had really been prepared beforehand to receive the Gospel. She set a good example for her little brother Natã who followed her in her determination to keep all of the commandments. Natã is friends with the family of Silvana who was baptized two weeks ago and they had brought Natã and Vanessa to church with them on the Sunday that they were confirmed.

Another young women that had been brought to church invited us over to visit and teach her during the week. Her name is Geovana and she too had a strong desire to do what is right. We had a very spiritual lesson with her and her mother and they accepted the invitation to be baptized without hesitation. Unfortunately they traveled this weekend and weren´t able to attend church.

During the week there was a young man from the ward that returned from his mission in São Paulo, and he came back all ready to work with us which was awesome. We could tell that he had been a powerful missionary and he had a strong desire to help us out with the missionary work in his home ward. It made us think about the day that we´ll return and how we´ll reach the dreaded day when we´ll have to take off our nametag. It gave us an incentive to work harder to use all the time we had and the rain didn´t stop us from seeing miracles on a daily basis.

As we visited Agatha (baptized last week) to continue teaching her and prepare her to receive the Gift of the Holy Ghost this Sunday we were very impressed with her progress. She asked us for a copy of the bible, and had almost read the Book of Mormon through already. She told us how she´d even answered the questions that are in the back of the pamphlets (The Restoration, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, ect.) that we´d given her when we taught her before her baptism.

On Sunday we were very happy to see Natacha, Agatha, Lucas, and our other baptisms from this transfer at church and only lamented the absense of Silvana´s family and Jacira due to the flooding. They literally couldn´t leave their houses because there was water in front of their houses. Later in the evening we had the baptism of Natã and Vanessa and we almost baptized in the streets there was so much water!