My dearest family,
Did I ever tell you all how BEAUTIFUL
Well, the Lord blessed me with the most blessed part of the whole country to work in. The members here are some of the most faithful I`ve ever met. They have no Church building, no bishop, no leaders whatsoever, no primary, no NOTHING!!!! But they`re so pure. They`ve got the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and that`s all that really matters. I don`t ever remember hearing about beautiful church buildings or extravagant meetings in the Scriptures. The most powerful teaching moments simply happened when sincere seekers of Christ came to hear His words. That`s what`s happening here. The faith of this city is incredible.
Now, we`re still working towards all of the wonderful buildings, and classes, and full-functioning church activites, and leaders, etc… That`s our goal. We want to be a Rama, a Branch. (I KNOW that one day, not too far in the future, there`s going to be an entire stake here, just in Santa Rita. The People are open, they want to hear a new message. We do contacts, and just ask if people live close by. If they do, we tell them that we share a message of Jesus Christ, and 90% of the time they just tell us to come on by. Incredible. (just to give you a gist of it, we found 49 new investigators this past week. In Ybatè, 10 was a great week.) And the FAMILIES!!!! THERE ARE FAMILIES HERE!!!!! Sooo many moms and dads live together with their kids. Wonderful. We`re teaching a lot of really neat families right now.) Anyways, for now, we`re working on becoming a Branch. We`re capacitating the Men, the Fathers in the ward, to become leaders. We`ve got a man, Hermano Tengaten, who comes out 24km on a dirtbike, over SUPER slow, bumpy terrain, with his little girl with him, to make it out to church. They then go home to their family, a wife and two more younger girls, to share what they learned in church. Why can`t they just all come? Because a few months ago they heard the Prophet`s counsel to do whatever you need to to get out of debt. So, they sold their car. The only thing that they had to transport their whole family, they sold, just to follow the Prophet. Haha, tell me you wouldn`t kill to be a missionary here. ;_) Right now, his family is all studying their Preach My Gospel, Chapter 3 lesson 4, to make sure that they`re complying with all of the commandments, so that they can come to our temple trip that we`re planning in April.
I`m super grateful to be here. I`m comps with Elder Villegas, a Super solid, older missionary, who teaches like a champ. I`m learning a ton from him. He`s my first Latin comp. It`s really helped me a lot to have to speak Spanish all the time, makes me progress a lot.
Speaking of which, guess what?! I wasn`t kidding about the Portuguese. Haha, we`ve taught a lot of Brazilians this week. Everyone understands spanish, so I can speak just fine. Haha, the funny part comes when they respond in Portuguese, and I`m left with my mouth hanging...."Uh.... Elder? What did they say?". Funny. But no worries. I`m starting the Book of Mormon in Portuguese this week, and my half hour of language study will be portuguese now. I`m stoked. Elder Villegas understands portuguese perfectly, and gives all the credit to reading the Book of Mormom. What an opportunity, huh? Learn to communicate in two different languages on your mission. Blessings, blessings, blessings. We come here to bless people`s lives, and the blessings just get dumped right back on us. ;_)
We live here with 2 other missionaries who came to
Tell Grandfather Stewart good luck from me! That`s really exciting to hear about his new calling. MTC Branch Presidencies really have a lot of influence on the young missionaries. I still remember mine, and I`m going to pay my old President a visit when I get home. He lives in
Gotta run! Love you all!
Elder Stewart
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