Monday, October 21, 2013

This Week

This Week
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Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 10:29 AM

So first off, the picture I attached is of Elder Jensen on the ladder that I talk about at the end.  
And the other one I may have already sent.
Hello Everyone, and Happy Birthday to the Greatest Father on Earth!
Dad,
Thank you so much for everything, but especially for making me do hard stuff.  I am sorry for all the times I complained and stuff, but I am glad that you taught me to do stuff the better way.  It turns out a lot of missionaries show up to be missionaries but not to do missionary work all the time.  Simple stuff like cooking and cleaning I put more of an effort into thanks to all the things that you taught me.  I was cleaning the bathroom today and was thinking about how you made me clean stuff the right way and that our toilet hadn´t been really cleaned until today for months just because no one really does the deep cleaning.  All the priciples of hard work that you taught me show up here and I am way more motivated to work hard all the time.  I know I would be way worse of a missionary if it weren´t for all that you taught me and I see and remember things you taught me every day.  thank you and I love you.

So this week was pretty interesting.  We had some nice meetings with our branch mission leader and the one branch missionary that whowed up.  We planned for them to walk with us throughout the wee which was pretty good and we planned to visit less actives with them.  Less actives are a problem here.  I don´t remember if I already said this, but we have about 2700 members here in Fogo and just over 1000 are active which is still enough to make a stake, but we are trying to prepare more people to be solid, especially preisthood holders.  We lack and solid generations of families because pretty much everyone here is a convert.  The only real non-converts are the branch president´s childeren who are sweet.  One of the counselors in our branch presidency is inactive so we are trying to work on that.  Ther was also a excommunication problem in sao filipe with a person stealing tithing money.  It is things like that that keep us from having a stake here now, but in the next few months we will have one here.  People just need to work on continuing to be converted after baptism, as we all do.  The work is good though!

This week we had zone leaders with us on wednesday.  Elder Martinez was with us which was good.  We learned a lot about teaching people and not lessons and showing people how the gospel will help them with their individual needs.  We marked a couple of baptism dates and also started on a marrage.  Most people here aren´t married so that has to happen before they can be baptized.  This family, the man is less active and the lady is a non-member.  I hope that turns out well.  We might possibly have 1 or 2 other marriages to start on this coming week as well.

We had branch conference yesterday and some of the lessons were on member missionary work so we are starting to get more support form all of the members, nut just sometimes the ward missionaries.  Djoy who is a less active (pronounced Joy.  J makes a cghuh sound more or less so dj together makes an english J sound like j in Joy) who was called to teach gospel principles.  We helped him prepare his lesson on Obedience and it went really well.  We only had one investigator at church and we had 3 less actives show up.  We are working more on emphasising the importance of church and getting people to bring their friends to church instead of us making our rounds every sunday inviting everyone to church right before it starts.  Its nice that we do that, but it isn´t that effectice.

This week I started talking to everyone more (not that I didn´t talke before but I approach tons of people on the street)  Elder Jensen doesn´t really like to do that but once I approach and start out he is good to talk with them and then we teach whatever gospel principle and try to sit down with them and have a short lesson or mark for another day.  We found some new investigators through this and got a baptisimal daye marked.  There are so many people to teach we are emphasising the importance of work in recieving blessings of the gospel and dropping people that aren´t trying sooner.  Almost everyone here will sit down and talk to you.  Everyone believes in God and Jesus Christ and that they re important because they have been taught that for forever, but they don´t most of them know why or how.  

We currently have one investigator that is doing super well.  Her name is Christina.  She is 14 and lives with her aunt who is super catholic.  We had taught her once before like three weeks ago and then went back to teach her brother and he wasn´t there but she invited us in and we started teaching her.  We first taught the plan of salvation because both of her parents died of illnesses.  We taught the restoration the second lesson which went great and she told us she wasnts to serve a mission.  She is getting baptized the 2nd of November.  She was the only investigator at church snday which is a problem, but with the help of the members this will get better.  Every time we show up at her door she walks up normal, and when she sees it is us, her face lights up and it is incredible.  On days we don´t teach much it turns the day around when we teach her because she actually cares a ton about what we say.  She is going to be the only member in her family which is usually a bad idea because people go inactive, but we make an exception expecially with the young women because that is the strongest part of our branch.  I am also excited for when she can do temple work for her parents.  We didn´t thing that we could get permission for her to be baptized, but we prayed for a miricle and I fasted and we got it!

Mostly I just want to work.  We are trying to work harder every day, especially me.  Most other elders and sisters look foreward to p-day, and I enjoy p-day, and it is great to write and hear from you all, but I also love missionary work.

I still haven´t heard much of conference.  hopefully this week thoough.  The bit I have heard is great.  I am finding more potions of things to use in our house and with food.  When missionaries are compacent it seems like we have way less then we actually have access too. I also did some deep cleaning today that I don´t think many missionaries know how to or like to do which is a problem if stuff hasent been done for months super well.  I am also using my resources to work out, like pushing a huge matress back and forth accross the floor in our appartment.  Haha.

So funny story of the week.  Our appartment has a door to get to the staircase and a door to get into our room, and I acidently locked the keys in our room so that we were stuck in the stairs between the two locked doors.  Whoops.  We finally got to the outside and then we can just easily climb to our balcony to get in which is unlocked, but it is bad to show people it is easy to get in because someone might steal our stuff, so we had to get a ladder and climb up and in to get the keys.  Twas fun.  Hence the pictuer of elder Jensen on a ladder outside our balcony.

Everyone who reads this is challenged to talk to the missionaries or Ward mission leader and find out what they can do to help!

Love,

Elder Sampson


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