Life

So, this last week was an adventure.  We still havent been split but it is probably going to happen eventually.  We heard that 2 minis (mini missionaries, people that are preparing for missions here.  There are normally about 30 of them throughout the mission serving at any given time) are preparing to come out here, and the only elders that are not a greenie or training a greenie here are us two, but no one has told us anything yet so we will keep going.

I heard from Elder Jensen this week.  He is serving as a secritary.  He is not any better but he can survive.  That is a lot of faith on his part.  I am just super happy that he is still here.

Happy Birthday to Grandma Low, Grandma Deanna, and Lindsey that all have birthdays or already had birthdays recently.  

So this week we have done some great stuff.

1st, so we started teaching a bunch of youth on the street every night.  We don´t have a young mens right now, but we are teaching like 20 of them in mass on the street which is really difficult to help specifically, so after a bit more we will start talking more indivdually to the families of those who are more promissing.  It will also help when our new church is here. We are still waiting on a boat.  Pray for that.

So this week we had some stellar days.

On Thursday we had to do the baptism interviews of William, Cely, and Ana. Denise and Joaquim were up in the air until friday morning when Elder Drawe left.  Hopefully they will make it this week!

William was supposed to come down but couldn´t make it for the interview, and was sick, but we called fransisco and he organized all of this stuff and they trucked it down (litterally) and william had to have help getting up the stairs to the interview, but nailed it!

The Baptism was awesome too.  Everything is super hecktic because of distance and transportation and stuff, but it was still stellar!  Ana and Cely were the first members ever of Povoação, the main city here.  Super sweet!  They were confirmed on Sunday.  William was sick but made it to the baptism, and then was worsesunday so he will be confirmed next week.  

We have been teaching Cely´s brother, Sandro, and a little bit his girlfriend with whom he has a son, Ary, and so we sat down with them together and talked about eternal families and proclomation to the world on the family and stuffed and marked a marrage and baptisimal dates.  Sweet.  This transfer our theme is "Últimos Dois Minutos"  The last two minutes.  When you are in a sport or something and you push super harder for the last two mins.  That is how we are running this transfer.  We also had some super stellar experiences training members and helping people understand their roles. 

We also had 5 investigators in church, and 6 less actives, some of which we have been working with for a while that finally came!  Great!

We are growing slowly but surely!

Spiritual thought for the week is about Revelation.  That is the point.  Pray=Get Revelation.  Scriptures=Get Revelation.  Church=Get Revelation.  All these other things=Get Revelation.

What are you doing to get more revelation on a daily basis?

Love,
Elder Sampson

This New Week

Well, this week was great.

It was full of horse races and teaching and walking and stuff.  Also this letter will be pretty short.  Sorry.

So some great things happened this week.  First off transfers were last night and I am still with Elder Naylor which is weird because President said he was splitting us but oh well.  No complaints here.

So we did some extra work to get members out to work with us here since the first baptisms ever of this area will be this weekend.  Manuel, our Elders Quorum president came out with us one day, and he was super sweet to teach with.  Studd.  Our branch president came out another day.  It was his first time ever helping the missionaries, and he made some good improvement during the day.  The first lesson he slammed one of our investigators about how he needs to have better friends to stop smoking, which was okay.  Not super tactful, but very clear which is good.  Slamming people isn´t something that can happen every lesson, but every so often they can help.  Our next lesson was a little worse because he went in and started bible bashing our investigator about tithing.  One big thing that is important is that we don´t ever really tell people what they belive is wrong, because that usually doesn´t do any good.  Instead we ask them how Christ did things and then let them tell themselves that whatever they believe (it isn´t really even critical to know what they belive exactly) isn´t the same as Christ taught and had been corrupted.  Then we invite them to follow Christ.  It isn´t, Your catholic baptism was wrong, it´s Christ was baptized by immersion with preisthood authority from God at an age of responsibility.  The Scriptures are great here too.

So we have been teaching Ana and Denise.  We found them through a drunk kid that invited us into a bar and then his friend was drunk too and we marked an appointment in the bar for another night and then when the bar was closed that night, we gave up, but then ran into the friend again on the street, and he said his mom (Ana) had read the pamphlet and liked it and so we marked an appointment but couldn´t find his house after searching for 50 mins, and so the next day right before the appointment, we finally found it, and the kid wasn´t even home, but his Mom and Cousin (Denise) were there and we started teaching them.  They have been to church twice and came to a baptism.  We have been trying to get them to accept baptism for weeks and finally in church on sunday, they were sitting with Cely who is getting baptized this week, and we asked them if they would attend, and then also told them that if they wanted, they could be baptized the same day.  That night in our lesson, we were talking more about Cely´s baptism, and mentioned that they could still be baptized and Ana has been hesitant to do stuff on her own, it has always been, "Whatever Denise wants" etc... and denise still won´t accept a baptisimal date, but we asked, and Ana wouldn´t say anything, but she asked for Denise´s pencil, and wrote in the back cover of her book of mormon, "I want to be baptized on that day too." and handed it to us. She had finally decided that doing what was right has to happen now, even if she doesn´t have Denise to go with her to make it more comfortable.  Denise still might accept baptism this week or maybe another day. She has a doubt we are still trying to find because she loves the book of mormon and studies it with a dictionary in hand.  This week is going to be grand like the high flying flag!

Anyways,
So the spiritual thought for today is this:

Love.  It has to be the basic fundimental motivation for everything you do or your are doing something wrong.  If everything you do is out of love, you won´t have fear to help others do hard things, and you won´t have fear to accept other people´s agency, even though it may be sad.  God is sad when we use our agency wrong, but he never gives up on us.  He loves us to give us exactly what we need to get back on the path.  So, find a way to Love everyone more this week!

Love,

Elder Sampson

Cova

So today was a weird day.  We had a pretty much all day ward activity in which we went way up in the mountains about the same distance from utah valley to the top of timp.  Maybe a little less, but still way way way high up.  Then we hiked down for 3 hours, and then walked on a path for another hour and then showed up at this place that is super sweet and had games and chilled there and ate food and stuff... and this place had a pool.  Woah.  Rediculous.  It was cement, but still a pool.  They don´t really make those here, but, this part is super green and stuff and has river things because of the mountains and the way they work.  It is the only part of this country that has water avalible.  It was soooooo sweet.  We had some investigators and less actives there.  Cely and Joakina´s oldest daughter, Valdisia were supposed to come too, but valdisia slept in and Cely´s uncle died.  Well... That happened.  Oh, also the very tops of the mountains are like utah a lot.  There are tons of pine trees and acrican plants, but also some normal looking ones too.  That was one of the best smells, and one of the best parts of the day, was the smell of pine.

So this week was good.  Stuff happened, I will just give you an investigator update.

1. We talked to lots of people and did our own finding people.

2. Joakin, who owns the new church (which will be done in like 2 weeks) came to church again, and he will be baptized this week.

3. William, who has been coming to church for a while, but we were just slackers because he lives far away, moved his own baptisimal date from this week to next week because he can´t leave his house saturday because of something with his mom.

4. Cely, had to work all night saturday, and so slept through church, and we had some miscommunication so we didn´t wake her up because we thought she was already there.

5. Ana and Denise, didn´t come to church because Denise had a volleyball game.  They have some questions deeper that we don´t know how to get out.  We are mostly just focusing on being normal people (with them and with everyone) and not on being missionaries.  That is very important, and a thing I am still learning and faught for a long time.  Just being people and talking about non missionary stuff and what ever, because all conversations lead to the gospel, and then lead to their needs. Not that we don´t talk about the gospel in lessons.  That is still really important.  Pray for them!

6. Valdeir, who we have only talked to one gave us some sweet ideas for finding tons of people, and so we went in and had a meeting with the head of this teen center, and we will be giving lectures and stuff and working with them to help kids with the problems the world has.  Also we are starting to teach the guy who runs the center tomorrow.

7. Joakina, we are struggling with.  She still has work on sunday and has problems with a life long (litterally) addiction to coffee.  She has 4 kids, Valdesia (18), Fabio (15), Eliana (12), and Eliane (confusing and then names are almost pronounced the exact same too) (9).  Eliana and Eliane came to church with us sunday, but the other 3 didn´t.  Also Valdesia slept through the ward activity.

8. Leidimeir, is sweet.  His dad was a member, and he had been to church.  He is like 21.  He is marked for baptism on the 1st.  He smokes a ton.  He was smoking like 20 cigarettes a day, and started doing less and less after we first talked with him.  Yesterday, we ran into him on the way to his house because he was going there too, and he was smoking his 3rd cigarette of the day witch is great, and it still had a ton of smoking left to do, and we told him to throw it away, and he paused for a second, looked the other way, and then threw it and didn´t look back.  It was super painful for him, you could see it in his everything, but he did what was right!  We are going to see him and check up tonight.

9. Right now we have 35 investigators that we are working with, but for now this will be it.

Also, for times sake, the spiritual thought this week is to really study Jacob 6:12.  Memorize it, and apply it.

Love,

Elder Sampson

Novo Ano (January 6, 2014)

Dear Everyone,

This week was an adventure.  But I´m pretty sure that the new year was like weeks ago.

We focused a lot this week in Povoação (which means village.  Origional name I know. Comparible to "Fig Tree Peackock" and "Tea of Rocks" which are also names of places) which is were we live.  We found two great knew investigators this week, Denise and Ana.

I will start at the beginning in the miricle of finding them.

So Benvindo (which is a name, and also means welcome) was drunk one day and told us to come into this bar area, and there were some other people, some sober, and others drunk, and one of those people was Yinick (unique) who is like 22.  We marked to go back there, but it was locked when we went back, then we ran into Yinick on the street (less drunk, but still a little) like 4 days later, and he told us where his house is, and so we went imidiately after talking with him to try to find the house.  We walked around for a long time and couldn´t find it, then wen´t home because it was late. The next day we got back from Riberão and tried to find the house again for 45 more mins, and finally found it, and he wasn´t there, but his mom, Ana, and cousin, Denise, were there, and Ana had read the pamphlet we had given them, and so we taught them, and they ended up coming to the baptism and to church which was fantastic, and they have tons of great questions because a lot of times people don´t like to ask questions.  Super sweet.  They are praying about baptism, and we will talk with them about it tonight.  My favorite question from them, "So can I be baptized in this church if I was already baptized in the Catholic church?"  Yes.   Yes you can.  We also talked a bit about how the catholic church´s baptism was an act of desire to do good but actually won´t do anything.  Sometimes rough but It went really well.

Also Cely showed up at the baptism.

Hodiairson was baptized and it was great.  These computers have problems, so next week I will try to send pictures from a different place.

So another miracle that happened this week involved curry.  So I made curry for lunch on saturday before the baptism, and I took a picture of it to send home because it looked legit, and then we got home from the baptism and one appointment, and I started to feel sick and so I stayed in bed for the rest of the day, but I knew that we needed to help a bunch of investigators get to church, and so I asked Heavenly Father for help to be able to just get them to church.  That night I took some medicine, and stuff, and had a long and miserable night.  I was going to take a picture of the curry the second time as a before and after shot from the other picture I took, but decided that it wasn´t very appealing the second time, then finally got about 2 hours of sleep from like 6-8 in the morning, got up, made it to church with our investigators, then the second I stepped off the car after church I felt sick again and went back home and slept.  I learned 2 things:

1. Cook the chicken all the way before you make curry.

2. The Lord Answers Prayers. (Obviously more important)

If you are doing the Lords work, and you want to be doing His work with all you might mind and stregnth, He will give you the ability to conquor.  To WIN.  My dearest Mother Shared with me a think that she is applying this year that is fantastic.  She is focusing more on Wholesome INtakes.  Or... WIN.  Let us all focus on this!  And also outtakes (out gives?) too.

Love,

Elder Sampson

Also, Elder Naylor and I are probably getting split this week as soon as President can find two solid minis to be our comps.

Love,

Elder Sampso