Dear Everyone,
By the grace of God, I was permitted to stay until Friday in Sao Nicolau, which was a huge blessing. I think graced is really the only word that describes the blessing I recieved to serve a few more days there. During those days we saw the continuation of many miracles.
One of those was with our group leader, who has been discovering the loneliness of leadership coupled with being on a secluded island with no help and no trainings or anything. He was ready to be done. We went to talk to him to try to help him out, and he was bad. He wouldnt pray with us or read with us. He stood up in the middle a few times to walk out and we told him to sit down. We were not overbearing, but felt multiple times that he needed to stay so that we could help him. We kept him in the church by force 2 different times. He was mostly lethargic and didnt really struggle much. We tryed everything we could think of to help him, until Kevin showed up. Kevin passed through something similar last week, and they had some things that needed to be resolved. We sang a hymn standing in the stairs, then got Kevin and our group leader together, and we got them talking. The spirit took over, and our group leader felt the companionship of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. He said the closing prayer, and is doing much better. I am so grateful for the power of the atonement and the holy Ghost.
I took a beautiful boat ride that was pretty miserable but I didnt get too sick. It was about 2 hours long to get to mindelo.
I am serving, like I said last week, with Elder Adams. I have known him pretty well for a while. He is black, but is from Lehi. His dad moved to orem while he was out here though, so we will be going home to the same city. He has been out around 19 months, so he teaches well. It is great having a black comp. We had someone complain about how the preisthood was withheld from blacks for a while, and it is very difficult for me to testify of that, but he bore a powerful testimony and the man stopped talking about it. haha. He has a super strong love for the prophets and apostles. It is contagious. It is going to be super good for me to serve with him.
It is really weird serving somewhere where there are funtioning organizations and stuff. Where the church is not dependent on the missionaries for survival. It was weird to just make normal comments in Elders Quorum. Actually, having Elders Quorum was a bit weird. It was only Elders. Not even Elders and young men. And there were a decent amount of people there. We had 107 people at church. That is a bit higher than our goal of 17 in Sao Nicolau for this week. haha. Actually, 3 hours of church was a suprise too. I forgot that church is usually 3 hours instead of just 2. Lots of new things going on.
Our area is really small. Lots of people, but a very small area. I am starting to get to know people. We are in need of some new investigators though. We are working on that. We are walking too much right now and teaching not enough. Life is always better when you teach a lot. So, we are doing better with that.
The members here are really good too. Most of the members dont live in our area, but the ward mission leader does, and he helps alot. His name is Helton and has been a member for about 9 months. He teaches a lot with us.
We were supposed to have a baptism on last saturday, but that had to be put off until the 8th. So as far as baptising soon, we have some way to go. But, we are marking some good people for baptism and stuff.
One important thing I learned this past week is about the importance of being God-minded and not man-minded. Everyone has different talents and abilities. The hand can not say that they dont need the foot because they are not a hand. We are all part of the body of Christ´s church. So. Dont judge others because they have fortes in different areas than you.
Thank you for your prayers and support!
Love,
Elder Sampson
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