This week was pretty good.
We are still conquistisising new investigators and less actives and stuff.
I don´t know if I have already mentioned this, but our mission Baptises and Rescues. This means that just as much as we try to find new people to baptize, we also have key indicators (in weekly goals and numbers) of less actives progressing, and being rescued, which pretty much means that they come back to full activity in the church.
We found a lot of less actives this week, and started working with some of them. One of them came to church, and brought her 9 year old daughter, which is one of the side blessings of rescuing is that people have family members that can be baptized as well.
We did a lot of walking this week and we are working to figure out how to work in both of our areas most effectively because it is about 2 hours to get from one to the other, and we live in the middle, but the areas themselves are very large, and so we are getting better at knowing people´s schedules, and trying to plan less walking and more teaching. Walking does leave us lots of contacting to do on the way though.
So the moon has been super bright this last week, and then on Saturday night, all of the sudden it was super super dark, and we were walking home, and we got on to the main road that goes back to our house, probably 3 miles from our house, and these two guys approached us in the street and asked what we were doing there. We cheerfully informed them that we went around telling and teaching people about Jesus Christ. After we said that one of the two guys backed off (I learned after that Elder Pires saw a knife that he had) and then the other guy informed us that this was their territory. I cheerfully told them that we aren´t strangers, but we live here and love it and this area is awesome.
Then I gave the guy who probably was going to rob us before a Plan of Salvation pamphlet, wished them and all of their friends that were off the side of the road a good night, and they responded cheerfully, and now we are friends instead of getting robbed, which was good because I didn´t really have much on me that could be robbed. This just shows how God protects us, and when we proclaim that we are representatives of Jesus Christ, people change.
We are working really hard to get people to come to church here, but that is a problem because they all live super far away, so if you wouldn´t mind praying for them, that would be awesome.
This week´s spiritual thought is about Baptism.
Baptism is very important.
Christ showed us an example of baptism, and he was baptised because it is a commandment, and to get into the celestial kingdom, we need to be baptized. One good side effect of baptism is that it clenses us of sin.
It also shows that we desire to be baptised as a proof and testimony that we desire to serve Him until the end. (Sorry, a verse in portuguese roughly translated)
In order to recieve more blessings, we have to show more willingness to follow. We do this through baptism. In God´s infinate wisdom, He gave us baptism, which is something that is super easy physically to do, but that symbalises many important things, and physically requires effort to do it to have an outward expression of our inward disposition to follow Him. Everything is crafted so perfectly by a being who is Perfect.
I bear my testimony of Him, and of His Son, Jesus Christ. He lives.
Love,
Elder Sampson
Also I attached 2 pictures. One of me and Elder Levi which I didn´t have time to send last week, and one of a monkey because they have monkeys here and I finally decided to take a picture of one. You can decide which photo is which.
2 Attachments
No comments:
Post a Comment