Monday, April 13, 2015
I have a new Grandson!!!
Dear Family,
I just recieved news of an Elder Ryan who is being trained by Elder Wallace, so I have a new grandson. Thats great. Im sure he is a boss.
I would like to invite everyone to watch this video
https://www.lds.org/bible-videos/videos/feed-my-sheep?lang=eng
In this touching part, where the risen Lord asks peter three times if he loves Him, he answers, yea Lord.
Every time he confirms his conviction to his self and to his God. I can only imagine the recommital of Peter to feed the Lords sheep.
In Christs church, he asks us the same question. My child, lovest thou me?
We are invited to reaffirm our love to our Savior on a weekly basis.
As we partake of the emblems of the sacrament, we may ask what Christ himself could ask. Lovest thou me?
If we affirm that, yea Lord, thou knowest that I love thee, we must, as Peter, take a new start and Feed His Sheep, proving to Him and to ourselves that we love Him.
That we love Him more that fishes. That we love him more that fishing. More than our friends, more than our jobs, more that our works, more than our own dreams.
In a world where fun and funny replace reverent and righeous, we need to remember that He asks us this probing question. Lovest thou me?
I hope as we prepare to take the sacrament this week, we can ask ourselfs, and feel the silent warmth of the Holy Ghost letting us know that we truely do love Him.
The Holy Ghost is vital in knowing these things. After we are asked by Moroni to pray and ask God if the book of mormon is true, he tells us that, By the Power of the Holy Ghost, ye may know that He Is. I know that He is. He lives and loves us. He cares about us.
I had a guy in the street a few weeks ago ask us what is the difference between our God, and his God. Why we were doing this missionary work, when he already believed in God.
I asked him if his god cared about the beer bottle in his hand. That my God wants me to be free from the chains of sin.
I love you all!
This week was pretty trying, but I learned that you cant fix everything at once, and that if you choose a bit at a time, and base your happiness and sucess off of the achievement of the baby steps, you can get out of the Pit. If you ignore the Holy Ghost, you shovel yourself a foot closer to the firey pit at the center of the earth. But. Simple acts of faith, leaving your comfort zone just enough can apply the grace of Christ. God just expects our 100%, as my dear sister Lindsey shared with me a few weeks ago. My 100% is different than yours. The prophets is different than a recent converts.
This week we had no baptisms. We moved them back so that more members of the family could be baptized together. Understanding the implications of our belief that Familys can be together forever changes missionary work.
We are still working to get permission for Cris to be baptised. They learned to fast with us this week. The Lord will bless us. Thank you for your prayers and sacrifices.
We had interviews with the mission president, and he came to our sacrament meeting. 61 people. Our brand new building that is almost 100% functional will be our of space soon if we don´t slow down our progress. Its a good thing that God´s work isnt restricted by money or space. Remember it is the work of man that is frustrated, and not of God. D&C 3:3.
I love you all!
My imidiate family, please watch the bible video and give me some thoughts on the sacrament please. Everyone else, I would love to hear of your experiences.
Mom and Dad, you are responsible to make sure that everyone watches it and writes me about it.
Good luck to those who are holding on. As Elder Holland shared, hold on for a moment more, and you will find Christs hand.
Love,
Elder Sampson
Monday, April 6, 2015
Wait, but where is the Prophet?
What a great conference weekend.
We watched the first session a little late but didnt miss any talks, all of the second session, not the preisthood session, were still transporting and setting up technology for the first 30 mins or so of the fourth session, and all of the fifth session. So, long story short, I watched all of confrence except the part where the Prophet spoke. I feel very disappointed. Very sad indeed. Its okay though because I already downloaded ALL of it and will be listening to the whole thing in english. It is way better in English. Actually, it is way better in the origional language. When it has the voiceover in portuguese, I have to pay way more atention to get everything, and all the distractions become way more distracting and irritating. It was still a fantastic conference. I downloaded Elder Soares talk in portuguese from the preisthood session to listen to as well.
I loved all the doctrines and talks on the family and marrage and eternity, and stuff. Unfortunately, the very first talks, which a bunch of men here in the country need to hear, were at the beginning, which means the same people that need to hear them show up late and would have missed them anyways. Oh well. That is what the internet is for.
I also loved whoever talked about studying the scriptures and stuff. One gets to a point where there isnt really much new material. There arent new scripture stories to descover, and most of the famous verses are already known. Although the doctrines dont change and evolve, we do. We need to see the old material with new eyes. That leads us to discover what it is that The Lord needs us to learn.
In 2 Nephi 32 verse 4 it says Wherefore, now after I have spoken these words, if ye cannot understand them it will be because ye ask not, neither do ye knock; wherefore, ye are not brought into the light, but must perish in the dark.
The word ask is key here. To grow and to learn and to understand, we need to have questions. We need to ask, and then we need to knock. We will stay in the darkness if we do not go after answers to our questions. The questions that we have change repeatedly, and we are responsible for finding those questions, but the answers are always there and are always the same. Wise is the man who can form his knowledge into a question and then exert all of his force and desire in resolving it.
This week too we have been preparing some people for baptism. The Lord has been preparing people, and many miracles have come up. Right now there are still a few loose threads, that could unravel until we ensure that they get tied down. One of these is for Cris, the daughter of one of our baptisms, Niza, to get permission from her dad to be baptised. Please pray for them. It is going to be a great week for this family though.
I think that is pretty much it for this week.
I love you all!!!
Elder Sampson
Monday, March 30, 2015
What an Interesting Week
So,
This last week started out with our apartment flooding when our water heater, which has been dripping
for a few weeks, broke open and started gushing water out while we were out teaching. Luckily, it broke
like 10 or so minutes before we got home, so the appartment was only partially flooded, and although it
took 2 and a half hours to get all the water cleaned up, nothing important was damaged, and it sent an
important message to the owners of the house who replaced our water heater that has been bearly
working a little for the last few months with a new one that works perfectly! So, we have lots of Hot
water again, which is a blessing. I have been blessed on my mission to have lots of hot water. Only
about half of the missionary appartments here have hot water, and every house I have served in has had
hot water.
I learned many things this week. I learned that when we take up our crosses and follow Christ, we
must be willing to pay a tolken of the price that he paid, and suffer a part of what he suffered. When
we go, we sometimes have to go alone, and sometimes have to learn to go with others. As Neal A.
Maxwell said at BYU once, that sometimes if God were to take away our pain and our trials when we
ask Him to free us, it would destroy all progress until that point. Sometimes, we have to have a new
peak trial, which can not be removed until we get over it, which can only be possible in relying on the
Atonement of Jesus Christ. I know that this work is His, and that he lives.
I invite everyone to go and see http://www.mormon.org/
means that He Lives. I know that we dont understand all of the implications of his love, but we can learn.
This week we also had a training just for our district from President Mathews. It was done in a half
completed part of a half completed building, but it was still fantastic. He talked about making goals,
and working for them. My life just got a lot more controled because of goals. I know that the doctrines
of Goal making are true.
I am soooo excited for general conference. I literally cant wait.
Love,
Elder Sampson
Monday, March 23, 2015
Wonderful Week One
English is weird. One. Won. When you need a triple W there is no good way to do it. Why One and Won sound the exact same, I knowith not.
But, nevertheless, week one of the transfer was pretty great.
On monday I taught one of the, or maybe the best lesson that I have ever been in. For sure it was the best I have ever taught people and not lessons. We taught this to a family where the husband came to church two weeks ago, and his woman wanted nothing to do with us after she found out that we weren't just there to teach people the bible. It has been a struggle to get to talk with her. We went in, and she was home and not busy and we just started talking, and morphed into teaching, and just discussed the gospel, and we shared the gospel with them, and the spirit was super strong. Things aren't instantly better, but it was a solid force of the spirit the whole time. That is what happens when you have a good comp study and then apply what you learned.
This week was Edgar's baptism. In his house, there are now just 2 that aren't members. He is 17, and when we first got to the area, he had no interest, and just sort of shoved us off, but over time, every so often, he warmed up a bit. Then we felt like we should invite him to read the bood of mormon, because he likes reading. And... He started going really well, and has been picking up everything. A few days ago, we taught one thing, and he said, Tell Me More, and so we taught him another and he said, tell me more, and so we kept going. He is going to be fantastic. I am super excited for him.
This last weekend, as part of our zone plan, we had a sacrament meeting focused on missionary work, and the three older of us in our branch spoke because Elder McMullin, who is new, spoke two weeks ago. Elder Zuniga spoke on why we do missionary work, Elder Chevalier spoke on the responsibilities of members, and I spoke on references. I talked about the 3 principle doubts for giving references. 1. They are of another faith. 2. They might not want to hear, and 3. I am afraid to talk with people about the gospel. Then I slashed, figuratively, the doubts to ribbons. Mostly the first and 2nd ones. The third one just needs a good exercise of faith to see the blessings.
So, that was the week in a nutshell. I don't really know what to write these days, but I'm super excited for next week.
2 Weeks to Conference!
Love,
Elder Sampson
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Monday, March 16, 2015
Another Brief Week
Hey everyone!
This week past quickly!
Transfers came, and all 4 of us are still here the same. It is going to be a good new transfer.
This week was branch conference. Because of the construction, we had to go saturday and sunday before church to clean up everything. When they do construction here, they just go instead of planning it out and stuff. The conference was great though! We had 60 people there which was a new reacord!!!
The big family with like 20 people had 6 that showed up. Miricles everywhere.
It is normally very difficult to baptise older people, but the mom of this big family is awesome. She is friends with the relief society president, and had a dream the night we asked her to pray. She still has lots to learn, and it goes slowly, but she liked church. She can not read, so we need to help her get a testimony of it through reading it to her.
One of her daughters is also progressing super well. Full of Miracles. She made a big financial mistake a bit ago, and so prayed and asked God to punish her, and He did immidiately, and so she asked for a way to change and get out of her suffering and we showed up. After one of our lessons we went to leave and I went to give her 2 nephi 31 to read which talks about baptism, but felt inspired to leave 3 Nephi 11 so we did. The next day we asked her what she learned. She said she had learned about forgiveness and doing things not to be seen of men. We were a bit confused because 3 nephi 11 talks about Christs visit, but she had read chapter 12 as well that talks about the sermon on the mount. She told us she can´t be baptised yet because she still needs to forgive someone, and can´t be baptized if she isn´t willing to forgive.
Got to go,
But this week was full of miracles and suffering!
The Church is true!!!
Love,
Elder Sampson
Monday, March 9, 2015
And... a Papaya
Sorry to those who wrote me and I didn´t have time to respond this week!
So this week, we got back from teaching and there was a cut papaya on Elder Chevalier´s bed. The story
is fantastic.
So there is a small market here (a big inclosed building) that sells fresh produce. When we need it, there
is a bathroom there that we use. Elder Zuniga and Elder McMullin (reminder, elder Zuniga is training Elder
McMullin) went in there because Elder Zuniga was using the bathroom, and when he does that, he gives a
card to Elder McMullin, and tells him to go and share the gospel with someone. So, Elder Zuniga comes
out of the bathroom, and Elder McMullin is standing there with a papaya and a bag of 7 unripe pears. He
was very confused and asked where the fruit had come from. Elder McMullin had gone to contact a lady
right next to the bathroom, and had asked how much a pear is. She just started piling pears into a bag,
and in his first transfer portuguese he tried to tell her that he only wanted one. She informed him that it
was okay and he could buy the one now, and then come back the next day to pay for the rest. To try to
get out of it, he asked her how much the papaya was. He was given the price, and she put it in the bag too,
and he didn´t know how to undo what he had done. She said 500 excudos (6 dollars) and he gave her 400
(all he had) and then Elder Zuniga came out. The next day they went back and found out that just the
pears were 500, and the papaya was another 400, so he ended up, just wanting a pear, spending 10
dollars on fruit.
It was the first papaya he had ever tried, and found out immediately that he didn´t like it, so I enjoyed a
large papaya this last week. Also, Elder Zuniga and Elder McMullin like to joke alot, and Elder McMullin
didn´t know how to eat a papaya (cut it, pull out the seeds and then eat the inside) and so when he
asked how to eat it, Elder Zuniga told him to eat it like an apple, so there was a big bite mark on the
skin of the papaya. haha.
This week was super good. Actually like a roller coaster. One day great the next pretty bad, etc... We
are working with tons of new people, especially a family of like 20 people that life in the same close area
but not in the same house. They are all super receptive to hear the gospel which is awesome. Some
of them came to church with us this week, which was fantastic. We are back up to consistently breaking
50 for our church frequency as well. I am super excited to be working here. Transfers are this week,
so we will see, but I think that all of us are staying here.
This week I learning about the importance of preparing. If you look at all of the scriptures under the
word prepare, you can see that God doesn´t do anything without preparing first. The Lord givith no
comandment unto the children of men without Preparing a way for them (I don´t know exactly how it
goes anymore in english). God prepared to create us and the world. We need to prepare to keep the
commandments and the mission rules and for the stregnth of youth, etc... because if we don´t we will
get there and it will be too late. Then it will be imposible to do everything good. We will have to choose
a good thing or a bad, or maybe a good thing and another good thing, or a bad and a worse, because
we cant do both if we don´t plan. Planning is good.
Love,
Elder Sampson
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Monday, March 2, 2015
Really Really Short
Dear Everyone,
Something came up so,
This week will be really really short.
It was a stellar week except we were stuck in the house for a few days with Elder Chevalier sick.
This week Mariza was baptised. She is doing really well. We had to do her baptism really early before church because she was at a doctors appointment that went long with her kid on saturday. We are super excited for her though.
We are working to make miracles happen here though.
Quick spiritual though.
Faith, in the words of a member after the study with left her with, Is the path that leads us to a certanty. I know that is true. That we can become what the Lord wants us to become through faith on Jesus Christ. I invite Everyone to read the last 4 verses of Alma 13 and the last 5 of 3 Nephi 13.
Love you all.
Elder Sampson
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