Keep it Up (July 14, 2014)

Dear Everyone,

Thank you so much for you prayers for me and my comp.  I literally have felt them during this week.  I had no doubt that when I showed up here that I would find that you have been praying for us becuase the Spirit told me that you were.  Thank you.  Please don´t stop.  Please realize that the Lord answers prayers, and that He is answering right now.  Please take this opportunity to learn to pray more fervently, knowing that He is responding and helping according to your faith.  Thank you.

So this week was pretty good.

One of our investigators, Sónia, finally came to church!  She said afterward that it was the best day of her life.  We had talked to her last week about why she hasn´t been coming to church, and she said that she is always sleeping and so never comes to church, because church starts at 9 and she gets up at like 9:30 every day, and we didn´t believe that it was something so simple that was keeping her from coming to church, so we talked about repentance and that she can repent by coming to church in the future, and one way to show the Lord her desire to repent is to get up earlier every day, so she got up at 8 every day this last week, and then showed up to church super early which was stellar, and... Had the best day of her life.  The Church is True.   `nuf said.

So on another day this week we had a super powerful experience.  We had marked to go out and teach with a preist in the branch, and as we were walking we ran into another member who decided to go teach with us too.  We went out to the area, and started passing our appointments, but weren´t teaching anything.  We ended up at the work (construction work) of a member and an investigator, and the investigator left, but we stayed with the member and were just sitting there and everyone was joking around and stuff, and not doing missionary work.  And I kept thinking:  well, I´m here in Cape Verde to teach the gospel.  I can chill with people in America, but I am here to be a missionary, so I finally told everyone that we were leaving, and so all 5 of us, Me, My comp, and 3 members, started walking, and everyone else was all joking around and not really focused in the work, and (my voice has been almost gone all week, but it´s life!) I managed to sing a little bit of called to serve, and that helped everyone pay attention to the work of the Lord, and the we went off the side of the road, and we said a prayer, and started going to really teach and the spirit was with us.  We taught one lesson, and it was inspired, and then we followed the spirit to another house, even though we knew that the person wasn´t home, and the spirit said to sing a hymn, so we sang a hymn for the persons dad, and he started to cry, and the spirit was super strong, then we went to try to find someone else, and it was getting late, and it takes 45 mins to walk home, and so if we don´t get lucky and find a car to take us, we have to leave at like 8:35 to get home, but as it hit about 8:40 and we were walking home, full of the spirit, I recieved a revelation of things that were to come.  Through the Holy Ghost I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that we would find a car to get home faster.  It came super powerfully, and I was so confident that it was true because I knew that it came from the Holy Ghost.  Right after this, the Spirit prompted us to enter the house of someone we could never find during the last 6 weeks, and so, knowing that we would get a car home, we were able to follow the spirit and enter, and re-establish contact with these people that are not progressing super well.  Right after we left the visit there, we got a car to take us home, and were able to follow the spirit, and make a big difference in the lives of people, and fulfil all of the mission rules and commandments.

I testify that when we follow the Spirit, the Spirit will show us the way to make miracles happen while following the commandments, and rules that have been justly set.
I know that this is the True Church.

We were also blessed with a miracle yesterday in finding a man who is a strong member who lives far from our area, but passes it every day that is able to help with the needs of a specific investigator.  It was a real blessing and miracle.

Last thing.
So we hold a night of miracles every monday night at the house of one of our members.  We talk about miricles from the scriptures, from our lives, and how we will make miracles happen in our lives during the next week.  I invite everyone for FHE to hold a night of miracles, and to talk about how they happen, and what you can do to make miracles happen in your life and in the life of other people.

Love,
Elder Sampson

It was the best of times, it was the best of times, even though it isn't always easy!

Dear Everyone,

IT IS MY DEAR MOTHER´S BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!!!
I LOVE YOU!!!!!
I have the greatest mother that has ever lived.  Thank you so much for teaching me and being an example to me of charity, and gratitude, and patience, and peace, and of living the gospel!

So this week was interesting and good and stuff.  Unfortunately because of time, this will be briefer.
So this week I was able to see real progress.  We have been making progress, but when I got here we were at nothing, and so it has been hard to see the slow progress that has been made, but this week, we have gotten so far that I really can see the difference that is being made here.  Things are getting better with my comp, and with our investigators, and with the area, and with the branch.

Thank you for your prayers in my behalf.  I felt them again this week.  It is a different but good feeling to know by the spirit during the week that people are praying for you.  Thank you for your faith.
So this week Sónia is getting baptised.  It has been a grand journey that is starting with her.  She is really becoming converted.  The last thing this branch and the church need are some flakey recent converts, and sometimes, especially here where it is so easy to baptise, missionaries baptise people that aren´t really ready and solid, but Sónia is really changing and she will be a great help the the Lord´s work, especially in this branch.

This week there have been a bunch of parties in our areas, and we have walked a ton ton ton ton ton.  On the bright side, I am loosing some of the fat that comes from eating cape verdian food that is all cooked with lots of oil every day.  I hope this week will be better.  I have faith that it will.  I am ready to act in accordance with that faith to win this week, and to make a difference.

This week´s spiritual though is about making a difference.
When we have desires to make a difference, the Lord will help us when:
It is something just.
We want it to glorify Him, and not ourselves.
We are willing to act.

So, think about how you want to make a difference and go for it.  Life is about making a difference.  Be it Big or Small.

Love you all!!!

Elder Sampson

Also, attached is a picture of me and my comp!
Editor's note:  Sorry -- I couldn't get this picture to copy :/

Week of Struggles, but as always, Love and Patience Win!!!

So this week...  Was a week a little bit different.

The first sweet think that happened is that President Mathews came out and we had interviews, so I got to talk to him.  A lot of things changed, but not that much actually did change. Sort of hard to describe.  Haha.  The interview was great, and it was great to just talk to him about missionary work.

Also this week we had a grand lesson with a less active, where we ended up talking about the Atonement.  Every time we are there, his mom herds some chickens that are outside into the house for the night so they can be protected from the dogs and stuff outside.  Some of them enter easily, but others have to be chased down to get them into the safety of the house for the night.  While we were there we compared this to the gospel and the atonement to help José.  The door is always open for José to enter into the safety of Christ´s church.  Because of Christ it doesn´t matter how many times that he comes in and then goes out, the door will always be open for him to come into the safety of the house.  The Lord loves him, and just like his mom was helping the chickens enter, God sent us, the missionaries, to help him enter again into the safety of Christ´s fold.  It was a great example for me of the Love that our Savior has for us in all things.  I hope and pray that José can come back and be the strong member that he was that this branch needs.

So, also this week were some comp learning experiences.  There were a lot of things that happened that you all don´t really need to know about leading up to the point where (not because of worthiness issues but because of other issues), my comp almost got sent home, and I was fasting and praying for him, and doing every type of service that I could think of for him, and trying to help him understand that I love him, and a lot of super hard stuff, that I never would have gotten even close to encountering without the Lord.  I fell like I don´t have terrible patience, but this week I got to demonstrate even more than I have at any other point in my life.  Anyways, it was decided that he was going home, and I asked for one more day to try to figure stuff out, and the said no, and then with the help of another Elder, we managed to get some stuff figured out so that my comp wasn´t going home, and we could keep working together.  It was a true answer to my prayers because I know he didn´t want to go home really, and that it would put a downward turn on his life.  I am so grateful that we are still serving together, even though it is still rough, I am learning a lot and have the opertunity to change and change and change and change to become more like Chirst and to use the atonement in my life.  In the middle of all of this, at the hardest part, I was praying, and was filled with the Spirit in a way that nothing could make me unhappy, and that I was led to do the stuff that I needed.  I was litterally lifted up from misery to the most perfect happiness that I have experienced here in a way that no power of Satan or man could affect me (or effect me?). 

So, Pray for my comp and for me!

The Gospel of Christ and the Atonement of Christ are useless without Repentance.  Repentance=Change.  We. HAVE. TO. CHANGE.  Just doing stuff doesn´t work.  We have to be changed to recieve eternal life.

I know this is the Lords Church and I am so Grateful for the Atonement.

I know I have weaknesses, but I have no doubt that the Lord has forgiven me as I change and forgive others.

Love,
Elder Sampson

Well, We Tried

.
So this week had some stellar stuff and some "well... that´s life" stuff.

So the more or less stuff:
We tried to find Nuno all week.  We dropped a ton of lessons every day to go to the area he lives in to try to find him, to no avail.  So, in the end he wasn´t baptised and didn´t come to church.

We also found out that the girl who was supposed to get baptised this week didn´t actually go to church last week alone and didn´t come this week.  Great.

Also, Elder Gilbert, who lived in my house, went to america, and so I was in a trio for 2 days which shafted both of them.

Also, we found out that one of our less actives who lives with another man who is not a member and they aren´t married is actually married to someone else right now.  Man, big commandment breaking.

The Good News, is that they want to live the commandment, and She is going to work this week to get divorced with this guy that lives in Portugal, and then get married to this other guy so they can live the commandments.  They didn´t come to church, but their 9 year old daughter came alone, and she is sweet!
Also good that happened this week is that we got to see President Oliveira one last time.  They came out to do house inspections 2 days before they went home, but didn´t have time, and so we just had a small zone meeting which was awesome and we talked about the future.  Pretty much all of the transfers that were supposed to happen this sunday already happened.  The only things that will change will be giving greenies comps when they come in next week.

We talked about miracles in that meeting, and the spirit was super strong.
We had a meeting with 2 of our 5 members that are active in our 2 areas, about miracles, and the spirit was super strong.  We made plans based out of Moroni 7:31 which talks about covenants and miracles.

Our plan has 3 parts:
1. Personal Worthiness to Covenants
2. Help others Make or Return to living covenants
3. Night of Miracles which will take place every week to help us talk about and see the miracles that are happening and make plans to have miracles happen.

Everyone wants to see miracles.  We just need to have enough faith to make them happen.
So, find more faith this week!!!

Love,
Elder Sampson

Where's the water?

This week was a rougher week full of scattered blessings.

First off, this week the water has been pretty much broken.  It started last week, when we ran out of water in our tank.  Right after, we called a water truck which brough us more water because our tank never refilled, which happens thursday and sunday.  The next day it was out again because our pump didn´t have power because the power was out.  Then we had water for 3 days, then our pump stopped working, it worked for 1 day, then it stopped.  We got a guy to come fix it, and it worked for 10 mins, we left, then it stopped, and we have been without water for 3 days, so he is supposed to come again at 4 today.  So, when we need water, we take a bucket on a string out to our tank, throw the bucket down into the tank and pull up water that is not drinkable, then we have to filter it by hand to drink which is about a cup of water every minuite.  It´s good though.  We learn appriciation.

This week we also did a lot of walking.  We had a lot of oppertunities to prove to the Lord that we will work hard even when life is not the greatest. In return, He has blessed us with a bunch of miracles.
On of those miracles is Nilson.  He is proof that money and worldly goods don´t bring happiness but families bring happiness.  He has been extremely miserable for the last 5 months or so after his baby and lady left him, and he suffers lots of stuff that his family doesn´t know about.  He has been invited to go to a few churches but said no, then we were passing him, and he asked if we could come to his house and help him.  We walked in, and he opened up everything.  He told us that God told him to stop us as we were passing him that day.

We also started teaching his dad who loves him a lot but is not very happy with how he has fallen into temptation and sin. His dad is 76, and has been married for 49 years which is crazy, and he immidiately accepted baptism.  It was incredible.  A true miracle.

The best thing to find here is families.  When you baptise a family, they immidiately have the help of their familiy members.  We have been blessed to find 3 men, who have big families, who have lots of desire to follow the true church, and are already married.  We are working with all of them.  They all also conveinently own cars which makes everything easier in these areas in the middle of nowhere.

The last of these three we found Saturday.  We have been teaching his son, and he is happy with the good principles his son is learning, and now wants them for himself and all of his family. Please pray for these three families, that we can be inspired what to do to help them all progress.

We are still struggling to have investigators and stuff in church, but our baptism for this week, Nuno, was at church, and so that was good.  No one else came.  We were especially sad about one of our investigators who has been progressing super well who wasn´t there.  We had a rough sunday, and then passed her house at the end of the day to find out that she wasn´t home but in Assomada at her sisters house.  Sad.  So we left, and then right after coincidently got a call from her which is a miracle in and of itself because no one ever calls us because it uses saldo (kind of like minutes) and no one will ever use saldo to call you so we never get calls.  She called us to say sorry, and to say that she was in Assomada, and that she had gone to church by herself in Assomada, and loved it!!!!!  That was a huge blessing after a very rough day of a lot of walking.

This week´s spiritual thought is about door knocking. Actually not really, but it is about following the spirit.  So I knocked my first door yesterday.  It was terrible.  I hate door knocking.  We do street contacts all the time, and that is pretty fruitful, and we will go knock on doors to ask where people live because there are no addresses, and then contact those people too, which is pretty fruitful, but knocking doors, is terrible.  I don´t know why I was prompted to do it, becasue the lady was very not happy with us, but at least now I have the clean concience that I followed the spirit, and will do what he tells me to do, especially after I am tired from walking 2 hours straight, and having no one be home at like 7 or 8 houses.  The Lord works miricles when we are obedient.  We have struggles to grow.  Man it is rough getting people to get to church, but because of all of these problems, I understand the doctrines of the sacriment and church so much better.

The church is true.  I had the oppertunity to learn a bit about another church this week through a strange experience, and it is so clear that their church is not true.  The members are still good people, but it brings me happiness to know that we have the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Love,
Elder Sampson

Follow up, POW, Kick, GOAL!!!!!

So, this week has been good.  There are a lot of people watching the world cup in Brazil all of the time, and so that has been a bit distracting and makes talking to boys and men mostly difficult in the evening.  It will go for another month or so, but at least I am not in Brazil!

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

 

First Week in Assomada

Dear Everyone,

So this week was my first week in assomada (or, next to assomada).  There is a road that goes from Assomada to TarraFal that is like 15 miles, and we live on the side of it, and our area goes out for a long ways.  We have one zone, a 40 min walk from our house in the middle of nowhere, and another super long one that is an hour walk or so away in the other direction.  The other elders that live in our house work in the middle close to our house.  It makes things a little difficult, but oh well.

I am serving with Elder Pires, who is from Fogo.  He is waiting for a visa to go to brazil.  He is great, and has a lot of learning and growing to do!

We started off this last week without less actives or investigators.  We contacted a lady who turns our lives in our area and is less active, and so we started working with her and her man.  We now have 13 investigators, and 7 of which have a date for baptisms.  The Lord really blessed us this week through the members.  One of our areas has only 4 active members, and the other only 2, so we pretty much only have 6 members.  The rest live in the middle next to the church.  It is a good area.  We started teaching a man, and although he didn´t make it to church this week, 2 of his kids that we had never taught went.  They are 19 and 20, and when we went over on sunday after church the 20 year old was reading the resuration pamphlet that we had given her dad.  It was awesome.  We also found out that the Dad is already married, which never never never happens here.  Never.  That is a great miracle.  There are I think 7 of them in their family that can be baptised in the near future. That is a real blessing.

This week´s spiritual thought is about following the Holy Ghost.  When we dilligently seach to learn how to follow the Holy Ghost, and then Follow the Holy Ghost, we are blessed beyond anything we can imagine.
This Live is a time for us to prepare to meet God.
We prepare by doing His will.
We always do His will when we follow the Spirit.
When we do His will we are blessed.

It is very simple, but more difficult to do.


I Love You All, and Hope that you look for the tender mercies of the Lord this week.

Love, Elder Sampson

Attached are pictures of our Baptisms in Praia.  Antunina, Paulino and Zelito.


Me with Elder Pires


Me with Elder Levi (If that one sends)