Ola

This week was awesome. A lot happened but I will start with last p-day. After we used the internet cafe for email, it started pouring rain. Literally like buckets pouring down. I forgot my umbrella so I took the opportunity to literally sing and dance in the rain. It was so much fun just to enjoy the feeling of the rain. I was completely soaked, but feel so good. It reminded me of the Primary song that says “I want my life to be as clean as earth right after rain.” Like the rain cleans and purifies the earth, the Lord cleans and purifies our soul.

In relation to our investigators, Emerson and Everton will be baptized this Sunday if everything works out! They have strong testimonies, are always going to church, and are excited to be baptized. We are working with the family also, but they aren’t as certain about the church yet, but I think with a little time they will take the steps to come to church and be baptized. It is an amazing, unified family. The lessons with them are so spiritual and fun. They always welcome us in and I can already see a different light and feeling in their home as they are accepting the gospel more and more.

Our other main investigator is Robbie. He is an Indian man who doesn’t speak a lot of Portuguese, so we are teaching him in English! It is a lot of fun but very weird to switch to English. It has been almost as hard as teaching in Portuguese when I first arrived. One crazy thing that happened with Robbie this week is that we had an appointment with him, but he wasn’t in his house. As we walked back to our house, we stopped to talk to a member on the street. As we were talking, Robbie came up behind us. He had been our running and had lost his house key. We helped him explain to his landlord, and she gave us a huge bag of keys (probably about 60) She said to try them and maybe one of them is for his house. We went to Robbie’s home and he pulled out the bag of keys. He chose one and the very first key he tried worked and opened the door. It was a little crazy. I truly know that the Lord was looking out for him. After, we had a great lesson with him talking about the word of wisdom and setting goals for him to follow. He also went to the Stake Conference we had this week, so I translated most of Stake Conference into English. It was a little bit of a challenge but was fun. He hopefully will be baptized in one of the following weeks.

A couple of days this week were great learning experiences for me. Firstly, I had a division with the zone leader, which was great and I learned a lot. Then we had a multi-zone conference and had some great training from our mission president, his wife, the zone leaders and others. It was in the chapel in Cotia so it was also fun to return to my first area. The last day that was great was Stake Conference. It was focused on missionary work. He gave training to the leaders about inviting friends to Family Night, church, etc and all of the talks on Sunday were great. It reminded me that every member is a missionary. Missionary work is not effective without members. Through simple things (such as sharing a video or testimony on social media) every member can make a difference. One interesting thing that President Thomas, the mission president, showed was a talk from Elder Bednar showing that we shouldn’t just pray for people to magically show up for church but that we should go out and do the work. We are all instruments of the Lord. Lets all do are part to spread the gospel and it’s message of hope and love to all the world. I love you all.

Chao
Elder Johnson

Soaked