Ola!

This week was fantastic. I hope you all had an amazing General Conference experience as I did. I loved hearing all the inspired talks of guidance, love, hope, faith and all Godly things centralized of course on our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ. I felt the spirit so strongly and am excited to review the notes I took and truly apply what I learned from the teaching and from the Spirit. We truly need to now apply what we learned this Conference weekend. We need to push on in faith, relying on Jesus Christ, trying to become more like Him through listening to the Holy Ghost and daily prayer and scripture study, especially study of the Book of Mormon as our prophet so inspiredly talked about. The Book of Mormon truly does have power and if the prophet of the Lord only has a few short minutes to talk, what he says is truly important. Let us all (myself included) study the Book of Mormon everyday starting with today. If we promise to read today, and we keep our promise today, we can keep our promise two days, like the Primary president talked about. What matters most is to start today and to examine what we need to do better. Make goals and plans to achieve this and then rely on the Lord to help us through. I truly did love conference and can’t wait to study and ponder on the talks over and over again.

The rest of the week was pretty normal. We are working with Emerson’s family a lot. I thought I would explain a little bit about each of them. The main people we are working with are Emerson who is 18 years old and his nephew Everton who is 14 years old. They both like the church and have been a few times on Sunday. Everton is also studying in Seminary every morning. Their friend Jose is 16 years old and wants to be baptized and go to church but his dad won’t let him. He has a strong testimony though and will continue to build it until he is allowed to frequent church and be baptized. Emerson has five sisters who all like when we teach them, but I think the most interested is Eliana. She always loves our messages and wants us to come over to teach. She has a boyfriend who also really likes us. He has a lot of questions and doubts but is truly interested in learning more. They have one little girl who is one year old and they are more like husband and wife, just not legally, which is a huge problem here in Brazil. Emerson’s other sisters are interested in the church and love our lessons, but feel like they haven’t yet received an answer if this truly is the church of Jesus Christ. We will keep working with all of them as they truly are a special family.

We are teaching another family now also. They were at a Family Night we had with someone and now we are beginning to teach them. They are married and have two little boys. The dad’s name is De and the mom’s name is Joelma. The two kids are Mateus, who is eight and Gabrielle, who is two. They are a sweet family. The two little kids are cute and have a special spirit about them. We left a Book of Mormon with them and they have all started reading. Their only problem is that they work a lot, but they should be able to go to church and hopefully will fill the spirit in their lives and see that this is the true church of Jesus Christ.

We keep looking for more and more people to teach and help. I love seeing the light of the gospel illuminate the lives of many who choose to accept and seek for the truth. Conference gave me yet another testimony that this is truly the Lord’s church and that he has called prophets and apostles who speak for him. Let us continue to review the words which have been spoken and I know that we will all be blessed. I love you all!

Elder Johnson

Trying my hand at drawing!