Hey family, June 8,2011
So I got some good news about the package and some bad news. The good news is that it arrived. The bad news is that I don't know when I can receive it. It's currently stuck in the mission office so it should be safe for now but it's so big that the zone leaders can't bring it with them on the hour long bus ride. Anyways, I got 3 hours to write so this should be a big enough email. We had another runner for a baptism last Sunday. This one at least stayed for the interview but didn’t show up to church and when we tried to pick him up in a car he wasn’t there. Luckily we were able to talk with him later that day to see what was up. Apparently he went to a party (probably to celebrate his baptism the next day) and got super wasted there. Anyways he was throwing up and had a pretty bad hang over in that he couldn’t go to church. So we talked to him again about the word of wisdom and how he can't do that. It is obvious though that he is currently repenting and still has a desire to be baptized. So we'll see what goes down this Sunday, but we're thinking it will happen.
Another cool story here that was actually a personal spiritual grower happened last Monday with an investigator, Vinícios So several weeks back (before teaching Vinícios) we taught the dad of this investigator, Edson. All went great. The first lesson he said that he wants to baptized and already knows that our church is true. He accepted the Book of Mormon and was excited to read the parts we marked and was going to pray about it. Anyways, we returned later that week to follow-up, and it turned out that Edson was in the hospital with some disease called Derramie (I’m not too sure if it’s called the same in English, but basically, from what I understood, it stops the function of certain parts of the body and could be very fatal). Vinícios that told us this, and one thing led to another and we taught him the first lesson and he accepted to be baptized as well. The following week we visited Vinícios again and his father was still the same and the whole family is very worried about him. We talked to him about the book of Mormon and about prayer and about church. It was towards the end after Elder Almeida bore his testimony of these things and it was my turn to speak that I felt prompted to talk to him about going to church. During my testimony, I felt the spirit speak through me with force and I started to talk about how sometimes the spirit of the Lord tells us things to comfort, but sometimes He tells us to do things, or to say certain things. I told him that the spirit told me to tell him something. The spirit said that: “if you go to church this Sunday, your father will improve and that the Lord loves you and your family very much, and wants to help.” Then we discussed that the Lord will help Vinícios if he showed faith in Him. It was a very cool experience because the spirit was there with a ton of strength, and I know that if Vinícios goes to church this Sunday that Edson will be healed. It’s amazing how the Lord guides us in all things.
Anyways, I was thinking about your last email last week about how some people treat sacred gospel things lightly. It's seriously the story of my life here in my area. I don't think anyone knows what reverence is. Lately sacrament has been fairly good, but when I arrived some people in the branch would get up to go talk with their friends in the middle of sacrament. Laughing and talking normally during this part of the meeting. Things like this, but it's a lot better now. I think that they understand the importance of the spirit in meetings.
My companion's pretty interesting. He was one of those computer nerds before he left on his mission. He’s totally into conspiracy theories, strange happenings and such. He was trying to convince me of how we never actually landed on the moon. It's pretty funny actually and I just let him believe what he was wants to believe.
This past week was my companion’s birthday, a big 21 years old. I ate a lot cake and candy that day. Ice cream here is awesome. Keep up the good work with your investigator friends! Have they already had the first lesson with missionaries? Tell the family that they can write my emails if they want, I can write back, especially Mal and Chris so that they don’t have to wait a long time for letters. Love you all!
Elder Williams
Anyone want to "pick up" info on the church?
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