Hey Mom, 4-17-12
Thanks for the email! This week was very good, every day was an effective day. It's a cool thing to see! We could work really, really hard, but if it's not efficient, we just don't feel good. So of course, on the days that we just futilely knock on doors, we finish feeling like we wasted our day. Preach My Gospel, really helps in that category, it says that we should speak to everyone, but it also says that the best baptism is through member references. So we've been trying our best to improve our relations with our members and we've gotten a lot more references. We did our first FHE here with a member. It was WAY good. We watched a 20 minutes restoration video that we show to investigators. That video is super strong. My companion made the observation that when the restoration happened; God and Christ appeared at the same time to restore the church. If we read the scriptures we can see times when One or the other appears, but never BOTH of them! It's a very bold statement that we as members of the Church state, but it's true.
We've been trying our best to work with the less actives as well. A good part of them have family members that they live with, that aren’t members. If we baptize them then there’s a good chance that their family members will also be reactivated. We met a lady the other day that become inactive together with her family here. It's a very sad thing to see. She admitted to us that she knew that the church was true and that she wouldn’t go to other churches. But she started smoking again saying that she could stop easily if she went back to church. You guessed it…She doesn’t take any effort to go back. She's upset with the bishop, she claims she was offended by some of the members, etc. It's like she actively rebelled against the commandments of God without purposely meaning to. Of course she knows what she's doing, but doesn’t want to do anything about it.
Mom, As far as the Alma question goes (Alma 32-33…Ammon full of joy and falling unconscious), I’ve never fallen to the ground before, I think that he feels a completely different level of joy. However, when someone ends up doing what they're supposed to, I get really happy and a good relieved feeling. I've spent many breathless Sundays waiting to see if our investigators are up and ready to be picked up, if they'll go to church and if they'll like it when they go.
These past days me and my companion built an old-school barbeque out of bricks and a grate we found in our oven. Last Friday night we made a BBQ to celebrate. Next time I’ll take pictures and show you guys. Last week I ended falling into temptation and bought a hammock. I tried putting it up between a bar and our clothes line and I ended up falling and hurting my elbow. So I tried putting the hammock up on a grate on our window…as of today it's still good, but there's a chance that our window will be falling out soon.
Yesterday we went to another area that we're in charge of. There’s no missionaries there and all the members are sad. I really like it there and I’m tempted to ask the president if I could go there one time in my mission. Anyway, we received a reference so we were teaching a girl that wanted to get baptized, but her mom won’t let her. She's 20 yrs old, you'd think she'd be able to make her own choices by now! This girl had a ton of deep doctrine questions. It was cool for me to put my knowledge to the test and I was surprised to see that I actually knew quite a bit. Maybe I don't understand it all, but it was cool to see that I could at least answer the questions.
These past couple of days we've been working with a member that has been helping us out a lot! He has a disability that makes him unable to walk correctly and his whole left arm is withered. It's really cool to see him walk a ton with us and help us out, even though he may not look physically able to do it. It makes me see that I can do a whole lot more when I get back home to help out the missionaries.
Good work to dad for surprising you guys by driving to Utah! I’m jealous of Cassan and Sam! I can’t wait to visit them. Currently, we're here at an English school to use the internet for free and to teach English every now and again. There's a ton of little kids that are swarming us trying to speak English, its fun!
Well, Love you guys! Elder Williams
POST #2:
Hey Dad! 4-17-12
Thanks for the email, sorry it's been a while since I’ve written. It seems like I've said just about everything in the last letter to mom. It's hard for me to remember some things that happen, yesterday for example, we woke up early to get to a district meeting, but we left a little bit later than normal (my companion was combing his hair) and we ended up seeing our bus leave the bus station. For whatever reason we thought that we could catch up to it se we started to run after it. After about 3 minutes of the bus taking off, then stopping at a light, then going, then stopping to pick up some people, we ended up missing it. You'd think the driver would see two idiots 40 feet behind him running, waving their hands and whatnot... but he didn’t. Anyways, this was at about 5:30 in the morning. That day we ended getting home at 10:30, because we went to an area that was far away. (With days like this, everything gets all mixed up in the head when I go to record them.) Anyway, to finish the story: We ended up taking a bus to Campinas (which was going in the opposite direction) so that we could take a bus to where we needed to go. There weren’t any buses going directly from our area to where we needed to go. We wasted a ton of money in doing so. Therefore, we decided NOT to ride a bus on the way back, so we ended up going onto the highway to hitchhike our way back to the other area we needed to get to. When got there, we were successful with the references there, then we got a ride back to our area from one of the members (which was a big sacrifice because it’s about 45 minutes one way) and he topped it off by giving us 40 bucks to spend (just completely out of the blue... which is always a good thing!). I think he was trying to pay us off so that we would say something good to the president so that he would put missionaries back into his ward. Never-the-less, he’ll be blessed for his sacrifice.
I’m jealous of your surprise trip to Utah, dad! If it were me, I probably would have done the EXACT same thing by driving all night and surprising Chris, Annie, and mom at their door in the morning!
There are some many things I’m learning about the gospel here on the mission. It's crazy how much clearer everything spiritual has become being here, than when I was back at home. For instance, the commandments make much more sense out here on my mission… It's like anything else we study, we can’t study something complicated if we don't even understand the basic stuff. I like the scripture you quoted (1 Nephi 13:37). These past couple of weeks, I've really been trying my best to enjoy the presence of the Holy Ghost in my life. Everything just turns out right if I do that. I would encourage you and everyone reading this, to try it out whenever possible! Anyways, I love you dad!
Elder Williams
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