Hey family, 9-28-11
Thanks for the email. This past week I've been thinking a lot about a talk from the Prophet last conference about gratitude. I'm sure you guys remember this talk. My companion found it and we've listened to it many times in Portuguese this last week. Gratitude is an attribute of God, and I’ve decided that if we're not grateful, we cannot live with Him. President Monson said that ingratitude is condemned in the scriptures and so on the other side of things, those that are grateful are greatly blessed. We need to be more grateful in our prayers, and speak with God from the depths of our hearts about all things that He gave us that we should be grateful for. It's legit. Thanks family for your support!
Anyways, on the other hand, I've gotten in a bad habit here of burning everyone that is stubborn or doesn’t want to listen to our message. Sometimes it's definitely necessary to call someone out when they’re doing something wrong or something, but other times I need to have more tact. For example, yesterday I was walking on a division with some kid from my ward, and I told him to make his first contact with some old man that was walking down the street, because he looked sad. We found out why he was sad, when he started telling us that the Book of Mormon is false and that it's written in the Bible that anything that is added or taken from the book is from the devil. The problem was that he was saying this to start a fight and not because he wanted a question answered. We tried to talk him down but he wouldn’t listen to anything we said. I said three things that two of which I probably should have kept my mouth shut. First I told him "He is filled with sin, and that the Lord sent me to call him to repentance." which was followed by, "the problem is that you are too proud to listen to my words. So when you’re heart is more humble talk with us." Afterwards he changed the subject and started talking about how his church is from God and that ours is from the devil. So I told him "Brother, I know that you are wrong, I know that God established His church calling Joseph Smith as Prophet. I tell you these things so that at the last day when you meet the bar of God, He will tell you that he sent me to tell you these things, and that my garments will be clean of your blood." I don't feel bad about that last comment. The problem was that I said these things because I was angry with him, probably wasn’t that good of an idea.
Since we've started marking people for baptisms we’ve marked 8 people and it's being really effective, but we need to be extra attentive to the spirit so that we can know whether to mark them for baptism or just get their addresses. Yesterday we started something new again and started walking around with Book of Mormons in our hands to grab the attention of people in the street. I have a sweet program planned up of visiting another church here and watching their meetings. The plan being that we talk with the current pastor and say something like, "we have a lot of questions about what you believe, can we pass by your house one day and you can teach us more about this stuff". This would set up the scene that we are humble and we don’t want to bible bash. The day we would visit he would teach us and establish a healthy relationship, that Mormons are normal and that we are serving him by going to his church and letting him teach us. After some visits he would become interested and we start talking about things that are simple but would show that we have authority and power to talk about these things. And in time they become baptized and we baptize his congregation; of course doing these things following the spirit.
Anyways, I’ve started memorizing the Book of Mormon in Portuguese. It's pretty awesome to have a long project like this, it should take about a year and a half to finish. It's cool though, because I know that the Lord will help me with this if I work hard, Just like he helped me learn Portuguese from reading the book of Mormon.
Also for that Christmas package you’re thinking about... If you can find a ukulele that is really, really cheap, I would really like one =]. We get the ensign by the way, but it’s in Portuguese, if you want to send a copy in English you can.
You guys should check out on YouTube something along the lines of "The Voice of Ancient America", I don’t know if they have it in English, but it’s a documentary about the people here in America that proves that they had the same gospel here back in the day. And it proves it without talking about the Book of Mormon until the end. It's by BYU and it’s a little bit old.
Anyways, I love you!
Elder Williams
