Monday, April 1, 2013

Keep the Letters Comin...

E Aí Todo Mundo!!! This week flew! Actually, every week is flying now! Oh man i´m so pumped for general conference this week! I never was excited as i am now! Its so perfect to invite people to conference to here the prophet LIVE! There´s no way anyone can go and not feel the spirit! Of course Jeffery R Holland will light it up as well! We had some great stuff happening this week! We had a lot of lessons change from one to the other! One example was a lady that we started off with the restoration and switched to the plan of salvation. Her mom died 6 months ago of a leg infection out of nowhere, so i bore my testimony to her about grandma suzie and how the same thing happened to her. she was rough though and said that she wanted nothing to do with God anymore.. if she reads the pamphlet and scriptures that we left though, she´ll find an answer. We went on knocking doors that night as well and found a GOLDEN family! Samuel and Camila, they´re 30 and have a little girl thats the cutest little thing! She´s 4 and was so flirty with us! Samuel frequented to church for 4 months when he was 18 in Fortaleza and knows quite a bit! He was almost baptized but left the area and never found a chapel after. THeyre such open friendly people that asked everything about us and about the church! I swear i didnt ask one question! He has family that live in Colorado and everything! Such a smart guy. He has a masters in Business and biology and sell glasses now! He has a car too which is crazy rare here! They were sick when sunday came though, but they will go to general conference!! They seriously starting reading the book of mormon out loud on the spot! Couldnt have been better! We went down this little dirt road this week as well that we never went down and it turns out that 80% of the people there were members! Its really poor and everyone has like 8 kids! You guys dont know what i mean by poor as well.. i mean poor as in their houses are made of mud and straw. A lot of them went inactive because the van that passed by to pick them up for church stopped. We´re trying to get something together for them, but its hard because only a handful of people have cars! Everyone is either foot, bike, or motorcycle. The little kids loved me there! They asked me for words in english like crazy! It was funny when they started asking things that dont translate like Coca Cola! ITs sad that none of them know how to read...kids that are 10 12ish. Seriously, and they dont even have toys! They just make kites out of notebook paper with a little string! Kids in the U.S. are pretty dang spoiled. Saturday was Santo Sabado and every single thing in the city was closed! we had lunch with the branch president as well..he passed by our house and was like elders, i have nothing in my house to feed you and everything is closed, but i´ll try to find something...he returned with a bag of noodles and spam and said, "make a miracle out of this, elder" hahaha! We found other golden investigators, Rosa and her nephew Daniel. They are taking care of rosa´s dad who´s 85 and is disabled 24 hrs a day. We started teaching the gospel of jesus christ and it switched to the restoration...Daniel asked, why are there so many churches in the world? Me and Elder Nakazoni looked at each other, grinned and gave him a dose of scriptures! He asked about the priesthood, saying that he believed that anybody could have it, so we showed him the story about Simon in Acts where he wanted to buy priesthood power and Peter burned him! Afterward, everything made sense to him. He wouldnt stop thanking us for book of mormon! In the branch now the best programs are the relief society and young men. They have good leaders and support each other. The people that we baptize are of these organizations as well. It shows that the organizations that function well have baptisms! The young men are really faithful and diligent. I think every one of them will go on a mission. Its tough to retain them in this area though, because they go on missions to Sao paulo or Rio and like it a lot there and dont come back! The area here just lacks a little bit of leadership. There will be 2 areas opened in Sao Bernardo now! We baptized Betania who with her husband, Manuel, are the first member couple there! They had 40 investigators there last sunday!! 70 in total! I got a stack of letters today! More than of gotten in my first 6 months! I´m excited to read them! I gotta get going though! I love you all!
Se cuidam meus queridos!
Elder Larsen

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