May 18, 2015
Nothin like some pictures from good ol´Slippery
Rock. Looks exciting to have some new neighbors.
This week in church in the Elders Quorum we read
a story about some guy.. I don’t’ remember who it was, that handed out .. I
think it was 40 Books of Mormon to people on his street, and then he continued
and started handing out more to other people. He said the result was amazing
that because of all the books he handed out 7 people were baptized soon after,
and more time down the road some people that had set the book aside initially,
had picked it up again to read and felt the Spirit that comes from reading it
and were baptized and later thanked this faithful member. I thought it was
interesting how simple it can be to make such a big difference in the lives of
others.
Today Elder Moroni and I were
sitting in the Super Market eating lunch thinking about all the people that
were around us, and what will be the destination of their souls in 2000 or so
years. No one really knows until judgment. But while I thought about the
salvation of these people, I felt the desire increase inside of me to share
with the people what we have, and what we know. I believe that the process must
be the same for members as well. When we think about those around us in an eternal
perspective, we have more desire to share the restored gospel with them, especially
our closest friends. We help our
friends with worldly cares and desires and want to make their lives more
joyful, so why would we not help them with their eternal salvation and make
their eternity more joyful?
This week we decided that we
would increase our number of contacts each day and we started talking to everybody,
and we found some great new investigators. We found a 19 year old girl who has
a 2-year old daughter. We taught her for the first time Tuesday, and when we
returned on Thursday we marked her baptism for the 30th and she said "I’ve
already had some people asking me if I’m going to be Mormon. I told them that I
am going to go to church and if all goes well, I’ll continue going
always." And soon after she accepted the baptismal date for the 30th. So
we told her that she will be prepared for baptism by reading the Book of Mormon
every day and praying everyday and going to church every Sunday, and receiving
our visits.
So after church yesterday we
went to visit her and we talked about how she felt at church. She said that she
felt so good and happy while she was there. She said she tried hard to listen
and to understand everything. So after she said how she had received a testimony
that the church is true, we read Luke 5:1-11 with here about how the apostles
left their old lives to follow Jesus after they had received testimonies. We
then invited her to be baptized this week promising her that using her faith
she could be prepared by Sunday. And she accepted!
It really feels good to help
someone exercise their faith to follow Jesus Christ and see how when they keep
little commitments like reading the Book of Mormon every night and saying
heartfelt prayers and going to church, they really do start to feel the power
of the Holy Ghost, that gives them a testimony of the truth.
This week I learned about the
importance of following the promptings we feel from the Spirit as we ask God in
prayer for advice and answers. About 5 or 6 weeks ago when we started to teach
one of our investigators, I remember one night I was praying asking what we
could do to help her feel ready to be baptized in the next week. I remember that
I felt an impression to give her a Liahona (Ensign magazine) that has a bunch
of pictures of the temple and talks about temples, and teach her about temple
marriage (she’s 21). However, for some reason, probably because it was
something kind of different to talk about in the second visit, I ended up not
following the prompting. Only this week did I find out that a few days before
we visited her, maybe 1 week, she was having difficulty with a particular
commandment, and when she went to church for the first time the first talk was
a high priest that gave a great talk on keeping that particular commandment.
She said that she felt touched during that talk. However, we didn’t even know
that she was having a problem with that commandment. However, God knew, and he
told me, I just didn’t listen until after. However, I believe if I had done
what the Spirit told me to do that week, she would have been touched even more.
It would have been proof to her that we represent Jesus and that the Spirit
tells us what we need to say. I believe that if we had taught her the about
that particular commandment and temple marriage in the first week, when the Spirit
told me to, she would have been baptized already. I learned a strong lesson on
the importance of trusting in God and in his Spirit. Even when we don’t want do
something out of the ordinary, whatever the Spirit tells us to do, is the will
of God and it should be done.
So this week was pretty
eventful, I don’t really have much more time to write, but sounds like you guys
had a good week too. Today for P-day we are going to go to the shirt store to
make our zone shirts and maybe next week we´ll be able to get the hot water
working in our house :) Hope you
have a good week! Love you guys.
Até mais!!
Élder Udy
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