Dear Everyone,

 

Wow. If there is one thing that we learned this week is that when God makes a promise, He´s not joking around. We fasted last Sunday for: helping Paulo quit smoking, working in unity with the ward, and finding/reckognizing/helping the elect. So we did everything within our power to realize our vision, and the Lord did waaaay more than what we expected.

 

We´ve been calling Paulo just about everyday to remind him about his goals and to help encourage him. In one lesson we explained more about the Priesthood and how he could have a blessing from a member of the bishopric. He was excited about the invitation, so the next lesson we talked about faith and the 2nd counselor gave him a beautiful Priesthood blessing to help Paulo quit smoking and drinking coffee. The effect was outstanding. Paulo went from smoking 30 cigarettes to 14 in one day! 

 

We finally have a ward mission leader! His name is Nadgar and he is a more or less active youth preparing for a mission. He isn´t exactly what we were hoping for, being the temple ward, but he´s the one the Lord called. We´ll have to work with what we´ve got. Sometimes it frightens me that the Lord calls the `weak and simple to thrash the nations.´ Our meetings with him have been trainings for him to understand what missionary work really is and his role as a mission leader. If we don´t have unity... the ship will sink.

 

We taught the family of João Carlos, a recent convert, that is super elect. He is a military pilot that found the Gospel in Porto (northern Portugal) but at the time was away from his family. As he travelled around for work, he went to Church at the American military bases, where he had lots of great support. João recently retired so that he could be a better family man for his wife and 2 kids at home. The first thing he did was take his daughter to church and invite us over for a lesson! I am sooooooo excited about them!

 

Yesterday we gave talks in Sacrament Meeting about the importance of sharing the gospel. Both Sister Thornley and I read Elder Ballard´s talk from this past October Conference in preparation. He invited us to conquer our fears and worries of sharing the Gospel be kneeling in prayer for more missionary opportunities and the ability to reckognize them when they arrive. We invited the ward to do this, and we also did it ourselves as we left the apartment after lunch. THAT INVITE WAS NOT A JOKE! We had a lot more opportunities than normal even though only one of our appointments were solid. For instance a guy tried to sell us wallets, but we had the opportunity to say that Sunday is the day of the Lord, so we´ll have to waith until Monday. By the end of the day we ended up with a whopping 6 new investigators! God truly proves Himself when we are willing to follow the apostles and prophets.

 

Although we as human beings fail all the time, the Lord NEVER fails us. Everything that we prayed for and fasted for came to be reality even though it wasn´t in the ways we were exactly expecting. I hope that you guys have a great week and that all is well.

 

Sister Derrick