28 July 2014 - Viçosa, Brazil

OK, folks, this week we have some great stories of how the Lord blesses his humble servants as they listen to the Spirit and their priesthood leaders. Also, to help you decipher Elder Frogley's English, when he says "news" he doesn't mean journalistic articles about the goings on around the world, but instead he means "new people" or "new investigators" (literally "new ones" when said in Portuguese, I believe). Anyway...

Hello family! This week was a great one for finding and helping new investigators! We´ve had some great teaching experiences and helped some wonderfull people accept baptisim! On the down side, we havent had the opportunity to teach Jessica and Juliana again because theyre both traveling. But ill fill ya in on that later.

This week weve been praying for God to provide some news for us. We´ve been having a tough time finding people who want to go to church and be taught. Mission Pres. told us to work with the less actives and wed find people to baptise because there are a lot of less actives here. So thats what we decided to do. We have a list of all of the inactive priesthood holder in our area and we decided to visit every single one. Tuesday we visited a Man who was living with his brother who was an inactive member. His name is Marcio and hes just a really large guy, but super chill. He told us that the missionaries use to pass by his house all the time and he really liked them. Hed even been to church a few times. But never was baptised. His brother, the member, didnt want anything to do with the church any more, but Marcio said that we could teach him and his nephew, so thats what we did. We entered into the lesson with little enthusiasm, because he told us that he lived with a women and they werent married, and marrages are tough here. Not the best way of thinking but we realized it half way through the lesson. We were kind of running through the first lesson just to get it over with, not worrying about his understanding, and we started to feel like he really needed the lesson. I think the Holy Ghost chastised us a little. So we stopped and tried to listen to the Holy Ghost to teach him and help him understand. Honestly i think ive never had anyone understand the Restoration so well. He said he would definately pray and search for an answer if the church was true, and he promissed to be baptised on the 19th when he found his answer. That was humbling. Its amazing the things the Holy Ghost can hide from people. When a person wants to understand, The Holy Ghost reveals the trueth. When a person doesnt care, it doesnt matter how clearly you explain something, they dont understand a single principal. But through that experience we we found three more news and marked three baptisims. Already an answer to our prayers.

On Thursday, we took the whole day to visit everyone on our list. We had all four missionaries on our side of the river working our area to get it done, but we finished it! We got them all! Now we can clean up the church records and update the member lists. And we also found some other great people to teach. 

One of those great people was a Man named Gabriel. He moved to another state and stopped going to church, but has come back to Viçosa to stay. When we knocked on his door, he imediately invited us in and told us to sit down. He said hed love to go back to church but hes fallen into some back habits (drinking, and such) and hed have some troubles. He was also living with a women, unmarried. We promissed to come back and visit to teach him and his wife, which we did on Sunday! We stopped by after church. His girlfriend answered the door. He was apparently drunk and assleep, which was sad, but his wife said we could for sure teach her. We taught her about the restoration and we took care to explain verry clearly for her. Shes was full of desire to learn but she was having a hard time grasping the importance of prophets and a restoration. We taught her for a solid hour doing our best to explain the importance of a prophet and we taught about the Book of Mormon. When we challenged her to be baptised, she didnt even hesitate to say yes. She said that earlier that same day shed been challenged to be baptised in the catholic church but she never was and she didnt accept. But she accepted baptisim in an instant with us. I feel like that means she felt the Spirit and understood.

Thats about is as far as our week! It was good and we continue enthusiastic!

Elder Harris (my comp) has two weeks left of his mission Dad, so ill be getting a new comp soon. Probably my last. Theres a weird thought. Also i havent gotten my new plane ticket but ill let you know the times when i do.

Love you!

Elder Ian

PS Dad, keep your eye out for some jobs. Ill need one right away when i get back.