Monday, June 8, 2015

Spatugese

So last night we had that portuguese family home evening, I tried speaking my spatuguese haha but I have a lot of improvement to do. Sitting in that lesson I felt like I was starting my mission over again, desperately trying to put together the little words and phrases I understand into something that makes logical sense haha. It went really well though and Im excited to see if we can help this brazilian family's friends progress with the help of the portuguese returned missionaries here.


-So I will just share a few experiences from this week. One testimony builder for me was our lesson we had with Joy. Joy is 25 and from Honduras and is the friend of the President Gazziro and his wife. We have taught her during their family home evenings for the past 3 weeks and man she is awesome I love her. It's a little intimidating though teaching with president gazziro and hermana phillips suddenly got super nervous right before we went into the lesson because of her spanish. I had been studying alma 31 that morning and there are some verses at the end when it talks about alma with his sons and his brothers getting ready to go down to teach the Zoramites who had fallen into apostasy. In these verses, he prays and pleads with heavenly father to fill them with the spirit, and to give them success in bringing these people who they love, their brothers, back to Christ. After his prayers, him and his brothers were immediately filled with the spirit and didn't worry any more about what they would eat or drink or wear,  because they were consumed in the joy of Christ. And it says in verse 37 that all of this happened because Alma prayed with faith. And the very next chapter is alma 32, where alma goes down and teaches which we know is one of the most beautiful sermons ever given on faith. These scriptures really touched me a lot and I knew we needed to do the same thing as Alma. So we said a prayer of faith, and plead to be filled with the joy of christ to the point where we didn't worry about or weaknesses or things we needed, so that we would be able to help our friend Joy. We ended up having the best lesson on the plan of salvation that I have ever had. The spirit was there so strong and Hermana Phillips bore a great testimony.  We taught purely from the book of mormon, and were able to teach her how the book of mormon can answer our deepest questions. In the previous lesson, Joy had told us how she had always wondered what her purpose in life is. As we read different scriptures in the book of mormon, her face would suddenly light up with realization, with knowledge. She said that because of the book of mormon and what we shared with her that night, she was finally able to understand the fall of adam and eve, the atonement of Jesus Christ and what she really is here to do. I am so grateful for the answers that we can find in the scriptures. That is probably one of my favorite parts of being a missionary, is that moment when the spirit guides you to a scripture that answers the question of an investigator and seeing that light and realization in their eyes as the spirit confims that it's true. Ready for the storykiller though? We found out that Joy is moving back to Honduras for a few months in a week so tonight will be our last lesson with her:( that's the sad part about serving stateside is that this happens a lot. You get really close to someone, see them going so far and then they move! It's ok though, Joy wants to keep learning and meeting with the missionaries in Honduras and will be in contact with the Gazziros. She said she wants to move back here in december and keep going to church too.


- We have been doing some more tracting and every time before we do, we pick a number of doors we want to knock and ask to be led to which ones we should knock on. Haha at one point I said you know, Im not sure if it is the spirit leading me to this door, or just the fact that I am attracted to their doormat. But then I realized, hey I bet you God knew the missionaries would be attracted to that specific doormat, so influenced that person into buying it so we would be led to their door haha. No joke though I feel like this is actually true...we were walking through a neighborhood before an appointment and I saw this cool mail box and was like you know I really think we need to knock this door because it has a nice mail box. So we did and it was this cute old lady who was a long lost member of the church and we were able to teach her! Haha I told her that we didn't knock on anyone elses door in the whole street, but knew we had to knock hers because she had a cool mail box and she was like wow I built that thing years ago! who would have thought...

- So we have the goal of trying to set a baptismal date with an investigator every single week...but this week me and hermana phillips were just like alright. This is REALLY going to happen this week- we got to amp up our faith somehow. So we put up sticky notes with the words fecha bautismal all over the house to always remember our goal and prayed for divine help together at every single opportunity- and you pray a lot as a missionary so we did this a lot haha. And guess what happened? We were able to set a baptismal date with Ruby in June! Ruby is the mom of the miracle family that we found with the 3 little girls. We have been able to meet with here 3 or 4 times and already we can see the effect that learning more about the gospel is having on her. She stopped using the Lord's name in vain, even when we didn't directly ask her too and she has gone from never praying to saying nightly kneeling prayers. It is really neat to see these little things she is doing and it makes me super excited to see her willing to work towards baptism as a goal. We have a few things we need to work with her with though....hahah when we extended the baptismal date to her she was like "Wow! I feel like Im getting marrried or something!"....uhmm yeah...about that...you're going to have to do that too haha. We are excited to keep helping her progress though and I know that we were definitely blessed for our faith this week by that experience.

- ah man, se esta acabando el tiempo. Basically God's good and so is the mission life. Hope y'all have a great week!
Hermana Baugh

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