Good Morning family!
How is everyone doing? I hope you have a great Valentine´s day!
This last week was so-so. We had a baptism on Saturday of a 17 year old guy. His girlfriend is a member and always invited him to church. He had been coming to church a long time before I ever got to Parnaíba and the missionaries never taught him for some reason. So I saw him for the first time in church about 3 weeks ago and we started teaching him and he already knew everything cause his girlfriend talked to him and he had been going to church. So we taught him for 3 weeks and he was baptized and confirmed this weekend. His name is Mateus. I am happy he has good friends in the church that can help keep him active as he strengthens his testimony.
We have a family we are teaching too that came to church yesterday. The guys name is Giovani and his wife is Vera. He always asks such good questions and always wants to learn more. It was awesome in church yesterday. Usually investigators just sit there and listen, but in church Giovani was participating and giving comments. He sounds like a member already. When President Dias was here for zone conference he visited Giovani and told us that he is the most elect man he has ever met and that if we don´t baptize him within 3 weeks, he is going to come back here and baptize him himself. So, we are going to baptize this guy so we don´t get in trouble... haha.
Do you remember Italo? He was supposed to be baptized on Christmas when I called home, but it fell through. He has been very difficult to get him to do anything. So we kinda just dropped him for a little. Not officially, but we stopped visiting him cause he wasn´t doing anything. So we went back for the first time in 2 or 3 weeks and he was a little sad that we stopped visiting us. I explained to him that we focus our time on those who are ready to be baptized and stuff and I just kinda burned him. I was pretty bold with him and told him that we have taught him all he needs to know to be baptized, I told him I know he has a testimony (because he has told me) and then I said, with all of this knowledge you have, what do you think God wants you to do with it? He said, be baptized. So we marked another date with him to be baptized and we are going to give it another shot. Except he didn´t come to church yesterday!!! It is so frustrating. We put so much work into him and it is hard to see it all go to waste. I really really want him to be baptized. He is ready, he just won´t keep the dumb commitments! ugh..
And do you remember my letter about that drunk guy that came to church a little while ago? He actually isn´t in my branch so I didn´t have the opprotunity to teach him, but he is going to be baptized this saturday coming up. So, that is a really neat story. I wish I could have seen his progress. I saw him yesterday at church and he was sober and in a shirt and tie. It was pretty cool. I could tell he has changed.
Since it is Valentines Day in the united States, I decided to study about love today. Not mushy, gushy love, but about pure love and charity. It was really good. I read Elder Holland´s conference talk from last April about the difference between love and lust. It was great to remember that. He gave some great ways to resist the temptation of lust, and any other type of temptation. But as I was reading it, I just kept thinking about you, Mom and Dad. You guys are a great example of true love. Thank you for always loving each other and your kids no matter what. Dad, thank you for always respecting Mom. It is a great example in my life of how I need to treat women and my future wife.
Now, Dad, for breakfast I usually eat some yogurt. Just a little cup of yogurt. But recently I have been buying cereal because I was missing it. It is SO expensive down here though, so I probably won´t buy it much longer. The milk is weird here too. You don´t have to refridgerate it before you open it. It is just in a box and it can be out for like a year. It has a weird flavor too, but I am starting to like it...
I think that is crazy that Sloan resigned. He is pretty old though and obviously isn´t a championship coach... (just kidding, don´t be mad at me) But maybe the jazz needed a new coach. Change is always good. Are Jazz fans mad at Williams? or do they like him more than Sloan?
Dad, good luck with your Marathon training. i think you will be doing marathons until you are so old you can´t stand anymore. You are a stud.
I hope you all have a great day and a fantastic week! Try to get healthy! Everyone in Parnaíba has some kind of sickness too. All of the missionaries in my house have had something once or twice in the last couple of weeks and the normal people that live here seem to be sick too. I am trying to stay healthy from here on out.
I love you all so much!
Love, Isaac
No comments:
Post a Comment