Rio Branco: Week 8

Wow, thanks for your thought´s and prayers for Maria, our investigator. Actually, she´s not an investigator anymore. She´s a recent-convert! It was really one of the miracles of the week. I actually traveled with Elder W. Silva this week to Bom Jardim- Mossoró. So Elder Sales was the one who followed up with her during the week. She got mad at me last week because I took her pack of cigarettes when she wasn´t looking, haha. But she was really able to stop. Luckily, I got to see her baptism when I came back. We got back at 8pm and the baptism happened at about 8:30here. We invited her son, Felipe and his wife, Patricia. It was just them, us, and a member of the bishopric but it was a really good baptismal service. Felipe baptized her. My favorite baptisms are when members are the ones who baptize, particularly when they are of the family of the one being baptized! So that was a good highlight to end the week. I´m grateful that my companion works really hard in the area while I´m gone. I will tell her that you were praying for her and it will make her happy.

The division this week went really well. Both of us went to Bom Jardim which is an area that we had both worked in in the past. We had success working with recent converts. Of all the people that we were able to take to church- several were family or friends of recent-converts. And the others, recent converts had helped in the process of integrating them in order to come to church. One thing I like about that ward is that it runs really well but everyone in the ward is a convert. There is a great family who only has about a year-and-a-half of being members and it seems possible that their dad might be the next bishop. It was also good to work there with Elder Andrade who had been my companion before. We stayed in the ZL´s area most of the week and a couple of days I went to other areas in Mossoró too.

It´s super rainy here in Natal! About once a day it rains here. I´ve been hearing things about the Zika virus but it seems like one of those things that the media blows out of proportion. Yes, it was Carnaval week. Luckily, these cities don´t have big Carnaval parties. Lots of people here travel to other cities to go to these parades. Caicó is the city on the mission that has the biggest Carnaval parties. It didn´t mess up the work very much. It just made it a little harder because lots of people traveled! And everything was closed today.

I love you all and hope you have great weeks!

Elder Church