Monday, January 5, 2015

First letter of 2015!

Well everyone, this week was a great one for sure!  I hope you all had a great New Year's because I know I did!  It´s kind of funny to think about what my New Year´s resolutions were last year compared to this year haha.  This year, 2015, will be the only full year of my life that will be completely dedicated to serving the Lord.  So I´ve been doing a lot of thinking as to how I can make it as great as I can.  So we had the baptism of B. on the 31st, the last day of the year and It was awesome!  I was able to baptize her so it was even better :)  This week I went home teaching with a member Irmão F.  It was different because I wasn´t with my companion who can usually take charge.  F. just put me straight to work once we got the houses and I ended up giving all of the messages and answering just about all of their questions.  All the people we visited were less actives so it wasn´t as easy as talking to the firm members.  It was really intimidating at first but they ended up being really great discussions.  I was able to understand just about everything and say just about everything I wanted to say!  It was actually really cool.  I know I´ve talked about this before but being here forces you to rely on the Lord.  It´s been one of the best things that has ever happened in my life!  When I have the spirit with me I can say and understand just about anything but when the spirit isn´t there.  Just about all of my portuguese goes out the window.  So it´s been really awesome because just to have a random conversation on the street I have to rely on Heavenly Father´s help because without him, I can´t do anything.  So that´s kind of an experience to share and kind of an invitation to all of you out there reading this to look at how much Heavenly Father helps you on a daily basis with the littlest things that you never really think about. 
        Anyways, we finally got U. to come to church!  Unfortunately we couldn´t get him to come to his own daughter's baptism :/  The past two lessons with him have been intense! Intents, like camping... Alright, ignore that, but for real on Friday the AP´s came to Currais Novos and went on splits with us.  We went teaching with Elder Corrington.  He´s an American from Texas and he´s just about to finish his mission so he´s fluent in the language.  Anyways I can honestly say I learned more from him on Friday alone than I have from anyone else in my whole mission.  Anyways back to the point.  We went to U.'s house on Friday night and usually we read from the Book of Mormon and testify and answer any questions he has and invite him to come to church and pray and all that.  But Friday we started discussing why he doesn´t believe in God and pretty much it just comes down to he has had a lot of trials in his life and doesn´t know why God isn´t helping him out.  And this is where I took over, it was awesome, All of a sudden a bunch of scriptures were flowing to my mind and I read a verse in Ether 12 that says blessings come after the trial of your faith and testified and then he asked why God lets people be killed and bad things happen if he really loves his children, And so I opened up to Alma 14 about Alma and Amulek having to watch their families and all the believers being burned and it talks about how the righteous are recieved up in Glory and we kinda got that settled and then he was pretty much saying that he has no proof that a God exists so I was like, Bam Alma 30, where it talks about everything we have on earth testifies that there really is a God.  Idk, it was just cool that I was able to understand his questions and know exactly what to say and read and it kinda showed to him that the gospel has answers for everything.  So he finally agreed to come to church and after church he said there really is something different about this one that he hasn´t felt in the other churches he´s been to.  So we´re gonna keep working with him and fingers crossed!  
          Wednesday we had the ward's New Year's/Christmas dinner (That we decorated for again) and it was good.  The best part about it...no one got sick from the food!  Woo!  I get nervous when we go to places where they feed a lot of people because the food is almost always bad :/  Speaking of food, we went to M.'a´s house again for lunch yesterday and she fed us baby pigeons... Yeah, when I say baby I mean like I´m pretty sure someone went to crack an egg open but they baby chick had already formed so they just decided to fry it up instead haha.  There isn´t a lot of meat on them so you eat it whole, bones and all.  And I would be lying if I said it wasn´t really good!  I ate 8 of them!  It was actually really good.  I did however stay away from the feet.  The little claws scared me, I didn´t want to have one stick on the inside of me.  But yeah, for sides we had.... Yup you guessed it, beans and rice haha.  
         But anyways, this week was really great and I have been taking the lead a lot more and becoming more and more confident in the language so it´s been great.  I love you all!  Make yourselves a great year this year!  A igreja é verdadeiro!  Fica firme fica forte!
 
Elder Harris #2
 

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