Tudo bem minha familia!!

 

           Wow is Elder Gay really coming to your stake conference in like a month? That is so crazy! Maybe I should have talked with him a little more so that he could remember me. I did talk to him with one of the visa waiters here about how the church is doing with getting those visas from Brazil and he said that they weren't doing too well. Ha but that's alright. He gave a really good talk about how it is never a coincidence where you serve on your mission and that the Lord has prepared you to be here. So that kind of reassured me that I am supposed to be here at this point in my mission. But yea he gave some great trainings on missionary work. I learned a lot from him. He really wants us to find out the why for people and then teach them the how. Which is true. He gave an example about how these one missionaries were teaching this lady that had just gotten a divorce and was not healthy and looking like she was going to die soon. He said that the missionaries told her that she has to be baptized with someone that has the authority, but that isn't really what she needed at that point. It was really good and kind of opened my eyes a little bit more about teaching people and not lessons.

         Some pretty great things happened this week. The Lord has blessed us that's for sure! Yesterday at church we had 6 investigators there! I think that is the most that I have ever had come to church. The whole family that we have been teaching was there, so that is 4, and then we finally got these two black kids to come which have a date to be baptized on the 28th. Ha they made us so late for church though, because these black kids don't have a car so we were really scrambling to get them a ride to church. Then these kids call us and tell us that they have 3 cousins that want to come to!! Ha so we really had to cram them in with this family! It was pretty funny. So yea it was a great day. Another miracle happened when we had a lesson with this Mongolian lady. She is under 60 so we needed a male to come with us, and our appointment was right in the middle of the day. So we were trying to think of who we could get to come with us but nobody came to mind except.... this really inactive and unemployed guy. Ha so I gave him a call and he answered and said that he could come with us. I was so surprised. He showed up with his hair all slicked back and a button up shirt. I really was blown away. We taught the Plan of Salvation to this lady and this guy actually put in quite a bit of input. I'd imagine that he was feeling really guilty when we were talking about how its going to be so hard to look at our Father in Heaven if we are filthy and willfully rebelled against God. We are going to start working with him again though so we are excited. He just needs something that will get him back to church.

            With the family we are teaching, they are all doing pretty well. The mother is scared to set a date because she thinks that evil spirits will try to stop her if she sets a date ha. Sheesh that is just a tough thing to teach to sometimes. But her daughter always wears this young women necklace thing so that is sweet. I think that her and her mom have been to church like 5 times now, and then the rest of them have been twice. The father is autistic so he has trouble feeling if its true so that's a little rough sometimes, but all in all I think that they have really been liking it. So we are going to set a date anyway and get them baptized:) We usually just stop by because they are horrible at setting appointments, but they like learning and the mom was saying how she cant believe how she is slowly starting to not want to drink anymore. Ha she had a probably with Jesus being white though... I was like, what?? She said he should be darker since he was born over there in the middle east.. I think she is forgetting that he is the Son of God.

         We also went to teach the guy that had the Idaho shirt on and guess what... He brought his minister!!! Haha I was like oh boy! Basically he was reading us Romans 3:19 and telling us how the law will condemn us so we should just stop trying to obey God's law and just grab on to Jesus and he will take us home. I just sat there laughing inside. How can people interpret scripture so weird and wrong. He was a way cool guy though!! I just gave him some stuff to read in the BOM about how Jesus wont save us in our sins because no unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of God and that we will be judged according to our WORKS!! Fun stuff. I actually learn quite a few things from lessons like that. Builds my testimony quite a bit.

          Well family things are going great!  I love you all so much and couldn't ask for a better family. Hope you have a great week!!  Love you!!

Love Tate