Divisions with the AP's

Happy Valentines Day to me and Elder Ball. We bought this pizza for each other!

Week 81 February 21, 2011

Hello family! How is everyone doing! I hope that all is well and those who are sick are feeling better! I’m so grateful for all of you guys! For the wonderful email that you all always send to me and for the updates with everyone back home! It really calms my heart to know that our Heavenly Father is always looking over you all!

Today is transfers and we are entering a transfer with only 5 weeks… so it’s going to fly by really fast! Our zone is changing so much so it will be pretty crazy! In our zone there are going to be 3 areas that will open, and 6 people that are going to train! A lot!!!!!! So we are super excited to see how everything goes! We found out a couple minutes ago that we are going to have to go to a little city that’s called Palmeiras tomorrow to try and find a house or an appt. to rent there for the elders that are going to get there... so that will be pretty fun. But we are super excited to have this new zone with a lot of fresh missionaries to come in with this fire to work!!!!! Sadly that is what’s faulting in our mission at this point….

But besides that, this week in the mission field threw a couple curve balls at us ha-ha! The week started off on Monday afternoon after p- day when we were soooooo excited to go to some appointments just to find out that our investigators were going out of town for a couple weeks to the beach to have fun these last couple days of summer… so the families will be back here in a week and a half and we will return to see how they are doing!

Then on Tuesday and Wednesday we had a division with the AP! I decided to stay in the area this time so that was pretty fun! And it was great to work with Elder Gingell again! He is a great friend and we had some wonderful lessons! We taught a really spiritual lesson with a woman Zilma that really is sooooo amazing! She is going to be an amazing member of the Church one day but the only problem is that she doesn’t ever stay here in Santa Mairia at the end of the week because her sister has cancer and lives in Ijuí so she has to go there every weekend! Which makes it hard for her to go to church!

We also had some pretty spiritual experiences with the prayer that we do for the people! We have noticed that to enter a house its super super easy…. Everyone wants a prayer, but to try and go back is a different story so we have been trying to figure out what we can do for the people to accept our second visit!

We have also been having difficulty with getting people to go to church! I don’t know why but the whole mission is having this challenge…. Me and Elder Ball have been thinking about what we can do to have more success with this… right now I am in the middle of making a bunch of invites for people and me and Elder Ball made a goal to invite 100 people to go to church this week!!!! It’s going to be a great goal!!!! I don’t know why it's been so difficult but have faith that this is going to really be something that will help with getting people to go to church!!!

I am so grateful to be a part of the Church of Jesus Christ! I really know with all my heart that His church is true and this work is the most important in the world! There is nothing else that I would want to do at this moment in my life than serve the Lord and I'm so grateful that the Lord has trusted me with the holy calling! I know that the Book of Mormon is true ant that it is the foundation of the entire church! The Book of Mormon is a special witness of Church! It contains the power of God to convince and convert all to know the gospel of Christ!

I love you all and I'm so grateful for the wonderful family that I have! You guy are the best!!!

Love you with all my heart and be safe and a great week to all!!

Love you all!

Elder Wiscomb

Week 80 February 14, 2011

Happy Valentines Days!!!

Hello family!!! How are all of you guys doing on this fabulous Monday afternoon! Before I say anything else I want to wish all of you a Happy Valentines Day!! You know that today is just a normal day here but the day that would be the most similar to Valentines day is “o dia dos namorados” (the day of the boy friend and girlfriends) hahaha and guess what day its is…. Ya you know it, June 12!! Funny huh! So I hope that all of you guys will have a safe and fun day!

As for me this was a good week! Another fast week too… it’s crazy to think that we are already half way through the month of February. Soon enough we are gong to enter into March and we have the area 70 coming to do a conference here that will be super fun!!! I’m excited for that, but the time is just flying.

We had another activity this last week and it was a huge success we had about 80 people there and we did an activity on the Tree of Life!!! Elder Ball and I started following the leaders of the world, and to do a scheduled activity every 15 days! And we are already seeing a huge change in the mood of the ward!

The divisions were just great! Some of the areas here are just dead because the missionaries sadly don’t want to work… so we got to go help them kind of get this desire to work! We have been really worried about our zone and about our area these past couple days… at the beginning of the week it seemed like nothing was going our way…. First of all it rained alllllllllll week long. There was literally rivers in the streets and the houses were flooding and stuff it was pretty crazy and to add up to that we cut Fatima (the lady that gets posses by evil spirits) because she is worried what her brothers will do to her if she follows the church. Her 6 brothers are all pastors of some church here…. She said that she felt the spirit so strong but she doesn't have a desire to have that in her life… kind of confusing, I know…

And 2 other families of ours will be moving this week…. Which makes us sad!

Another family also told us that they want to keep following their church and they asked us not to talk anything else about ours because they feel temped that they will change and they don’t want to…. They went on to say that when we talk about the gospel of Christ and about how we have it all in our days they feel a good feeling a conviction that its true and they don’t want to change so they asked us to stop talking about it… weird again I know… so pretty much until Thursday this week it was pretty rough because we have been working our hardest and we don’t know why these things are happening to us!

This was pretty difficult for us… and then a miracle happened in our lives!!

Friday morning I prayed and prayed and prayed asking the Lord to help us find someone that He had prepared for us to teach! I prayed all morning long and before we left Elder Ball and I we knelt down in front of a map and we prayed to our Heavenly Father asking Him to show us where this person or family that was waiting for us! Elder Ball and I we felt the same road so that day around 5 in the afternoon we went there….

We started knocking on doors and it was a richer part of our area and no one was letting us in…. we kept on knocking and finally we got in a couple houses and we blessed their families but they didn’t accept us to return and share the message about Jesus Christ which we have…. And we were about ¾ of the road and it was 7 by then and we had an appointment on the other side of the city at 8 and it takes a good hour to get there… but we both decided that we needed to finish the road….

So we kept walking and knocking and literally the last door on that street was the person that was waiting for us! We knocked and we entered it was a house that is a little bit more humble with a 65 year old women named Zenir that is cripple (I think that she has Parkinson’s disease and she isn’t able to walk without to crutches and the braces on her legs. She has a son William and he lives with his mother. We started to bless her house and her and she started to cry and it was just one of the most spiritual things I have ever felt in my life! We started talking to her and the spirit told me that I should tell her how we got to her doorstep… so I started to explain… how we prayed to our Heavenly Father where was a person that was needing our help and as we prayed in front of a map and how we both felt this road, then I expressed my testimony about Jesus Christ and how He is able to help our lives!

After I said that she looked at us and started to cry and said that that morning she was praying because her family isn’t happy and she needed to find the road of Christ! She needed to find out what she needed to do with her life! And then we showed up!

She went to church and she loved it! And on the way home she was talking about baptism and stuff it was super special!!!

I know that we pass through hard times in our lives! Our lives in general are difficult but I know when we ask God to help us through our trials we can overcome anything! The power of pray is real! I testify that God hears all of you! Pray to Him, He is waiting for you all! I know that through the teaching of Christ we are able to find true happiness and we find that in His church with a living prophet! I know that Thomas Spencer Monson is a prophet of God! I don’t doubt it one bit! I know that he was chosen by Him! And I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is Gods Church here on earth!

I love you all!! Happy Valentines Day and always remember that our Heavenly Father never is far from us! Go to Him, He is waiting!

Love you all!

Week 79 February 7, 2011

Hello family!!! How are all of you doing on this wonderful February afternoon!! I hope that all is well and that everyone is happy and smiling!

This last week for has just flown by once again! We have been doing so much and we have been worrying and trying to figure out so many things that we have 0 time to think about time… it truly feels like yesterday I was here trying to figure out hat I would tell you in this email and know I am back here again…

So this week was a little different! This week we had the LZ meeting, which was amazing. So Thursday night we went to Santa Maria and we got to see everyone! Most of the buddies in my group are all zone leaders, which was pretty fun se we had a great time! We learned so many things also.

This meeting that we had was how to prepare a lesson to teach with the spirit and to answer to the needs of our investigators! I was thinking through the whole meeting that we were having, and to be honest, I have been thinking a lot about the work that we have been doing and sometimes it feels like we are sells men selling the way of salvation… but that is SUCH a horrible way to think… it makes me sad to think that I was thinking like that sometimes.

As missionaries we aren’t here to sell something…. If you think about it we are young men, boys, when we start here… we all about 20 years of age and we are helping families feel the love of Christ in their family and individually through the teachings of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! I am so grateful that I figured this out these last couple days so that I can put into my teachings a lot more love that I have for the people I teach and to really figure out what these families need in their lives!

Elder Ball and I, we talked with president about doing the whole blessing method on the first contact and it has been something that we are going to start doing on the first contact with everyone that we have! Instead of saying “we are here to share a message about Jesus Christ with you and your family” we make a contact to the family and say, “ that we are here because we would like to do a 5 minute prayer to bless the individual and their family”! So we enter and we talk with them for a couple minutes and we ask if there is anything that they would like for their family and we bless them! We all kneel in a circle with the recently known friends and we say a simple prayer! The spirit is soooo strong it’s amazing! And its a way to show our love for these people and just to show up and talk about baptism… it has been amazing and we have only been doing it for 1-day hahahaha!

I was talking with president the other day when I was in Santa Maria and he was saying that he is nervous because there are coming some 15 missionaries and he doesn’t have trainers to train them…. the position of the Trainer I have decided is the most Important position of them all… more important then AP, LZ, LD, SR…. whatever… its you who is training the future of the mission… anyone can collect the numbers and pass them to the AP and stuff…. but a trainer literally has to be the one that is ready to work and willing to help a new missionary get this enthusiasm to work with all is heart! President was saying that here in a little bit he is going to start spreading about the LZ and calling a new Group and putting all of us to train these 15 missionaries so we will see what happens!!!

Well as for Fatima… the women that gets overtaken by the evil spirit… it was hard to find her in her house this week so we are going to go back this week…

And we are still working super hard trying to spread the word of God!

This week is going to be a little different because once again I will be doing a bunch of divisions… its like I'm not even working in my area which is hard. I'm just helping others… but its been fun! I will be spending tomorrow in a different part of the city and on Wednesday I will be going to IJUI to do division with the LD their… it will be fun I'm excited to try and help them and to pass everything that we learned!

This work is so important! It truly is the work of the Lord! I am sooo grateful for everything that the Lord has giving me! I am sooo grateful for what the Lord revealed to me as a young man and as His servant that teaching with love is the way for others to feel His spirit! The Lord is always by our side!!! He always there! I am so grateful for His presence in my life!

I love you all and I'm soo grateful for all you guys do for me!!

Have a great week!

Love Elder Wiscomb

"Playing soccer today...I am so tired."

Week 78 January 31, 2011

Hello family! How are all of you guys doing on this last day in January can you guys believe it... I can't…. We are almost in the second month of the year… crazy huh…but I hope that you guys are staying all warm and that you all had a fabulous week this last week.

So this week passed by sooo fast and it was quite an amazing week for our work! We have been working sooooooo hard and we are finally starting to see the fruits of our work… our president said that by the 4 week when you start finding new people again you will start seeing the results of your work and it's true. So this week where do I start… let's start with the activity that we did…

So on Wednesday we did an activity in the church and it was pretty fun!! It was to start at 7 at night and around 6 :45 started one of the biggest rainstorms that I have ever seen…. So we started to think great there goes our activity…. But we had already planned everything we hid about 100 peaces of chocolate in the church and we were going to do an activity on the liahona (the compass that was given to Lehi from God to guide them through the desert) but for those that have read this part, the compass worked according to the Faith and obedience that the family of Lehi had, and the compass would lead them to the promises land.

So we decided to use this story and to create it into an activity…. So we hid 100 peaces of chocolate in the church and we said that they can run around looking for the chocolate but every minute (on the dot) we would give a clue that would help them find the BIG PRIZE, which would be the promise land in the story…. So they had to have faith that they would be able to find it and that it would be better then little pieces of chocolate and they had to have obedience because we said it every minute and the clue we gave was 3 seconds long.

So like I was saying it rained and we were pretty sad… thinking that no one would come but we decided to do a prayer and about 7:30 came 20 to 25 people all soaking wet and ready for a great activity and they loved it!!!

But you know that the activity showed us something that is sooo true…. And this is what we passed to the people there… most of the people there were sooooo worried about trying to find the little chocolates or in other words… people in our days are so blind with the worldly objects and we lose focus of the whole picture and purpose of our life which is to prepare to return with our father in heaven!!! In this activity we missionaries were the liahona (the compass) and we gave the clues but sadly only 2 out of the 25 people had faith and obedient and heard the clues that we gave to find the bigger prize!!!

Just remember that the things of the world don’t compare with the blessing that the Lord is able to give to each person here on earth! We need to be lead by the Holy Spirit in our life and the only way to do that is to give our heart to the lord and listen acting in faith and obedience!

This week we also had an amazing experience with one of or investigators with the name of Fatima! Let me tell you a little about this women. She is an aunt of a woman that is in the church here (our neighbor Graciela) and this woman Fatimia she is known in her family to have a weak spirit. But let me explain a little bit more….

This was a reference and we visited her the first day I got here… so we went there and we thought it was just a normal person with 2 sons and is separated from her husband. We have been teaching her and it was going so well and 2 Sundays ago she was soooo excited to go to church and when we went to go get her 2 weeks ago she came to the door and it looked like she was soooo tired and that she didn’t have any force left her in our body. It was quite frightening to be honest… and Elder Ball and I, we started to think what happened…. She was soo excited and then something happen….

So that night we passed by the house of Grasiela (her niece) and we talked with her and she said that she was praying that we would pass by there and we went…. But why?… because this Fatima women has history of being over powered by the evil sprit… to be honest I was a little frighten. Grasiela was telling us that it had not happened for about 2 years and then we started to visit her 3 and a half weeks ago the evil spirit started to take power of her body again… and that Saturday night before church it happened… she said that the evil spirit was literally throwing her on the ground and she was dragging herself on the ground and stuff… and Grasiela thought that we needed to known that…

So Elder Ball and I went home and we thought about this situation and how we could help her and we prepared a lesson where we would show the purpose of the 70 in Lucas which is to bless the lives of others, and we decided that we would go there and bless her house and give a priesthood blessing to her.

So this last Saturday we went there planning to do this and it was one of the most spiritual lessons I have ever taught… we got there and she seemed pretty mad… she told us that she didn’t want us to pass by any more and stuff and she was really cold. But we just said ok and stuff, and after she vented out everything we asked if we could leave the last message with her and it was the one we planed. We explained our purpose as missionary and explain about the priesthood authority and power we have to act in the name of God here on earth to bless others, we asked if we could bless her house and her. We did this without her knowing that we knew anything about the evil having power in her life. But when we said that something amazing happened…

After we asked her she opened up completely with me and Elder Ball and told us everything… how Satin enters her body often and its because 5 years ago when she separated from her husband, the women of her x husband cursed her and now she sees a dark cloud over her head sometimes (I don’t want you all to think that this is crazy because its soo true. Satan is strong and is willing to take over our body if we are weak or if we allow him to.)

Anyway we listened and after we started by blessing the house which Elder Ball did and the sprit just enter that room and in the house in a way that I'm not able to explain

Then I followed by giving her a priesthood blessing and this tingle sensation just overpowered us both. We both after that message said that we haven’t ever felt like that before. At the end of the Blessing we testified that if she read the Book of Mormon and if she would go to church, she would have any space in her body for the evil one to enter… and she said that she would go to church the following day!

So we went and got her Sunday morning and she loved church!!! But then again there isn’t a way to not love church!!! The sprit of the Lord is sooo strong it’s amazing!!!!

My time is up but I just want you all to know that the Lord love each and every one of us and is waiting for us to follow Him! He is waiting day and night with His arms spread wide open calling our names! There is no doubt in my mind that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day-Saints is the kingdom of God here on Earth and there is noooo place in our lives for the evil o consume when we are following the words of our leaders and the prophet that we have here on earth! I know that the evil is strong, but I testify to you all who read this that the Lord is Strong and unlike the evil one, GOD WILL NEVER LEAD US USTRAY!

I love you all

Have a wonderful week

Love Elder Wiscomb