Hello family how are all of you dong on this almost March afternoon! Can you believe that we are heading into March and before we even know it April general conference will be at our doorstep!!! WAHOO!!!!! Hahaha but I hope that this week has been just great and that all of you guys are getting better from this sickness which was passed in the Wiscomb family hahaha!
So let me just think real fast about this week because sooooooooooooooo much happened I truly don't even know where to start! I think that this was one of the weeks were I have been the most tired in the mission…. We have had to do soooooooo much!!!!
First off Tuesday morning we went early at 6 in the morning to Palmeiras das Missões! It’s a little city that president will be putting missionaries there this transfer but they don’t have a house so we had to go there and look for a house… I'm pretty sure that we walked that entire city talking with all the rental places and we didn’t find 1 house that was in our limit of money we could spend…. So we were already tried and we still had a big day of work that day… so that was Tuesday
Wednesday we went to Ijui to give training to the district there…it's another city that is really pretty that is about an hour away from Cruz Alta! We went there to meet the new missionaries in our zone and to get everyone excited for this new month and this transfer!!! It was good but tiring as well then we had a long day ahead of us!!!
Thursday we had had to do a training here in Cruz Alta for all the missionaries here which was amazing! In these training we talked about the Law of the Harvest and about inviting people, and how we should go about it! As missionaries we aren’t here to convince or persuade anyway we are simply here to invite people to come unto Christ, following the examples of Christ, which He, Himself left for us, hoping that we will follow Him! That is our purpose and it turning out to be an amazing training!
Also Thursday night we had a cake competition in the ward!!! It was super fun we had some investigators there too, which was fun!! There was a huge turn out we had about 100 people there and in church this last week the frequency of the members and less actives has pretty much doubled since we put these activities into plan! It’s been a huge success!!!!
So we had to plan all of that and get that all set up so we were busy doing that on Thursday as well!!!
Friday and Saturday we were focusing on the work, which was nice!!! We got some really good lessons in and we invited about 60 people with invites this week to go to church!!!! Most of these invites were families, so we believe that we achieved our goal of inviting 100 people to go to church this week. The only thing that has been hard is that this was the last week of summer break here… everyone returned to school today so most of the people left out of town Friday night and came back Sunday afternoon… so I am hoping that here in a couple weeks we will be see the results of these invites that we are giving out!!!
On top of everything that has happened this week I forgot until Friday that the bishop in our ward asked me to prepare a talk just in case if he needed me to speak so I prepared a talk on “trust in the lord” and more specifically the way He works to bless His children here on earth. The main point was that He works through His servants, the prophets anciently, and if He is the same yesterday today and tomorrow He will work though a prophet today! It’s so simple!!! And I have trust in the lord that He never changes that He always will work though a prophet here on earth to bless us here on earth today!!!
I have trust that in 1820 God called a boy prophet Joseph Smith to be that prophet and because I have trust in that, I have trust in Thomas Spencer Monson today, that he is a prophet of God! It all starts with trust! When someone has trust their faith will grow and then they will believe!! And though someone believing they will see the blessings of the Lord and this will grow into something that they know!!! That is how I have gained a testimony that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!!!
To be honest maybe it didn’t start with trust in the Lord… I think that where I started was trust in my parents!! Ya you mom and dad. That you guys knew the best for me so for that reason I just went to church and I learned!! I learned that in church too, to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ we follow the examples of Christ! And we are lead by a living prophet of God! Then the prove that this is true came!! The happiness came, the unity in the family was visible, the health that I had was always good, and the meaning of life in general was found!!!
There is now doubt in my mind that the church is true and that we are lead by a prophet of God and I am so grateful for that!
This week on top of everything, I am living with an elder that has been wanting to go home! I have talked with him almost every night for 45 minutes just trying to find out why that we would want to go home and stop doing this wonderful work! And I was able to figure out why…. It's not that he doesn’t have a testimony of the church, I actually found out that it was quite the contrary….
You know the mission is pretty difficult… we hear the word “no” probably 50 times a day to something that you know to be true and its not easy! And this elder is just tired of hearing no. This elder came here with me and he has come to be a great friend. He is from Bahia! Anyway he wants to go home because he is sick of hearing “no” he feels like this isn’t doing anything for his life!
I sat down to talk to him and really the Lord just told me what to tell to him! I talked to him and I heard him just spill out why he was feeling that way…
The only thing he could say is that he was sick of here no…
Then I asked, “Why does he feel that way?”
And he started to explain that he knows that this gospel is true…
Then I asked him how he feels when someone says “no”
And he said sad!!
I went on to explain that we are here to invite people to come unto to Christ and to share to the world that there really is a prophet that lives. And every “no” we hear is heard but it makes us stronger! It makes us realize how happy we are for what we know…. And that we can here 1000 “no’s” but that one person that takes us in, the one person that the Lord prepares for us to teach that has taken us in with an open heart to understand makes up for all those “no’s”
He made his decision some time ago that we would go home today… but this morning he came to me and he decided that he will give it another chance and just realized that to hear “no” is apart of this work!
I am so grateful for this work and the gospel and for what it had done to the life of the people I have taught here in Brazil! But I am always so grateful for what this mission had done to my life!!!
I love you all remember we have a prophet and he will never lead us astray! Listen to his what he has to say!!
Have a great week!
Elder Wiscomb
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