15 Nov 2010 - Alvorada Area (Dad)

The spirit is always good to teach because people are always excited to hear that they can receive help from the Lord 24/7. It is sometimes hard, like you said, to get someone to commit to being baptized because they think they need to know everything or they think they need to wait at least a year. All they need is the desire and after baptism, if they keep the covenants, they will never regret the decision. I had an investigator in my last area that we worked the whole transfer teaching him lessons etc. He is fully convinced that we are angels of God and his sweet little old mom always called us angels. I have had the most spiritual experiences in my life in his house and at times it felt almost like the temple because my chest was just burning the whole time. Sadly I left, but I feel confident that he will be baptized and I really hope that he does. If only he would just accept baptism. He has waited 6 weeks, he has grown and has felt the spirit, but his joy could be so much more and so much fuller. Sometimes missionaries look past the whole confirmation part. They just count the baptisms but baptism is nothing without confirmation. I am a little worried becasuse this ward baptizes on Sunday instead of the usual Saturday so the people have to wait a whole week to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost and who knows what will happen during the week. This week was missionary week in the ward so I got to give a talk about missionary work. I just talked about 4 things that make us better missionaries. 1) Be a missionary forever, not just 2 years, 18 months etc 2) Don't be scared to share the gospel 3) Be an example 4) Don't get discouraged because missionary work will be hard. The 4 things are from Quentin L. Cook fom an Ensign article. The talk was easy, the Portuguese was easy, the spirit guided me and I think I spoke the best Portuguese of my life because of it :) I don't have problems with it, which I am grateful but I have other struggles because we all have problems.