Can
you believe it?!? I've been out for a whole month! This is CRAZY!!! It has just
flown by! Man, I sure have loved it, though! I have grown so much already! I
can't wait to see the results in 2 years! Man! I can't tell you guys how much I
love the Gospel!
I
am just so hyped to get out and start ACTUALLY sharing the gospel! I got a
little taste of what it will be like when, this week, we committed our
investigator Franca to baptism! He is a theology major that was convinced that
the Church was true, but he didn't want to be baptized because he felt like the
members of the Church were hypocrites, that they professed one thing, but went
and practiced something completely different. He also felt this way toward some
missionaries, and he never truly felt like we loved him. So after a lot of
prayer, study, and pondering, as a companionship, we knew what we had to do. So
we went to the lesson, knocked on the door, and we all gave him a big hug! Um
grande ambrasso! We just joked around with him for about 10 minutes, talking
about basketball and soccer, and his son, Lucas, and about his life and likes!
He started asking us questions about our family! Now, before this next part,
just a bit of background on Franca. He is divorced, has a 9 year old son, and
has been divorced for a few years now, and he is 30ish... Anyway, he starts
asking us if we have sisters! Elder Draney and Elder Larsen said that they both
had younger sisters that were like 9 or 14 or something like that, and Franca
said, "Man, they are too young! I need someone a bit older!" Just
joking around! So it came my turn and I told him I had a 14 year old sister, he
seemed kind of disappointed, and that I had a 23 year old sister! His eyes got
big, and a weird smile came across his face! It was hilarious, and we all
laughed! Then I told him she was getting married in September! Haha! This was
his response, "Oh, so I've got some time to change her mind!" Haha!
We all just died laughing! We kept joking around and I told him that if he got
baptized, that we'd help him find a girl! He laughed and asked if I promised! I
promised him and we just kept on talking and joking around and laughing! So
then we started the lesson with a prayer. The spirit was immediately in the room
and we could tell that he felt it. We based our lesson on Romans 3:23, which teaches that
we all fall short of the Glory of God. We are all sinners. Every single one of
us. But the most important thing is, is that we, as missionaries and as members
of the church, try to repent on a daily basis to live worthy of our potential
and our Priesthood. We testified that we love him. That God loves him, and
wants him to be baptized. He told us that he knows the he needs to be baptized,
but that he was just waiting for someone that he thought was worthy to baptize
him, and we convinced him, and the Spirit convinced him that we were worthy,
and that it was time that he's baptized. He asked Elder Draney to baptize him!
So we were all super stoked!
Now,
for those of you who don't know. These "investigators" are not real.
They are real people that our teachers taught on their missions, and our
teachers "become" them in order to help us with our teaching skills
and let us practice. So our teacher is Brother Machado, and Franca was really
one of his investigators when he served in Brazil. Right after the lesson,
Brother Machado pulled us aside and told us that he had been playing Franca for
years as an investigator for missionaries, and that we were the first
missionaries to identify his problems, and help solve them. No other
missionaries have been able to commit Franca to baptism, but we did! I felt so
good and excited to get out in the field and start doing some real work!
Anyway!
This week was great! Last Tuesday night we had a devotional from Elder Joseph
W. Sitati, of the Seventy! It was a really great devotional! One of my favorite
quotes from it was "The message you have is a special gift; give it
preciously."
Then
we also had a 4th of July Devotional at which President Daniel K. Judd spoke at
about ancestry. He quoted President Packer by saying "You are standing on
their shoulders." Talking about our ancestors.
Then
we had a Mission Conference because it was Fast Sunday! President Burgess
spoke and what I got from that was; when you trust someone, you know that
person. When we trust in the Savior, we know and love him.
Then,
Sunday
night we had yet another Devotional at which Jenny Oaks Baker spoke and played
a lot of music with her family. From her talk, I learned that there is only one
type of Faith; Faith is Christ and in the Will of God. Not faith in miracles,
not faith in healing, but faith that God has a plan, and that everything He
does and everything that He allows to happen to us is for our benefit.
I
came across this scripture in my personal study and it made me think of home
and of my parents, and of all parents with Missionaries out serving right now.
It is 3 John 1:4! I really hope that this is how I make my parents feel, and I
can only imagine how our Father in Heaven feels when His children choose the
right!
Also,
I don't know about my visa yet... Typically there aren't any problems with
Mozambique visas, but no one knows if they have theirs yet or not. We will
start to find out within 10 days of our departure date, so I'll know more then.
But there is no way to check the progress of my visa, it's either approved or
it's not... So, yay... But we're all in the same boat. With Brazil visas, there
is a website to check the progress of it, but not for Mozambique... So for my
mission "credit card" I guess you'd call it, it has 65 dollars loaded
onto it for some reason, but in Mozambique, that is worth 2500 dollars..
Well,
I'll wrap it up! Dad, Google translate stinks. I understood very little of what
your letter said, other than you want me to send you a letter all in
Portuguese? Maybe? Idk! Well, I love you all! I'm responding to people's
letters this week, so if you wrote me, you should be receiving a letter
sometime soon, hopefully! If not, my advice to you is that Patience is a
Virtue. I'm a busy man, okay? Cut me some slack!
I
love you all! The Church is True! It has become very precious to me.
Love,
Elder Rash
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