September 1st...MIRACLES

September 1, 2014
Araruama

Dear Family and Friends, 

We had a really cool story this week. You ready to hear about the first week of the new area?

Well we started off pretty good. It's a little hard because we don't have a map of our area yet, so that complicates things a little bit, but we are learning quickly. We are working hard with the members to create this branch. Exciting news, President Cabral has been talking with me about the possibility of opening a mission branch here first. One of us might have to be a branch president haha. That would be a lot of responsibility. But continuing. We also inherited a few of the previous missionaries investigators. The miracle story is a little complicated to explain, so I'll do my best, just hang in there.

We were given an investigator with a baptismal date for Saturday, an 11 yr old girl. But we still had to do the interview and prep everything for the baptism. Since I'm DL the ZLs have to the interview. Friday afternoon the Zone Leaders showed up in my area earlier than expected for the interview so we had to quickly think of people to visit with them and we did an exchange. 

As I was walking with the ZL trying to think of someone to teach with him (We don't have much options yet, with 3 days in the area) but I decided that we would pass by a woman who had already been going to church and had been taught once by the other elders and confirm that she was going to church this week with her daughter. We got to her house and she was already outside waiting for us. (I didn't tell her that we were coming). We made some small talk and from nowhere she said "There's going to be a baptism tomorrow for that other girl, right? Me and my daughter and I are going to be baptized too." MIRACLES. She had told us 2 days earlier that she wanted to wait for awhile before getting dunked, but the spirit was working hard with her and us. She had been reading the book of Mormon everyday and she knew that she needed to be baptized. So after a bunch of stressful last second planning and re-planning and re planning again, D and Y were baptized. Show de bola!

We are just still getting used to our new area. But we are finding people who have desire to be baptized and really, that's 90% of the battle here in the field.

I'm loving being a missionary, and I love Brasil. 

I saw that video of all of the missionaries from our stake opening their calls and thought it was amazing how many of us are doing this work. Imagine all the good that each one of us is doing in literally every part of the world. Pretty amazing, huh?

BATIZAR, REATIVAR, RETER, e CONSTRUIR UM TEMPLO EM RIO DE JANEIRO!!

Elder Evans