The first week is also up with Salomão and things are going awesome! He served there for 6 months in the beginning of his mission so he knows the area and the members better than i do haha! It is like a huge homecoming for him coming back now so it is really awesome! And the nice thing is that the members loved him a lot so i think it will help a lot here!
Elder Hull and Nascimento who were living with us were both transferred as well and we got Elder W. Silva and Elder Larsen. W. Silva is from São Paulo and Larsen is from texas but his family just moved to Mesa right when he left on his mission. Pretty cool! He was part of the first group of new missionaries that I got to go pick up at the airport and it is cool to see his progress! W. Silva came from serving in Pato Branco and so it was nice to get updates on everyone! Gabriel and Candida are still active and they were even able to baptize Candida neice Jessica as well! Super happy about that!
W. Silva has a year out and Larsen has about 4 months in the field.
But this week I really got into this months ensign and it is so awesome! It has some great key advice for our lives! There were 3 specific articles that i really loved!
Pg. 7 Marriage Is Ordained of God - No im not getting trunky haha but what was super interesting was the story about Larry M. Gibson that his wife said "i love you because i know you love God more than you love me." That came from the Visiting Teaching Message of the month.
That really hit me. It is the first and greatest commandment as Elder Hollands amazing talk talks about (The First Great Commandment) we must love God above all other things, even our own wife! At first I thought that is a little strange but its true! We gotta love God more than anything else in this world! And I really dont think I have hit that point in my life yet. That is something I am gonna have to work on in these last few months and probably when i get home as well.
But we have to put God before EVERYTHING. Before school, before football, before our families, before freinds, before work, all of it! If he comes before the wife than he comes before everything else.
But one interesting thing is that if we put him first than all the other things are going to come together and work out for the best!
We went and taught Rubens and Flavia this week and really had just an AWESOME lesson. Flavia had been really quiet in the lessons and so our goal was to really see how she was feeling about all of this and what her needs would be, and it was a little hard but the Spirit helped it all to work out.
We found out she stil didnt want to come back from Fortaleza but she feels like God made her come back. She misses her family there a lot cuz she has a family of like 9 siblings and all live up there. And so she had made up her mind to stay! But then God brought her back! Thanks for all the prayers! (: So the Spirit helped her recognize inthat lesson that God loves her and has a purpose in her being there, in us being there, and in her meeting the church in this crucial time in her life. So i pray that she can find the great beauty of the gospel as rubens has and apply it in her life!
Rubens is just a champion and studying the scriptures and everything he can get his hands on and when we teach he opens the book of mormon and goes and finds a scripture he likes to share with his wife! So cool!
But keep praying for them!
Maria and Angelo are so so. Their biggest problem is the Sabbath Day. And I know a lot of people back home are trying to follow the advice from this last conference and do better with the sabbath day so if you could send me advice on what you guys did to make the sabbath day a delight and how you made that change that would be awesome!
Maria and Angelo come from a family who Sunday is party day. Everyone gets together and its just festa, festa and more festa. And so they dont go to church! So if you guys got any ideas send em out here!
Odair and Denise are also in a rough situation with the marriage but said are coming to church again tomorrow! So we will see what happens.
I am out of time but things are going great! I love you all so much and hope you have an awesome week!
Love, Elder Keller
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