This week was really awesome! I was reminded of the importance of working with the members. Lately we have been focusing a lot on the Mission Plan which is each family in each ward only has to bring one person into the church each semester or every six months. So jan to june is one person for one family and july to dec. one person for each family. Sounds simple right right? Well it has been really hard and not a lot of people really wanna do it... So we were giving the members time to do that and start participating with us in Missionary work and then we found that we would be teaching a ton of people with out members. But this week we changed that. We tried visiting all of our most progressing investigators with members and it helped out a lot!
The first cool thing is we took an R.M. Andressa who is the same age as Rodolfos wife more or less to a lesson. Suelen, Rodolfos wife always stays in her room and will never come out. Rodolfo doesnt miss a week at church and is reading the book of mormon every day and knows it true. The only things is his wife (girfriend) refuses to get married.
So we get there with Andressa and she totally rocked! She got her to come out and participate in the lesson and it went super well! She opened up about some things and it was a great experience!
And in all of our other visits the members bore powerful witnesses of the truth of the doctrine found in the lessons. They are a huge part of missionary work if not the key.
One thing that President Silva always teaches us is that as Leaders in the church we can not have fear to ask for sacrifice. And sometimes as missionaries we feel afraid to do that to the members. Clearly we cants ask them a day before or the same day to do a visit with us but sometimes here it is hard to visit someone because the member doesnt have a car or the place where a person lives there is no access by car and its hot and peoples have babies they have to carry around, or no member lives near the place so we get a little scared.
But some awesome members made some awesome sacrifices this week. This morning we visited Rubens and Flavia with a couple in the ward. We planned with them a week back and last night the wife got super sick. But they still got up early this morning and climbed the huge gill with their 10 month old girl and the wife was really sick! We told her when she got to the bottom of the hill that she didnt have to go if she wanted but she did it anyways! Super awesome! And the Lord will bless them for that.
Our Bishops wife just found out an old Cancer came back. That is hard! But still the Bishop took time out of his day to go visit a family with us that is needing marriage help!
President shared an awesome parable with us this week called "The Parable of the Butterfly".
I dont have enough time to make it all nice and pretty but the story is basically this: once there was a man that came upon a cacoon. It had a tiny hole through which he could see the poor butterfly struggling and fighting to get out. The butterfly got to the point where he just couldnt go anymore. So the man thinking that he would help the butterfly opened up the cacoon so the butterfly could get out.
The man waited for the butterfly to take off but nothing happened. He then learned that the butterfly had to struggle to be able to get out of the cacoon. The struggle made the wings stronger and therefore enabled it to fly. But now without the necessary strength that butterfly would never be able to fly.
And it is the same thing with us. Sometimes we think about all these difficult things we have to pass through and we dont want it, but our Heavenly Father knows us and knows what we need to pass through to be strong enough to handle his presence in the final judgement.
And that was a big answer for me about Rubens and Flavia this week. We found out that the website they used to order the marriage papers was a scam. And no papers are coming. It was that same couple that we visited them with that had sent the money to do it and it all worked out wrong... And i was just mad! And thinking why do there have to be so many obstacles? And then i read that awesome parable. And ya know maybe thats what they need to be more converted and stay firm after they become members of the church. The Lord knows them and knows us and knows what he is doing.
But my birthday was awesome! I live with awesome guys! they bought some awesome pizza for me and we had a pretty wild missionary party which consists of sitting around the table for thirty minutes eating pizza and talking about the gospel!
But this week was great and hope it was for you guys too! Dad good luck in the Boston Marathon! You are gonna dominate! Love you all so much!
Elder Keller
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