Judge from Outside

Hello my wonderful friends and family!

Unfortunately after just a quick 6 weeks in Alto da Serra, Petrópolis, I've been transferred to the central city of my mission Juiz de Fora. It was really hard for me to accept the transfer and say goodbye because we have a ton of people close to baptism and the members here are some of the most down to earth, giving people I have ever met. They really love missionaries there and in a very short time it became my favorite area yet. I hope I'll have the opportunity to go back someday because I love Petrópolis.

But now I'm here in Bairú, Juiz de Fora and it's pretty awesome! I'm very happy to be back in Minas Gerais. Rio de Janeiro is super cool and pretty and has a cool culture to it but the rolling green hills of Minas Gerais feel like home to me now. Once a mineiro, always a mineiro! (Mineiro means miner and that is the title given to natives of the state Minas Gerais, sorry if I haven't already explained that). Also at a member lunch yesterday I heard this 5 year old girl say "deixa ele comer uai!" (Let him eat, uai!). It's too difficult to explain but that's just about the most mineiro thing imaginable and if you don't understand you just gotta come here to find out haha.

But this area will be a big challenge for us because we are whitewashing! (Both of us are new to the area) I was whitewashing last transfer so I was very shocked when I heard I was gonna do it again. My comp is Elder Bonoso and he's from Argentina but his family moved and lives in San Bernadino, CA! He's fresh out of training so he's got that Greenie fire. It's kinda funny that neither of us speak português natively but that's how we communicate. But we both speak pretty well so we don't really have any problems. Honestly he's one of the nicest dudes I've ever met so I'm very happy to work with him! 

But we don't know anything about the area so the first week was pretty rough. We cover a large part of the city and have to do a lot of walking. I was glued to Google maps the first couple days cause we kept getting lost. One day we were heading back to out house when we realized we were on the wrong street so we turned around. We then realized it wasn't that way either so we doubled back and it turns out we were literally standing in front of our house the first time.

But now fast forward, I've been here two weeks and I know the area well enough haha don't worry.

The last Elders who were here, Elder Hartzell and Elder Helm (my son) left a decent amount of progressing investigators for us so it's going well! Actually one of them Sofia got baptized a week ago on Sunday! 

Sofia is the granddaughter of an active member. Her dad is inactive and her mom isn't a member. When we showed up we knew nothing about her. Just that she had a date to be baptized on our first Sunday in the ward. So we showed up her house and she said that she was so excited for her baptism she couldn't sleep! She's 8 years old and so cute. She loves to talk and she wants to be a missionary. After her baptism she bore her testimony and it was the cutest thing ever. It's really fun to teach her because she has a lot of questions and her dad who hasn't been active in church since he was a kid has been helping us teach her. He told us he loves our visits and that we're helping Sofia so we're hoping we can get him to come back to church too!

Back in Alto da Serra, Maria, who I had mentioned in a prior email, got baptized! We had found her pushing her wheelbarrow up a very steep hill so I offered to help. We met with her a couple more times and invited her to church. She can't read, is very old, and lives on the side of a mountain far away from the church but we wrote down the address of the church on a small piece of paper with a picture of Jesus Christ and invited her to church. We asked a member to pick her up in the morning and ride on the bus with her also. Turns out the member didn't go but she still made it to church and a couple weeks later she's baptized! 

Also Leonis one of the recent converts that we worked a lot with wanted his brother Bryan to get baptized so we had been working with the two of them for a while and yesterday Bryan got baptized!

Bittersweet that I wasn't there for those baptisms but I know I played the part that God needed me to!

Spiritual Thought

I really liked the intro to Come Follow Me this week about the sacrament. Growing up in the Church the sacrament had always been something very routine to me, something that I did every week automatically. But my time here on the mission has realy changed my point of view. 

Jesus could have commanded the disciples to do any thing in remembrance of him. In the Old Testament people were required to have great sacrifices but Jesus established his new law and the sacrament. Like it says in Come Folow Me eating a piece of bread and water is so simple, something that we literally have to do everyday or else we die. But what is important in partaking of the sacrament is that we do it remembering Christ. In the same way Christ's higher law requires us to remember him always and act in small and simple ways to show that faith and love for him. As I've learned more about Christ's life and his teachings the sacrament has a much greater impact on me. Those short 10 minutes (or more or less depending on the size of your ward and how organized your deacons are (shout-out brother Burgon)) should be the highlight of our week. I invite you all to put aside your thoughts and worries during those 10 minutes (preferably the whole meeting but let's start small) and I promise you will feel greater peace and be able to tackle those problems with greater energy and focus afterwards.

Love you guys have a great week!