Hey Family!
Thats crazy that you guys are still getting
snow! Although now that I think about it that seems to happen every year. Really
warm during January and February and then snow during March. I´m excited to see
Shane´s grad pictures. Does he have his mullet still? How did he get the cat to
sit still? It's still not super hot here although it has gotten significantly
warmer. As long as you are teaching alot it´s not too bad. They don´t have air
conditioning but their houses do tend to be a lot cooler than outside. This
week was pretty good and it was the last week of the trasfers. I´m officially
done my twelve week training program which is crazy. So Saturday morning we got
transfer calls and I´m staying here in Assomada for at least one more transfer.
However, I will be serving with Elder Fonseca. He just finished serving as
Assistant to the President for six transfers so I´m really excited. I´m going
to learn a lot from him. He´s from Mindelo on the island of São Vicente so I´m
going to be speaking a lot more Portuguese. Which is good because I still have
a lot of improvement to do. I also got some other rather crazy news... we´re going
to be serving as zone leaders! Man nothing like jumping steps, straight from
being trained to zone leader. I´m excited though and it´s going to be a great
learning experience and also a great opportunity to serve. Elder Bunderson will
be moving to Riberão Manuel, an area just outside of the city of Assomada and
will be serving as Branch President in the newly formed branch out there. He´ll
still be in my zone but just in a different house.
So M, our one legged investigator was
baptized this week and this one really was special. This man is just amazing.
We found him in the middle of my first transfer while doing contacts. The first
time we just talked through his window and then marked to come back another
day. When we came back, we found out that he only had one leg and that he
smoked. We started teaching him and he didn´t really understand very well so we
took things really slow. He wanted us to come back and so we continued passing,
teaching just a little bit every time. Then one day he asked for a Book of
Mormon. We hadn´t given him one yet because he told us that he couldn´t read
very well but he wanted it and so we gave it to him. He read every day and from
that moment he really started to change. He was understanding things much
better and we could tell right away whether he had had a chance to read before
our appointments or not. We marked him for baptism and set up a plan to help
him quit smoking. He said he smoked about 6-7 cigarettes per day so we set up a
plan to have him quit in about 3 weeks. He quit in one and only had on day
where he smoked after quitting. This man was determined. Before we started
visiting him I´m pretty sure he hadn´t left the house since he had his leg cut
off. But after the first time we got him to church, he stared leaving and
walking on his own. He wanted to be able to get to church on his own! So he
quit smoking and was baptized two weeks earlier than originally planned. The
service was super good and I was just so happy after! This man had quit smoking
in just over a week, was walking around on his own and has developed a
testimony of the gospel of Christ. He was determined and it was great to see
the Spirit working with him. We also learned a bit more about him and he seems
to have had quite the life. He was an acrobat in Mindelo years back before he
moved here. While here he worked as a barber and I´m pretty sure he knows half
the city. I swear every other person we passed as we took him to his baptism
stopped to talk to him. It was pretty cool. He´s also had his fair share of
trials. He had to get his leg cut off three times, each time getting shorter
and shorter, because it wasn´t done right and it got infected. But he´s found
the path of Christ and he seems a lot happier. He still doesn´t understand very
well but he knows what he´s doing and he is determined to do it.
Our other two baptisms didn´t happen which
was a bummer. We had to change A's date because she didn´t come to
church last week and E told us he wasn´t ready. They´ll be baptized the
week after conference though which will be good. We had another surprise this
week as well. Monday night we had just finished planning and had Tuesday full
of marked appointments. We had just prayed and then our district leaders told
us that we had to go to Praia the next day for special training. So we changed
all our plans and went to Praia. It was really good and I really learned a
lot. President Oliveira did the entire training and we focuesd on asking
inspired questions and better use of the scriptures with our investigators. A
lot of it was focused on following the Spirit to determine the needs of our
investigators. It was really cool and we´ve been working a lot on applying it
this week.
Not much else to write about. I´m kind of happy
to be staying where I am for at least one more transfer because we have a lot
of good things happening. We´ve got two baptisms planned in two weeks that are
pretty much 100% certain. We had one of our dropped investigators come back and
ask us why we stopped passing. We told her it was because she was working from
8 in the morning until 10 at night (which is why we dropped her). She told us
that she was done and that she wanted us to come back following the same schedule
we had set with her. I feel really good about her this time. We also found two
people who were almost baptized a couple months back but didn´t do it for no
good reason. We´re going to work with them and try to get them ready for
baptism. We also have some really promising references that we´re going to
start working with so I´m really excited.
Funny story of the week. So we were reviewing
the baptismal questions with M the day before his interview and we got the
the fourth question. So we asked if he had ever comitted any major crime. He
started and said: "Well... many years ago I killed..." and then he
paused. My heart dropped. Then he finished : "a cat." I didn´t know
what to say! Ha ha he said it was about thirty three years ago and that he
already repented. Not exactly what we were expecting but it sure made for a
good laugh afterwards. He´s really a great guy. Anyways, have a good week! I
love you all and hope everything keeps going well!
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