WOW!! É Difícil!!

  Hey!

Well, this week was mais ou... Some pretty sweet stuff happened though so I can’t really complain. Time is going by so fast and it is General Conference next week!!! I’m pretty pumped. It’s gonna be awesome!! 

So, C was baptized but it wasn’t quite as easy as we had thought. Around Wednesday, she started having doubts as to whether she could be baptized or not. Her work, her dad, school... nothing that was actually going to keep her from being baptized. We talked to her dad on Wednesday and he had no problem with her being baptized. Then we got to teach her on Thursday, and she had even more doubts!! It all came down to fear of change so we all kneeled down and she prayed to know if she should be baptized or not. After awhile, she got her answer and after that everything just ran smoothly. She was baptized and confirmed and is super happy now. It was a neat experience and once again, we really didn’t do anything to help her. If she hadn’t prayed and received a confirmation that she needed to be baptized, nothing we could have said or done would have changed her mind. We were blessed with another miracle and another one of Heavenly Father’s children has entered into the path.

We had nine baptisms as a zone this weekend, and 7 in our ward. Sacrament meeting started late, then we had a bunch of Stake business and then 7 confirmations. The actual sacrament didn’t start until roughly 1:45 and the bishop cut church short. Kind of weird but it was still really cool. Two of the people baptized were from a family in the other elder’s area and they have been waiting forever to get baptized. They were finally married on Friday and were baptized on Saturday.

Other than that, we really didn’t teach that much this week. I don’t know what exactly happened but I just had the slowest week of teaching my entire mission. We’re working on finding new people and on preparing for this wedding next week. But, things are looking up. Elder B, the Portuguese missionary in our zone, fed us some sort of Portuguese dish this weekend. It was pretty much just a huge chunk of meat, a couple pieces of bread and some sort of special sauce. It was good but way too much meat. It didn’t feel the best afterwards. I don’t know what else to write really... I hope everything goes well this week and talk to you all next week

BATIZAR!

 Hey what’s up?

This week has been pretty crazy. Transfer week is nuts and we had a lot of random things that we had to do. But the week ended well and this transfer is gonna be so sweet! It’s been fairly hot but some days are worse than the others. It hasn’t rained all week but Praia is still pretty green. It’s super cool to see, especially because everyone always says that Cape Verde is always green. Everything is going good though and the work is really picking up.

We had two baptisms this past weekend, F and P. They are the brother and sister of F, the girl that we baptized last transfer, and they are both awesome!! Also, their mom came to church on Sunday, which is pretty sweet as well. This family is amazing and we are slowly working with their parents to help the entire family. This family is a miracle and they have been so prepared for the gospel. F and P were so prepared that we didn’t really have to do anything special to help them prepare for baptism. They prayed, received their answer, came to church and were baptized. Everything just came so easy to them and they had no problem with anything. Just another blessing placed in our laps. I love this area!

Also, today we went to the registro and marked a marriage date with V and N, the family we have been working with since I got here. Everything is all ready to go and after 15 days we can set the date in stone and they will be married the day before General Conference. I’m so pumped! Our week didn’t run the best but the miracles that happened just make up for everything else. We are being blessed so much right now and this work is just amazing!!

That’s all that really happened this week. We’ve got training and interviews with President tomorrow and another baptism to prepare for this weekend. We really don’t have to prepare much though, just talk to the dad who lives in Sal. The grandma is a member and doesn’t think it’s going to be a big deal so we will do that tomorrow morning. We’ve got to find a lot of new people again this week and get our baptisms ready for next week as well. It’s gonna be SWEET!

Love Elder Dola

When it rains, it pours!

É modi?

Man it has rained so much in Praia!! I think almost everyday in September it has rained and when it rains here, it doesn’t mess around. Saturday rained pretty much the entire day so I don’t think I was properly dry until night. But it is so green!! I wish I could go out to Assomada again because it has been raining a lot since July and apparently it is amazing out there! It was green when I got here but now it should be even greener. Praia is pretty green though and it looks pretty nice here. It’s still crazy to think you are all back in school already. I will definitely say that I am not missing school right now.

So I guess I’ll start with transfers. Surprise, surprise!! I am NOT being transferred. But that is good because I don’t want to leave this area. I don’t think I have ever wanted to leave an area yet... I’ve only had three. But our area is exploding right now and I don’t want to leave! I do have a new companion as Elder H has been shipped of to Mindelo to be Zone Leader in the North zone. I will be serving with Elder R as Zone Leader. He is from Wales so that keeps up my streak of foreign companions. He’s pretty sweet and I’m really excited for the transfer. Our whole zone is being changed around and we have a lot of new missionaries coming. We will have three greenies and four areas are being white washed. We’ve got high hopes for the transfer and our zone is going to grow a lot.

The rest of the week was pretty sweet. We had zone leader’s council on Tuesday and it was ALL DAY LONG!! 12 hours of training with President! We spent the first half going over the numbers for each zone and each dupla. I really realized how much you could learn from numbers. Obviously numbers don’t equal success but they do show where things are lacking. After though was probably the best part. President O let us into his office to see the transfer board! So we all knew about transfers all week. It kind of took away the suspense of transfer time but we were able to plan out for each dupla of missionaries in our zone for the next month. It was really hard not to say anything to the other missionaries, especially since the two new zone leaders were invited to the council but weren’t allowed to tell anyone why.

The only other thing that happened this week was B was baptized! He’s the friend of a bunch of the youth in our area and he is sweet!! This youth group is awesome and reminds me a lot of my group of friends from home. The only difference is the youth here are all baptizing their friends!! SO COOL! So he was baptized by one of his friends and is super pumped. He showed up to church on Sunday in a shirt and tie with all of his buddies and he received the aaronic priesthood afterwards. Our other baptism wanted to wait a week to be baptized with his sister so we only had one but it was a pretty sweet one. It’s so cool to see these new converts and watch as they share the gospel with all their friends and family. Definitely wish I had done that when I was at home.

That’s really all that is new here. Next transfer is going to be even better and we have a lot of work to do. We’re going to help this family, that we have been working with since I first got to Praia, get married and we’ve been finding a lot of awesome investigators. There are so many people who are ready and are getting answers to their prayers and all we have to do is help them prepare. It makes missionary work so easy!! Have a good week!

Love, Elder Dola

Revelação= Milagres!

September 3, 2012   

Rain=HOT!

So this week was nuts! Last Sunday, President O called us to talk about the baptisms. We’ve been having a lot of problems with falling baptism dates and it needs to stop! So, President took action and set a goal for the entire mission: 10 new investigators with baptismal dates by the end of the week! You’ve got to understand that we just finished finding 12 new investigators last week and almost all of them have a baptismal date. But when President sets a goal, you just do it. We’ve really been having a lot of success lately finding people. Mostly because we haven’t been forcing things and the Spirit has just been dropping these people in our laps. I really don’t know how to explain what we have been doing because to me it seems like we aren’t doing anything special. We’ve slowed things down a little and are really being guided in everything we do. These people that we are finding are ready and when we invite them to pray, they do it! Not only do they do it but they get an answer! We’ve been really blessed lately so we weren’t too worried about meeting the goal. Things went pretty good and by Wednesday we had 5 new investigators. Then we went a couple days without finding anyone! So Sunday came along and we needed to find 5 new people before 9:30. We went out to teach after church but NOBODY was home! Things were looking pretty slim and we hit 7:00 with 4 people left to find. As the zone leaders we HAD to meet this goal. I still don’t know how it happened but from 7-9:15 we found 4 sweet new investigators, had some pretty sweet lessons and marked 4 baptismal dates. In 4 separate lessons!!! Talk about miracles. There is no possible way that we could have planned things so perfectly. All I can say is we had a pretty awesome experience and we were really blessed by the Lord. So as a mission, we found 268 new investigators and marked 178 dates with them in the last week. Talk about an inspired goal.

So, at the moment our teaching pool is MASSIVE! We have 20 people with a marked baptismal date and I don’t know how many other people we have. We have a couple families that we are working with and some other people that just need dates re-marked. We have no time to teach these people! Our next open appointment isn’t until Saturday!! But I know that the Lord is going to make it so that we can take care of all these people and help them enter the waters of baptism. We have two people getting ready for baptism this week and dates marked for the first 5 weeks of next transfer. Lots of work but that’s the way I like it. Hence, I don’t want to be transferred!

Another crazy thing that happened this week. So Saturday we were at the baptisms (unfortunately ours fell so we didn’t have one). There was a wedding at the other chapel and someone forgot to fill the font! And you know how long it takes to fill one of those things. We turned it on but we were already late because it took us a long time to get the keys and it wasn’t filling fast enough. So we found an old hose in the back closet, hooked it up to the sink in the bathroom and ran water from there for about half an hour. Elder H and I had to hold the hose so that it would work but we had enough water to do the baptisms. They started over an hour late and they had to do them from their knees but it worked. Just another one of those random stories that happen on your mission.

Anyways, I hope everything keeps going well at home. Enjoy school and have a good week!

Love, Elder Dola