3 words...BAPTISM BAPTISM BAPTISM!!!!

June 29,2011

Ciao Titti! :)

 

so not going to lie this week was way awesome!! I'm sure you are all wondering what is going on at transfers... we're staying the same :) I'm pretty happy about that. I love Anziano Reynoso and I love Mantova, its my first transfer in my mission that I've had a companion for more then 1 transfer :)

 

THURSDAY&FRIDAY- so in our mission we have assistants that work with president and we have something called travelling assistants who go around the mission and do scambis and teach the missionaries. So Thursday we had the travelling assistants come to do a 2 day scambi with us. I really learned a lot during these 2 days. I was with Anziano Newton, he is just about to go home. He finishes in August, so he's been in the mission for a while. I really improved on contacting, I was pretty good before, I could teach and then get a phone number. But Anziano Newton showed me that I could use the first vision when contacting. Not that I didn't know that it just never came to mind. I just always thought about getting the return appointment and then bringing up Joseph smith. So we did that a bunch of times I've never given the first vision so many times haha . But it is really so powerful and then people are more likely to be legit and be really interested. We stopped this one guy in the park named Emiliano, he got really excited and opened up about how he has been searching for the truth. We felt inspired to give him a baptismal date right there in the park when we just barely met him, so we did and he totally excepted :) It was such a powerful experience and now I have such a stronger testimony about sharing the first vision as soon as possible. We have this amazing message that no one else has why not share it? It was just a great learning experience :)

 

SATURDAY- 3 words...BAPTISM BAPTISM BAPTISM!!!! yeah that's right. We baptized the Santos family. We baptized Sandra, Bruno and Pablo, Clovis wasn't ready for baptism yet. He came but he didn't get baptized. We will baptize him soon enough though.  It was one of the more spiritual experiences on the mission that I've had. Wener baptized Sandra, I baptized Bruna and Anziano Reynoso baptized Pablo. To see the tears roll down their checks as they came out of the water was breath taking. To see the 3 of them just hold and kiss each other all showing tears of joy, just barley being baptized. They truly understand the importance of their baptism. I just felt the spirit so strong and really felt like I had helped someone. I know the Lord put me in Mantova for that family and to see that I was an instrument in the Lord's hand was amazing. I will be forever grateful for that experience and I know that they will be so strong in the church. Now we just need to get Clovis, he knows its true so that's not the problem he just wanted some time. So just keep him in your prayers. Thank you so much for praying for this family I know it really helped. They are amazing and I know that we will be friends forever.  After the baptism is was 9 at night and we missed our last train home so we went to sleep at the zone leader's house by the time we cleaned up and got there is was 11. We had to wake up at 5 the next morning to get a train and to go to church...not the funniest things I've done on the mission...

 

SUNDAY- after waking up at 5 we had to walk 20 mins to the station and I had 50 pounds of stuff from the baptism with me. It wasn't the best but I didn't care because we had just baptized 3 people, a family. And we were going to church to see them receive the Holy Ghost :) it was so amazing and the spirit was so strong again. Wener did the blessing in Portuguese for Sandra and Bruna and the branch president did it for Pablo in Italian, it was so awesome. I know that through this family many other lives will be changed, both Pablo the 12 year old son and Bruna the 14 year old daughter want to go on missions and I know that this family will just keep growing in the church. I thank Heavenly Father everyday. Multiple times a day that He gave us this elect family to bring the gospel to, so awesome :) After church we only had 12 lessons taught and we wanted 20 for the week, so we went and taught a bunch of lessons. Some investigators, also we went to the park, I used what Anziano Newton showed me, to use the restoration. At the end of the night we taught 20 lessons, do you know the promise behind the 20 lessons? It's a promise to all the missions in Europe, that if we consistently get 20+ lessons a week our baptisms will double from what we got last transfer. So we got 3 this transfer, we should be expecting 6 if we keep teaching 20 lessons :) I love teaching the gospel and doing everything the Lord asks of us :)

 

MONDAY-we did our weekly planning in the morning because we didn't have time last Friday or on the weekend because of everything, then we taught a few lessons. We taught this African lady name Matilda about the book of Mormon and got a return appointment. Then we taught this Brazilian named Jonas with his friend name Paulo about the restoration and we got a return appointment. Then we taught this girl named Rosa that was found last week during the scambi by my companion and the other travelling assistant. It was a good day, got 3 solid lessons in. If we get 3 a day we will have 21 by the end of the week, it was a good day.  Also maybe I didn't really explain what must be done to count something as a lesson, so pretty much you have to teach some kind of doctrine and you have to have at least 1 prayer with the person. haha Sometimes its a little awkward in the park to ask to pray, but I don't make it awkward. We teach them and then I usually say something like this in Italian..before we leave we want to say a prayer to bless you and your family... Then its like not awkward and they are pretty much asking me to pray for them, deepening on how the person takes the lesson is how I decided to pray or not because I just don't want to do meaningless lessons. I want to teach lessons that mean something and to teach lessons to those that actually want to learn more. So don't think that I just do this not care about who I'm teaching and just caring about the 20 lessons. I care about the 20 lessons but every lesson I teach I discern if i should count it as a lesson or not. If I feel the person didn't get anything out of it and don't want to learn more and didn't understand it then I don't count it even if we pray with them.  It's great to teach people all day instead of doing casa all day and teaching maybe 2 people haha

 

TUESDAY- went to Wener's house in the morning to teach them Italian and get fed lunch, it was way good! :) yum yum. Then we came home for language study and my companion made brownies and I made tiramisù for our ward mission leader Cyro, its his daughters birthday her name is Cynthia. So we made that and got that all ready, and then we had a lesson with the de Santos family. We went over and looked at pictures and taught a lesson and they found my blog on the internet haha so I got to see my blog a little bit because they were on it haha thanks for all the hard work you do with it I really appreciate it :)You guys are the best :) Then we came home to get the stuff we made and but it in our basket on our bikes (because our bikes have baskets ;)) And we rode to Cyro's house it was a little shakky but we made it haha. We talked about the work a little bit and then had dinner with the family and celebrated his daughters birthday. Then we got the phone call about what's going to happen at 11 at night haha so like I said we are staying the same. I'm pretty happy about that because I want to baptize Clovis and with the 20 lessons a week the work here is just going to explode :)

 

Thanks for everything my family I love you all soooooo much! I'm so grateful to have parents like you and to have you in my life, Thanks for all you do and for your get example for me, I love you with all my heart, and guess what...I'm almost 20 :) hahaha have a great week my family LOVE YOU!

 

Love Anziano Glowa