Hey-O! Agosto (August for all you English speakers) has arrived!
This week was quite the good one. We had a man get baptized! Igor, the 21 year old boyfriend of one of the members. He´s been coming to Church for more than 8 months and FINALLY got baptized. After E. Abreu and I had started to teach him (another companionship had already been teaching him, but nothing happened), we set a date for him to get baptized. It didn´t happen and we decided to just let him come to us when he was ready. So the good thing was, that he chose the date to get baptized and was actually ready and willing to get baptized. So, that was awesome. He got confirmed along with Maria Raimunda (the Indian woman that we baptized 3 weeks ago) this Sunday. So, things are going well!
Now, we are just looking for people that are actually willing to get baptized. We were teaching this one 12 year old girl and her mom and marked a baptism for this past Sunday, but her neighbors and other people have apparently been talking bad about our Church. It´s kind of a complicated situation, so we´ll see what happens with the girl, Bruna. Also, in Ji-Paraná it´s a strange how people think of our Church. Because there are SO many churches here, most people have visited at least one and have had a bad experience, so they aren´t as willing to come visit ours. But, that is why we are here! To explain that our Church IS different.
Something interesting that we learned about this Sunday, is that all of the missions in the whole world are going to do the invitation to baptism in the first lesson. This is something that our mission already does, because we don´t want to lose precious time with people who don´t have to desire. But for the other missions in the world, this is kind of crazy, but really cool. Also, we´re supposed to kneel down for the closing prayer with all of the first appointments and invite the people present to pray. I´ve never knelt down for a prayer at an investigator´s house, so this is new to me. We´ll see how it goes! I´m excited.
One cool thing that I realized (yet again) this week during personal study. I read a scripture about how God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. It made me think about how all of the problems that we have today, have always existed: Pride, lust, greed, etc. And yet, man has always been expected to follow the teachings of the gospel and avoid these problems. The things that we learn in the Church are eternal principles. They have always been here. It is our responsiblity to not be lazy, and actually live them. I know that the Church is true, and that if we really live the principles of the gospel, we will be happy. Have a wonderful week!
-Elder Carpenter
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