Its been a very busy week (unfortunately that doesn't always mean missionary work took place!). I had a zone conference, companion exchange (only for 36 hours), two district meetings, two missionary farewell parties....yeesh....sometimes I forget that my job is to teach here! But nonetheless, it was a very inspiring and insightful week. Our zone conference was fantastic. President Lanius conducted the conference. He was continually beating in the basics of missionary work.....studying, planning, obedience! All simple things, but things that this mission is currently having a bit of a hard time with. I had a chance to talk with a few of the other missionaries during the conference, and they said that the challenges that I am experiencing in my companionship are not unique....if anything they have it worse, and it was even worse before the new president came in. I really do feel for President Lanius. He has quite a burden on his shoulders.
Enough with the negative though! I have faith that this mission will be a lot different by the end of my 2 year stay here. I am trying to find ways that I can be instrumental in turning things around here....I do believe that it will be a long, slow process, but that it will be possible. Fun fact for you....last year there 35,000 baptisms in Brazil. Guess how many are active in the church today? 10%. Yep. We met a lady the other day that fell away from the church. When she met the missionaries, they told her that she could be baptized in 7 days, which she was. That was also the first and last time she stepped foot in a chapel. Oh yeah, and she wanted private English lessons from me....I told her that if we could share a message and if she came to church I would be happy too. She said that the bus fare (about a dollar) was too much for her, but lets just say that money wasn't her limiting factor.
The work here is slow going. I know Brazil has a reputation for being a baptism machine, and without a doubt, there are people prepared for the Missionaries here, but you definitely wouldn't know it by spending a day with us tracting. Threes a lot of "crazies", drunks, and bible bashers here that unfortunately are hard to avoid. It seems like they make up about half of the people we talk to. There are diamonds in the rough for sure. We have 3-4 investigators who I believe were prepared for baptism, but it is sooo difficult to get a sit down appointment with these people! And whenever their schedule is open, we have something planned that is limiting us. Its driving me nuts! Nonetheless, I want to talk about a few investigators.
First we have Luiza. We were waiting for one of our investigators, Pedro, to come back from the "pharmacy" (I suspect he went to go drink), when a 16 year old girl walked by. I started a conversation with her, and she immediately asked about the church. Turns out, her father died when she was 10, and she has been investigating churches ever since then. Right now, she is attending a baptist church, but she claims to be deist, meaning that she believes all churches are right, and she just wants the best one, doesn't really matter who. She was immediately interested. When our pal Pedro came back, he started arguing with us (actually he was kind of arguing with her, which is strange because they go to the same church, but like I said, I suspect he wasn't getting his prescriptions filled). To my amazement, she was defending us! She knew very little about our doctrine, but I think she recognized that what we were telling her was true. We had a follow up appointment with her on Monday. The first thing she said to us was, "You guys said something about Gods plan for us. I want to know what this plan is." We had about a 2 hour lesson with her....she was locked in, without a doubt the most interested investigator Ive had here. She asked what it felt like when we received answers to our prayers. No one asks that. She is a legitimate investigator. We called her that night to follow up. She asked us if we could call her back, because she was reading the book of Mormon. Sheesh. What a stud.
Another lady we ran into, is named Dione. She stopped us on the street, and told us that she had a dream about the missionaries. We got an address from here (she lives about 30 feet from our apartment, and has never had contact with the missionaries before in the 6 years that the mission has had that apartment (kind of like my story with the shuttle driver to the MTC, if you can remember back that far!). She said that in her dream, her and her 13 brothers and sisters (13!) were all gathered together in a room for their mothers funeral. There were also two missionaries standing in the room, and she heard a voice say "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints", and then she woke up. She asked me what I thought it meant.....I said sometimes dreams are coincidences, but anytime you have a dream with all of your family, and you hear the completely correct full name of a church you re not familiar with as well as looking at two of that church´s representatives, all at the same time.....its usually more than a coincidence. She agreed, but wants to be sure. We taught her how to receive answers to prayers as well.
These stories just really go to show me that the missionaries do about 1% of the work. The Lord does 99%. He is preparing these people, listening to their prayers, concerns, needs, wants, day in and day out. He knows when they are ready to receive the missionaries. My biggest challenge and priority right now is making sure that me and my companion are ready and worthy to be those two missionaries. Its not easy, but I know that we can be the means of miracles here. I love this work! Even when I'm frustrated, tired, and sweaty (especially that last one), I cant help but be happy in knowing what I am doing here! For that, I truly am thankful. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Until Next time,
-Elder McKinley
No comments:
Post a Comment