I Can't Remember the Meaning of It at the Moment, But I Know It's Good

Boa tarde familia!

This week was better! I´m still understanding hardly anything, but this past week I began catching more words and even some phrases. So, it´s coming, really slowly, but surely.

We have a lot of investigators right now, but two that I especially love. Ivana is fifteen and come from a family of 13 girls. Wow. I met her through her youngest sister who came up and started trying to speak English to me. People here think they´re fluent when really they only know how to say ´´hello, how are you?´´ Anyways, Ivana is awesome because she just loves the gospel. Everytime we give her a reading assigment, we come and and she has tons of questions for us and invites the rest of her family to hear our lessons too. She loves church and is so excited about her baptism date. We had a hard time getting her Catholic mom to agree to it, but she randomly signed the paper last night! Blessings!

Our other investigator I especially love is Ivana´s uncle, Nelson. He´s an older man with a limp and no teeth. Portuguese is already pretty rough for me, so I can´t really understand anything he says, but for some reason, he just always lights up whenever I start talking. He´s always telling me ´´Firmeza´´, which I can´t remember the meaning of at the moment, but I know it´s good. Anyways, he´s catholic, and we´ve been having a hard time getting him to say a prayer from the heart, but I finally told him how much it meant to me when I recieved letters from my family and bore my testimony on Heavenly Father´s love us. Ever since then, he´s been praying and told us yesterday that he knew the church is true. Awesome!

I´m really excited for these people to get baptized because I know what a blessing the gospel is in everyone´s life. At the same time though, I´m not a huge fan of how a lot of missionaries focus soley on baptism and numbers, and not testimony and spiritual experience. I hope I can be and good example and influence here in bringing people closer to Christ, not just through changing actions, but changing hearts.

The gospel´s true! Even in times of trial we can find joy and peace. Heavenly Father loves everyone and I know He knows better than me. I will get this language thing down eventually. Prayers appreciated.

Love you all!
Sister Barkdull