There Will Be No Burning This Week

Family!

It was a great week!  On Wednesday we had Zone Conference from which we learned about being more obedient and about working harder.  I feel like I´m doing pretty good in those areas, but always trying to get better.  The best part was being reunited with a ton of friends, including my kindred spirit MTC sisters Sister Sprague, Sister Kemer, and Sister Doutre.  Sis D finally got her visa this transfer after more than a year!  She has like 5 months to learn the language.. and then she´ll go home.. bless her heart.  Also saw Elder Costa, my friend from Portugal who only wants to talk with me in English now that I finally speak Portuguese, and Elder McCrea who arrived with me, but I haven´t seen in over a year because he´s been out in the boonies of the mission all this time.

So, about a week ago, we were knocking on doors (yes, we do that even here in Brazil), and finally, this one woman, Dirleni, let us in.  We were chit chatting with her and her husband when we saw The Ring.  They were legitamately married!  A real family!  So we went for it.  They were 7th day adventists, but we talked about prophets, the priesthood, and the Book of Mormon.  They said they´d read the part we marked and even asked when we could come back.  What?!  So we went back this Saturday, and the whole week, my head kept telling me, ´´They´re 7th day adventists Sister Barkdull.  You really should brush up on your Sabbath day studies´´ but I ignored it, thinking that we would just talk about the Book of Mormon and be happy.  Wrong.  Giovani, the husband, had gone a fishin´ on the internet and threw out the whole slew of anti mormon gab.  We successfully responded to all doubts about our religion except.. the Sabbath day.  It´s so frustrating because here, in the Portuguese version of the Bible, the tard translated ´´keep the sabbath day holy´´ to ´´keep the Saturday holy´´.  It´s written right there in the Bible!  Because of this and some other things, oh man, G and D burned us so bad.  But, we held strong, showing evidence of everything we said in the Book of Mormon.  Finally, Giovani said that he would believe all that we said if we could show it to him in the Bible; he only believes in the Bible.  Unfortunately... it´s been a while since I´ve studied the Bible... So, he gave us some Adventist pamphlets to help us study the Bible this week (burn), but we left with a promise that they would go to church with us the next day.  And they did!  Well, just Giovani; he´s more interested.  And it was awesome.  They talked about baptism, family roles, and sacrament meeting was all about morality in a world with so little.  At the end, I asked G what he thought and how he felt.  He looked shell shocked, but in a good way.  He´s said that it was so much information, so much that he´d never heard before (yeah, because it´s true), but that he felt good.  With that, he confirmed that we´d be visiting him again this week becuase he has a ton of questions and went home, hopefully to tell his wife that he´s gettin´ baptized.  I am super excited to visit them again this Saturday because this time, we´ve repented.  We´re bringing a returned missionary and his super cutesy, friendly wife.  There will be no burning this week.

Things are going great!  This morning as I was studying the Adventist pamplets along with my portugese and english bible and book of mormon, I felt so grateful for the knowledge I/we have that the gospel and power of God were restored and that Jesus Christ really does lead this church through a living prophet, and not just words from times past.  So blessed.

Muito amor pra todos vcs!

Sister Barkdull