Definitely felt all of your prayers this week! Thank you for them! I had a great week!
We had lots of member and investigator meals this week! One investigator meal was with Carlos (who we´d appreciate if you would pray for, that he can be humble and read the BOM and get the right answer in his prayers and know that he should get baptized. Thanks ;) and his wife Elisabete and 11 year old daughter Inês. We had whole shrimp for the appetizer, you got to rip the head and shell off and then dip it in mayonaise and/or Whiskey Cocktail sause. We kept with the mayo. Then after i got pretty full on shrimp i realized my mistake in thinking that was all when they brought out a huge dish of Bacalhau and puré which was delishious but i´m sure Heavenly Father helped me have enough room for it and also the creme brulé at the end. (I´m sure i ´m spelling all of this wrong, don´t worry. Every word in english comes up with a red squigily line under it. )
When we were all stuffed silly we talked about Paulo, Carlos´ not-as-wayward-as-two-weeks-ago brother, who recently had a spiritual awakening. This Saturday we walked into Carlos and Paulo´s store when to our horror, Carlos steps into another room and we were left semi-alone (it´s a store) with Paulo, a single, 41 year old very worldly man that looks at ME and says he wants to talk to me. "Uh oh. This will make for a good email home, and i hope i don´t know what he´s about to say" runs through my mind. I say "yes, you can talk to US" squishing myself to Sister Azevedo´s side. Then the floodgates open. He starts shaking and crying, this hugely buff and kinda disgustingly attractive man starts bawling in the store.
He goes on to tell us how when he first met us all he wanted was to win the Euro-milhões (lottery), luxuria and a ferrari but the times we would come in to speak to Carlos he would overhear sometimes (he would not want to listen at the time of course, yes we did invite him) and how he was a changed man because of us sisters and what he has felt. Of course we invited him to be baptized on the spot, but unfortunately his "religious organization independent" brother (carlos, who is totally awesome besides that) had already gotten his "there are lots of ways to get to Christ" had already gotten in his head so we still have some more work to do. We read Alma 32:27-28 to him that talks about the word being planted in your heart and how it gives you a swelling in your breast an he totally started crying, sobbing and shaking again. WHoah.
Carlos confirmed his change of heart at their house when we had dinner with them, how he was such an unresponsible teen-ager his whole 41 years but now he will cry on his shoulder and ask him for advice, kiss his mom, get home on time for dinner with the family etc etc... and Paulo says it´s because of our "positive energy" but we corrected him telling him it was the Holy Ghost and that he needed to repent an be baptized but we could only get him to commit to coming to church NEXT week... so i´m hoping we can direct all of this spiritual energy into the true church and not just into searching for random information about reencarnation or Jesus or whatever on the internet and sitting in the park enjoying the breeze and little birds that he said is happening right now.
At another appointment with a random guy we found in our Area book, Fernando taught me a lot about myself. I didn´t mean to but he got me pretty mad when he didn´t want to hear what we had to say (we had been on a 45 min bus ride to get to his house to tell me i don´t have love in me haha darn it) and my comp also told me she had never seen me so mad. I was just mad that i could let myself get so mad honestly. But i´ve been studying charity and repenting this week so hopefully i´m not a lost cause.
Christmas has already started here in Portugal! They´ve got some little halloween things (what it was just halloween last year! and i was in the Açores!) but mostly it´s all Christmas preparations now. Goodness! I kinda love the idea of having Christmas spirit everywhere for longer than just November 25th to December 25th like we do there.
Enjoy this song, it was my theme song for the week.
Please write me back!! Tell me about your life!!
Sis Shumway
No comments:
Post a Comment