Hello!
This week has just been great! I got to the bus
station and met with the swarm of other missionaries who were transferred and
found out that I was made senior comp and stayed in the same mission!!! I was
pretty happy to stay in the same mission, but pretty nervous to be senior comp.
My comp is Elder Batista, he has four transfers in this area and he is just
awesome! Works super hard and is super spiritual.
This week has been the best one of the mission for
me! The bishop of the ward came and got us from the bus station and we stopped
by our house so I could get settled in a little bit, but it was fast. I
kept talking with Elder Batista about the area and it got me super excited so
we got out of the house quick, went and ate lunch with our bishop and got to
work. The bishop here is great, he reminds me of Miguel, really easy going,
really helpful and hilarious.
We cover the wards here in this area, one of them
is Jardim do Lago (lake garden) and the other Jardim das Bandeiras (flag
garden). The areas are divided by a highway and one area is a favela (ghetto)
with dirt roads and tons of unfinished little brick shacks and the other is
quite normal. We only work in the favela. Ha-ha all of the humble and receptive
people live there. It was a perfect first day; we ended it off with teaching an
investigator and his daughter the first lesson with the bishop.
I found out on day 2 who my district leader was,
turns out its my old comp, Elder Albuquerque and the other two missionaries in
our district are sisters. One of them is from the same MTC group that Elder Albuquerque
and I are from. Our entire district has 7 months or less on the mission.
Probably the youngest district in the mission. I am loving it.
So we have a few investigators that have already
been taught everything and didn't get baptized yet, their names are Andressa
and Deliane and Claudia. All of them have a bit of a different situation and
Elder Batista and I decided to fast to know how to teach them and how to help
them be baptized. The Lord worked miracles this week with us and prepared
families for us. We were able to mark a baptismal date with Andressa and
Deliane. It has just been so crazy, I have encountered so many situations this
week where I wouldn't have known what to do if it were last week, but the spirit
has been with our companionship and I have seen the Lord's hand guiding us in
the right direction. I have no doubt in my mind that he has accepted our
efforts of last week.
Friday I woke up pretty disappointed with the night
before, we had gotten into a bible bash for the first time and it was just
ugly. I was pretty mad that we had gotten into one because the spirit had fled
from us for the rest of the night. The same feeling carried on in the morning
for me, but it didn't seem to for Elder Batista. Before we left the house that
day, I asked him for a priesthood blessing. It was incredible, he said exactly
what I needed to hear and it gave me the energy I needed that day. It turned
out being the best day of the week for us. We went tracting down a tiny little
street in the favela and couldn't finish knocking all the doors in three hours
because so many people were letting us into their houses!
We taught a 17 year old and marked a baptism with
him and he was so excited, we came back the next day and his mom answered the
door and said she didn't want us teaching him because she is from some other
church, even though he isn't part of it. I was pretty upset because we saw him
light up when we taught.
That night we went to the 18th birthday party of
one of the ward young men. He had bought about $200 worth of meat for a big bbq
and the whole ward was over at the house along with the neighborhood. It is
pretty cool the way it works here in Brasil, the whole world stays together and
just laughs and eats and jokes around and dances like its nobodies business.
There was so much food that they had barely killed off half of it before the
night was over.
Church was the following day. It was pretty good,
our first session is from 9-12 and then we ate lunch and went back for our
second ward from 3-6. It is pretty relaxing, but I was asked to speak in both
sacrament meetings for ten minutes each. Welcome to missionary work. It all
went well. During priesthood, the young women’s leader asked us to go and teach
the young women about the priesthood, and it was a really cool experience. We
could really feel the spirit, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to hold
the priesthood and to see the power of god work miracles here on earth every
day.
We had some incredible experiences giving blessings
this week. We gave a blessing to a member who is terminally ill with cancer. He
could barely leave his bed, but the following day, his wife called and said
that he got up and walked down the stairs for some fresh air on his own. It was
incredible. Anyways after the last session of sacrament, we brought Eva, a
single mother investigator, to the baptismal font and showed it to her. Eva,
Elder Batista and I leaned against the railing and talked about her baptism and
the church and sacrament. There we marked her baptismal date. We had felt the
spirit pretty strongly and it was so incredible.
The Lord has guided us every step of the way this
week. I have learned so much. The greatest thing I have learned is that I can't
do anything without the spirit, and thank the heavens the Lord granted all that
help to us this week. It has just been perfect. I love this area; it sits in
the city of Campinas itself. It has just been great. I hope you all have a
wonderful week! I love you!
Elder Paynter
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