The Lord's Invitation

Well, just like always, another wonderful week has come and gone here in the wonderful Cristalina. This week was hot, and included a lot of work! But in the end it was good :) 

So to start out the week we had a family night with one of the investigators of the elders. It was a proud moment for me and my companion because it’s a family we found in the hospital when Sister Costancio was sick. But it was really good to spend some time with them and get to know them better :) But it’s just amazing to see how much the gospel really changes lives. The wife, Fabiana was telling us how much the gospel has changed their lives in such little time! But it’s so true! The moment we give ourselves to the Lord, the same moment he starts blessing us! I love seeing how the gospel blesses families :)

This week with our investigator, Denis, has been really good! He wants us to visit him every day so that’s what we have been doing! And he is already inviting everyone he knows to go to church and to sit in with us on our lessons, ha! But this week as we were going to visit him one day, we found him talking to his neighbor who is a pastor.... My first thought was “Oh Crap..." So we were introduced to the pastor and the pastor gave us his thoughts on baptism. I don’t know why but almost all of the pastors here think that people should wait 6 months or so to be baptized. It just doesn’t make sense to me. But we had a nice chat with the pastor, luckily for us he was very friendly and he just wanted to preach to us a bit. So we let him do his thing, then we were on our way. So we sat down with Denis and just kind of asked him how he was doing, how he was feeling. And he said, “I’m doing good. But don’t worry, I don’t listen to anything that pastor has to say. He just wants me to go to his church. But I don’t want to. And he wants me to wait to be baptized. But I can´t wait. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow!" hahaha we laughed when he said this but we were super happy! So Denis is strong and firm and will be baptized this Saturday!!! Woohoo!!! We are extremely excited :) 

But other than Denis, we just visited some contacts that we made in the street and have been finding new people, and cutting more people, ha. We had the opportunity to travel to another city yesterday with our group for stake conference. Our stake was divided and we are now a new stake. But we still haven’t become a branch... but it will happen soon enough :)

But one of the General Authorities gave a talk yesterday that I thought was so good! So lately, the first presidency and our leaders have been talking a lot about the Sabbath day and what we really should do on this day. So the General Authority (whose name I have forgotten...ha) went on to explain a little more about this. He started out by saying what would we do if we were invited by the savior to his funeral. How would we react... and so on. Then he went on a little more about taking the sacrament. That literally Christs body lays upon the sacrament table. It made me really think about what we do during the breaking of the bread to really remember our Savior. Are we playing with our phones, talking to others? What are we doing to keep the reverence? He compared it with our baptism. We weren’t baptized with our phones in our hands. When we partake of the sacrament it is like we are being baptized again. Our attitude during the sacrament reflects our love for our Savior. This made me really think about what I am doing to show my love for my Savior. 

Well that’s about it for this week! Next week is transfers, who knows what will happen! But I hope you all have a wonderful week! Be safe! And for this week, I want you all to remember to study the words of the living prophets :) (had to change the challenge because my dad has now stolen it from me, ha) Love you all!

Love,

Sister Steadman