Monday, October 21, 2013

October 21, 2013 ~ Goiania Brazil Mission, Rio Verde ~ Week 38

Dear Family,

This week was a big improvement from last week and the weeks before haha!!!!!!! Everything just seemed to go so much better. We're gradually improving with getting our investigators to church. My companion and I are becoming really good friends :)! Please keep praying for our success!

Noah is huge!!! I saw the picture you sent and my mind is completely blown! What the fudge??? How tall is he now? That's crazy. Is he taller than Erik? It looks like he is taller, by the picture lol.

The beliefs of some Brazilians are sometimes unique haha. This week we were teaching these two sisters and we were talking about the Prophets and everything...then randomly they start telling us about a story. One night they we're looking at the stars in the sky and they saw Jesus's Face in the stars so now they know for a fact what Jesus looks like and they are sticking to this story. It really did strengthen their faith in Christ though, so I just respected their story. One of the sisters is a 22 year old girl and she lives with her sister, who is 23. It's crazy to me how interested they are in the church. It's Awesome!!! The older sister ALWAYS reads what we ask her to, but she needs to come to Church.  Veronica is good to come to church and is interested in Jesus Christ Church, and her sister seems super interested as well. Thankfully Veronica is strong and she told us that she prayed about being Baptized and she committed to keep all the Lord's commandments. She's been coming to church so she will be baptized this Saturday!!!!! Pray for her por favor! And for Veradiane as well!

This week we were blessed to find this guy to teach. At first, he didn't seem super interested in our message, but he said that he would go to church. So we stopped at his house a few days later and he said he had kept all the commitments we asked of him and he already received an answer that this Church is true after he prayed and asked Heavenly Father! I was so happy haha!!! So we invited him to be baptized and he accepted :) BUT we found out that his marriage contract prevents him from being baptized for the moment :( So dumb!!!!!! He married legally, but it's like this weird contract thing for only two years (I guess it was cheaper to get married this way lol/but not lol). So yeah, it prevents him from being baptized until he marries her legally. My guess is that about 80 percent of the people here just cohabit. It's so AWFUL and it's so frustrating when we find Brazilians who are really interested in the Church and then we find out they're not legally married.

Answering dad's question about the gates in front of all the houses here, it's so weird! I'm still not used to the gates at every single house. We either have to clap at the gates, or we just knock on the gate really hard. They say that they have them so they don't get robbed!

This past month has been hard for me. Not having any success this month and seeing other Elders have so much success is frustrating to me because I'm so obedient and I always try to do all the right things. It makes me feel like a failure sometimes. But we had this meeting with President Kuceki. He talked about a million different things and so I'm feeling a lot better now about everything....I am trying my hardest everyday and then I realized that I was doing everything right and that I need to try even harder. Then leave the rest up to The Lord. I'm not sure what else I can really do haha.

Love you guys! Thank you so much for the packages that you're sending me! I hope everything is going well with you guys. Love you! Tchau!

Elder Hanson

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