Week Twenty-Four

"This weeks been a roller coaster! Huge ups and downs. We´ve had to cut a lot of investigators again, our biggest challenge right now is helping our investigators have a spiritual change, like in Mosiah 5:1-2. They just aren´t getting it! Our entire district is having struggles, we´re really having to analyse our teaching approaches because the people arent eating what we´re feeding...

we´re really concentrating on listening to our investigators. all of missionaries have the bad habit of giving a memorized lesson and then taking off. Something that we´re putting more into practice is the uasge of our ears! If someones just lost a son to gang violence, theyre going to have little or no interest about Joseph Smith and the line of authority. Theyre going to want to hear about the plan of salvation, and how they can not only see their son again, put that they can help him here in this life through vicarious baptism. teach people, not lessons!

Something we´re also focusing on is obey the letter and the spirit of the law. We´re obeying the letter by keeping with the missionary standards: each missionary contacting more than 10 people in the street. That number usually ends up to be 150 or more street contacts each week. the blessings we´re manifested one night when we were heading home: my companion had his 10 contacts and i had 9, but no one else was out in the street! i prayed a simple prayer, that i would complete the commandment we were given, when from behind me a man said,´´hey i was baptised in your church twenty years ago!`` the mans name was marcelo, a single guy from portugal with a funny accent. he hadnt attended church in many years, and said,´´ya i think coming back to church is a good idea.`` how golden! we´re now visiting with him and preparing him to come back to the fold. it´s my tesimony that we were blessing because of our strict obedience!

We´re striving to obey the spirit of the law as well, or in other words- listening to the spirit instead of the manual! we´ve recently picked up Oneida, the wife of Álvaro, again as an investigator. manual says that our visits should pass over 45 minutes, but one night we were invited to eat some pizza with the couple (Álvaro is a bit of a cozinheiro). After the grub and some good jokes, we had felt that we really won the heart of Oneida, so we dove into some deep religious discusion. We cast out many doubts and disagreeances that she had about the church; our visit with them lasted over 2 hours. She now has the desire to be baptised this sunday, so you be the judge!

My companion and i are doing everything to listen to the promptings of the spirit. some of the most life changing lessons happened this week. I know that thought the Lord we can save this dying area! In striving every day to cast out my pride and fill my soul with the spirit. i am purifying my heart so that i can be an instrument of the lord!"

-Elder Kelland Hansen October 22, 2012