This was a rather difficult, yet interesting week. Elder Furrows was
transferred to Jardim da Penha, President Araújo´s ward. He is going to be the
next Mission Secretary. Elder LeFoll arrived. He has about 8 months of
experience and just became a senior companion. He and Elder Dance get along
very well. Elder LeFoll is from Hartford, Connecticut.
Seven missionaries were transferred in our zone. All of the companionships
that were having difficulties changed in some way and now are doing much better.
This is good news. We are happy to announce that the zone has had at least one
baptism every week since the 11th of March. The work goes forward. It is
interesting to see with a larger perspective that when one companionship or
district is having hard times, other are having a lot of success and everything
ends up pretty balanced.
On Thursday we had a miraculous day. We had the whole day open, and we
decided to do something different. We visited all the addresses we had
accumulated from contacts on the street and all the addresses of less-actives
and we tried to visit all of them. We found nine new people to teach and we
taught seven good lessons. It was a success. And we even had time to buy pão
doce (sweet bread) and the bread store.
We had another Zone Leader Council this week. The mission is now going
into a huge focus on reactivating less-actives and inactives. Just for you to
see an example of why this is important, Ala Estrelinha, one of the wards in our
zone has 130 members that are active and over 600
inactives. So...I think this is a good
idea. Our ward has about 300 inactive members. We are continuing to have a lot
of success here with fortifying and helping those that were not so active in the
Church.
Mara and Vitória are in a hard spot. They
had to go out of town again and her husband is as bad as ever. The member visit
scheme was not as successful as we hoped. They have still not been
confirmed.
Felipe is a returned missionary that we have
been visiting since January because it has been quite a while that he hasn´t
been to church. Yesterday he finally went!
But the highlight of the week was yesterday.
We showed up to church and surprise! There was a family of four there that we
had already taught several times in weeks past, but who never went to church.
We visited them after church and the visit was especially spiritual. They
loved the meetings and the classes. Their family is made up of a married couple
Élcio and Luciana (about 35 years old) and two children Alexandre (10) and Tainá
(8). We marked a baptismal date for all four of them. Their baptism will be on
the 17th of June. Élcio gave us all the cigarettes he had in the house. They
all said many times that they feel happier than ever and that they want to
continue to feel even better. It was an excellent end to a long
week.
We´ll be heading off to Cachoeiro again this
week and we have a TON of people to visit. It is going to be tiring and
hopefully very rewarding.
Dal was confirmed yesterday. We passed by
his house and we gave him two ties.
These
pictures are of Dal and his wife Renata. And of Elder Furrows with us before he
was transferred. (He is the baldish one.)
Speaking of transfers, we showed up over an hour late because the traffic stopped literally. It was horrible. We had to get off the bus and carry the suitcases to the chapel. But, what can you do?
Pray for me to have more
patience.
Have a wonderful week!
Elder Bodily
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