Email from Erica
October 8, 2013
Oi, oi, oi! Tudo bem??
Things here are just awesome. AWESOME! I can't believe next
week around this time I'll be leaving for the REAL mission field! Time has
flown by like a cheetah with wings on a roller coaster! This Thursday I will be
getting my travel assignments! So I will
find out if I have my visa and will go right to Brazil or I will get my
temporary reassignment to a mission in the US of A! Either one will be
wonderful. As a missionary, I feel even more that wherever we are we are in
God's hands! For example...I was originally assigned to the Sao Paulo MTC...but
after being here at the Provo MTC, I can't imagine not coming here! I love my
district and companions and teachers so much! This experience has been perfect
for me! As I know my whole mission will be, as long as I have the attitude
"I'll go where you want me to go. I'll be what you want me to be."
Guess what our devotional on Sunday night was? VocalPoint!!! They came and did our devotional! It was so great!! Another amazing experience
I got to have thanks to being here in the Provo MTC! Singing in General Conference,
having a devotional by my most favorite singing group in the world. Life is
grand. Being a missionary is so so good!!!
Things have been going great with our two investigators,
Rafael and Carlos. It's pretty neat because we actually just teach our
teachers...they are the "investigators", but they finally told us
that every person they choose to be for the investigator is actually a real
person that they taught! It's funny because they take their character super
seriously. They don't break character ever!! And Irmao Miller, during class,
when it's time for us to teach our investigator, he will say something like
"Oi...Eu tenho muito fome agora...Vou a comer o almoço...mas voces vão a
ensinar a seus pesquisadores. Bom?"
In other words "Hey...I'm really hungry...I'm going to go eat
lunch, but you all go teach your investigators...Ok?" Haha, then he tells
us which room we will find them in and he goes to 'eat his lunch'. Haha, so
great! But he said that on the last day of class he will bring photos from his
mission and tell us the real stories of the people we are teaching!! I'm so
excited to hear the real stories of Antonio and Carlos! And Rafael is our
investigator with Irmao Porter, so I'm guessing Irmao Porter will tell us about
Rafael's story too. The cool thing is that every single companionship in our
district teaches different investigators. So, we are the only ones who teach
Carlos and Rafael.
We had a very good and interesting lesson with Rafael
yesterday. We taught him the Doctrine of Christ -- Faith, repentance, baptism,
receiving the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. It was all going very well.
We could feel the Spirit working through us as we shared testimony and thoughts
and scriptures that we hadn't planned on sharing.
When we got to baptism is when things got interesting. I
basically told him, in answer to his questions, that his baptism wasn't valid.
Wow, hard to tell someone, right? Baptism is a super special thing! And anyone
who chooses to be baptized is definitely demonstrating their faith in Jesus
Christ and desire to follow him, which is awesome!! But I was explaining to him
that it is essential that we are baptized by someone who has the authority to
do that from God.
Rafael is Baptist. He's awesome! He loves the Lord so much
and prays and studies the word of God and wants to follow Christ however he
can! But he is having a hard time understanding that his pastor who baptized
him didn't have that priesthood authority which the Lord restored to the earth
through Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith received the priesthood by the laying on of
hands, from the apostles of Jesus Christ, Peter, James, and John! Jesus Christ
gave the priesthood to them through the laying on of hands and also to others
as well including prophets in the Book of Mormon, like in 3 Nephi 11:18-26,
when he teaches Nephi how to baptize and gives him and others the authority to
do it. Anyways, Rafael got a little bit worked up when we told him that this
church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is the only church
that has that restored priesthood authority. I told him this, and it is true,
that that is a very bold claim to make! But the reason I can make that claim,
is because I know that it is true! God has all the answers, and if we will
study and ask Him, He will reveal the truth to us! Pretty amazing. What better source to go to
than God Himself when we want to know the things of God? :D
I can testify that I know that this church has the
priesthood authority of God because I have read the Book of Mormon, I have
prayed about it, I have come to know for myself that the Book of Mormon is
true, and that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God and that this church was
restored to the earth through him by Jesus Christ! And because I have
experienced firsthand the blessings of the priesthood! I am so blessed to have a dad who holds the
priesthood of God, and who has used this authority and power to bless me and
our family! How incredible! And the amazing and awesome thing is that ANY man
who takes the steps required to be worthy of the priesthood, can be given this
gift! And it is a gift that is used to bless others.
I find it interesting that the priesthood can never be used
to bless oneself. No matter who it is! Not even the prophet can use the
priesthood to bless himself! It is a gift of service and love and selflessness!
It is used to benefit and bless others! How awesome!
So, back to Rafael. The rest of the lesson went well. We
testified, we kneeled in prayer with him, and he invited us to come back. The
interesting thing is, is that even though he got a bit upset and wasn't really
receptive to some parts of the lesson, it was my favorite lesson with him that
we've had. After our previous lessons with him, I would often feel like there
was more we could have done. I felt like he was feeling the Spirit testify of
the things we were saying, but not that this church is any different than any
others. I kept feeling like we hadn't truly taught him about THIS church.
And so as we left, we felt peace. I felt good about the
lesson. I felt like a real missionary! In the Bible and Book of Mormon,
missionaries didn't just go around saying "hey, wanna be baptized"
with the response "hey, yeah! Sure! Why not??" They were rejected. They testified boldly, and
were sent away. They were stoned, they were killed! They were mocked! I definitely
wasn't stoned or mocked or killed after that lesson, but I felt like I had
finally experienced a tiny bit of the fact that I am here to testify of truth,
no matter what others think and no matter how others respond! Of course I want to do it in the most kind and
loving way possible because that's what the gospel is about! And we want to
share this message because we love and God loves His children!! But we should
never avoid teaching the truth so as not to offend someone. We must testify
boldly and kindly and with love! And I
felt like that's exactly what we did. We expressed our desire to help Rafael
and God's love for Him, and about how awesome it is that he has so much faith
and loves the Lord, but we also testified to him that we know that this
baptism, by the priesthood authority of God, is the way that Christ was talking
about.
Later that night in class as we were doing companionship
study, we came across this quote in Preach My Gospel that sums up really well
how we felt.
"When you have done your very best, you may still
experience disappointments, but you will not be disappointed in yourself. You
can feel certain that the Lord is pleased when you feel the Spirit working
through you." ~Preach My Gospel, pg.
11
Mom asked me what a regular day in the MTC is like! I left
my official schedule in my room, but here's an idea of our schedule: (Basically
the same things every day but in different orders)
6:00 am wake up.
6:30 breakfast in the cafeteria
7:00-10am class with either Irmao Porter or Irmao Miller
10-11 Personal Study time (Study out of the Scriptures,
Preach my Gospel, or Jesus the Christ or other missionary library books. I
generally do Book of Mormon and Bible reading...I've been doing a lot of Book
of Mormon reading in Portuguese. I also read Jesus the Christ sometimes, which
is an incredible book)
11-11:45 Lunch in the cafeteria
11:45-2:45 Class with which ever professor we didn't have
the first class period. (these classes are focused on our investigator
teaching, learning Portuguese grammar, and learning how to teach the gospel. Our professors speak only in Portuguese.)
2:45-4:00 Language study in the classroom
4:00-4:45 Dinner in cafeteria
4:45-5:15 Additional study (your choice- scriptures,
language, etc)
5:25-6:15 GYM TIME! WOOHOO!
6:15-6:45 prepare for next activity (aka quick shower for
me!)
6:45-7:45 TALL (Technology Assisted Language Learning- a
program developed by missionaries for missionaries)
7:45-9:00 Additional Study
9-9:30 Daily Planning Session (for tomorrow)
9:30-10:30 Personal Time. During this time we get ready for
bed, our sister training leaders come by (By the way, I am the new Sister
Training Leader. We are the last district of sisters gong to Brazil in our
branch...all the new groups coming in are all Elders, so I'm the training
leader just for our district, rather than for the zone),
10:15 We have
personal devotional - which means quiet time when you can pray! :D We spend
that time in prayer or reading the scriptures, reviewing our day, etc.
10:30 Lights out and in bed
And then we do it again the next day! Woohoo! And I love it!
Some days are a bit different, like Sundays! Sundays are awesome! We spend all
day studying or at church or at devotionals, etc. We have devotionals every
Tuesday and Sunday night. I've heard that our speaker for tonight's devotional
is going to be pretty awesome... a general authority! We usually have members
from the 70 or other awesome people speak! They are always great devotionals!
General Conference was so incredible! One thing I learned:
The widow's mite was sacred. I loved how Elder Bednar shared that story from
the Bible. When he said that her sacrifice was sacred, it really hit me. It hit
me that her sacrifice was sacred because it was all she had! She gave
everything! It hit me that as missionaries, it's great if we sacrifice and give
a lot...but if we give everything - all our time and effort, our strength, our
hearts, our focus, etc- then our sacrifice becomes sacred. When we give our
everything, even when it is not enough, Christ fills in the rest, and he makes
our sacrifice sacred and powerful. I'm
so grateful for that! He is EVERYTHING! Jesus Christ lives! Everything is about him! Without him, the
gospel wouldn't be anything. It wouldn't be possible for us to ever return to
God's presence and be with Him, our Father, again! Without Christ, we could never be clean again!
We would be forever unclean in our sins! Without Christ, we couldn't pray, we couldn't
feel the Spirit, we couldn't be with our families forever, we couldn't have the
priesthood, or prophets, or apostles, or miracles! He is everything!!!
I love you all! Eu amo voces!!! Espero que tudo esta bem! O evangelho e verdadeiro! O Senhor vive! Eu sei que estas coisas sao
verdadeiras!
Tchau
tchau! Ate logo!
Sister Greenall
PS: I'm getting my travel assignments on Thursday! Did I
mention that?.. Oh, I did! Haha, oops! Tchau! Com muito amor!!!!
