Oi, oi, oi! Tudo bem??

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!!!!