What a week...

18-3-13

Hey Family,

So I don’t want to jinx anything, but I think I might have a big load of baptisms coming up. We have 8 people that are investigating the church that can be baptized, and I feel like this might be what I have been praying for. Please, PLEASE pray for me and my companion, that we can baptize these people and that they will feel in their hearts that this is the right choice. 

My interview with the president was awesome. I told him that we were having difficulties with the members, that they didn’t really like the missionaries, because some of the missionaries in the past always just argued with them.  It has been hard hearing them every day complain about how poor the missionary work has been here, saying that out of the last 20 people that have been baptized in the ward, only 5 are still active because the other 15 were poorly prepared or weren’t ready. But my mission president just told me to not worry about it and he would work things out. So….

This last Sunday was a Stake Conference. My Mission President came to speak, and he brought a Member of the Seventy to speak as well. Our Stake was called to repentance by these great men. Elder Fernandes said to all the members that, "every person has to be baptized, just as Christ was. Once they have a testimony, once they have repented, and once they have started keeping the commandments, they get baptized! There is no other way." He continued by saying that the mission work consists of 5 parts: find, teach, baptize, confirm, and retain. But then he said something interesting. He said, "Finding and Retaining is the members job! If a person falls away from the church, it is not the missionaries fault, but it is the members fault".  That was directed especially for my ward! Then the president transferred us to a different ward.  We are still here in 7 Lagoas though.

But yeah, anyways we did an open house this week, and we were able to bring more than 60 people to the church and show them around.  At the open house, in the sacrament room, we had some banners set up for the investigators explaining the first lesson.  We had a lot of people accept to be baptized.

Anyways, I gotta go now. I love you all!

Elder Smidt X