Thursday 10 December 2015

Winter Winds

(Sorry no new pictures this week... hopefully next week!)

Cova Figueira happens to be one of the FEW areas in Cape Verde where we actually get to feel cold every once and a while. Though the seasons don't really change here all that much, we still get to feel just the slightest chill come night time, which is rather nice :) the 'winter winds' are also bringing about some changes in our area which are pretty dang cool :)

This week has been a pretty solid one for us, and we saw a lot of blessings from the Lord come in our work here in Cova Figueira. In all honesty, this week saw just good, solid, hard work more than anything. We had some AWESOME stuff happen though. 

Last week, we had the Lord work some wonders for us, and put into our work a new investigator, named Mariozinho. I may have mentioned him last week in that we had a random guy show up at church for the first time, and this week we had the opportunity of teaching him a few times. He's the cousin of our one member, Dani, who goes out and walks with us all the time, and so Dani has been really helping him out. Mariozinho was recently in what I think was rehab for the past 10 months, and on coming out of being in there, he knows that the best life for him is to follow Jesus Christ. It's actually really cool to see, because I can see in him that he KNOWS that he can't keep with the life that he had before he went to prison, and that following the path we teach him about is the right one. Another thing I love about him is that he really recognizes the Spirit, in that whenever we teach him, he's always telling us about how 'sabi' he feels when he's at church, which is Creole for just overall goodness. 'Sabi' can be used to describe anything from good tasting food, to a nice breeze, to the Spirit at church. I love Creole so much :) we have Mariozinho marked to be baptized here in two weeks, which will take a lot of prayers, but I really think it's going to happen. 

We also had to put a lot of work in this week to our one area, Tinteira, because the stake here in Fogo has decided to pay for a car to take people to church on Sundays for this month alone, in the hopes of putting a group out there in the new year, and so our task this week was to get people hyped for the car. Normally, we make two trips out there a week, during weekdays because there's a bus that drops high school kids off at night, and we use it to get back to Cova Figueira when it returns. We went out there on Tuesday and had more or less success, but on Friday, we had Zone Meeting in Sao Filipe, and weren't able to get out in time, which meant we would have to make the trek on Saturday, but without a car. So, after we had opened our fast on Saturday at lunch, we walked ALL the way out to Tinteira, which is more or less about 5kms, and we freaking WORKED to make sure we could get around to every member we could so they knew there was a car going the next day. We were basically running all over the place so we could get to everyone before it got too late. While we were running around, we were going to teach one of these less active members, and Dani, who was out with us, walked up and just started talking to a guy right outside this less actives' house, and by the time we got there, this guy was like, 'hey Elders, I don't have a lot of time, but I do have 10 minutes for palavra de Deus, let's do it' and so without even having to argue with the guy to sit with us, we jsut sat there on the roadside and taught him. It's cool how the Lord guides us to people without us even realizing it. That day ran rather long, as we had to walk all the way back in the dark, another 5km, and teach another lesson in Cova Figueira just to hit our daily goals. We wiped OUT that night. 

The next day was really dang cool too, and it seems to me every time we are fasting on Sunday, the Lord pulls some cool stuff on us. It seemed to me that just everyone was coming to church, and while it wasn't the most we've had there, we managed to have 4 investigators there, 1 being Mariozinho, and also having a bunch of less actives show up, including 3 brothers, who brought Ricardo, our investigator with them. 

Something I'm starting to learn is that, even if we feel like we're giving it our absolute ALL and nothing is coming from it, the Lord finds ways to show us the fruits of our labors, even if it is very occasionally in some places. 

We're getting stoked about Christmas here, and I hope all you back home are enjoying the snow I don't have. I really miss it like a lot. Hoping all is well where ever this finds you! 

Elder Massey

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