The Reason

Just as Ben from Said the Whale once sang about being cognizant of why things happen, I too got to have a little bit of an opportunity to do so this past week :)

So, as I have been saying recently (and if I say it too much you can tell me to stop :P ), is I've been in Cova Figueira for a LONG time, and as I mentioned in a past email, I had my Mission President tell me that there was a reason why the Lord wanted me to stay this transfer here despite having a rather long time in the same area. While this transfer certainly hasn't been an easy one by any means, we were able to see the Lord put his hand directly in our work these past few weeks, and this past Saturday, we got to see the reason WHY the Lord wanted us here. 

WE HAD OUR FIRST COVA FIGUEIRA BAPTISM WOOOO!! As far as I know, this area hasn't had a baptism since I came into the mission, and so for the first time in about a year or so, our ward got to have a convert baptism. We had our investigators, Katia and her son Fabio, be baptized on Saturday, and it was awesome. Fabio just turned 8 this past Tuesday, and so the got to be baptized together, which was really special. The great thing about it all too was that the Lord just about worked EVERYTHING that needed to happen for them to be baptized. While in the past working with investigators to be baptized has never been easy, with Katia and Fabio, just about everything has run according to plan (or even BETTER than according to plan), making them just about the most golden investigators I think I'll find on my mission. 

A lot of our week ended up going towards prepping for the baptism, such as teaching a few final things, preparing for baptismal interviews, and having the Zone Leaders come to do their interviews. The ZLs had come on New Years Eve, and by the time they were done and ready to go home, there were like NO cars going back to their area that night, and they almost had to stay with us for New Years, it was pretty funny. 

After the interviews were done that day, however, Elder Mason and I went about continuing to work, and while we were passing by and talking with members about the baptism for Saturday, we had left a barber shop where one of our members works, and I stepped down off the sidewalk and my right foot went into a hole in the cobblestone, and my ankle didn't seem to agree with the angle at which it went in, and I ended up spraining it :P I thought it was just like a 'CRAP that hurt better walk it off' kinda ankle roll, but as we worked more and walked more, it became more and more difficult to move and walk on it, and I realized that it was maybe swelling more than I would like :P so, yeah, I sprained my ankle this week. Took a solid day of getting it better, and now I'm walking on it normal again. WOOO!! 

A few other funny things happened this week. Katia had invited us to Fabio's birthday party, which I thought, 'yeah no worries, we'll just pass by and say hi' but when we passed by, it turned out that his party was like THE event going on in Cova that day :P we saw Katia, but not Fabio. He told us the next day that there were like over 200 kids there from different zones around Cova Figueira. It was crazy!

Fabio's birthday party

New Years wasn't all that special really, I had sprained my ankle New Year's Eve, and we had our ward planning a party in the house of a member, and they told us we could pass by and get food from them, but when we showed up a bit before 9 and nobody was there, we decided it wouldn't be worth waiting around for food, so we went home :P then on New Year's day, they had ANOTHER party, and our one member, Kennedy, who's a member of the Stake High Council, was so upset that we didn't get anything the night before that he PROMISED us food at the party the next day. However, come 9pm AGAIN, there was NO food ready, soooo we told them to just bring food to our house when it was done :P we got woken up at 11:40pm by a couple young men outside with 4 pieces of chicken and a couple bottles of pop. Pretty solid for not even going to the party I guess :P 

The baptism we had was pretty rad too. We ended up having the baptism for a girl in the other elder's ward together with ours, so there were a few people being baptized together, and so at the end of the service, when time was given for those who were baptized to have the opportunity to bear their testimony, after Katia and Fabio had gone up, Katia's 5 year old son, Fabricio, got up and started saying a prayer. It was classic. He loves to say prayers for everyone :P the next day we had the opportunity to visit with Katia a bit after her confirmation, and she said something that has stuck with me. She said, 'You know, lots of elders have taught me, lots of sisters have taught, lots of really COOL sisters have taught me, but you guys are by far the coolest. You're the ones who put us in the path'. I guess that really showed to me that the Lord needed me to be there for her at that point in time. I guess that's 'the Reason' the Lord has left me here so long :)

Thank you all so much for your prayers and support these past couple weeks, you guys are all the bomb. 

Love y'all! 

Elder Massey