This week's been a really good
one for us. Not necessarily the number one best in terms of lessons
taught or other numbers, but we both came out of this week feeling
really good about how things went. There were quite a few miracles that
came along the way.
One miracle came with our
investigator, Belarmino, who we've been working with for baptism for a
while. He's super cool, and in all honesty, totally ready. He's just not
all there with the desire to be baptized quite yet. We taught a lesson
with him last Monday, and taught from Mosiah 18, talking about the
baptismal covenant and such, and asked him what Alma asks in the
chapter, 'what's holding you back from being baptized?', to which
Belarmino gave us an answer we've heard many times, where he told us
it's something he would really like to do, but doesn't feel a need for
it at this time, but wants to focus on keeping the commandments first.
While there is nothing wrong with that, Belarmino is keeping all the
commandments pretty well, and so we didn't see that as much of a concern
for him. As we were sitting there teaching, I was drawing a blank on
what to say or what to teach. While Elder Penner was teaching, I had a
prompting tell me to ask him about his answer, but by the time it came
for me to speak, we'd already sorta moved on from that point, and I
didn't think it was gunna work, but the prompting hit me again, so I
decided to ask about it. That might've been one of the most clear
spiritual promptings I've gotten in both my mission and my life, and it
was for a good reason. It turned out that Belarmino hasn't actually
found his answer yet, and that THAT was exactly what he needs to have
that desire to be baptized. I asked him, 'if you knew for sure that
these things were true, would you follow them?' to which he responded,
'well, I'd have to!'. It was such a spirit guided lesson, it was
awesome. Since that day, he's been reading every day, came to the
baptisms to watch on Saturday, and came to church on Sunday. He still
needs some help, but he's gunna get there :) He's SO close!
Another
miracle from this week was a guy we started to teach. One of our
mission rules is we aren't allowed to contact Muslims (for religious
reasons) unless they contact us. Usually it's more or less pretty easy
to tell the Muslim people out from others, because most are immigrants
to Cape Verde. One day we were walking and Elder Penner almost stopped
to contact a guy working on some upholstery, and when Penner just kept
on walking, I made a joke along the lines of, 'what, you decided to not
contact the Muslim guy?', just because it was clear he wasn't Cape
Verdean (which, noted, was a judgement placed by me. I've since
repented). The next day when we walked by, he called out to us, and was
like, 'hey! Come here!' and when we came over, he gave us a rant about
how 'I'm a human being and I have the right to hear your message! Why
don't you ever stop for me?', to which we profusely apologized. Turns
out his name is Baka, which is the same word in Creole for cow, and he
isn't Muslim, though his parents were. We went by to teach him the next
day, and he was pretty in to our lesson. Whether he understood
everything, I'm not sure, but he readily accepted everything, even a
baptismal date! On Sunday, he came to church to, if only for a few
minutes, and when we ran into him later that afternoon, he was like,
'hey, why didn't you introduce me at the front?? I wanna get to know
people!' hahaha. We told him he should stuck around a little longer at
church. He's really really cool though, and tonight we're planning to
teach him with a member who's from the same country as he is,
Guinea-Bissau, so that should be interesting :) Heavenly Father puts
people in our path in strange ways.
This week
President Mathews came through with his promise from interviews last
transfer and he and Sister Mathews took us out for lunch this week :) It
was cool to just to get and chat with them one-on-one in a sorta less
work-based setting. I definitely learned some stuff during that lunch,
while I very politely ate my nice pizza, and also found out they aren't
Harry Potter fans. I think that one hurt Elder Penner a little more than
it hurt me, but it was a bit of a sad moment. All in all though, it was
a really good lunch :) we've got awesome mission presidents here.
On
Sunday, another cool thing happened in that one of our less actives,
Toni, brought a friend of his to church who is really interested in the
gospel. Both of them stayed all three hours and his friend, Adalei, made
some really cool comments in our priesthood class :) it was just
another one of those moments where both Elder Penner and I were amazed
at what Heavenly Father is doing for us here.
It's been a solid one over here. We're loving life right now. I'll leave it at that for now :)
Love y'all!
Elder Massey
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