Giving Up the Gun

This week was sweet. Lots of small miracles, and lots of fun.

There was one thing that sucked about this week, and that was a lot of our investigators had family members that passed away. Like for Tommy and Deborá, they had an uncle who passed away, Deborá called me on Tuesday and told me they weren't going to be able to talk for like a week, because of a tradition they have here, where family members pass a week in the house of their loved one who passed away. Later in the week, we went to go visit a new investigator for the second time, when her brother at the door informed us that her husband had died that morning in an accident. Really sad. We figured that might not have been the best time to talk, so we'll go back later this week. It seemed like stuff like that was happening all over the place this week.

We were really lucky to have a lot of success this week, in teaching, finding, and getting people to act. We found that we were really trying to progress the same four people, and that wasn't working, so we started pushing for progressing other people this week. The Lord helped us outline a few.

One of our investigators, Junior, came back from spending time in a mental rehab facility. He's recently out of prison, and we had been teaching him, but his family took him to the rehab place, and we didn't see him for like 3 weeks. One day while Elder Ronces and I were out walking, we heard someone calling 'Elder! Hey, Elder!' and we looked and saw him coming up to us. He took us to his house right away and started to teach him. He expressed a real desire to change and follow Christ in his life. While he's still sorta scrambled, he's got a really, really good desire.

Another is an investigator named Obona, or Neto, or Valdir, depends on who you are and what status you have with him. We go with Obona, that's his favorite name :P he's another guy who's what we would call a thug sorta guy, likes to wear basketball jerseys, drinks some times, but a really nice guy. He wants us to help him, and so as we've taught him, little by little, he's been making changes. Each visit, he's understanding a little bit more, his reading ability is improving, and he's answering questions really well.

We also started working with a couple that Elder Ronces found a couple weeks back on a division, named Carla and Maruwilson. We went and taught them while we had one of the new senior couples, the Souzas, out walking with us, and we all clicked really well. Carla is really open and funny, and understands our message really well. We taught about the Book of Mormon, since she or Maruwilson hadn't read since the first visit, and by the end, Carla was like, 'okay, i get it! I know I need to read! And I'll come to church on Sunday!'.

The best part was, was on Sunday morning, while passing investigators before church, all of the three above were waiting for us, dressed up, holding their Books of Mormon, ready to go. We walked with three investigators all together to church, and a fourth, Zezinho, who came last week, showed up on his own. It was SO cool. After a transfer where one investigator came once, the Lord helped us finish off this one with 4 investigators in one day. It was awesome.

The highlight of the week, though, was Mundinho and Nixi's wedding. Even though it wasn't in my area, it was still so incredible to see two people I worked with for so long make the decision to take that step of faith and move forward, getting married on Friday, and baptized on Saturday. I'd never seen the two of them so alive and happy. It was really touching for me. They almost didn't make it to the baptism on time, it was funny :P there were people already in the font getting baptized when they showed up, so we threw them in some baptismal suits, and ran to the font before they emptied it :P Cape Verde man. Both Mundinho and Nixi got up and bore there testimonies after, and especially something like that to come out of Nixi was incredible to see, being more outspoken.

I'm really happy. Really good week, the Lord is a boss.

Love y'all!
Elder Massey

At the baptism with Elder Neville

The District....