Week 51 Letter

Monday, February 13, 2012

Hello my family!

How are all of you doing?!  So, I have a new companion, Elder Alves.  I do not know if you knew this yet, but they sent another two missionaries here so Ji-Parana has 4 missionaries.  I am excited to get to work and find new people to teach.  We are teaching a lot of people.  Once again though, we are running into the problem of finding people who are legally married.  The process of marriage here in Rondonia and Matto Gross is such a headache that people stopped trying to get married and everybody just gets together.  It is a little hard on the missionaries, but we are doing well.  I am going to try and plan a couple of weddings this week.  I feel more like a match maker sometimes, but maybe I will be able to use this new found talent later on in life.  This week we worked really hard.  I am pushing Elder Alves.  He is the senior, but he is really relaxed and just follows so we have been running this week.  We taught 30 lessons this week and found 12 more investigators that we will teach this week.  It is good.  I am really hoping that we will be blessed with a lot of fruits because the branch could use it.  I am kind of out of stuff to say, so I will tell you about a lesson that we taught Saturday to José.  Well, first I will tell you about the little miracle that I saw Friday.  I wanted to teach him, but he was not home and Djeniffer, his daughter, told us that he would not be home at all that day.  I was really disappointed because I really felt that we needed to teach him, but what can you do.  So, we went with Djeniffer to teach some of her friends.  So, in between teaching her friends I had a huge urge to eat ice-cream, so we stopped at the ice-cream place and I bought an ice-cream for everybody.  When I sat down with my ice-cream, I saw José passing by on his motorcycle so I waved him down.  I told him that I would pay for his ice-cream so he sat down with us and we had the chance to converse and teach him.  It was a little miracle that made my day.  Anyways, Saturday we taught him again with his two daughters present.  We taught the plan of salvation.  Towards the end, I had a distinct prompting that I needed to ask him to do something.  It was a little weird because I knew more or less what I wanted him to do, but I did not know how to ask him to do it.  So, I told him that I was feeling that I needed him to do something, but I apologized for not really knowing in the moment exactly what it was.  I sat there for about a minute trying to listen to what the Holy Ghost was trying to tell me, and then I knew.  I asked him to look into the eyes of his daughters, one at a time tell them that he loved them.  He accepted the invitation and did so, and he began to cry.  His daughters went to him to hug him and in this moment something really special happened.  He talked to them, and promised them that he would be baptized and that he would grow in the church and help them grow in the church and that he would be their dad forever.  It was awesome.  One of the coolest moments on my mission.  He worked Sunday so he was not baptized but we will try to baptize him during the week.  He is so prepared.  He is living all of the commandments and has so much faith, but he still does not feel prepared.  We will try to help him see that baptism is something serious and important, but also something that is simple and a start, not an end.  It was a great lesson, and he is doing well.  He loves to read the Book of Mormon and loves what the gospel has done and is doing for his daughters.  I am excited to see him be baptized and see this little family on their way to being an eternal family.  So, that is my week, and I am excited to continue and even increase the pace for this next week.  I love you and wish you a great week.  

Love Elder Lee

PS Mom, I did eat the chicken and it turned out pretty good, although Val was feeling bad when she ate it.  It was funny.