Week 3, Ipiranga‏

Hey guys!


How is everyone doing? It was great to hear from Dad, and I got a box from you guys last week after I wrote!:D So that was great. However, I need to see pictures of Carrie as soon as possible!;) Thanks so much for writing me and supporting me.


So this week was good! To be honest, it´s been a little difficult in this ward, but nothing insurmountable. There´s just a lack of union between the members and the missionaries. Apparently things have happened in the past that have left awkwardness on both sides...I´m not sure what, this is just what I hear. So I think our work in this area has to start with that! Nothing can happen until we´re unified with the members. They´re the ones that know who´s prepared to receive the gospel, and without us working together, we can never help the ward grow. (I hope you guys are taking notes on this for your own wards! I never realized how crucial it is that the members work with the missionaries. I was terrible before the mission! But, absolutely nothing can happen in missionary work until the members are involved, looking around in their own lives for who´s prepared, and introducing them to the missionaries. There´s actually an amazing video called Small and Simple Things made by a mission in California that shows how amazing it can be. Go try to find it online, it must exist somewhere out there. Watch it, it´s amazing!) So we´re trying to make lunches with the members a great time, really get to know them, give great messages after, and show them we´re working hard so they´ll trust us.


So as far as the investigators....Tiago, our perfect investigator, had a little bit of difficulty this week. When we taught the Word of Wisdom and invited him to stop drinking coffee, he accepted immediately, saying he thought it was better to stop completely immediately rather than diminishing. But when we came back, he said he hadn´t made any progress at all, and he didn´t think he would be able to. He said he didn´t think something so small was important....it really shook his faith, somehow. He even said he couldn´t come to church, when on Wednesday he had been so excited. I´m not sure exactly what happened, but he´s experiencing a lot of opposition. He said he would pray and ask if he really needed to stop drinking coffee, but if he didn´t get an answer or felt like the answer was no, he would not only continue to drink it, but stop investigating the church:( I was so surprised to hear all this from him. So we´re fasting and praying that he can get a clear answer he´ll recognize, and know he needs to be baptized.


So what else interesting happened? Hmmm, a great experience with the Relief Society president! She´s a return missionary, so kind of judges us harshly, having been where we are, but we´ve been trying to gain her trust. So it seems like we did, as she shared with us an amazing experience she had. So she said she had been praying and praying for a referral to give us, but just couldn´t think of anyone. So then walking home from an activity in the chapel, she and her daughter took a road they didn´t usually take, and ended up almost running into an old investigator of the other sisters, Azarias. So apparently when he saw her he shook her hand, started to cry, and told her that his life was all wrong and he knew he needed to come back to church. (She was the teacher for the New Members class, so knew him really well.) So she said she´d send us there, challenged him to go to church on Sunday, and said it was an amazing experience. She said she felt a voice that said, "Azarias is the referral!" So that was an amazing experience hearing from her. He didn´t come on Sunday:(, and we´ve passed by his house 3 times without him being there, but we won´t give up!


So the work continues here! Sometimes difficult, always amazing, the greatest experience ever. Thank you all so much for your love, support and prayers while I´m here. I know this is exactly where I need to be, and I´m learning things here I could never learn in any other way. I love you all so much, and I know the Church is true. It´s not only good, amazing, and life changing, it´s the only church of Jesus Christ that was restored by him, not created by men. I know that, and I´m gaining more of a testimony of it every day. I love you all so much!!


Til next week,
Sister Madsen :D