Seeing the Fruits of Our Labors!!!

Boa Tarde!!!

My week was incredible!!! Seriously was awesome!! One of the best weeks I’ve had on my mission! We worked so hard and are seeing the fruits of our labors!!!

This week we found a ton of new investigators. We found a solid 13 more people that are "bons novos". That are actually wanting to hear our messages and look into it!! We marked 4 baptism dates this week and so now we have 6 in total!! I have never worked so hard on my mission, and never felt so much joy and the Spirit so strong throughout the day!

One of the studs we found was Vinicus. So we are doing tons of contacts in the streets and trying to talk with everyone we see about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  One day, after our studies in the morning, I just looked to Elder Lima and told him I had a feeling we would find someone special who needed to hear what we had to say and would get baptised! So we started the day off!  The first lesson we had marked, we brought a member with us and the lady ended up not being at home.. So that fell through. The member returned home so we started doing contacts. At least the first 8 people rejected us. I was just thinking, wow this day has started off like crap. ha.  But we kept on going! After another contact in the street flat out rejected us, another guy was headed in our direction. He was looking at us (I think just waiting for us to start talkin with him about what we had to share lol) and so we started to talk with him and taught him the whole message of the Restoration in a summarized form on the side of the street. Afterwards I showed him a Book of Mormon and we explained to him what it was. Then, I did something I had never done in my entire mission, I invited a contact in the street to be baptised if he received an answer from his prayers! He accepted and agreed to a date for June 14th!!  Contato de Ouro!! Golden contact!!  The Spirit was super strong talking with him!! 

For the rest of the day we just found so many awesome people who were willing to hear from us!! Including a contact we did with a lady named Fabiana. We went over to her house yesterday. She lives alone with her 3 kids, ages 14, 12, and 8. We taught them the Plan of Salvation and how Families are Eternal. It was so awesome!! During the lesson I felt prompted that we should sing that primary song, Familias Poderão Ser Eternas (Families can be together forever). I have never sang before in a lesson but we had our hymn books with us and we sang it! and the Spirit was so strong!! At the end of the lesson she said she just felt so good and it was all new information to her but she just felt it could be right! She said she has always wanted to believe that families would stay together in the next life but she had always had doubts! Now she feels and knows its true!! We then invited her to be baptised on June 14th and she accepted as well!!! 

We also have been teaching and meeting with a pastor from a different church. Funny story how we met him ha. We planned to meet with one of our investigators at a restaurant. Well after 10 minutes of being there and talkin with her, a pastor showed up to sit with us! So our investigator had called this pastor to come and I guess have a "Bible Bash" with us and try to tear us apart.  Well it ended up being the opposite. And we didn’t know that this guy was coming!  So the Pastor thought we would want to Bash with him I guess but we had just a great conversation with the guy. We read some scriptures together and just talked freely. At the end we showed him the Book of Mormon. After we explained what it was and how we believe in using both The Bible and The Book of Mormon, he got really interested!! How one complements the other.  We ended up marking another day to just visit with him (and not our other investigator, who we have stopped visiting..)  So he had read part of the Book of Mormon and really liked it! It is cool talking with Nicolas cause he already has so much knowledge about the Bible and things other than a lot of the people we teach who Believe in the Bible but have never read it. We just explain to him that we aren’t trying to take away the Truths that he already has a knowledge of, but to add onto the truths he does have with the fullness of the Gospel!!

This week was seriously a blast!! We taught so many people and just had fun going around and sharing this great message with everyone we could find!! There are so many great stories to tell that would take a whole day trying to email them all!! Awesome experiences happen everyday, and I’m so grateful to be more in tune to notice those big things that happen but also those little blessings and miracles we sometimes take for granted.  Its awesome how, the days you work the hardest is when you return home the most happy and full of the Spirit of the Lord!! I love this work and I love my Savior!! I know that He lives! That he died for us so we could one day return to the presence of our Heavenly Father! It is a blessing to take part in this great work here and see the hands of God in the lives of others!! So stoked to see Elder Neil L. Anderson this Saturday who is coming to visit our Mission!!!

I love you!!

Elder Bean