Elder Lofton Q Bean : I Love Finding Families and Teaching Them About the Importance of Families and God's Plan

Beleza!! Tudo bem?

Eu aindo não acredito que o mês de Julho começou! Estou no último mês da minha missão. É muito louco! A missão passa rápido demais. Mas sei que tudo estará bem!

We had an awesome week here! Able to visit several people and find some new investigators! Elder Labrada finished his mission and his mom came to pick him up. We took him to the airport and waited with him at the gate for his mom to come. It was crazy! It made me wonder how y’all will be feeling when I am coming home and you already can see on the screen that my plane has landed and just waiting for me to walk through the doors. haha. Elder Labrada is a stud and a good friend of mine. He lives in California and goes to UCLA.

We helped a family move apartments on Friday; the family was in-active but is now active in church. They are awesome and treat us like family. They have us over every Monday night to do family home evening! We got there at 11:00 and the move ended at 9:15 at night.. lol. We had to help pack the boxes and then load it all and unload it from the truck. The apartments were only 10 minutes from each other. We were exhausted but we were glad to help. They are an awesome family and do so much for us. We went on a trade this week in the city of Ceilândia! I got to work with Elder Escobar from Peru. It was awesome! Ex- Elder Sales (name is Warly) is now living in Ceilândia and he went with us to teach some families for a couple hours! He was in my first district when I arrived on the mission. I still remember the first time I met him haha, it was my first week here in Brasil and I was waiting outside the church building with Elder D. Call for the other missionaries to show up to open the building to start district meeting. I see a Brasilian missionary (Elder Sales) arriving and he walks up to me and the first thing he says to me was in perfect English, "What’s up!" hahaha he’s hilarious. He has been a good friend since I’ve gotten here and he finished his mission in January. He was an Assistant as well. It was great being able to see him again and have him there to help us out. When a family wasn’t home for us to teach, I turned to him and asked him to take us to visit his non member friends. He is an awesome member missionary and presented us to his friends like we were rock stars. It was awesome! Elder Escobar is a really good missionary, has almost one year here and is from Peru. It was good being able to talk with him and get to know him better. We were able to visit several awesome investigators that he and his companion have been teaching and preparing to be baptized! We had a cool experience that night. So the rule is we have to be home sometime between 9:00-9:30. We showed up at the house at 9:05 and no one had arrived yet and we didn’t have keys to the house so there was no way to get in. So instead of just waiting outside the door, I turned to Elder Escobar and said Lets go knock some doors and find a family to teach, what do you think? He got pumped, agreed and we went off! First house, rejected. Like big time. ha. Second house, we clapped at the gate and a nice lady opened the kitchen window to see who it was. We were able to explain who we were and what our purpose was. After talkin for a minute we asked if we could enter to share a message about Christ and how important our families are in God´s plan for us. She let us in and we were able to teach the entire family about God´s plan. Where are we from? What is our purpose here? Where will we go after this life? We bore testimony of families and how sacred and important our families are to Heavenly Father. That families can be together forever. The family felt the Spirit so strong and they accepted our invite to pray and ask if our message was true and if they needed to be baptized. We marked a return visit and felt great returning home on a high note. It was a great experience and I hope the family continues to want to know more. I love teaching families and bearing testimony of the importance of them in our lives. We ended up ordering pizza that night (kind of a tradition when we do trades in other areas).

We had two people from our ward here get called on missions - one to Porto Alegre Brazil and the other Pocatello, Idaho. haha. We were there when they opened their calls and it was really cool to see the excitement they had and remembering experiencing that over two years ago, opening up my call and having no idea where I would be called to serve. I now know that Brasilia Brasil is where I needed to be called and I am so grateful for being able to serve here. It has been incredible! The Gospel is true!

Com Amor,

Elder Bean