Esta Semana Voou!

 ​Boralá!

 ​P-Day with the staff!

 The richest missionaries here: os secretários financeiros!

 ​The office, with E. Zeballos e E. Oliva

​A bela vista do escritório. Bom dia Goiânia!

Batismo na Ala Goiânia!

                Rapaz, this week flew by!  We worked really hard, and I don`t even remember what happened…  I’ll try to remember a few parts.

                We have two investigators progressing towards baptism in two weeks!! Woohoo! We found both of them by contacting them in the road. Falar com todo mundo traz milagres—talking with everyone brings miracles! We found Marcos about a week ago and have been teaching him often. He came to church the first time yesterday and liked it a lot. He’s as excited for the 12^th as we are!  Andressa was taught a lot by the missionaries over a year ago and lost contact because she moved. She worked and was hardly ever able to come to church, but now she doesn’t and she came to church with her neighbor yesterday. Her neighbor, Anisse,  is actually a friend of a member who has already invited her to church a few times, and we’ve started teaching her also. She’ll have to get married before accepting a baptismal date, but she`s liking the lessons a lot. Andressa has a date for the 12^th also. We should have a great reunião batismal that day!

                We also had a great first lesson with Flavio this week. I was on a division Tuesday with Elder McBride, a new American in the mission, and we walked out towards the edge of the area to his house. I had spoken with him in the road a few days earlier. He understood everything we taught, and while his view of religion and salvation is slightly different—that faith is all we need—he is interested to know more about the message we bring to the world as missionaries. We had a good conversation about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.  We return to his house hoje (today)!

                It’s so, so, so nice to find someone who understands very well what we're teaching. Often, we teach a good lesson about the restoration and first vision to someone and at the end we’ll ask them what they learned. Not uncommon responses are “It`s good to go to church” or “The word of God is good.” Nada ver! Haha, I guess it’s hard for people that don’t have basic doctrinal backgrounds to understand the restoration the first time. I think that’s a big problem of religion these days, especially here. The majority of churches don’t teach doctrine nor principles of the gospel, just that God is good and he’ll save us and stuff. True, but significantly lacking structure.

                Also, William, the son of Roberto whom we started teaching in my last area, was baptized this week! I was so happy, knowing that a road contact that Elder Zanuttini and I made turned into a baptism. His parents should follow his example soon! Even though we didn´t get to finish the process of teaching him, the joy was the same. This work is the best!

                Man, Brasil is great! It’s easier to speak and write Portuguese than English now. Even though I don’t have the same vocabulary or grammar, I’m so much more used to it that I really have to try when I do things in English. Tudo bem. Vou ajustar-me quando eu voltar!

                This week we have a multi-zone conference in Goiânia, and leadership meeting, and a zone conference in Anápolis. It’ll be a busy week (like every week haha) but it’ll be great! I`ll have lots of things to write about semana que vem. Esperosamente não vou esquecê-las! Keep me updated and enjoy all the American food you can for me this week! I love you all!

Elder Anderson