Monday, Aug 1 2011

Oí Família!!!

All right, just to let everyone know how this month started for us, our mission president put an extremely outrageous goal for us to reach this month in baptisms. Anyone want to guess how many we had to baptize?... 300 sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father in the month of July!!! Crazy huh? 300 is a lot of people, but we all were ready to accept the challenge and we started working really hard to help our mission president baptize these children of God. Well, we had our ups and downs this month, as usual, and we ended up finding, teaching, and baptizing... (drum roll) 314 people this month of July!!!! We broke the record in this mission. Never has Brazil São Paulo East baptized more than that! We are making so many big steps and it´s all because our president knows that if we work hard and keep the commandments, we will have the Spirit. And if we have the Spirit, we can teach the people the Truth. And if we teach the Truth, they want to be a part of it! My president gave a huge congrats to us and told us that because we accomplished such a huge goal, we now know how to accomplish whatever kind of righteous goal that we set with our Heavenly Father. If our goal is to graduate from college with good grades so we can support our family, if we keep the commandments and do our absolute best, God will help us reach that goal. I am saying to everyone that EVERY righteous request or goal that me make with Heavenly Father, He is willing to help us if we do our part.

Last night, there was another person who was getting baptized and we had to heat up the font for this little kid. He was 9 years old and had a huge fear of cold water! We went to fill the font, but the heater wasn´t really working very well. I got super discouraged and didn´t know what to do. The sister missionaries showed up at the chapel and asked what was wrong, and I explained the situation. Then I had an idea to go to the kitchen and start to boil water and throw it in the font. I went to the kitchen, and guess what... no pots or pans. I gave up and almost called it quits on the baptism, but the sisters told me to wait a little bit. The left for about 10 minutes and came back with three big pots! I asked where they found them. "We borrowed them from the neighbors!" They went and knocked on the neighbor´s door and borrowed their pots. We heated up the font perfectly and the kid was baptized without any problems! I was so impressed with the sisters! They are really amazing missionaries.

We had one of the best baptisms ever this week! Just this month, we started talking with a family here in the ward. Almost everyone in their family is a member, except one son and one son-in-law. We made a goal with them to baptize the two of them. The son-in-law got married to their daughter in the middle of the month of July and we started teaching him immediately! He fell in love with the idea of being able to baptize his entire family in the temple, and accepted to be baptized on July 31st. He automatically stopped drinking coffee and committed to not go to parties anymore and to stop playing soccer on Sunday, which is a HUGE thing here! He said he would rather sleep now haha And he went to Church yesterday and after sacrament meeting, the ENTIRE family was there and we took a picture outside under the sign of the Church. After the baptism we all walked back to their house together. The entire family lives in one apartment complex together. The guy we baptized, Sérgio, told us that now he will help us teach the son of the family that isn´t baptized yet. He said, "I want to baptize him!" We invited him to hear the messages and he ACCEPTED! We are going back to their house tonight to teach him for the first time! I am so happy to see all these blessings falling from the sky! There is also their neighbor who we are teaching who told us that he LOVES the Church and that he will be baptized this month of August and then we can baptize the rest of his family! He has a wife and 6 kids!!! Life really doesn´t get any better than this :) I left my family for two years to help others be together for eternity. This couple is now preparing to be sealed next year and I am so tempted to extend my mission two more months just to see it. If only it were possible.

I love the mission and I am learning so many great and wonderful things. And I love my family so much too :)

Elder Clark