Monday, Aug 22nd 2011

Oí Família!!!

Can I just tell you that I am getting quite confused nowadays. I left Utah for sunny Brazil and I still feel like I am in Utah with this cold weather all the time!!! Oh well, I know that I am not here to enjoy the weather. So school has started once more? To tell you all the truth, it´s extremely wierd for me to think that this time of year has already begun. It´s almost surreal. I know that this year will be better than the last if we all remember to do the simple things everyday; reading the Book of Mormon, saying family and personal prayers, having family home evening on Monday night, going to Church every Sunday, and always trying to be like Christ. These are all the things that I wish I had learned how to do BEFORE the mission. I was talking with a brother from the ward last night about this stuff because his family is starting to get sluggish with coming to Church every Sunday. I told him that before the mission, I really slacked off when it came to this kind of stuff. If I missed one Sunday, I was all right. But now it is TOTALLY different. I KNOW just how important it is to be at Church EVERY single Sunday to take the Sacrament. It is the absolutely most important part of the week! I will only miss going to Church when I get home if I am on my death bed because I am litterally addicted.

Well, I did splits with the assistants this week. His name is Elder Fassini and let me tell you all that he is an amazing missionary. He has a bad reputation on the mission because he has a personality a little rough and thick headed, but he knows how to teach with the Spirit and how to ask the right questions to get the investigator thinking. I learned a lot with him and I am now working hard to be able to teach at his level and beyond (always gotta try to better, right?). We visited our only investigator that we were preparing for baptism. His name is Sidney and he is the husband of a member with two kids. The elders have been passing his house for YEARS and he had never accepted to be baptized because he just never felt the need. When we got there, we started with a great conversation and I looked at him straight in the eyes and asked, "Sidney, what do you think about becoming a member of the Church?" He started to think and said that he needed to know for sure that it was the right thing for him. I then challenged him to pray that night to ask Heavenly Father if his time to be baptized had arrived. The next day we went to his house to see how the prayer went. He said that something had touched his heart and that he had a dream. In this dream, Christ was standing in front of him and said, "So many people rejected me and continue to reject me... will you be another one?" I looked at Sidney and invited him to baptized that Sunday so that he could finally tell Christ that he accepted Him. He sat there in silence and it felt like an hour to me, but it was really just a few minutes. He looked up with a smile on his face and said, "All right, let´s do it!" I leaped up for joy, litterally, and gave him a huge hug right on the spot. He told his wife and she started to cry and the rest of his neighbors who are members also started to get really happy. I felt the Spirit SO strongly in that lesson and it was such a great experience for me. Then, at the baptism, his wife and two kids were there to take pictures with him and he asked me to baptize him. The testimonies were great, but the best was his wife´s testimony. She told him that she had been praying for seven years for this day to come and now that it had come, she was so eternally grateful. They had gone to the temple that afternoon before the baptism and they both knew that they would be sealed there as a family in a year from now. His wife told me thanks after the baptism and I told her that I would be following her family for the rest of my life. What a great chance I have to be a missionary. I left my family for two years to help other families become eternal. THIS IS THE LORD´S CHURCH. I KNOW IT! There isn´t anyone in this Universe that could make me deny what I know and feel everyday here on the mission. Families can be together forever.

Love,
Elder Clark