Week #53– Concórdia – Episode #4 - Blessings on Blessings!

Safe to say this week was full of big time blessings.

Starting with Monday after pday... we visited a guy named Jacir whose wife and kids are all members except him. He has been going to church for a couple years but has always had something stopping him from being baptized. We visited him for the first time and we invited him to be baptized and he accepted! He will be baptized on Sept. 16. 

Tuesday we were able to give Tailon a baptismal date as well! He may be only ten but he reads the pamphlets we give him and basically teaches us about what he learned. He is a straight up stud and loves church. He also prayed and received an answer!

Wednesday we hit up a reference from our ward mission leader which was absolutely golden. It is a woman named Ana with her 2 kids Ruan (12) and Carlos (8). We taught them about eternal families and Ana got emotional. She told us that Carlos is a triplet but the other two passed away shortly after being born. We were able to promise Carlos that he will have two angels watching over him his entire life. They came to the activity on Friday and church on Sunday so we will try to put them on date this week! 

We have other investigators progressing as well! I am so excited for the work here in Concórdia. We were able to get 10 to church yesterday! This week is transfers and I really really hope we both stay. I know that the Lord has seen our hard work and has started blessing us.

Lastly: Farah, Junior, JP, Helena, and Gabriela from my last area will be baptized this Saturday!! They asked President if I could go and he said yes, so this weekend I will be making a come back to Floripa and I will baptize Gabriela! I´m so excited to see everyone!

That´s all for this week!  So crazy that I will be hitting my year mark!! Thank you all for the support!!

Sempre fica firme, forte e felizzzzzz!!!!!!😁

Elder Scheer

Week #52– Concórdia – Episode #4 - Just Keep Climbing!

Subject this week goes out to how extremely hilly it is here in Concórdia. Sometimes I look at a hill we are about to go up and just laugh because it really is so steep and long that it´s funny.  But these weeks are passing soooo fast.

This week we worked a lot with the group of investigators that we have. Igor and Patricia are finally making progress in the process of getting married so they can get baptized. Mafalda is a woman we have been teaching and this Sunday she walked to the chapel in the rain from about 3 miles away. John stopped making progress and didn´t go to church on Sunday so we visited him last night and told him about the pride cycle. Now that he´s doing better in life, he stopped going to church, reading, and praying. He said that he realized that he was being prideful and that we would humble himself and get back on the straight and narrow path that brings so much more happiness. Cauana´s parents still haven´t signed the baptism paper (I don´t know the right name for that in English) but we have a good feeling that this week they will but we shall see. 

2 really cool experiences:

On Thursday night we were almost home when we heard someone call us from the side of the road. We went over and it was a 19 year old kid. He told us he knew who we were because he had already talked to the missionaries before. He said that his sister found out that she has cancer and he wanted us to talk to her. He waited outside of his house until we passed by to go home! I feel so humbled to know that people see me as a person that can help in hard times. We still haven´t gotten to talk to his sister because she has been busy but he went to church on Sunday!

On Friday we were heading up to John´s house and we were running late so we were in a hurry. We passed by this lady and the Spirit told me so strongly to talk to her. I put the prompting to the side because of how late we were. But luckily Elder Nobre received the same prompting, stopped and turned around. The moment we started talking to her she started crying. We said we felt that we needed to talked to her and she said that she got the chills when we passed by. She told us that her husband left her and her son that day and was doubting her faith. We were able to comfort her and assure that God loves her. We will visit her again this week.

Funny story:

We were walking when a 10 year old kid yelled out to us hey what do you guys do? So we started talking to him and we went in to share a message. We invited his mom to listen. She said ´´I already know the church because my ex husband is Mormon but I just don´t want to waste your time because I know that what I do is a bad sin... I have a prostitution house. But feel free to teach my kids!´´ Elder Nobre and I just looked at each other like ???

But I really love you all and miss you all so much!! 

Sempre fica firme, forte e feliz!!

Elder Scheer

Sorry no pics :( this computer is being weird

Week #51– Concórdia – Episode #3 - T'was Another Great Week!

This week was one of the fastest weeks of my life.

Not a ton of news... but John and Monique are progressing super well. We taught them the Word of Wisdom this week and John was shocked when we said we don´t drink coffee haha. We explained the importance of the commandments and how Heavenly Father doesn´t give us commandments to restrict us but to help us be happy. Two days after we went over to see how he was doing and he was still drinking coffee. Elder Nobre being a spiritual giant once again, explained the importance of sacrifice. ´´If ye love me keep my commandments´´. Christ payed the ultimate sacrifice for us. The least we can do is show our love for Him and keep the commandments. He said that he would never drink coffee again.

This week we got a reference from Bishop for a man who left his church because he didn´t agree with it and started his own group in his garage of about 20 people. We taught him the restoration and invited him to pray. I´m really hoping he receives an answer because that would be 20 more people to teach!! haha so we will see. 

Funny story of the week:

When we were teaching John and Monique about the Word of Wisdom Irmão Antonio shared a story. He said ´´I have a friend who had a lot of problems with smoking. When his baptism day arrived, he came to the church with his cig pack in his pocket. He was changing into his baptism clothes and he started to think, am I really going to do this or am I going to keep smoking? He took the pack out of his pocket, threw it into the trashcan and said Get out of here Satan because I will never put a cigarette in my mouth again.´´ haha after he got baptized and never smoked again. Probably wasn´t that funny for you guys but the way he told the story it was hilarious.

Well I love you all, have a great week!

Also check out the new Mormon message

https://www.mormonchannel.org/watch/series/mormon-messages/whatsoever-he-saith

Sempre fica firme, forte e feliz!!

Elder Scheer 

Week #50 – Concórdia – Episode #2 - Batismos no lagoaaaa

Oi galera!!! I hope everyone had a great week.

This week was pretty crazy and stressful but it ended super well...

So in this area we cover another city called Irani which is super small but there is a branch there. There used to be missionaries there but now there aren´t. There is a member from my area that drives there every day for work so we caught a ride with him Tuesday to teach Ana and Luis who are two kids that weren´t baptized because their families were inactive for a little while.

On Tuesday we taught Ana and we were talking about a baptismal date. Her mom said that it had to be Sunday because her dad would only be in town for that day. So we spent every day going to Irani to teach her and Luis to be baptized on Sunday. 

The house that they use as a chapel doesn´t have a baptismal font so we got to baptize in the lake!!! Haha it´s winter here so it was pretty cold but it was a great experience. As I entered the water I was having some flashbacks to the wakey jakey days. 

This week we also taught John with his wife and 3 daughters. Their story is pretty rough... They moved from São Paulo to live with his mom while they save some money and find a house. While they were there, John ended up arguing with his step dad and got a knife pulled on him. So they had to move out and have been staying in what´s like a better homeless shelter. When we taught them about prophets, we told them that there was a prophet here on earth today to guide us. Elder Nobre, being the spiritual giant that he is, promised them that if they prayed asking if there really was a prophet here on the earth, they would receive an answer through the Spirit and they would find a cheap house to rent.

On Sunday when they showed up to church they told us that they had found a house!! Also John bore his testimony about how he received an answer through the Spirit! He is seriously the man. Sadly they have to get legally married to get baptized so we will be working on that. 

Also two other investigators; Igor and Kauana bore there testimonies in testimony meeting!

I know that like John, if we ask Heavenly Father a specific question He will respond to us through the Spirit!

I´m so thankful and happy to be doing this work! This week definitely had it´s difficulties, but we never have any reason to get down. I love you all!!

Sempre fica firme, forte e feliz!

Elder Scheer

For my Mamma Melinda "Mindy"

Baptism in the lake!