Week #62– Concórdia – Episode #13 - Mission Tour

Another great week in the mishhhh!

This week we had the opportunity to have a conference with President Mark Bassett who is the 2nd Counselor of the Brazil area presidency. We caught a bus at 2 a.m, got to the chapel in a city called Lages at 7 a.m and got back to Concordia at 8 p.m. Another 35 hours without sleep, but it was a good time. He spoke about sacrifice and obedience and it gave me the spiritual boost I was needing. I love Mosiah 15:7 that says that Christ´s will was ´´swallowed up´´ by the will of the Father. If we are able to have the same mentality, making our will the Lord´s will, we will be happy and successful in life.

Everything is going well with our investigators. Matheus is progressing really well and had no problem to stop drinking coffee. We visited Francinete and her two kids, they are really the sweetest family. They always make us so much food and pay so much attention to our lesson. They went to church on Sunday and enjoyed it! We have a bunch of other investigators that are really great people with potential, but they just don´t go to church! Brazilians are super relaxed and don´t like to commit themselves to things. Every Sunday we are expecting a solid 10 people and 3 or 4 show up. But that´s just part of life haha. We found some other families contacting this week so I´m pumped to visit them.

Also, Saturday night when we were walking home, a kid came up from behind and started talking to us. I recognized him but I didn´t remember from where. He reminded us that about 8 weeks ago when we contacted him, but then 2 drunk dudes came up to us and started talking so he walked away and told us he wants us to visit him and his family! He said he really wants to change and follow a church so I´m excited to teach him.

That´s pretty much all for this week! Love you all and shout out to Elder Judd for turning 20 this coming Sunday!!

Elder Scheer

President Bassett and his wife at Conference

Week #61– Concórdia – Episode #12 - Casamento + Baptismooooo!

What´s up everyone!?  This week was pretty good except almost everyone in the zone got sick. I just got a cold, but there´s something going around. The weather here is absolutely nuts. Tuesday and Wednesday I thought I was going to melt, Thursday and Friday rained, and now it´s cold haha. 

Anyway this week was Igor and Patricia´s wedding and baptism!! It went super well and I´m thankful that I could be a part of it. I got to baptize Patricia and it was a great experience. They were both glowing afterwards... pure joy.

There was a family at the wedding that is one of Igor´s friends. We were talking to them and they said they are from the church Assemblies of God. The wife said that her Uncle is a Pastor and that he said whenever she has a question, to ask the Mormon missionaries because they will know. But he also said ´´don´t let them manipulate you because they are really good at that´´ hahaha. We explained that we answer questions, but we always ask people to pray to know for themselves if we are teaching the truth. Hopefully we can start teaching them soon.

We also found a woman named Tereza. She was working in her bar and I was writing down the street name. She started to talk to us and we explained what we do and she got really interested in our message. We taught her the Restoration and she loved it so much. She was asking about our Prophet today and stuff and then she asked ´´how does another Prophet get chosen when he dies?´´ So then we explained about the Quorum of the 12 Apostles and how the President of the Quorum would be the next Prophet. She then said that God must choose His next Prophet by letting some Apostles live less and others live more. When she said that I was super impressed! haha.  We are excited to work with her and she really wants to go to church but couldn´t make it this Sunday.

We marked another baptism date for Ana, Ruan, and Carlos for Nov. 12th but they didn´t go to church again and I was pretty bummed...we still have a good group of people that I am excited to work with though! 

This week I was studying more about charity and I realized that the moment we put ourselves in front of others we lose charity. The moment we say ´´I can´t take it anymore´´ we don´t have charity. The moment we judge someone or are jealous of someone we don´t have charity. If we get irritated easily by something we don´t have charity. I realized why through the development of true charity, we will become so much more like Christ. I also understood why Moroni  taught that we must beg the Lord with all of our energy to help us have charity. It really isn´t easy, but like Elder Holland said this past conference, the Lord expects the most from us.

Love you all, have a fantastic week!!

Elder Scheer

Week #60– Concórdia – Episode #11 - Hakuna Matata

Life is pretty worry free to say the least. I am happy as always serving the Lord. The only BIG bummer is that the U.S didn´t qualify for the world cup so that is depressing. But I´ll be staying another transfer here in Concórdia with Elder Sanchez and I am pretty hyped because we are going to see a lot of fruits this transfer.

 It also rained every day this week which made things interesting but this time we had an umbrella. So this week was for sure a success. We had some great first lessons with new investigators and helped our current investigators to progress.

Matheus, who is one of our newer investigators accepted baptism for Nov. 11! He is 16 and he really is the man. He understands everything really well and is loving going to church.

Igor and Patricia are getting married and baptized this week so that will be awesome!

Thursday we had a Family home evening with Francinete. We took the Relief Society President with us and it went super well. We talked about why we have difficulties during this life and how we can overcome them. She went to church yesterday and loved it!!

On Saturday we didn´t have anyone to visit after 5pm so we went a neighborhood and just started talking to people on the street and clapping doors. One house we passed had the cutest little girl on the balcony so I said ``Oi´´ and she said “oi “ back. We stopped and asked if her parents were home and she ran inside and got her dad. Her dad told us to come on up and that his wife would be getting home from work any minute. They are seriously the nicest family ever! They are looking for a religion to follow because they aren´t really happy with the Catholic Church. Marcos and Janaína were definitely the miracle of the week. They said if they receive an answer, they will be baptized. 

That Saturday we didn´t have one person say no to us so it was an incredible day haha. And then Sunday we decided to go back to the same neighborhood because of the success we had Saturday and after about 2 and a half hours of contacting, not a single person said yes hahaha. That´s life though.

We are still trying to figure out when we can baptize Ana, Ruan, and Carlos because Ana is having serious health problems so please pray for her. If she doesn´t get better soon we will baptized Ruan and Carlos and then baptize her when she gets better.

Sending love from Brazil to you all!! Have a great week!

Elder Scheer

Week #59– Concórdia – Episode #10 - Francinete

It´s been another good week! I don´t have much time but I´d like to share the highlight of the week.

On Saturday morning I was looking through the area book trying to find an old investigator that a member had talked about when I came across the record of a women named Francinete. It said that this women had come running after the missionaries one day to talk to them. So I called her to see if we could visit her but no one answered. Later that day all of our appointments had fallen through. We didn´t know what to do but they the phone rang and it was Francinete asking if someone called. I told her that we are the missionaries and before I said anything she asked ´´Can you come visit us now?´´. And I told her that we were on the other side of the city so it would take a little bit but didn´t want them to wait, so she sent her husband to pick us up. When he pulled up he was just driving the cab of a semi truck hahaha. We climbed the ladder to get in and met him.  Anyway, Francinete told us that she´s been wanting to be baptized for 20 years but she can´t because she isn´t able to get a divorce from her ex-husband, therefore she can´t get legally married to her current husband. She said that after all this time she got discouraged and gave up,  but the fact that we showed up testified to her that God still loves her and that she needs to come back. This lady straight up loves the Church more than any member in this ward. She is so incredible. And her husband also loves the Church and really wants to be baptized.  I had always heard cool stories with the area book and thought I would never have one haha. But this Thursday we are going to take the Relief Society President and  the first counselor to have a Family Home Evening and try to get this divorce thing figured out as well.

Sorry for the short letter but I love you all! Have a great week! Transfer calls will be coming in this week so we will see what happens.

Elder Scheer

The District

Week #58– Concórdia – Episode #9 - Just Buy the Umbrella

First off, Happy late Birthday to my dad!!!! Hope you all had the opportunity to wish him a happy birthday because he deserves it!! Love you Dad.

Also super sad to hear about the shooting in Las Vegas.. hope everyone continues praying for the victims and their families.

This week was a great week! Starting with Monday night... we are teaching a mom and her son who have gone to church and really liked it but they don´t know how to read, so it has been a little bit harder to teach them and help them get a solid testimony. On Monday, I was like, we are going to teach them to read. So we went to their house and I have never been more wrong in my life. It was so much harder than I thought it could ever be. So I think we are going to help them go to a free school to learn how to read haha.

This week we had to opportunity to dedicate 3 houses. One of them was Ana, Ruan, and Carlos´ house. After we taught them on Wednesday, Ana told us that 3 nights in a row she had woken up feeling like she was being strangled by something and those same 3 nights Ruan had woke up on the ground. We decided to dedicate the house and it hasn´t happened since.

The highlight of the week was definitely General Conference.  One of my favorite talks was by Tad R. Callister. He talked about the Book of Mormon and how it can be the keystone of our testimonies. He said how clear it was that it truly is a divine book because it could not have been written by Joseph Smith. Not only is it clear logically, but it is clear spiritually because as we read it, the Spirit continually testifies to us that what we are reading really happened. I love the Book of Mormon so much. I do not have a perfect testimony, but what I do know 100% is that the Book of Mormon is a divine book that testifies of our Savior Jesus Christ. I know that if we read it and ponder it´s teachings, it will better our lives in every aspect.

Last night after conference, we went to find the house of a reference we got from a member. As we left the chapel it started to rain. We could not find her house and by the time we got close it started to pour. Of course we didn´t have an umbrella so we were getting soaked and our scriptures were as well. We didn´t know if we were going to be able to find the house and it was already late so we decided to go home.

Throughout the mission, I have gotten kind of frustrated with inactive members that have a testimony but simply don´t want to go to church for whatever reason and I have never understood why this happens. I was thinking about how me not wanting to buy an umbrella is like an inactive member not wanting to go back to church. My comp and I clearly know that if we buy an umbrella, it will help us a lot and we could´ve even found the house. But it´s that small sacrifice of buying an umbrella that gets us. Many inactive members know that the gospel is true and that there are so many blessings that await them, including an eternal family. But they don´t return because of the small sacrifice they have to make to change their life or step out of their comfort zone. It was the same thing with the Israelites in the desert. All they had to do was look to the serpent and they would be cured. The Lord gave us these examples in scripture so that we wouldn´t have to do the same thing. A small sacrifice is never an excuse to not follow our Savior Jesus Christ, for He sacrificed everything for us. Like an umbrella would do for us, the gospel protects us and brings happiness; but unlike an umbrella, the gospel can protect us from not only spiritual down pours but also spiritual hurricanes. ´´For behold, it is as easy to give heed to the words of Christ, which will point to you a straight course to eternal bliss, as it was for our fathers to give heed to this compass, which would point unto them a straight course to the promised land.´´ (Alma 37:44) Never let a small sacrifice, or a big sacrifice if you see it as such, put your eternal happiness at jeopardy along with the many generations to come after you.

Sorry for the long letter this week. I love and miss you all so much!

Elder Scheer

Makin' some cookies!