WEEK 86 One of the Best

August 12, 2019

WEEK 86 One of the Best

August 12, 2019

Hey everyone! I'm back to writing. I realized how much I will be upset with myself for not writing these last couple of weeks. But the week was awesome!!

6 de Agosto, it was a pretty good day. We woke up and drove to our district meeting which always happens in Oeiras, we have a district of 10 now instead of 12, and our roomie Elder Goff is the district leader. He's unreal, absolutely a bud for life. Then after that the couple missionaries (The Marriotts) took 8 of us all out for lunch... it was unreal and we had Cod fish. After that, we got back home and prepared a training for the mission leadership conference which was to happen the following day, I'll talk more about that in the next day. We then went and taught one of our investigators, Ana Beatriz, at an amazing member's house. Family Cardoso helps us out so much. We taught a great lesson and Ana Beatriz is super close to being baptized. What then followed was great. We picked up our roomies, Elder Goff and Elder Ingram and went to go do some service for the temple. Before everything started we got to go through the temple, luckily it was my 2nd time even before the open house... it is just amazing in there and I really have been missing life without the temple. I won't say too much but the feelings were just so good. We then helped rearranging everything in the new church buildings built beside the temple before the open house which starts on August 10th! Gonna be unreal. The day ended with all of us getting Pizza, so that just rocked.

7 de Agosto, it was another awesome day, we had the mission leadership counsil and it was unreal to see so many of my good buddies from all around the mish. Presidente Fillmore really does know what he's doing, he is an inspired man. He's been teaching us a lot about how the Lord's plan is to influence and the devil's is to determine.. we can see that all throughout the scriptures and Presidente Fillmore tries his best to run the mission through influencing and through the prophets' teachings. It's worked really well as I can't come to think of a legit straight up rebel missionary in the mission. He talked about how "The church is the Atonement delivery system", and how we need to develope all of the Christ like attributes. In my weekly scripture I'll explain something else he taught. Sister Fillmore talked about the word NOVAR. in English it would be THINK - T(think) (H)elpful (I)nspiring (N)ecessary (K)ind. THINK. We wanted to stress the importance of thinking before speaking and realizing what we can do to control the way we handle situations and transport the Spirit to others. We also addressed issues and necessities of the mission. Elder de Lima and I had to give a training, as well as lead two debates. It went great, for the debates we did two different activities involving some groups and switching, and the other activity was done so that everyone would get one chance to speak. It was dope. In our training we gave 3 missionary situations of missionaries who were struggling with different issues. We had the Elders and Sisters respond on how the would help and they gave some amazing answers. We then talked about NOVAR or in other words THINK, using Preach my Gospel and some scriptures. We then gave the same 3 situations and asked would Jesus would to to help. It was really cool to see the answers everyone came up with, and I think it helped us all realize how we all need to treat situations. We then left 5 final situations with some questions on what Christ would do for everyone to write down and study as a companionship on another day. It was pretty sweet. We also had Subway for lunch. Basically what happened after that is we finished the leadership counsil which was just great. Then we drove some Zone Leaders (Elder Morris and Sales) to do a baptismal interview, while that happened we dropped a bus pass off to a different Elder, then we returned to get Elder Morris and Sales to take them to visit someone in the hospital. We then rushed off to go teach our weekly English class, which ended at 9:00pm and we rushed off to a member's home for dinner with our roomies Elder Goff and Elder Ingram. Crazy but fun day!!

Dia 8 de Agosto, it was one of the first real day we had to work in our area!! We passed by a bunch of the people we are teaching and Elder de Lima introduced himself to them, that went great. In the night we had a baptism of a young kid named Aílton. As I served with Elder Goff for 1 week in the area of Amadora, we taught and baptized 3 people, Aílton is the neighbor of Emely (the girl who can't speak)... so I left that area to return to Queluz but Elder Goff and his wonderful greeny, Elder Ingram, kept doing an amazing job of teaching and we had another baptism there, with at least two more coming up pretty soon. Just miricales.

Dia 9 de Agosto, in the weekly planning which took up a big chunk of time, we had lots of stuff to plan for our area and the mission. Basically after that we had some good time to go work in our area! We taught a lot of our investigators/friends and it was dope. We've been showing a video where the Apostles David Bednar and Ronald Razband give a tour of the inside of the Rome temple. It's really powerful and especially with the open house of the temple here in Lisbon going on people are interested in visiting. I'll try to include the link below.

Dia 10 de Agosto, basically it was our first complete day to work in the area together and we started workin away. We passed by and taught lots of people. But I'll just talk about the highlight of the day. So we have a few people who are really close to being baptized but we were talking about how we needed to find someone else who was ready. As we did that, the daughter of one of our investigators (Madalena) passed by us and asked if we wanted to go home and talk to her mom Madalena. We had passed by her the day before but we said "why not". We got in and we found the answer to what we needed. It turned out Madalena's granddaughter had been begging her to come visit our church. We had never actually thought of teaching the granddaughter, who is 9 years old, so I feel like that was God giving us a love tap on the face and saying "get to work". The granddaughter's name is Luana and she loved the Plan of Salvation. I feel like she will also help her Grandma Madalena decide to be baptized. We have taught Madalena EVERYTHING. She has already said she knows everything is true and that someday she'll be baptized. All she needs to do is choose the day. So we think Luana will help with that! God really does work miricales.

Dia 11 de Agosto, This could very well be if not the best, then very well one of the best days of my mission. Unreal. It started off by church in Queluz, Madalena and Luana arrived and it was awesome. Immediately after church, we went straight to my last area Santo André... wow it was amazing. 1hrs30 by car but we made it. It's cool cause I served there, and my companion, Elder de Lima, also served there. But here's why we went.... about 4 months ago I left Santo André, and right before I left we had the baptisms of our great friends Davino and Elena. We found their family knocking doors and wow, their growth was incredible. So that was super special, we went back because their daughter, Gessika, decided to be baptized. It was amazing to watch Davino (her dad) baptize her. One of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. We showed up in the branch and I got teary right away as everyone was so heppy to see me and my comp since we had both served there before. In the baptism I was asked to give a talk on the gift of the Holy Ghost, I even used the example of how that very gift lead me to their family! After that I sung Peace in Christ with my good friend, Joana Picanço, from the branch and then the baptism happened. It was amazing to watch Davino baptize Gessika. Gessika left the baptismal font and Davino just watched her leave while crying, then he came out hugged me and we just cried together. I ain't no crier, but the Spirit was so strong and as well as my bond with this family. We will be friends for life, and they are now preparing to be sealed in the temple. I hope to be there for that as well one day. After the baptism we just had a little party and it was so nice too be back in the branch and see people like Irma Germana, Irma Sinieid, Presidente Inacio, Irmão Gorge, and just everyone. I feel so at home there and I would say that Santo André has to be my favourite area for sure, as much as I really do love all my areas. After that, we drove to our mission President's house, talked about what will happen in the zone conferences and then he asked us to stay for dinner and the steak he made was unreal.

The Spirit during the baptism was something so strong that I can't even explain, it was probably the strongest feeling I've ever had! Everyone there was crying!

Challenge of the week: Watch and share this video with 3 people through a message.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/temples/rome-italy-temple-virtual-tour?lang=eng

Scripture of the week: Lucas 2:52 in the Bible

"And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man."

Jesus increased in

1. Wisdom

2. Stature

3. Favour of God

4. Favour of man

He needed to grow in all aspects, imagine if he didn't increase in favour of man... or if he didn't increase in wisdom... it wouldn't be complete.

Sometimes we need to look at ourselves and see if we're increasing in all the categories we need to, instead of focusing just on one. If you work really hard on patience but through that you forget to work on obedience, the scale becomes unbalanced. Pretty cool to think about.

Great week.

Elder out.

Mamba out.

parks.layton@missionary.org

The Costa Family! Davino baptized Gessika.