The Missionary's Delight

So, seeing lots of baptisms is definitely a missionary's delight, but seeing the church chock full of great people on Sunday is also just awesome! This week, we started working with a TON of less active people! We started hunting people down through member referrals and our member records. We found some SUPER cool people. People who used to be fantastic members but that for one reason or another slowly stopped coming to church and doing all those things that make such a difference in life. We can't blame them. The road we walk is difficult, but we all have to remember the remarkable blessings that await us along the road, but especially at the end of the journey. 

We got to church on Sunday after having little success in searching out our investigators to bring them to church with us. We walked in to find SO MANY PEOPLE AT CHURCH. The building was SUPER packed! It was so cool! Cooler still because some of these people I got to help get there. Everyone was super excited with it all, and we took advantage of the situation to mark several days to go visiting people with members. We also marked family home evenings, so we should have about three family home evenings this week! Too cool! Bishop was super excited about it all, as well as the new Ward Mission Leader that they called today. Lots of members want to help us out, so we'll going to get them going bringing friends to church and sharing the gospel with them! We want to help the ward build up and know that we can! It's so cool to see the progress that has been going on here. I truly love being a missionary and being able to directly help these people with their lives. Sometimes it feels like we don't make that much of a difference, but none of our efforts is ever in vain. We can make a difference! It has to start with ourselves and then work out to others. We must change ourselves and then work to change others. We start with one or two people and are gradually given chances to work with more and more people and expand our abilities as we work with more and more people and as our influence spreads to them all. God gives us chances to learn and grow! This is a large part of our purpose here on Earth. We were sent from the presence of God to get a physical body and then pass through difficulties so that we could become more like our Heavenly Father. We're meant to progress and develop ourselves! It's super cool to think about.

I know that Christ lives! He loves us and cares about us. He wants to help us! He wants to comfort us. We just have to let Him into our lives, doing what He asks us! Having faith in Him and showing that faith through our actions, including fixing the things that we do wrong through repentence. We have to be baptized and receive that Gift of the Holy Ghost to be clean and pure, to have a new life in Christ and to be able to start it all over again, to get a clean slate! We then need to stay strong and work hard to always be worthy of God's blessings so that we can one day return to His presence and live with Him forever in happiness and peace together with our families! I love this Gospel, Christ's true Gospel! I hope that everyone can apply these things into their lives and feel the beautiful music of the Gospel every single day!

Elder Ashford

More Pictures!

Another "Last One" Bites the Dust

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the last General Conference that I will be able to watch during this two year mission in Brazil! My fourth and last! It was super good! I'm sure that I wasn't the only missionary feeling more than a little trunky on Saturday with quite literally more than half the talks having been given specifically about marriage or directly stating that the topic at hand would prepare us for marriage. I don't know if it made it easier or harder for me to listen considering I have much less time left on my mission than most missionaries. Now, I officially have less than 100 days of missionary work left. I hit 600 days as of yesterday and someone told me that my group will leave with 700. Gosh darn it, trunky, contagious missionaries... I'll get refocused today though and work hard this week! The talk I really loved was from Elder Andersen of the 70. He talked about how lots of people learn the dance of the gospel and do it well, but how we all need to learn to hear the music and receive the joy from it all!

The pictures this week are actually all from last week. Last Monday, I had like no time to write anyone, as we took most of the morning up climbing a nearby mountain. SUPER FUN to go hiking again! I just felt super awkward in jeans and a t-shirt. Eck. I felt much better getting back into my white shirt and tie. The days beforehand were also super great! We had 4 baptisms that week!!! Alaide was baptized by herself on Sunday after church, and you can see here there with a bunch of the ladies and other members of the ward here! She is super special. She just had some doubts about getting baptized when we found her a few weeks ago. She has a friend who lives next door who is an active member and helped her out a ton. She overcame whatever fears she had, trusted in the Lord, and was baptized! It was also the only baptized here in Brazil where I actually got the water heater to work right, so I baptized in warm water! What the what, what, whatttttt! The other three baptized had happened the day before, on Saturday. There you can see Sérgio, who is the member who was asked to baptize some people, Marco and Regina, who had finally gotten married and baptized on the same day after visiting church for months! They are seriously great and have lots of faith. They have truly seen the difference that the Gospel can make in our lives! So cool! They are really special.

Last in the lineup of people-to-be-baptized is Tamires! She was a miracle. She was 8 and a half months pregnant when we found her. Her grandmother was taught in the past, so we tried to visit her and found Tamires as well! Tamires was super receptive and asked to be baptized right from the start! We'd explained in our first time there the importance of being baptized, and what benefits it would be. We explained how baptism would wipe away all her sins and would make her a new person. It would allow her to turn over a new leaf, a leaf that was focused on God and His son Jesus Christ. She really wanted that and insisted on being baptized and was content on doing it whenever, but she especially wanted it before her baby came. We got everything set up. The Bishop was a little worried about it all, but it was the most  perfect baptism I've ever seen. No squirming, no toes poking out of the water, just a perfect descent and coming out. So cool!!! She had tons of faith and really wants to follow God. We showed up at her house a few days after, and she'd gotten a tithing slip and wanted help filling it out so that she could start paying her tithing already!!! SOOO COOOOLLLL!!! We were truly blessed with that.

Things are going well here. I'm trying to improve myself always and be a better missionary, person, and follower of Christ! I love seeing that changes that have come from my mission and hope that I can keep up the things I've improved!! Things are challenging, but I know that Heavenly Father is preparing and qualifying me to do many other great things! I love everyone and hope that y'all have a great week!!!

Elder Ashford