Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Elder Searle's letter week 3


Oi cada um!

This week has been good! A little bit of a whirlwind, but good. Before Sunday, I was thinking about how monotonous every day was getting. Then on Sunday, Elder Silfies and I were assigned as leaders of our Zone and our schedule has become a ton more busy! We get to plan Sacrament Meeting for our Branch and conduct various meetings. We conducted the devotional on Tuesday and that went well!

The São Paulo Temple is closed for a little bit, so we have been going to Campinas! It's a fairly large and very beautiful Temple. We went there this morning for the second time and it was so wonderful! I'm taking lots of pictures for you guys. I'm going to miss going to the Temple when I'm in the field.

I should explain this because I wasn't very clear before, but our "investigators" here in the CTM are actually members of the church who we practice teaching on. They set up rooms with furniture to make the lessons feel more real and we treat them as such, but sadly I will not teach lessons to an actual investigator for 3 more weeks. But guess what! Our district goes street-contacting for the first time on Friday!! I'm super pumped. We each get 4 copies of the Book of Mormon to place and don't return to the CTM until they're all placed. They take us out to the middle of the city to do it. I'll let you know how it goes!

Another reason our schedule is busy is because we picked up another investigator (Joe) so we usually teach 2-3 lessons a day! Not gonna lie, preparing to teach sometimes stresses me out. But when we actually begin teaching, I feel so much peace. Our lessons are improving too because the Lord is helping us learn Português and we're getting better at listening to the spirit during the lesson.

Other than that, it's been a pretty normal week! If there is such a thing. It's crazy that I'm halfway through my time at the CTM. You'll never guess who's nametag/district info I saw this morning! :) Unfortunately, it was only the nametag and not the man himself. Brigham will be in my Zone and Branch!! I'm super excited because that means we will see each other a lot! His schedule is different today because he just got here, but I will see him tonight I'm sure. 

The language is still coming along! Elder Silfies and I only speak English now on Pday before 5pm and during specific meetings on Sunday. I'm starting to think in Português all the time which is good. The Lord has surely been helping me a lot during these 3 weeks.

During the devotional on Tuesday I had a really spiritual experience! I tried listening to it without headphones for english translation. The speaker asked us lots of questions and had people in the audience answer. One of the questions was "When do we need the ateonement in our lives?" No one was answering. He turned and looked right at me and said "You, what do you tink?" And I was able to answer him! I said "Sempre," which means both always and forever in Português. And I was able to also tell him how all people have problems and weaknesses that the Atonement can help with all the time! I'm glad I could understand him and answer him. 

I love you guys! I hope this week was good for everyone.

Com amor,
Elder Searle

Weekly steps: 53431
Weekly bites: 0

No comments:

Post a Comment