Hand of the Lord is guiding us

''Portugal is just old people with old stuff living in old buildings.'' -Unknown

 

This week was good. We had a lot of work that we did, and we did it. It was great seeing the hand of the Lord as he has guided us here in Portugal. 

 

The importance of Members: We have been working a lot with the members recently. I was reading in Preach My Gospel this week during personal study and I read the following sentence. I think that I may have been eating cereal while I was reading. In Preach My Gospel it says ''more people are baptized and remain active in the church''. I choked on my corn flakes and chocolocos. This part really hit me. Our purpose as missionaries is to ''teach repentance and baptize converts'' and I thought to myself as I was cleaning up the corn flakes that had spilled on my desk that that would probably be the best way to fulfill that purpose. 

Here in Europe the area presidency has made a card that has three basic goals that members should do to grow in the gospel. They are

3. Find an ancestor,

2. Become Self-Sufficient temporally and spiritually and

1. Bring a Friend to Church.

As missionaries we can help a ton with bringing friends to church. We decided to bring the card with us to the members and make goals to help the members bring their friends to church. It has helped the members grow in the testimony and feel more of the spirit. Also it has helped us eat more in their houses, so it's really a win win for all. 

 

Augusto: He was baptized. He didn't smoke at all since the day he left it behind. The only trial of his faith was the baptismal suit that we had in the church. All the others were being washed because of the last baptism that happened so we only had one left that was in his size, the only problem was that it was all ripped and the zipper was broken. We had to run home and back to the church to get white pants and a shirt that he could wear. Augusto being a very large man and most of the missionaries being very skinny and scrawny the shirts they had didn't work very well. I had a shirt that fit him which goes to show where my body size is at. It is going to take a long time to get back in shape after the mission.