Yesterday When I Saw them Come to Church I Just Felt So Happy!

How was your week?

It was really good. We found a lot of new people to teach. 

Any baptisms this week?

No we didn´t, but we´ve got at least one marked for next week!

How's the new companionship?

It´s going really well.   

Tell us more about your companion?

Hmmm, well he´s a really positive guy. He´s got a ton of energy. He´s the kind of friend you want when you need someone to pick you up when you´re down. Like last week when we had no one that came to church with us, I was ticked and just a little down and he was still pumped up and pickin me up. A great guy. 

Hi Family!

We had a great week this week. We had 9 investigators with us at church! We´re entering the marriage papers for Anderson and Angelica for sure this Friday. It´s marked and all of the papers are ready to go. They´ll be married in what will probably be my last weekend here. We´re setting the marriage and baptismal date for August 3rd. They were at church with us with their two kids. We went there last night and read A Proclamacao ao Mundo [Proclamation to the World] with them last night and talked about family relationships.

So this past week we worked in a city called Itaára again. I have heard that there are a lot of members there who are ready to come back to church, they just don´t know where to start. It´s a large city, with a lot of dirt roads and trees and large spaces where there are no houses. We were walking a long ways, literally lost in the trees, and came up to a house that looked familiar (I´d never seen this house in my life though) and we knocked there. There was a couple in there that were ready to come back to church! We just taught them a quick little lesson and left. They´re an older couple, who´ve been away from the church for a long time. He works for Herbal Life, so travels quite a bit. Yesterday when I saw them come into church I just felt so happy! The Bishop already interviewed him to get him ready for the priesthood. The woman, Alda, told the other sisters in the ward that they were just at home and two angels knocked on their door. How prepared can someone be to come back to church? We never know that´s why we have to “SEE MEN AS THEY CAN BECOME AS ACTIVE MEMBERS IN THE CHURCH, NOT AS THEY ARE”. I loved when President Monson said that. The man´s name is Arlindo. In the BYU transmission last week President Packer said that reactivating is as important as baptizing now. The faster we can get priesthood with these men, the quicker the work will advance here.

We had zone conference with President Parrela this week. He interviewed all of the missionaries in my zone the day before. My interview was for about an hour. I really like him! He´s a great guy, and has an awesome vision for the mission. He served in the Porto Alegre mission and his wife served in Sao Paulo Sul. We talked a lot about planning things out in our lives. How we need to set goals, and then do everything possible to achieve our goals. I think he´s going to move me during this transfer. I was the first interview he´s done during the whole mission

We´re still having a lot of success in the area and the members are loving us. We received a lot of references this last week, and a member called me like 2 minutes ago with two more references close to his house.  

We´re going to baptize the rest of the kids in the family of 10 this week. We´ve baptized 4 a few weeks ago, and this Saturday I hope we can baptize the other three kids. The mom wants them to be baptized, and she´s trying to get her husband to marry her so she can be baptized too.

I´ll send more information on that next week. I attached a pic of us playing basketball last week with some of the young me. WORKOUT. My legs are killing me! 

My testimony is growing stronger each day with all of my studying and the experiences that I´m having. I know that this church is true, and was created and organized to save families. I love this gospel.

I love you all very much, have a great week!.

Elder Shepherd