Week 80

One night this week we got a call from one of our district leaders in
the zone at about 22h30 and he told us that he was coming out of a
super powerful and long lesson that they had just finished up to
convince one of their investigators to be baptized.  This kid is
really stubborn and so since he had made up his mind he wanted to go
and be baptized that night!  So if we were going to do that we would
have been having a baptism at about 1pm which would have been pretty
cool but would wreck us for the rest of the weekend in getting all
that we had planned done.  Thankfully we were able to get him to
accept to wait for the next day since it was going to be really
difficult to even get together with the lack of public transport
possibilites at that time of night.  Anyways it was just kind of
exciting to almost have a midnight baptism, but in the end he did get
baptized the next afternoon.

Our bishop here, who seems to be doing a wonderful job, has scheduled
weekly meetings with us so that we can go over the ward list slowly
together with the three sets of missionaries that we have here in the
ward and be able to visit all of the members this year to see who
really lives here and who does not.  We have to get to him every week
the status of at least 5 unknown members which may seem like not very
much but is a challenge because we have to try to pass by several
times before we find someone home or a neighbor who is home that
actually can give us some decently reliable information.  It has been
something that has been a challenge for us and a work that I really
enjoy doing.  I feel like it is what Christ would want to do for us to
go after the one that is lost. I have actually had a lot of success in
doing this work in my mission so far.  I started doing this in the
azores and we were able to make a real difference in knowing which
members had any potential in coming back, in cacem we baptized several
people and completed a couple of families that were incomplete still
and reactivated them, and now here we are getting back into the same
results.  We have a family that we found that has 5 children  3 of
which are all about 18-21 years old and they are not baptized.  The
mother wants to be active in the church again and just about a year
ago she was active enough to go to the temple in Spain and do
baptisms.  It blows me away that nobody has done anything to get this
sister back yet.   How is it that she could be someone that was
progressing so well and then she just got swept under the carpet when
she stopped coming to church again? And how is it that nobody ever
asked her about her family and found out that she has a huge one that
wants and needs to be baptized still!  We are going to get working
with them so that we can bring them all back and get them on the path
to having an eternal family.

As for the Family from Ecuador, yeah the speak spanish and a bit of
portuguese.  they understand portuguese better then they can speak
Because they always are mixing in Spanish words.  But even when they
are speaking Spanish we are able to follow the conversation and we are
able to keep going with them it is just a little tiring and we are not
getting exactly everything.  But they are two very similar languages.
We gave it our all to get them to accept baptism soon for the two
boys, but they just really are not budging on the date that they want.
they have some reason that they have chosen May and that is when they
want to have the boys baptism.  We had to fight to get just down to
that Because they started out with waiting for about 5 years then 3
then 1 then 6 months and eventually they said it would be in may.
Hopefully we can get them to keep going and coming to church so that
when May comes around they can have their boys be baptized. But there
is not too much more that we will do with them in this moment because
they are just not willing to budge on this one even after the spirit
being really strong with us for over an hour of softening them up and
explaining the true purpose of baptism.

 Caro Presidente,
Diligencia e repetição são os princípios de crescimento que estou a
praticar e como estou a ver os resultados pouco a pouco.

Tivemos uma experiência bela na zona esta semana para ver Povoa B agir
com muito fé para conseguir marchar um pesquisador e batiza-lo na dia
seguinte, seria no mesmo dia se não fosse marcado as 22h20 naquele
dia.  Ficamos muito feliz para ver os missionários a fazerem coias
assim. Infelizmente também tivemos various quedas e vamos trabalhar
para que todos eles possam ainda ser batizado em breve.

Temos metas para ajudar nossa zona perceber mais a maneira em que
devem estar a coordenar a trabalho com a liderança da ala.  Pensamos
que se esta ligação for mais forte teríamos união e mais resultados
por causa de nossos esforços.  Queremos verificar que a zona está a
comunicar-se bem com os lideres locais para que possam ter sucesso e
perceber bem como comunicar-se para toda a vida.

We also are having some success with a couple brothers from angola.
they are making progress and one of them atleast has never been
baptized before and has a desire to be baptized so we will not even
have to help him understand that any previous baptism is not valid.
that always makes things a lot easier and hopefully we will capitalize
on that shortly.

One recent convert that we have here has been passing through some
difficult times as she makes the adjustments to being a member and she
for a bit was starting to go a little inactive. But this week we were
able to go back and get her back into the scriptures and then to talk
with bishop and to take the sacrament once again after having missed
it for about a month.  It is awesome to see here testimony grow about
the scriptures and the sacrament and doing all the small things so
that she keeps the spirit with her.  Definitely is amazing for me to
see the differences that this makes in here life as we can feel the
differences in the spirit as we are working with her.  We knew when
she was reading and when she wasent before we ever asked her.  It is
just so important and the spirit makes our lives just so much better.
Why not let our light shine forth?

Have a wonderful week.

Com Amor
Elder Hobson