Jason's Letter:
Subject: Temple!
Hello Everybody!
Yeah! When one of our appointments fell through on Saturday because someone decided to spread some false rumors to one of our investigators, we met a lady named Vánia that was struggling to carry a box. Of course we offered to carry it to her home. She was quite grateful. When we arrived at her home, we were sure pleased to discover that she lives right next door to our Ward Mission Leader. We taught her a quick lesson and invited her to church. She said that she could only stay for Sacrament Meeting, but at church on Sunday, she was so touched by the meeting that she decided to stay for the other classes. Sunday night we taught her with our Ward Mission Leader, Jorge. He's been a member for 2 years now. In these two years his wife and children have all fallen away from the church. To our great joy, his wife said that she might as well start coming back to church if her neighbor was going to go too. During the lesson Vánia accepted a basptism date. We felt prompted to also teach the Word of Wisdom to help her get over any bad habits as quick as possible. She committed to never again drink coffee. It's really rewarding to teach people that the Lord has been preparing. Vánia has had a really hard life. We are so blessed in everything. I told my companion last night after our lesson with her that most of the people in our area need someone like my mom to be their friends.
Brother Jorge had never invited her to church before because she had just moved there. We've been having the most luck with people that just move in because our area has a unique situation. About 3 years ago, the missionaries here did an excelent job and baptised hundreds of people. Now think, if you were a Evangelical Pastor and all of a sudden half your congregation gets baptized in a different church, you probably wouldn't be too happy. Also because the stake had so much missionary success over the last 10 years, the ward has split 3 times, so we had the smallest geographic area in the mission (and I heard that our mission is the smallest excluding Temple Square). So, over the past 2 years, those that weren't baptized have been making frontal attacks on the church. Everytime we teach a lesson we can litterally see someone from a different denomination enter into the house the moment we get out of the house with intent to persuade that person to never listen to us again. Gratefully, we have an army of angels on our side (see Alma 13:24).
Saturday night we received an amazing miracle. All of our appointments fell through and it looked like no one would be at church the next day. Our plan B's and plan C's and plan D's didn't work either. It was 8:30pm and I told my companion that is was still possible for a miracle to happen and for us to find and teach a golden family in the last 30 minutes that would go to church the next day. We sat down on our "revelation bench" next to our favorite bakery. I pulled out our map to see if any revelation would come. My compainion said that he still needed to talk to 5 more people that night to reach his contact goal. The idea came to walk over the the limit of our area and knock a couple doors on our side of the road that divides our area from the assistents' area. On the third door we rang the doorbell, and without even presenting our selfs the man came to the gate. Halfway there he stopped and said, "Wait, I left the keys inside." He went in and got the keys and then invited us into their home. They turned of the TV and invited all their relatives that were visiting to come listen to us without our even asking. I love teaching when it really feels like the Spirit is guiding the conversation. At the end, the accepted all the invites and even gave us a ride home so we wouldn't get home late. It was even more miraculous that it sounds because I don't have time to type everything.
Lucky day today! I went to an endowment session in the temple for the first time in over a year! I had spent from June 2008 until April this year in São Vicente which is too far away to go to the church on Temple Day. On top of that, our allowable attendence was reduced from once every 6 weeks to once ever 3 months. While we were at the temple this morning we meet a lot of missionaries from the MTC, including several that will be coming to our mission here in a week.
Guess what! Ok, you will never guess so I'll tell you. I went to a Wal*Mart today. They just built one across the street from the temple. We bought American doughnuts and chocolate chip cookies from the bakery inside. :)
Well, goodbye for now!
Love you all!
--
Elder Jason Morgan Allred
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