Time flies

Wow! It´s hard to describe the feeling I have being on the last week of my mission. I can´t believe I made it. Today is the last day that I will be able to write on my blog or send emails on the mission. The mission really has been wonderful. I was blessed in many ways that I couldn´t have even imagined. I feel that I was able to strengthen my relationship with my Heavenly Father and have a better idea of what my true purpose is in life. I learned that we don´t have to like everything but we can love everything, and by loving we can learn to like things or people we never liked before. I learned that we should always put others before ourselves because we all mikstakes and will always need help from others. Life is all about loving and helping one another. Without love there is no purpose to life. It´s incredible how love always helped me to get through any challenge on my mission. I also learned that the things of God will give us more joy and happiness than the things of the world. This last Christmas I felt super blessed by my Heavenly Father. It was the only Christmas where I hadn´t won any presents but at the same time it was the happiest Chistmas I had ever had. I spent the day simply sharing the gospel of the Jesus Christ with those in need. On this day we visited a couple that we´re helping to get married. The husband is a member but has been less active. The wife is not a member but has known the church for 10 years and has been taught by missionaries 6 times. I remeber a part of the lesson with them when she told us about a difficulty she has had in following the gospel and right at the moment that she explained that difficulty to us, an idea came into my mind of exactly what I needed to say to her, and I´m sure it was the Holy Ghost. I responded to her and I could see that the spirit had touched her. Then she told me, " For 10 years I´ve been taught by the missionaries and I never had the desire to get baptized. But I´m sure that when God was choosing his missionaries, you were among the best of them, because through you I can feel the love of my savior Jesus Christ. No one cared for me as much as you have. Because of that you can be certain that I am going to get married and I´m going to get baptized as soon as possible." At that moment I could feel a great love from God and I was happy that at that moment I could be an instrument in God´s hands so that someone might be touched by the spirit enought to have the desire to repent and be baptized. That was the best Christmas I have ever had. The best things are the hardest. On the mission I went though many trials and my faith was tested. Even though the gospel can be hard, I know it is true. I know because I´ve seen incredible blessings and miracles happen in my life and in the life of those who follow the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know the gospel is true because I can feel the Holy Ghost. I know that the Book of Mormon is true, without a doubt. During the hard times, the Book of Mormon is what kept me strong. Follow the path of Jesus and never leave it. Siga o caminho de Jesus Cristo e nunca se afaste dele por que sei que é o único caminho que leva a vida eterna. I know that God is real and that his son Jesus Christ lives. I´m grateful for having been able to be apart of his army. I hope that I can continue to serve him for the rest of my life. See you all soon! Até Logo!

Baptism

Baptism

Wonderful!

Hello! 

So I´m in a city called Cachoeirinha now. It´s close to Porto Alegre. I live in a new apartment and the chapel here is 3 stories tall, and is in the middle of a poor neighborhood. It´s pretty great here. Yesterday I was privileged to baptize 2 people. It was a miracle! We really can´t do this work alone. Only with God´s help are we able to do anything. 2 weeks ago we were knocking doors in a very poor area with dirt roads. They call the neighborhood antenas, because all the houses are underneath these big electric antenas.(You know those big electric structures to transport electricity from state to state) Anyway, we were knocking/ clapping doors there and we encountered an old man who lives alone in a wooden shack and he told us to come back another day because he didn´t have time. A few days later we went back to find him sitting outside his house with a dozen beer cans laying on the ground around him, and he had one beer can which he was drinking from. He told us that it would be better for us to come back another day because he was drunk, but I insisted that we share a message with him anyway. He let us in and really payed attention to our message. We invited him to go to church and he said he would go. We planned to go by his house the next morning to go to church together with him. Sunday morning we were on our way to his neighborhood and when we got close we saw him riding down the road on a bike and dressed in a suit. He smiled, waved, and yelled that we were late and that he was already on his way to go to church. Sure enough by the time we went to go pick up a few more people and go back to the church, he was already there waiting for us. Luckily there is a member in our ward who is old friends with this man. He loved the church. After the meetings I took him and his friend over to the baptismal font. We talked a little about how cool baptism is and I asked him, Will you prepare to be baptized next Sunday? He accepted! Every day during that week he road his bike to the chapel in the afternoon so we could teach him together with his old friend. Sunday when he got home from church he already threw away all of the beer he had in his house before we even taught him about the word of wisdom. Then after we taught him about the word of wisdom on the Wednesday, he already gave away all the cofee he had that same day. Yesterday he was baptized. It was a very special experience, but complicated at the same time. For a few days our city has been without water. Sooooo... We were able to fill up the baptismal font until just about knee level. Luckily there was actually water in the system but it came out really slow. During the priesthood class my companion and the ward mission leader had the idea to use the emergency fire hose. I had know idea that they did that. By the time the meetings were done they told me that they had solved the problem about the water. When I saw the water it was a bit taller, but green and freezing cold. Luckily both of our investigators had asked me to baptize them. Woohoo, Só vai! (Just go!) The lady who was baptized almost fainted from the fear of cold water. The man who was baptized said that he couldn´t even feel the coldness of the water. I am so grateful to be apart of the lord´s work. It really is the best work that exists. God´s elects are waiting in all parts of the world for our help. Many people want to and are willing to change they just don´t know how to change. They are simply waiting for our invite. You can be a tool in the Lord´s hand anyday you want and see the miracles happen. I´m so grateful to be here. P.S. Sorry about my english.

Compromisso

Well, I got good news and I got some bad news. I guess I´ll leave the good news for last just how we always eat dessert after the meal and not before. So the bad news is that we had to stop teaching 2 couples. One lady we had been teaching for over 3 months. She even got married to be able to be baptized. But when she was interviewed to be baptized she said she didn´t believe in God and didn´t know if she wanted to be baptized. She told us that her life had just gotten worse since we started visiting her. So here´s the funny part. God promises us that our life will get better when we follow the gospel. But we can´t expect the blessings to come before our obedience to His commandments. The answers, the signs, and the blessings will come after the trial of our faith. This lady we were teaching only went to church 1 time, almost never read the book of mormon or the bible, and did not pray. After her baptismal interview I realized how much time we had wasted teaching her. Our purpose is to invite people to come unto Christ, and if people don´t accept that invite we have no purpose in helping that person. We love to help people, and we can help them if we have a purpose. Basically this lady always told us that she never received an answer from God and never saw blessings in her life come from God. We are blessed in so many ways if we but open our eyes to see. If someone hands me a chocolate bar and I complain why there´s wrapping around it, well, I need to change my point of view. The other couple we stopped visiting was because of the cigarette. What a thing of the devil. We have been teaching this couple for about 3 months and they were also married so they could get baptized. The problem was that the wife couldn´t get rid of the cigarettes. She was able to keep from smoking for one day and even smoked less for a few days. But a week ago she fell back into her old habit of smoking about 10 cigarettes a day. After 2 fasts, a priesthood blessings, 6 visits at the church, we could see that she did not want to give up the cigarette anymore. A few years ago when she didn´t have any cigarettes to smoke she cut open her wrists with a razor blade. Without the cigarette she said she gets super stressed and abuses everyone around her. She´s addicted. It´s interesting how all people who are addicted to something ,and don´t want to stop, will act very similarly. They will always tell you that they will stop sometime in the future. They don´t want to stop today or even tomorrow. They will always have an excuse and say that God understands. They will say that they need that thing to be happy or to be normal. These are thoughts and lies that the devil puts into our minds. God is our Heavenly Father and loves us perfectly. He will not want us to continue in our sins or be captive to the devil through an addiction. He wants to help us to change now and not tomorrow. God wants us to always be happy. A sin is a sin and we can not make excuses. The only way to clean a sin is through repentance. And excuse will not do you any good. If you have any kind of addiction, stop today. Do not wait until tomorrow. God is ready to forgive you and help you to start again. I love the movie Ephraim´s rescue in which Brigham Young asks who would be able to cross the plains to save the saints who were stuck in the plains in the middle of winter. Many people said they could be ready in a few days or weeks. Ephraim told Brigham that he was ready now. If you have something to do or change, do it as soon as possible. Don´t create large to do lists of things you´ll probably never do. Don´t let your goals be forgotten or just stay on the paper. Do what you need to do and do it now. We have a commitment with God to keep. 

So I guess I should tell the good news. Yesterday we met the daughter of a member of our ward. This lady is about 50 years old and stays in a wheel chair. Many years ago she used to go to our church and she loved it but she was never baptized becaus a short time after she began going to our church she got a sickness in which her spine stopped working. she stopped having any strength or force in her arms or her legs. A few years later her husband left her and her sons didn´t want to take care of her. She had to hire people to take care of her. She entered a very sad stage of her life and she couldn´t understand why God had done this to her. She´s had this sickness for over 10 years now and during that time she didn´t accept visits from the missionaries and only went to church a couple times, but she knew that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was true. She really missed going to church. She said she loved the church. Her favorite hymn is Count your many blessings. We sang it for her. As we sang she began to sing with us the parts she remembered and cried. We left a message for her and assured her that God has great plans in store for her still and that if she wants she can still receive many blessings and have happiness in her life. She accepted to start reading the Book of Mormon again, stop drinking coffee, and get ready to be baptized. She then asked us to give her a priesthood blessing, which we gave her. She was so happy that we came and thanked us for coming. After this experience I realized how blessed I am. I have legs to be able to walk and go to church, and go to the temple, and to serve. Many times we don´t take advantage of the time and things we have. It´s very natural to just complain and want more. But to have a happy life we don´t need a lot. In this lady I could see a sincere desire to follow Christ, a commitment. For her to go to church and to be baptized it won´t be easy, but we´ll find a way. Christ opens the way for anyone who wants to follow him. I know that Christ is our redeemer. I know that this is His church. The Book of Mormon is true. I´m so glad to be here. 

Elder Ritter.

Trying not to get trunky

      Mission life really is great. It´s also kind of confusing. I don´t know how everything seems to go wrong and right at the same time. I´m always completely exhuasted but full of energy. I get sad but am always happy. I miss music and movies, but I don´t really want them. The greatest joy for me is to see the difference the gospel does in the life of another person. God has been preparing so many people for us to teach. Yesterday one of our investigators received the Holy Ghost. He was baptized the sunday before. I met him one day when I was on the road with a young man from our ward and this guy stopped in a car right next to us with loud rap music and tons of red bull cans. He asked if he could give us a ride. I accepted, but the young man was kind of scared. He took us to where we were going to do some visits and invited us go to his house and teach him because he´s wanting to change his life. We went to his house a few days later and had a great lesson with him. He accepted the date. After about a week of teaching him he had to go to the hospital because of a bipolar breakdown he had. He stayed in the hospital for a couple weeks and then we went back to visit him. He was super happy to get baptized.

       Friday we had a visit from Elder Anderson. I got confused a lot because I don´t remember having an Elder Anderson in our mission. When people say the name with a brazilian accent it just doesn´t sound the same. But no, it was THAT Elder Anderson. It was pretty good. I shook his hand. I told us that we baptize a lot but we need to have better retention and help reactivate members of the church. There´s a very popular phrase on our mission which is (Só Batiza!) which means (Just Baptize!) But I thought his training was really good. We´re going to work better to have more quality baptisms and reactivate less actives. I really have seen the it isn´t worth it if a person a baptized and afterwards doesn´t keep the convenant. It´s actually worse. The person needs to be willing to keep the commandments to be able to accept this serious convenant with God. Elder Anderson said we need to baptize more and especially young men because at the rate we´re going it´s going to take a long time to baptize Brazil. But with God´s help I think we can do it. I bet if we put all of the missionaries in the world in Brazil we might be able to baptize every citizen here in about 10 years. The people here have great faith and a sincere desire to do good. 

        So I have only 4 months on my mission. But the nice thing about missionary work is that it really doesn´t let you think about anything else. I´m addicted. I live and breath this stuff. If someone started using this stuff it would probably take 2 years to have a full recovery and get off the addiction. If you´re not sure about serving a mission, SERVE a mission. It´s the best thing you could ever do in your life. I have never gotten so cold, hot, tired, sad, frustrated, uncomftorable, and stressed, BUT, it´s all totally worth it because I´ve also never been so happy or felt the spirit so much, or learned so much. God gave me a brick of gold covered in mud. I shouldn´t complain just because it has mud on it. Anyway see you all later. Tchau.

Baptisms

     So I think it´s been awhile since I last wrote in my blog. I´ve been in a city called Esteio. The Lord has a lot of work to be done in this city, and He has been showing my companion and I a lot of His children that have been waiting to be baptized. Over the past 2 months my companion and I have had the privlege of baptizing 10 people. Each one has been a very special experience and a lot of work. We had to pray and fast a lot because the Lord really played the biggest part in bringing these people repentance. We as missionaries just took advanteges to follow the spirit and invite them to come unto Christ. I really think that the hardest part of the mission is not following the spirit, but being worthy of the spirit. When we´re worthy to teach by the power of the Holy Ghost every thing else goes well and becomes a lot easier. So miracles happened this week like they always do every week. One of them was pretty intense. Good thing it was intense because I was kind of needing to wake up a bit because I was tired. Anyway we were walking back home after the baptism going to lunch at a house that was pretty far from our house. I was carrying my back pack on my back, a violin, and a black trash bag with all of my companion´s wet baptism clothes. We then approached an area that had a pile of trash( or a pile of reusable materials as some people call it) and on the other side were 3 big dogs eating left over fod from the trash. When I passed by the dogs they immediately got super angry and started barking and showing their teeth. One of the dogs was a pitbull. I don´t know why they were mad but it all just happened super fast. I used the bag of clothes I had and dangled it in front of me and the 3 dogs came up and bit the bag. I kind of played tug of war with one of them. Keeping my front to them I backed away and luckily before another one came after me the owner came outside and called them into her yard behind the gate. I walked away with just a hole in the bag of clothes. I apologized to my companion about the whole. I´m glad he forgave me. 

      After lucnh one day my companion got a call from a member asking us to go to a Pizzaria with him. He said that we could go in a group and get a discount and each one of us would only have to pay 15 reais to get in. A pizzaria the most expensive place you could go to eat at in this city. You sit down and they bring all kinds of pizza to your table and you can eat as much as you want. No limits. They even bring you dessert pizza. And all the pizza comes fresh out of the oven. Normally it´s 30 reais. We went to the pizzaria with him and in the end he ended up paying for everything and didn´t let us help pay for the admission. He is the best! Food had been really rough for the first part of the week because we didn´t have a fridge. I was eating lots of ramen and noodles and crackers. Pizza was so good!

     Lately I have decided to be more focused on the mission than I already had been. Learning to direct all of your passions, interests, and thoughts to the Lord and His work really does make a differene. I can´t have one foot on the mission and one foot at home. The mission has helped me so much to find happiness in the simple things. something I like to ask myself is: When you´re alone and tired and stressed what do you think about or do? If we can do what´s right when know one´s looking or no one really expects it then we can change our nature, the way we live. As children of God we can really achieve a lot more than we think. Don´t let yourself get weighed down by anything of the world. Have a purpose, have a goal, and do everything you can to work towards it. I really do believe that we can trust in the Lord. If we do His will He will bless us. Many times want to do things our way but we´ll really only be shorting ourselves. We have to do things the Lord´s way, there is no other option. Do not look for rest because the Lord will give it to you if you only do what He asks. I´m so grateful for the Lord´s mercy and love, I feel it every day. I know that this Church is true. I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. It has an incredible power of converting people unto Christ. Apesar das dificuldades, sou muito grato por estar na missão por que sei que tudo valerá apena no fim. ( even though there´s difficulties, I´m grateful to be here on the mission because I know it will all be worth it in the end.) Tchau.