Work

Hi, my name is Joshua Ritter. I am currently serving a full time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the Porto Alegre North mission. I was in the Provo, UT Missionary Training Center for 6 weeks and I arrived in Brazil 5 weeks ago. My purpose as a missionary here in Brazil is to invite others to come unto christ and receive the restored gospel of Jesus Christ by helping them to have faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repent, be baptized, receive the gift of the holy ghost, and endure to end. To help fullfill this work I am assigned a companion and we have missionary standards that we follow. I live in a small house with 3 other missionaries including my companion. Every morning we wake up at 6:30am, workout, study scriptures, plan for the day, and study Portuguese. I did not Portuguese before I left for the mission so that´s why I have to study it every morning. We go eat lunch with a member and then we walk around our area preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. We don´t yell in the streets or sell anything. We simply visit people in their houses and share the message of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If people receive this message and want to learn more we teach them more. As people receive our messages and accept commitments to pray about our message and go to church they have the opportunity to be baptized. Baptism is a wonderful ordinance which can be done by someone holding the Priesthood, which is the authority of God. After baptism they receive the gift of the Holy Ghost and make a covenant to always remeber Jesus Christ and His Atonement, and obey His commandments. Here in Porto Alegre the church is growing very quickly. Many people here have been waiting for the message want to follow the example of Jesus Christ into the waters of baptism. We work hard every day to help people follow Christ. Every day we finish teaching at 9:00pm. At this time we return to our house, eat dinner, plan, and go to bed. One of the marvelous parts of missionary work that I´ve seen is the opportunity we have to completely forget about our personal desires and pleasures, and love to serve other people. I feel this more and more everday as I serve God. Yesterday I was doind a division with another Elder and we were contacting people on the street. We found a man sitting at a bus stop with a backpack and some blankets. We introduced ourselves and asked him if he would like to hear a message about Jesus Christ. He told us that he had already been baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints when he was 14 years old. He hasn´t attended church in a long time. He lost his family and all his possessions. He has no where to sleep and nothing to eat. The other missionary I was with talked with him invited him to go to church again. Then I pulled out a book of mormon and asked if he had one. He said he had read it and loves the book of mormon, but he didn´t have one. So we sat down next to him and shared with him a scripture about humility. We left the Book of Mormon with him and said he is welcome to come to church and then we left. He told us that just before we had arrived there he had been praying for help from God and he said he received his answer.

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First Baptism

Yesterday I had my first baptism for the mission. It was a great experience! The man I baptized was very happy afterwards was excited to be a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day saints. Hopefully I will be able to baptize many more people. It´s wonderful to see the light of the gospel come into people´s lives. This week we met a lot of people who didn´t want our message because they said that they already know Christ and accept him as their savior. I studied this topic a lot and found that the answer is faith. Christ offers the gift of the atonement to everyone, but we also have to accept it. We accept the atonement by having faith in Jesus Christ. Those who do not exercise faith in Jesus Christ and simply accept him as their Savior do not know their Savior. Part of our purpose in life to come to know our Savior Jesus Christ. We do this by exercising faith in Him, repenting, and being baptized.

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Strength From God

There are so many wonderful things to do to help progress the work of God. I´m thankful for the opportunity I have to be apart of God´s work. It´s been amazing to see God help us in the work. Last Tuesday we had divisions and my companion told me about a wonderful experience he had with the other Elder. He met a man on the street who got really excited to see the missionaries. He grabbed my Elder´s planner from him and told him where he lived, his name, and when he wanted us to come visit him. So a couple days later we were walking down a street and a saw a man sitting on his car in front of his house and I told him we are missionaries and we have a special message about Jesus Christ. Before I could say anything more he had dropped the food he was holding and ran to open the fence for us and he started shaking my hand. We sat down on his sofa in front of his house and we had a wonderful conversation with him. I couldn´t understand most of what he was saying, but my companion told me he´s had a really rough life. However, I could understand that he has a strong desire to follow Christ and he´s been searching for the truth for a while. There are some people I´ve met on the mission so far that are strangely familiar and he is one of them. We talked with him for about an hour during which we shared the first lesson about the restoration and gave him a Book of Mormon. It wasn´t until after this visit that my companion told me that this was the same person he met on the street eariler, and then things made a lot more sense. We met with the same man a couple days later during which we taught the plan of salvation. Before the lesson we were privileged to meet his family. The mother told us she was very grateful that we were teaching her son. Later we told we were both from America. Right after we told her that. Shen ran into the kitchen and yelled at her daughters something like, "Did you hear that?! These two missionaries are from America!" After that one of the daughters came in to the room and started asking us questions like where we live and how late we can stay out. We made sure to quickly tell this family about some of the rules we have from the missionary handbook. I love the missionary handbook. The rules help us in so many ways. After our lesson this man gave us some free fruit and invited us to have shurraskoo with his family next Friday. Shurraskoo is delicous brazilian barbeque. Learning the language is not easy, but God has given me strength to do what I need to do. Yesterday was my first time bearing my testimony in front of Brazilian ward. I´m so thankful that the Holy Ghost helps me to know what to say. After that church meeting. The two investigators we have that went to church said they want to be baptized next sunday! Be grateful for the past and make the future awesome!

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Josh's district in the MTC.  He loved his district.  2 out of the nine received their Visas and went to Brazil.  The other 7 were reassigned.

Josh's first companion, Elder Burrus, at the Porto Alegre Temple the first Monday in Brazil.

Hurrah for Israel!

Miracles

I´ve been learning for a long time about what the gospel and how to live it. Many people have told me that as I live these things I will see miracles in my life. On my mission I am so privleged to see miracles everday. We find many people everday that are confused about life and have been waiting to hear our message. It´s wonderful experience to help them to see that life can be very simple and joyful by following the example of Jesus Christ. Part of following Christ is being baptized. There was one lady that we met in a park while we were walking to any appointment. I asked her if she had 5 minutes to hear a message about the baptism of Jesus Christ. We then taught the first lesson to her and she loved. She said everything made sense and that throughout the entire lesson she felt very good about it. She wants to be baptized on April 12th and she said she would go to general conference the next day with a friend. Sadly she wasn´t able to go to general conference because the location changed last minute. We also learned that she´s in the other elder´s area. I´m excited to see what will happen. Follow the rules of the gospel of Jesus Christ and you will see miracles.

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