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.

Great Times

So recently I got sent to a city called Esteio. My companion is an american named Elder Barnum. He´s from Utah. Work here has been marvelous. The people here are very humble and acceptive. Since I got here we´ve baptized 2 people so far. One lady that we baptized had been taught by the missionaries since 2005. She been through a lot of difficulties and could never get baptized because of complications with her husband. She had been through a few abusive relationships with different husbands but was finally legally divorced. So we baptized her! She is very special and definitely strengthened my testimony. She seemed like a member of the church already. Because she wasn´t baptized she had been going to the catholic church for years and used manuals from our church and the book of mormon to teach classes at the catholic church. Maybe we should baptize her students. There´s another man we are preparing to be baptized this next Sunday. Saturday we did a fast with him to help him stop smoking, drinking beer, and drinking cafè, andddd conseguiu !(he did it!) Saturday night he went to work and didn´t get back home until 7:00 sunday morning. Church starts at 9:00am. It´s a good thing that he promised that he would go to church with us. So at about 8:15am Sunday morning we showed up at his house to take him to church. He was sleeping like a rock. His mom tried waking him up but couldn´t do it. So she told us that if we were able to wake him then he could go with us to church. After flipping the light switch and convincing him, he went to church! He even drove us there. 

One day we were talking to a guy on the road and for some reason I looked to my left and saw a drunk guy on a horse coming right at me. I dodged it just in time but the horse bumped against my companion. Luckily he didn´t fall or get hurt at all. The drunk guy got off his horse and started saying sorry over and over. He looked like Jack Spearow. Drunk breath stinks.

Saturday we went to a ward activity. Luckily some members brought some friends. References! One lady who came we had already taught one time and she asked me if I was the man who had those books. What books? I said. The book of Mormon? She said yeah, she wanted to read the book of mormon because she likes to read a lot. So I gave her a book of mormon, and 6 pamphlets, 1 pamphlet for every lesson. Then we gave her a lesson right there in the church in the middle of the activity. She accepted to be baptized next sunday. Then we marked an appointment for the next day at 3:00pm. When we got there she had already read 1 chapter in the book of mormon and all of the 6 pamphlets that I had given her. She doesn´t drink, smoke, do drugs, and has no husband or boy friend. Woohoooo! 

Another man we met at the activity accepted us to visit him the next day. We gave him the first lesson and they loved it. I think asked them if they´re going to be baptized, The husband said yes, and his wife said she´ll do whatever his husband does. Than the husband started telling me how nothing gets done without a goal. Alright then I thought. So I challenged them to be baptized July 24th. They told me that they had been visited by missionaries several times but had never received direct questions about baptism like this. I told them that baptism is our purpose, if they want to be baptized then we can help them. After thinking a bit they husband accepted and the wife said she would follow. 

Really these miracles that happened were completely lead by the spirit. There would be no way to do this work if not by the spirit. I would not even know how to speak portuguese without the spirit.

For 4th of July I saw the usual gathering of people at all the bars to drink beer and all the teenagers getting together on the road to smoke marijuana. Maybe they were celebrating 4th of July, I don´t really know. But my companion and I listened to a bunch of American music by the mormon tabernacle choir and talked in English. What a blessing it is to talk in English. Be thankful when the people around you speak your language.

I have found that quality is better than quantity. You could maybe get a lot of work done, but if you do it without love and without the spirit, that work will not have very much of an outcome. Before thinking of our status and our needs we need to think of others. I´ve learned a lot living with different people from different countries who have different cultures and customs. Something that always works when dealing with people is charity. Charity eliminates fear, anger, sadness, fighting, and brings the spirit. When we see a problem it can be really easy to complain and blame others. Even if it´s clear that the other person is wrong it will never help to tell them that they are wrong. We need to have patience with others and focus on their strengths rather than their weaknesses. Instead of pointing fingers we need to say sorry, ask for forgiveness, or do a little act of kindness that will make all the difference. Share with others. Everything we have really isn´t ours. It´s God´s. God gives us things to help others. God gives more to those who are willing to share and serve. Serving others is really the best thing you can do in your life. Search to serve every hour of every day. Try not to have "me time" or time where everything is about you, because it´s not about you. Happiness lies in the people around you.

I know that this Church is true. I know that the Book of Mormon. I know that using the Book of Mormon and the church we can know the will of God and keep his commandments and they will help to become more like Christ like we promised to do since we were baptized. Think of Christ and His gospel every day. Learn from it and apply it every day. This is the greatest joy and life. Do not let the world distract. The mission may be hard sometimes but it really has been the best time of my life. I´m so grateful for the mission and how it has opened my vision of things. God has a purpose for each one of us. Go after it. 

Birthday from Heaven

Wow, thank you to everyone who sent me an email for my birthday. It helps a lot. It´s interesting how on the mission you encounter the lowest of lows but the highest of highs. The mission is hard but the good moments and miracles make it all worth it. So for a while now I haven´t baptized anyone. In my numbers I haven´t actually had a baptism since December. Some missionaries plant seeds and others collect the fruits. I´ve been planting lots of seeds. And the work of preparing people to be baptized is amazing. But it´s even better to be able to see someone follow the savior´s invite being baptized. Lately I´ve been praying that the Lord could do a miracle and that we might be able to find someone ready to be baptized. The Lord heard my prayers. I just have to say that I would be totally lost without the Lord´s help. I´ve never been robbed or assaulted here in Brazil, and I haven´t even been bitten by a dog(yet..) Somehow I´ve been able to communicate in Portuguese, and cause others to have the desire to follow Christ. This is not me. I testify that a greater power, being a power from God is helping every day. I´ve seen that success can simply come by following the promptings of holy ghost and take advantage of certain opportunities. But many times these promptings will come at a time that we´re tired or not ready to follow. I´m so glad that a few times this week I followed promptings from the holy ghost and saw miracles. It happened 3 times from what I can remember.

1. So getting back to the prayer I talked about that God answered. It started last Saturday when after lunch a very humble sister in our branch told us that she knew a friend who was dating a young man preparing to go on a mission in 3 days. She told us that her friend is going to wait for this young man to get home from his mission to marry him and wanted to become a member of the church. Woooohoooo! Luckily that same day, Saturday, there was a ward activity that would happen in the afternoon. This humble sister invited her friend to go the activity. She went. At the activity they spent awhile talking, and I´m pretty sure it was about the gospel, because the next day this friend came to church! Woooohoooo! She told us that she really liked the church and had actually been to our church in other cities many times before. She invited us to come over to her apartment to do a family home evening with that humble sister and her family. Well I accepted that. (So let´s resume here, this lady has been to the church many times, wants to be a member, has a boyfriend leaving a mission in a few days, and invited us over to her house to do a family home evening. Wow! I think God basically just gave us a baptism on a silver platter.) The family home eveing monday night was amazing and very spiritual. My companion and I didn´t have to say very much. This lady just started talking with the members and her boyfriend who was there and came with the idea that she should be baptized by her boyfriend before he leaves on his mission the next day. I was shocked and couldn´t believe that she could be baptized the next day, but the spirit confirmed that I needed to invite her to be baptized the next day by her boyfriend. My companion had told me before walking into the family home evening to not mark a date with this lady to be baptized because it wouldn´t be the right setting. I knew that my companion is very experienced and has baptized a lot of people on his mission, but the spirit made confirmation very strong that she needed to be baptized tomorrow. I had never made an invite so direct. In the middle of all the talking I called the lady´s name and invited her to be baptized the next day. Without even thinking she said yes. I called up our Zone Leader and told him we have a baptismal interview. The next day we interviewed her and baptized her. It was incredible. Just a few hours after the baptism the young man left for his mission. God answered my prayer.

I won´t have time to explain the other miracles that happened this week but I can tell you that God has people prepared for my companion and I to teach and baptize.

My Birthday was cool. No one will call me a teenager anymore. The sisters in my district called me and sang happy birthday in english for me. That was awesome, even though they didn´t know all the words. That was very nice of them. 

I´ll keep working. I´ll do my best. I´ll help everyone I can to follow Christ.

Vou trabalhar. Vou fazer meu melhor. Vou ajudar tudo mundo seguir Cristo.  

Angels from Heaven

What an incredible week! Thursday I had the privilege of going to Rio Pardo to do a baptismal interview and baptize. This investigator was somebody that I found 4 months ago smoking marijuana on the outside of his house. That day was incredible! All of the members were there for the baptism. The investigator showed up in a nice suit with all his family. He told me that he had just finished reading the book of mormon that day. He started talking to me about all the parts he loved reading in the book of mormon and it was evident that he was really telling me the truth. During the baptismal interview the spirit was so strong. He told me that he had gotten into a such a severe addiction of drugs and smoking that if we hadn´t found him that day he would have been lost. He was so grateful for what my old companion and I did to help him. He knows that this church is true with out a doubt and that the book of mormon is true. I bore my testimony that God will bless and change his life in a way he can´t imagine. I had the privilege of doing the baptismal service. The other elders prepared the water so it was quentinho(hot). It was like walking in a hot tub. The other elders told me that I baptized him so fast and with so much strength that without a doubt all of his sins were destroyed in the water. Priesthood Powerrrrrrr!!! Literally the entire branch was there to see the baptism and all of them thanked me for the great work I had done there and for baptizing Bob(That´s not his name but I just wanted to keep his real name a secret.).

Another great miracle happened this week. We found an awesome family to teach! After so many prayers we found this great family. The family has a mother, father and 7 kids. 3 of the kids have baptismal age. Yesterday these 3 girls went to church and they loved it. This family is very humble and very hungry to learn more about the gospel. They accepted to be baptized! Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!

Then we were walking down the road Saturday one day in this new neighborhood we´re working in and out of no where I saw a girl come running up to my companion with her arms wide open and gave him and I a hug. She seemed so excited and happy to see us but we had no idea who she was. She told us that we were from the church and that we needed to talk with her mom. This little 6 year old girl who looks like an angel lead us to her house where she ran inside and told her mom that men from the church came. Her mother came out and it was easy to tell that she went through something rough recently. We had a great lesson with her and her daughter. A few days ago she had broken up with her husband. She´s also very confused about there are so many different churches and why can´t there be only one true church. So we taught the first and second lessons. They loved it. During the entire lesson the girl kept talking to me and asking me watch her do the jump rope. After the lesson the girl lead us to all her neighbors and told us that she wants us to visit all her friends. She gave us one more hug and asked when we would come back. We marked for wednesday. The girl really was an angel from heaven. 

I love Brazil

Right now I´m in the city Santa Cruz with my companion who´s a brazilian from the northern region. Santa Cruz is known in brazil as the city of germans. Work recently with my new companion has gotten a lot better. My new companion is a great missionary and already has 1 year and 7 months on the mission, so he has a lot of experience. I´m really excited to learn with him. This week we were able to teach 46 lessons. That felt really good. There´s so many opportunities to teach people here. We teach them on the road, at the door, in the house, or ate the gate, or in any location basically. One day we decided to go tracting in the country of santa cruz and we met quite of few germans. A lot of them actually recognized my name Elder Ritter as a german name and started talking in german with me thinking that I would understand what they were saying. In this part of the city they even teach german to all of the kids in elementary school. It´s cool to see the german culture they carry.

During the past couple weeks I´ve been learning a principle that´s helped me a lot as a missionary. One of the principle purposes of life is love and happiness. They are linked together. If we are happy it´s because we love. Life will always have rules that we need to follow. There will always be a system that works better than the other. We will always think that some person is better than the other, that one country is better than the other, that one way of being is better than the other. But we have to be careful to not judge and simply love. A person can be happy in any place and any situation if he decides to be that way. A person can love anyone if he decides to be that way. Happiness does not come from your surroundings but self principles within you. This past week I started writing more in my journal about all the blessings and miracles I had seen that day, and thinks I love about where I am and the people around me. It´s easy to criticize, or complain, but this doesn´t help in anything. We have to be ever searching to love everyone around us and look for the blessings in every situation. We must be obedient to the gospel with exactness but at the same time we have to love others. We have to be careful to not be like the Farisees who just strictly followed the law moses looking for self praise, but forgetting about the real purpose of that law. I´m so glad that we have a god of love and mercy.

Most brazilians have been an excellent example to me in charity. They always put others before themselves, share everything they have, and spend time to strenghten relationships with their family and friends. They have a way to talk in a very kindly manner and be very warm and welcoming to others. I hope that everyone can follow this example and realize that happiness comes from serving others and not from self pleasure. Use everything you have to help others because it was God you gave it to you.

Crazy Stuff

So starting off, Monday night we got robbed. Some idiot broke into our house in the middle of the night. For some reason he has a the key to our neighbor´s gate/fence, so he was able to jump the wall that divides the two houses, open our window, bend one of the metal bars, and walk in. So on my table I had a 20 reais bill drying, my pot full of about 200 reais, my bose speaker, Ipod, and Camera. But the robber just grabbed a backback, dvd player, wallet, 2 pairs of tennis shoes, and some bread. I don´t know how he didn´t grab any of my stuff, but it was a miracle. Our house has two floors and we sleep on the top floor. Where the thief broke in is on the first floor. Luckily my companion had decided to sleep on the first floor this time. He normally sleeps at the top, but I think him sleeping at the bottom helped to scare away the thief. Anyway that was stressful. Not a lot of cool stuff happened this week. It rained a lot. I´m super tired. No one opens their doors in this area. 

Last P-Day we went journeying in the middle of the jungle in search for monkeys. We didn´t find monkeys but at least we found some cool waterfalls. Brazil is very green and really has beautiful plants.

Santa Cruz

So since the last time I wrote quite a few changes have happened. I was transfered from the city Rio Pardo to Santa Cruz. I was called to be District Leader of a district with 10 missionaries. I´m working in the northern half of the city Santa Cruz. This area is completely different then anywhere I´ve ever worked. Santa Cruz is known in Brazil as the city of Germans. Most of the people here are of german heritage. It´s different seeing everyone with the same skin color as me. This city is also very rich. My area has no vilas, or favelas, are hardly doesn´t have any small wooden houses. There´s no dirt roads, and I don´t see huge piles of garbage on the sides of the road. It´s actually kind of nice beeing in this city. I don´t get home with my shoes and pants covered in mud. The tough part about this area is that almost no one accepts you into their house to share a message. Knocking doors does not work here. The first two days we spend entirely knocking doors, and during these 2 days about 5 people accepted to hear our message. This is very different than in my last area where I could spend 2 days knocking doors and teach 18 lessons, and have most of them accept us to come back. For now we´re teaching a couple who are preparing to be married to get baptized. That´s about it. One day while on the road we heard a man yell at us in English. My companion is a brazilian and didn´t understand what he said. He yelled Hey come here. I know the mormons. Come into my house. When I turned to look at who it was. It was a big white shirtless fat guy standing in his front patio with a huge samurai sword in his hand. That was weird. So we went up to talk to him. He only continued to talk in English with me while I translated for my companion what he was saying. He invited us to come into his house, but I was feeling strange, so we entered anyway. He has a huge house and all of the light were turned off. It was very dark. He showed a lot of things in his house. He said that he knows how to speak 12 languages. He spent a long time working on a cruise ship. He showed me that he has tons of money and told me that anything I want that´s his, he will give me. He offered us to use his TV, computers, speakers, or anything we wanted. He had a laugh that sounded like a crazy villan. He began to tell us that he has great power and even enought power to control the weather. He asked us why we were there and if we believed in Jesus Christ. He then said that we would not be able to teach him anything because he already knows everything. He talked a lot and hardly didn´t let us say anything. I was certain that this guy was possessed by the devil. I told him that we were leaving and we left. My companion was also certain that this guy is possessed by some evil spirit. We decided to go back with 2 more missionaries and expel this spirit. In the 2nd visit we could clearly see that he really wasn´t possessed. He was just crazy because he´s taking tons of pain medications for back pains. These 2 missionaries laughed quite a bit seeing that we had already told all of the missionaries in the zone that we had found a man possessed by evil spirits that we were going to expulse. We ended up visiting this man a few more times. One day he asked me for the book of mormon which I gave to him. We came back the next day and he said he had read the entire book. What!? He only sleeps 4 hours a day and doesn´t do anything, so I guess that´s possible. But he had marked quite a few parts in the book and told us about some of the things he had leanred, so I think he really read the entire book in 24 hours. I will have to try that sometime. Unfortinately we had to stop teaching him because he deosn´t want to live the law of chastity and hasn´t been able to go to church on Sunday. Bye, We don´t just visit people. We baptize. So things are going pretty well. I´m loving the mission. Until next time.

Josh Ritter

Time Flies

The best day this week was Sunday. After having an excellent family home evening with a couple we´re teaching. They came to church with their 1 year old kid and they loved it. We walked really far in the morning to a little village on the outside of the city Rio Pardo and were able to get one of investigators to go to church. He even gave us a ride to the church. For the sacrament meetings I´ve been playing piano and I´m getting a lot more acostumed to playing now. It´s actually pretty fun. After lunch we were able to go teach people with a member who served a mission 10 years ago in São Paulo.                                                    The first people we visited were the family of the lady we had encountered 2 weeks ago who accepted a baptismal date on our first visit.  This time she had her husband and 12 year old daughter with her to hear our message. The lady told her husband that we converted her to the mormon church and that this church is better than any other church. She said that she was a lost sheep and has been saved and she wants for her husband and daughter also to be saved. She began telling her husband all the reasons why he needs to be baptized in our church. She then ordered my companion and I to explain the message to her husband and have a serious conversation with him. Perfect! I can do that. So we shared a (chique) Plan of Salvation lesson and they all accepted to be baptized and go to church with us Sunday.                                                                                           The 2nd visit was with a mother and her 2 daughters. One of her daughters is about 20 years old and has a 6 year old child. Her other daughter has a boyfriend. The mother is divorced. They told us that they´ve tried so many different religions and feel completely lost because nothing seems to work. When we visited them for the first time a week ago they said that they didn´t have enough faith to prepare to be baptized. I explained to them that God only expects us to a have a little faith. We just a little faith we can make miracles happen. They were conforted to hear this. They then accepted to pray and ask god if they should be baptized in our church. We visited them yesterday and they told us that they prayed and knew that they should be baptized in our church. They felt a great peace. We explained the message of the restoration and the book of mormon with them. They accepted to read the book of mormon and be baptized!                          Then we went to our 3rd visit. We visited a on old couple of about 50 years old. The husband had stopped us on the road 2 weeks ago. He´s a gardener so he was riding on his bike with all his gardening supplies. He told us that 4 years ago sisters from our church visited him and his wife but after they left no one visited them. He asked for us to visit them because they needed it. Yesterday was the first visit we were able to have with the husband and wife. The man told us that they were taught for a long time by the sisters and want to be baptized. They just didn´t know for sure if they were ready. We explained the importance of faith and repentance in their preparation. I promised them blessings and challenged them to be baptized march 26th. They accepted!                                        The mission is great and has been going by fast. I know that God has people prepared for me to teach the need the help the gospels offers.

Carnival and Miracles

Sorry that I wasn´t able to write last week. For 4 days here in Brazil there was the holiday carnival. It´s horrible. It lasted Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights. Every night starting at 9:00 tons of people gathered together in the middle of the city Rio Pardo to party. They play loud music and party until the sun rises the next day. During the day most of the stores were closed because everyone was sleeping. We live in an apartment in the center of Rio Pardo so many times it was hard to sleep because of the loud music playing outiside. I´m glad it´s over. This week me and my companion worked like crazy to reach the standard of excellence. We have to do 45 lessons to meet the goal, 5 being with less actives or recent converts. We were able to teach 38 lessons with investigators, and 7 lessons with less actives. It sure felt good to get home tired at the end of the week. Yesterday I prayed that we might have the opportunities to teach and reach our goal. As we were in a poor neighborhood called Pinheiros I decided to clap hands at a house I felt good about. No one was home so I went to the other side of the road where a family was sitting down in chairs outside their house.(I don´t know English anymore). So I asked them if their could here our message, No. But then a lady came out of the area of the house onto the street and I talked to her. My companion then asked her if we could share a message with her. She said, "Yes! I love the mormon church." She led us to her house on the other side of the street. It was the same house I knocked before that had no one home. We sat outside and talked with her. Let me add a note here about Brazil: Brazil is awesome! I get to walk around in favelas, poor neighborhoods with dirt roads and tons of fields and forests. It´s beautiful. I can talk with anyone I want because the people here are so open. Everyone is friends. Everything is calm and without problems. The people here love to sit down outside their houses and talk. So we sat down with this lady and talked to her. She told a little of her story. I think she has about 60 years of age. She was married to a man who she helped raise when he was a boy. He asked her to marry him even though she was 10 years older than him. She accepted. They were married for 26 years. She raised 21 kids.(Yeah that´s not a typo. She raised 21 kids. Crazy) 2 years ago her husband cheated on her and left to another city and stayed with another lady. It was a sad story to here. She´s been praying to God that she could know how to follow Christ more in her life. She has a huge passion for the things of God but didn´t know how she could follow. She had already went to many different churches but nothing ever worked. She told us that she wants a restoration in her life. She wants an opportunity to leave the past behind and have a new start. Perfect! I got so excited. I gave the message of the restoration the best way I knew how. My companion and I divided the parts perfectly and I used scriptures I had memorized from the Bible. During the lesson this lady began to cry. She said she was so happy to see us young men teaching her. She felt that we were part of her family. She told us that she will go to church with us Sunday and that she wants to be baptized. I then asked if she would prepare to be baptized on March 12th. Without delay she accepted. I extended my hand to congratulate her. With a firm grip she grabbed my hand. At this point her eyes were feeled with tears. She looked me directly in the eyes and said, " You came from so long! You came all the way here to rescue me! Thank you!" I said yes. I felt the spirit strong. I felt so happy to be able to help a daughter of God to come back to Him. I´m so excited to help this lady get ready to be baptized. She will add a great to this branch in Rio Pardo where I´m serving. I love the mission. I love the gospel. Do what´s right, and never give up. You have people waiting who need your help. 

I´m training!

Many things changed for me this week. I received a call from the President of the mission telling me that I would be transfered to a new area and training a new missionary. Tuesday I went with all the other trainers to a hotel in Porto Alegre. There were about 25 new missionaries who arrived at this hotel. They all looked super excited. The assisstants said that all of them were singing hymns during the trip from the airport to the hotel. After the new missionaries left their things in their rooms in the hotel we all left to eat a nice restaurant with the president. We spent the rest of the day listening to different trainings from the president. Towards the end there was a huge presentation showing which area that every missionary would be going to. My new area is Rio Pardo. It´s a little city called Rio Pardo. It´s part of the zone Santa Cruz. The missionary that I´m training is Elder Oliveira. He´s from Terezina, a city in the northern part of Brazil. His accent is very different from the brazilians that live here in the south. That night the new missionaries and sister trainers sleeped in the hotel while the elder trainers slept in the assisstants´ house close to the mission office. The next day we had more trainings, ate lunch with the president again, and then left to our areas. The bus took about 2 hours to arrive in Rio Pardo. On the trip to this city I looked at the cell phone of the area the assisstants had given me and tried to find if there was someone I could call that could show us where our house is and help us with our baggage. I decided to call a member called Jean. He told me that he didn´t have a car and is only 14 years old, but that he could help us get to our apartment on foot. He met us at the bus station and helped us get to our apartment. By the time we got there I was drenched in sweat because I was wearing a suit and it´s summer here in brazil. The apartment was a pig stye so we spent the rest of the night and the next morning cleaning the apartment. We began working and found tons of people to teach. We´re going to baptize like crazy here. All the people here are very receptive and want to hear our message. They are all very friendly. It feels great to have the opportunity to train a new missionary. It won´t be easy because he´s already wanting to go back home. But I won´t let him. I know that this is the best work in the world.

new beginnings

I received a call from the mission president yesterday telling me that I´m being transfered to a new area where I´ll be training a new missionary! This is going to be awesome! I would like to share about an amazing couple that we started teaching. On christmas day there´s hardly anyone on the streets to teach, but we ran into a group of three people on the road and decided to teach them. We were giving out Liahonas to every one we encountered as a christmas present. So we gave a liahona these three people and found out one of them was a member, and the other was his son, but hadn´t been baptized. We did a pray and taught the first lesson on the road, and marked a day to visit the son and his wife another day. It was a fantastic lesson. We watched meet the mormons with them. We then came back again to teach them the plan of salvation with a member who accompanied us. The husband said that after we gave him the book of mormon he had a dream telling him that he needed to read this book. He then read the part in the book of mormon we had left for him and really liked it. They accepted to be baptized and are preparing to be legally married. They were so happy to hear the message of the plan of salvation. They said that everything we taught made sense and they had never heard a message like that before. They also thanked us a lot for entering into their house to share messages of God. I know that missionary work is a very happy and joyful work. Those who follow god´s will, will find the greatest peace that exists in this world.

As I was thinking about my personal standards and my goals I thought of a phrase that has helped me and may help anyone who reads it.

 "Have patience because you will never learn everything all at once. The spirit will teach you little by little. Follow his counsel with exactness. A man is not expected to know more than he is capable. Have confidence in yourself and faith in your decisions. Faith is what leads us to our greatest accomplishments in life. Have faith, go, and if you mess up, just get back up again. With the continuous desire to try again, you will never fail."

Life is not easy, but as we pass more challenges it gets better, and we´ll find greater joy in serving others. I know that my savior is Jesus Christ. I know that the Book of Mormon is true. I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was established by Jesus Christ and is the only true church on the earth today.