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.