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.