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.