Work

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

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