6-2-14
Dear Family,
Congrats Corwin and Katie on new baby Parker. Also, I loved hearing about many missionary experiences from all of you this week :)
This week we also were blessed with a LOT of miracles. Sunday night my comp and I went thru and counted 17 miracles in 24 hours! It was one of the most stressful weeks of my life, but the Lord helped us and everything worked out right.
Yesterday we got to be a part of the baptisms of 8 wonderful individuals.
Kawane, who we´ve been teaching since we got here (I hardly ever stay with investigators for an entire month so this is a big deal) told usFriday that she finally decided she was ready to get baptized! So we were super excited for her. She will be an awesome member of the church and future missionary. She never misses seminary or mutual and she’s helping her mom with going back to church.
Then there´s the families of Lurdes and Therez-- Just finding them 2 weeks ago was kind of a miracle. Our first couples of weeks in the area were frustrating because things always start out kind of slow. There was one day that was especially frustrating. We left a lesson at 8: something and we could have just taken the last 1/2 hour to walk home but we decided we weren´t going to pass an entire day without something good happening, so we said a prayer that we could find one good family to teach. There were 2 little girls walking down the street so I decided to just start talking to them. They looked at me a little while and then started to laugh. I eventually realized they thought our accents were really funny. I asked them if we could go meet their parents so they took us to their house and then proceeded to call all of their cousins, nieces, nephews, grandma--the whole world to come listen to these 2 Americans that they thought were hilarious.
I’m not sure they understood anything we said, but hey that’s one way to get in the door. I’m pretty sure they had never met anyone outside of the state of Parana, let alone Estado Unidos, so it was quite the event for them :) Anyway, we taught the whole family and 10 of them went to church with us on Sunday which was quite the event getting them to church and keeping them at church. And then this last week we taught them about baptism and most of the kids were excited about it, but the moms didn’t want to get baptized. We eventually figured out that they wanted to be baptized, but their other church helps them out so they were scared to get baptized and not get that help. We talked to them a lot about faith and putting God first and they agreed, but then Friday and Saturday they were scared and just didn’t want to anymore. It felt like there was nothing I could say to convince them it was going to be okay, but I felt like they were supposed to get baptized this Sunday, so I told them we would just get them ready for baptism and they could decide on Sunday.
So we got there Saturday and the Dist. Leader did the Interviews for the kids, but then the moms were like ‘no that´s just for people who are getting baptized’, so we said – “no, just have a conversation with him it will be the same as when you talk with us.” So they went. Then we started filling out the baptismal forms and they said, "You don’t need to do it for us because we’re not getting baptized." I told her, "Well we´ll see, let’s just fill it out just in case you decide you want to get baptized with your kids”. Then Sunday morning arrived. The moms and one of the sons told us they didn´t need to bring anything because they still weren´t getting baptized, so we just said, “okay well see”. That night not one of the members said they could help us with getting our investigators rides to church the next day. Great-- how are we going to get this family with a million little kids to church tomorrow especially because it was supposed to be tons of rain and cold the next day. So we fasted and prayed like crazy for sunshine and yes God answers prayers. We paid for one family to use the bus and the other, we got to their house at 7:30 to walk this family to church. There were so many miracles in getting them to church and only losing 2 of the kids, but anyway we got them all to church only 25 min late.
After church we got all the baptismal suits (also a crazy miracle because somehow in one night all but 4 of the baptismal suits disappeared so it was a mad rush to find 6 more.) We took them in the bathroom and told them to put the suits on. We were ready for them to tell me they didn´t need them, but nope they just said alright, and grabbed the suits and put them on, haha but then one of the kids told us he still didn´t know, so we said, “Well just put this suit on to take pictures and then you can decide”. So he did it and it was a crazy service but all 8 of them got baptized! There were moments where I was like, ‘What the heck am I doing”, but then afterwards it was very clear why. I have never seen that family so happy, yet so calm-- Ever. There really was such an obvious change in those moms and all of those kids and that was what was so sweet. To be honest, the service itself was insane and I was soaked and running around like crazy but when it finally all settled and we had a chance to talk to them, that was when I was able to see-- wow, this is a different family. And that is what the gospel of Jesus Christ does for us!
I wish I could individually go thru and write out for you all the many miracles that we saw this week, but needless to say we were very blessed. Seeing those baptisms take place, I felt so strongly that there is no way that we could have done that without the help of the Lord. The fact that we made it thru that day was a miracle because we were really sleep deprived this week, but the Lord always makes up for our weaknesses!
Love you lots! Go help someone change their life!
Love, Sister Lewis
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