Week 8

Hello all!! This week I was issued a phone, and I've taken it upon myself to draft up my blog email early this morning, that way I can really type up as much as I would like about my amazing week, because it truly has been just such an incredible week.

On Tuesday I had my first Zone Conference, which is basically a meeting of all the zones in the mission, in which we received about 5 hours of council, goals and reminders, as well as an amazing lunch. We also got to enjoy the company of all the other missionaries in our mission and we took a huge mission picture. It was super nice as well to get to see Elder Blackwell again, who was in my district in the MTC, He has been serving in the only Portuguese ward in our mission. Although I'm a bit jealous that he gets to attend a Portuguese ward, I'm still so grateful for the ward I am currently attending in Cypress Creek. Elder Blackwell was telling me how sacrament meeting for him was crazy, and very hard to understand, as I would imagine, but that he has been learning a lot already from being more immersed with Portuguese speakers. Anyway, it was awesome to get to talk with him again, as well as hear from the rest of the missionaries from my MTC district, via emails. 

Zone Conference pic!

At the zone conference, our mission president, President Garns, sat at our table at lunch and let me know that not only has my visa came in, finally, but that both Elder Blackwell and I will be flying down to Brazil two days before transfers, on February 24th. It is definitely a relief, as I've been eager to go down to Brazil ever since I was temporally reassigned. But I will say that I have already come to love this mission so very much, and I will be very sad to leave it in about a month. Until then the work goes on here in Fort Lauderdale, and I am excited to learn and grow here more and more each day.

Starting out this week, after zone conference, Elder Hansen and I had just about the best possible day ever. We first had a lesson with one of our friends Josephus, or Joey for short, which went super well, and at the time we had him committed to going to church! Fast forward to Sunday and he couldn't come because of work, but we felt really good on Tuesday nonetheless. Next we had an amazing lesson with Carl, our friend who is getting baptized on February 15th. We taught Carl about the actual covenant of baptism, to help him really understand that baptism is a promise we make, and what exactly that promise entails. All during this awesome lesson, one of Carl's friends, Donna, sat in, just out of curiosity, and at one point during the lesson, I could just see her out of the corner of my eye flipping through the Book of Mormon that Carl handed her. She was pretty quiet throughout the lesson, but at the end we gave her her own copy of the Book of Mormon and referred her to the local church up in Detroit where she lives. Anyway, it was really cool to see the "exquisite wonder" that she had during the lesson, as my companion would say. 

During our lesson with Carl, both Elder Hansen and I both had the thought that we were going to be late to meeting with Hector, a new friend we had just made last week. But we both felt that everything would be okay, and that we could finish out the lesson a little late, as the Spirit directed. After the lesson was over, we biked over to Hector's house, stood our bikes up in front of his house, and knocked a couple of times. After no answer, we turned back to return to our bikes, and guess who was walking home? Hector. It turned out that being late by almost 30 minutes was inspired, because if we had actually gotten there on time, Hector wouldn't have been home yet. After talking with Hector for a bit, we biked on over to a dinner appointment we had with the Huffs. Frank Huff, the husband, had returned to the church about a year ago, and actually just received his temple endowments. However, his wife Jill hasn't been baptized yet. Turns out that the whole ward has been trying to get Jill to be baptized for a long while, but Jill just couldn't grasp the point. Well, at this dinner, we decided to talk about baptism with Jill - about why we are baptized, and why it is important that a baptism be done with proper authority, like that which Jesus gave to his apostles in the Bible. Turns out Jill had been baptized twice in other churches, and thus didn't feel as if another baptism would be necessary. Well, with the Spirit super strong, we taught and testified, and at one point Jill said something along the lines of "well I guess I ought to be baptized then huh?", to which we responded calmly while truthfully jumping for joy inside, "we think so too Jill" and then promised her the blessings that would come from making that decision. Now yes, we haven't set a date yet for her, and we still would have to teach Jill quite a few things in order to prepare for baptism, but we, along with the ward, are very excited for Jill. 

Finally after already an amazing day, we went knocking and found two new friends, one of which, Matt who was super nice and had a bunch of gravel to shovel that we agreed to return and shovel for him, as well as Cynthia who turned out to be a Brazilian who used to live in São Paulo, who was very kind and agreed to meet with us again.

Also this week on Thursday, we experienced a TON of rain. It had been raining all morning, and once Elder Hansen and I set out to meet with one of our friends Jimmy, it was pouring down rain. Thankfully, once we got to Jimmy' s house it started to calm down so we could have a breather, but then for the rest of the night it was pouring heavy constant rain. We had a dinner appointment with Brother and Sister Perez that night, and when we arrived we were just drenched. 

Biking it in the pouring down rain!

We ended up sitting on towels while we ate dinner, but it worked out! In fact, at that dinner the Perez's had over their friend, Judy, who had come to church a couple of weeks ago, and was interested in the church. After we ate, she asked us lots of questions, and it really impressed us how elect she was. The questions she asked in Elder Hansen's words were "a bunch of softballs" as if we were teaching Trc' s in the MTC again. It was super nice to get to talk with her, and we will hopefully be meeting with her more in the future.

I also had the opportunity on Friday to do service with our zone at an organization called "In Jacob's Shoes", which cleans and refurbishes donated shoes for kids in poverty all over the U.S. and other countries as well. We got to clean some little rain boots, dress shoes, and Sketchers, and got to laugh and joke with all the other missionaries, which was super fun.

This week I've been reading in the Book of Mormon hard-core in Alma and Helaman, which consist a lot of the warring times of the Nephites and Lamanites. But what i found is that even during those warring times of hardship, that those that follow the commandments of God and put their trust in Him, relying on His strength rather than their own can do all things. Although we may not always be able to choose our circumstances, and may face trials and hardships that can drag us down, if we put our faith in God, and act on the things that He has asked of us, then we can be assured that all will be well, that no matter the trials ahead, we can find solace in God our Heavenly Father. 

Anyway, I hope everyone back home is doing well, as well as all my pals from the MTC. Love y'all!!

Elder Lightheart