Letter #25- He Fed A Thousand With One Loaf of Bread..

I saw Him raise a child from the dead. He healed the sick. The blind saw His eyes. The Lame man stood and joyous were his cries and he said, "Nations fall behind Him, the rivers crawl to find Him. Mountains move, just to let Him through. Come and never leave Him. Just let your heart believe Him. Never let His light go. Never let your love grow dim!"

Hello my dear family,

Oh how I love you. Thanks for all of your prayers. It really has helped and I have felt them. So this week has been great. Last Wednesday after P-day, we visited the Ward Mission Leader. He scared me because he said the problems with missionaries in the past was that he felt that they were unprepared. Well, that freaked me out a lot. We were with another companionship, our district leader and his companion. Afterward we went home and I talked with our district leader, Elder Braz. He could tell what the ward mission leader said freaked me out. He has helped me out a lot with some good techniques at finding people. It´s been a great week. 

My companion, Elder Paiva, has been great! He really has a desire to be the best missionary ever and he is. The only problem he has is with my name. hahha He thinks it´s Elder Asker and i think it´s so funny that i don´t correct him. But we have been working hard. It´s been great. We have been meeting with all the members of the ward and they really are so loving and love the missionaries. The bishop here is great! We had lunch with the 1st counselor one day. He was great and liked us a lot. At church he was conducting and he introduced us. He said "This is Elder Askins, He is from Bahia." (It´s a state in Brazil that is really hot and has pretty much only black people.) The ward thought it was hilarious. Needless to say, I have taken the nickname as Elder Bahia or The Bahian or something along those lines.

As you probably guessed from my last email, I was pretty freaked out at all my new responsibilities and I was that way until Sunday. During Sunday, during one of the classes the teacher shared a scripture in Jeramiah. Jeramiah 1:5-10. I think that is was written for me. Read it, it was just what I needed to hear. Needless to say, this Sunday was pretty spiritual for me. I also had the privelidge to help bless the sacrament for the first time in Portuguese. It was really neat. 

We´ve been meeting with a lot of members.Everyday when we leave the house we have to say to each other, "Okay, I know the Lord has prepared at least 5 people to hear our message today, now let´s go and find them!" And it´s turned into something kind of really fun. We´ve been applying fun techniques to finding and teaching. Like yesterday, we were out knocking doors and I got this idea. I said "Elder Paiva, I have an idea... follow my lead." Hahahaha so we knocked a door and this lady came out. I said "Hey my name is Elder Askins, what is the name of the senhora" She responded. I said "It is super hot today, could we have a glass of water?" She went inside and came back out with a glass of water.  I started chatting with her about life and then I said, "So we are missionaries with a super special message. It´s only like 10 minutes, could we share it with you right now?" And she said yes. hahaha so I don´t know if that is sneaking and not good to do. but it was a cool experience. Oh how I love the mission.

So I love you all so much. I have been thinking a lot this week about how blessed we are. We really are. I love you all so much. And I know it seems sometimes like 2 years is a long time and sometimes 2 years seems like a really long time. but it´s not really. We´ve got eternity.  I love you all so much!

Com Amor

-Elder Nathan Askins

P.S. The gift of tongues is REAL!