Hello my dear family! I sure do love you! My heart is full of joy today. It has been a wonderful, wonderful week! It has been pretty exciting here in our district. Let me start off with last Wednesday night. So as you remember last Tuesday night, we were teaching Sueli and marked a date with her daughter, Jessica.
Well, Wednesday night we stopped by her house to teach Jessica about some of the commandments. When we got there, we started talking to them about baptisms and the Holy Ghost. Sueli said, "Jessica, tell them what you told me this morning." Jessica said that the night before, as we were teaching her about the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the experience that Joseph Smith had in the grove behind his house, about how he saw God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. Jessica said that when we told her that story, a burning feeling flooded her chest and spread to her whole body and that she started to cry, but she didn´t want us to see. She couldn´t find the words to express how she was feeling, so when we asked her if she wanted to be baptized, she just gave a simple, "Yes." She said that that feeling happiness that she experienced stayed with her all night, even after we left and when she woke up, she still felt it and then she felt it the whole day. She said life seemed to be different. I asked her if she would like to feel that way forever and she said yes. We told her about how she had to be baptized and afterward, she would receieve the gift of the Holy Ghost and then she would be able to have these feelings with her forever, it was awesome!
I felt the spirit so strong! The Thursday, I went and did an exchange with other elders to do some interveiws for them. 3 out of the 4 people I interviewed were baptized! It was awesome! Then when I got back to the area, I ran straight to Sueli´s house because her interview was happening. Elder Medeiros told me that Jessica called the night before and said that Sueli didn't want to be baptized but that she wanted to bring the elders to do the interviews and that her mom really would be baptized. So when I got there, Jessica already got interviewed and passed. We waited like 30 minutes and Sueli came out and she passed and wanted to be baptized again! How awesome! And then they asked who wants to be baptized by whom. Jessica picked Elder Medeiros and Sueli picked me. It was awesome. We had the baptism on Sunday after church. The water was freezing. But in all honesty, I never have attended a baptism with warm water here in Brazil. haha.
Sunday night we watched, the Restoration with Sueli and what was super funny is her brother, who is really drunk all the time, stood in the door and watched the whole movie with us but no one saw him. When it ended I started baring my testimony. He interrupts me and shouts, "That was the best movie I have ever seen." Hahaha it was really funny. We all laughed. Her brother is starting to change. Sueli says that lately he´s been a lot more sober then he has been in a long time.
Last night we taught Sueli´s son, Tiago (which is portuguese for James FYI) I will tell you what happened with him. but afterward we went into the other room and the brother was there, sober, listening to our message. It was really neat. He actually looks like a really skinny Chuck Norris. I will try to get a picture with him. When we were teaching Tiago I taught him about God, and families, and about prophets, and about Christ and about how Christ organized a church. We read Ephesians 4:11-14 (which is one of my favorite scriptures) it explains that Christ built His church on Apostles and Prophets (v. 11) and that the purpose of the church, or why we need to frequent a church is for reaching perfection (v. 12) and that the church, with the foundations of 1 prophet, 12 apostles, and the authority of God was designed (by Christ Himself) to last on the earth until all of us reach the unity of the faith (v. 13) and then I said do you think that the Christian churches are in the unity of the faith? and he said no and I said then we HAVE to have 1 prophet and 12 apostles on the earth. I explained that we have prophets and apostles to help the doctrine of Christ stay pure (v. 14) and I bore my testimony and passed to Elder Medeiros. He bore his testimony about what I taught and said, because we are not in the unity of the faith we have to have 1 prophet and 12 apostles. But where are they where are the prophet and apostles? I heard a voice inside my mind shout "THEY ARE RIGHT HERE! THIS IS THE ONLY TRUE AND LIVING CHURCH ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH WITH THE AUTHORITY AND WITH 12 APOSTLES AND A PROPHET OF GOD. Luckily I kept quiet. haha. Elder Medeiros told the first vision and I felt a deep burning in my chest and knew that it was true. Whats more is, after we taught the lesson, we asked Sueli´s son to say the prayer and in it he asked if the things we said were true and the minute he asked, I felt a burning in my soul. I felt the answer. It was a really awesome experience. I thought about what Presidnet Cordon said last week about through 1 person we can bring millions to Christ. How true that is.
I know that this church is true and that God lives. I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and that it is true because I have read it and I received my answer!
I love you all! Hey! This month I´ll hit my year mark. wow!
Com Amor,
-Elder Askins
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