Missionary Monday - Week 2 in BNH

I have quite a bit to say today so I hope I can be efficient and express myself acurately.

I realized that I never really told you about the new area. It is in the Cocaia ward still, but now we are in the part that it gained from the split. It's a neighborhood called B.N.H.. It was driving me crazy trying to figure out what b.n.h. stood for, but once I heard what it was I was pretty disapointed so I'll just leave it up to your imagination. It's a super small neighborhood with a lot of apartment buildings. We can walk around the perimeter of it in about 30 minutes. Quite the difference from having a whole county to ourselves in Michigan. Ha. It's a good area though. Has a lot of families, which is nice. 

One night as we were doing our thing we saw the stake president in a pizzaria and he invited us to come eat with him. He lives in Noronha so I had spent quite a bit of time with him in my first area. Anyways, we had a really good conversation about less actives. He gave us some good advice. He said not to bring up that they are inactive or even ask why they stopped going. That will just embarrass them and bring up whatever bad feelings they had that made them leave. He said just go over there once a week, sing a hymn, and teach the lessons from the gospel principle manual. He said they will feel the spirit, be reminded of simple truths, and be impressed by the selflessness of your visits. So we are looking forward to implimenting that. We've started singing at the beginning of our lessons even though when I heard of that practice in Michigan I swore I'd never do that. I have only seen sisters do it here, but we are giving it our best shot. We sing Let The Lower Light Stay Burning to the tune of Come Thou Fount as our go to. Ha. The seventy that visited our mission said that if we work on reactivation our baptisms will triple, so we will hold him to that.

Speaking of seventies... President Pinho was called as a seventy! Not in the first or second quorum, but still. I have been blessed with great leaders.

And Wellington's dad Luis was baptized! Whoo!! Luis was in all of the lessons with us and agreed to everything, but we could never tell if any of it was sinking in. He liked our preaching though. He would often go on rants about "what's written". Ha. Anyways, it was a beautiful thing to see a father and son progressing and making covenants together.  

Conference was awesome. We watched it in English. This was the first one that I have had the spiritual endurance to pay attention for every talk all five sessions. That was a good sign of progression for me. I love our prophet and apostles. I have a huge man crush on Jeffery Holland. Elder Packer - "D&C 76:22-24, their words are my words"!! 

I just have a few random thoughts in closing.

Elder Ballards remarks about inviting someone to church and meet with the missionaries at least 4 times a year sounded more like a commandment than a suggestion to me...

I heard something this week that I really like. Youth in the church pretty much grow up hearing about how they need to prepare for two things: For young men, all they hear about is serving a mission. For girls, marrying in the temple. Those are great things, but they needed to be viewed as only a step and not the final goal. That is why we have so many returned missionaries that return to old habbits and young couples that become stagnant in their gospel progression or even divorce. I would like to invite you to consider the big picture. I used to think that life was easy, but that was because I was just floating along. Joseph Smith said "as a man nears perfection, his visions become clearer, and his enjoyments increase". As I have progressed and my visions are clearing it is a beautiful thing, but I am seeing a lot of work to do!

Elder Beck

Luis is always the image of joy. Ha.