Whew! We sure know it when the President of the
mission comes to town! We were really
kept busy when President Castro came to Cachoeira this week. He also brought a couple of his good assistants
with him, Elder Snow (Winnemucca, NV) and Elder Booren (VA). We all met together for District
Meeting. President Castro and his
assistants joined in with us for the practice. President Castro knows his scriptures and is a powerful leader. He is also very personable and we were happy
that we had the opportunity to spend a little time with him. He
asked Elder Shirley to attend the evening meeting with the District
Presidency. Sister Shirley “hung out” at
the chapel, visiting and helping Carolina Torres clean up.
Early the next morning we were invited to go
with President Castro to visit the 4 Sister Missionaries in their apartment and
study with them. (We got up early and
baked some bread to take.) It was a
great study period, but we got a work out.
We each had to share something that we had recently learned from our
personal scripture study. The Sisters had been warned that they would be doing
that, but we didn’t know. So it was
pretty spontaneous. Then we each had to
teach a portion of the lesson about CPTA, which means convidar (invite),
prometer (promise), testificar (testify) and acompanhar (to follow up). We are supposed to include all of the points
of CPTA when we teach or present lessons.
We had two minutes to prepare our individual portion. Add being asked to pray to those assignments
and you can see that we didn’t get off easy.
And there we thought that we would just get to go along and observe! Silly us!
But the challenge was good for us and we survived!
Following the visit
with the Sisters, we took President Castro to visit at the home of Julio and
Rosangela and their kids. Fortunately,
everyone was at home. It was an
excellent visit. Julio seemed really
pleased. He told President Castro that
they might not get all of the paperwork done in time to get married before we
go home, but probably before President Castro goes home in June. President Castro told them that he would like
to attend the wedding. (We told Julio
that we still need that picture of him proposing to Rosangela). President Castro led a nice discussion,
involving Rosangela a lot too. He asked
her to tell us what difference the Gospel would make in her life. She answered beautifully! President Castro also asked Rosangela to say
the closing prayer. She has not prayed
before when we have visited. When we
visit, Julio usually says the opening prayer and calls on Sister Shirley to say
the closing prayer. But President Castro
didn’t give him that option. Rosangela
was nervous, but said a beautiful prayer.
President Castro agrees with us that they are a special family. They have a lot of potential. We hope this family is able to bless their
new baby and their 3 year old, get Julio and Rosangela married and have
Rosangela, Julian, and Emanuele baptized.
That is a lot of blessings in the coming year for this family. We pray for their success and happiness!
Following our visit,
President Castro invited us, Elders Snow and Booren, and two of the Sisters to
join him for lunch. The luncheon
appointment for the Sisters had fallen through.
They got the call during our study period. Of course, we went to Per Tutti. The Sisters have not had the opportunity to
go there. So that was really fun!
We do love President
Castro! He is a spiritual and powerful
leader. He is amazing! He asks a lot of
those around him. He expects us all to
measure up and he inspires and encourages us to be able to do that. He really has a nice way about him.
We followed up all of
this in the evening with a missionary/member activity that Elder Gorham and
Elder Costa had organized. We didn’t
have a huge turn-out, but had a big enough group to have a really good time. We
were delighted to see Elivelton and Bruna attend.
Our week was filled up
with visits to members as well as non-members.
We had good visits with José, Elivelton and Bruna and others. Our lesson with Thais and her mother,
Gabriele, was postponed because of a huge rainstorm. Gabriele said that the roads were terrible
out in Promorar where she lives. No one
even wanted to go out of their houses and more rain was forecast. So we will do that last pre-baptism lesson
this week. We also haven’t been able to
do our FHE with Claudia and her family and President Glauber. Now President Glauber has started evening
classes during the week. Weekends are
hard for Claudia. So that is postponed
for now. But we did have some good
visits with Claudia anyway. We managed
to visit her three times during the week.
We stopped by to see how she was doing. She wasn’t feeling well. She had cancer in the muscle of her leg about
7 years ago and then it came back. She
is ok now, but she still has pain. She
had just been to the doctor. She is also
trying to quit smoking. We have tried to
support and encourage her. She requested
a blessing. So we returned with Elder
Gorham and Elder Costa to give her a blessing. She has a lot of faith in
blessings. Then we stopped by on Sunday,
after she failed to come to church. She
had been requesting a Doctrine and Covenants.
So we delivered that to her and read a little from it. Her new medication was making her tired and a
little sick. But she invited us to join
her and her daughters for a “hymn sing-along” this week. They love to sing and they love the hymns and
the primary songs. They know a lot of
them. Claudia’s son, Samuel, is
interested in music. So we hope to be
able to involve him a little too.
We have had a good
week. We have been “stretched” a
little. But we think that is probably
good for us. That seems to happen a lot
on a mission. Guess we do that to others
too. That seems to be what life is all
about…learning, growing, improving!
Hope you are all doing well too!
We love you and miss you all!
Keep on doing good things! Lots
of Love!
Eu te amo!
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