Olá
Well I'm glad you all had a good thanksgiving and whatnot. This week wasn't too interesting. I found out that our investigator wasn't going to be able to go to church because she was travelling so we have to wait another week for her to be baptized but we also heard the news from our other investigator that we can go talk to her mother and pastor to try to explain ourselves and show that we aren't a cult. We're going to bring the bishop along just to be safe, pastors can be tricky. So maybe next week they wil be able to be baptized.
Also thank you for the package, although it was pretty expensive to get. Everyone has told me Brazil robs the people and I experienced that first hand. Whenever I heard that it would be 950 reais to grab I thought, "The elders in the office think they're funny." But they were telling the truth. I just used the money that president paid me for the keyboard I got him and a little more I pulled off my card. But it's all good, I got to take the metro and experience the city life for real. So yeah I'm a city kid now. I also really enjoyed the food and games that were there. I didn't even bother trying to save the mangos because there are a million but the high chews and the pistachios are taking their sweet old time.
High: We had conference this week and President and Sister Thomas gave talks and they were really good I just hope that the members will start helping out with the work soon.
Low: A lot of appointments fell through again this week, so there was a lot of unnecessary walking done this week. We also ran out of minutes on our phone so this will get complicated now.]
Insight: I think the thing I have been trying to learn a lot is the diference between knowing and faith. I had a discussion with my companion about this and it turned into a little fight we had. Because I asked him how he was able to say that he knew for sure that our church was true and the Book of Mormon is true and whatnot to our investigators when he bore his testimony. Because I made it very clear to myself that I would never say I knew something when I bore my testimony. For the following reasons, I always looked to the Brother of Jared to understand the difference between knowing and faith. Faith is something that is very powerful but I feel like we end up sliding it under the rug. The brother of Jared was able to do incredible things with faith alone. He then continued to develop that faith until it came to the point where it was impossible for God to hide himself.
I personal believe that's how it is for all of us. We have to continue to develop faith which is hoping in things that are true but not seen. So even though they be true we still have to hope and act on that hope. God never made it a requirement to know that the church is true and everything like that. He made us forget everything for a reason. He just asks us to exercise faith, then with the faith that we show and act upon miracles are done. I don't know, this is always something that always gets onto me with testimonies.
The prophets would always bear powerful testimonies of Christ in whom they know perfectly and personally and people want to bear a testimony with equal power. But we can't know like they do that the church is true and that Christ lives. They were chosen and special witnesses, we are not the same kind of witnesses as they are. Sure we see the blessings from showing our faith and this gives a good evidence that the things that things we hope for are true. However, this is just another step in the process of developing our faith. Like Elder Bednar said in the talk I sent you guys last week, the evidence shown is to help us grow and gives and incentive to continue to act in faith. If we take that as the one and only response to "know" that something is true we're just stunting our potential to be the instrument of miracles.
I personally believe that a testimony of faith rather than knowing is more powerful. Especially for our investigators, the majority of them say they don't want to be baptized due to a lack of certainty or knowledge. So when we bear our testimony with faith it shows that we are willing to trust in God and the little things he has revealed to us and hoping that he will continue to help us, we show them that we are on the same process. Just a little further down the road. Baptism just happens to be one of the most important ways we show our faith and the beginning of that road. I like to think of it like knowing someone and knowing of someone. We know about them but we never got to know them personally, we have a lot of information about them. However, knowing someone is being intimately connected and having an actually bond and is just deeper.
Although it may not be the best explanation to me it makes sense. We know of the church being true, but I honestly believe that many people outside of the select few know that the church is true. This concept also helps me a lot in times of doubt, because I seriously don't know if anything in the church is true. I just need to have faith in them. Doubt doesn't mean not having faith, it's just simply a time of confusion that we all have. So in times of trouble and having a hard time really believing that the church is true, just focus on how to develop the faith that you have. Not trying to know that it's true. That's my insight for this week.
Like I said last week, for me FAITH IS EVERYTHING!! Faith is literally what makes us do anything. It's how the church was restored, it's how we are able to live. For me personally, faith is one of the greatest gifts we've been given.
Anything humorous: Well my suit pants ripped completely down the middle. Soooo, I'll have to look into get that fixed up.
