Week 39 - Gravatá

Dear Family,

Thank you so much for the emails and pictures. I’m so jealous of the sushi it looks so good!! There’s a Japanese restaurant in our area but it is really expensive and doesn’t accept a debit card so we’ve never gone there. But I miss sushi!!

This week was awesome!!! We are teaching the most elect investigator ever. His name is Fernando. I wrote about him last week, the guy who went to conference and wanted to know how he could serve a mission and go to the temple. Anyways we met with him almost every single day this week at the chapel and then he went to seminary afterwards and then institute on Saturday. He's 28 and we told him that it will just be teenagers in seminary but he still wanted to go anyways haha. He has a million awesome questions, is reading the Book of Mormon, and praying about it. He's on-date to be baptized on Sunday!!! He keeps saying how excited he is to be making this covenant with Heavenly Father and to have the priesthood. Everything happened pretty fast but he for sure is ready! All we did was invite him to church and Heavenly Father took care of the rest. Our members are awesome and being good friends to him too!

Also, we are teaching another new family!! We found them knocking on doors. They live in a really nice area and have an awesome house. But anyways we taught them about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and left that pamphlet with them. And then when we went back for our second lesson she was sitting there waiting for us with the pamphlet, a Bible, and the Book of Mormon. I was thinking wait we didn’t give her a Book of Mormon? She was like "I'm so happy you came back! I remembered that missionaries have been in my house about 3 years ago and left this book. I read it every now and then and I have a lot of questions for you two." AND she read the whole pamphlet and filled out the questions it has in the back! What the?!! Our area is the best! Heavenly Father is preparing sooooooooooo many amazing people for us to teach.

One other family that I think I wrote a little bit about last week, Rosi and Gilberto. We had another lesson with them and dinner too which was delicious. But the lesson was great and they love us. It’s so hard to leave their house because they don’t let us!! haha They literally asked us to come at 6 and stay until 9 when we have to go home! They said they feel better when we are in their house. They couldn’t come to church yesterday, but they said they would this week!

Ok one more about Ivete the really old lady. This one is sad. So we planned with her every week to pick her up in a car for church and she is always really excited. But then every morning before church her daughter calls and gives us some excuse. And then the last time she called she told us that her mom is really old and doesn’t understand anything that we are saying and that we should stop passing by her house. And everything she said is not true. I know she’s really old but her brain is perfectly fine and she knows what she’s doing and she wants to come to church. It’s really sad that her daughter is keeping her from going. We talked to the bishop about it and he happens to know the family and he said he'll stop by and talk to them. So hopefully everything will turn out fine.

I love my mission. Seriously, I’m so happy that I chose to come. Not a single day passes where I don’t think "when would I have learned this if I wasn’t here." I know this is exactly where I need to be. I can feel myself changing to be more of the person that I always wanted to be. I think of how I was at the beginning of my mission and I have changed so much. And I’m only half way!! :) One thing that I've gained a stronger testimony of while I've been here is that Heavenly Father hears and answers our prayers. All of my doubts, concerns, weaknesses, everything he has helped me with every time and all I had to do was just ask and try to do my best. He takes care of the rest. I’m just so grateful!! I hope you all have a great week. Love you guys!

Love,

Sister Bedke

A smaller replica of Cristo Redentor.

Isn't Malyssa's companion so sweet?