Boom!!
First, we played baseball in our house this week; Americans vs Brazilians. It was quite funny. 2 bases, dust pan bat, and fruit snack ball!!! We won of course, 5 to 2 after 3 innings. It was quite ridiculous!
I went on a division this week to another area that I have never been to that is just WAYYYY out in the middle of no where!1 It is in the middle of the jungle on the other side of the airport and it was way cool. LUNCH WAS GREAT! There was a family there who had just an amazing house off in the jungle far away. It was quite there and much cooler. The food was to die for! The nature came right up beneath your feet and they told us how monkeys often swing by every day and how sloths steal papaya in the night from their trees. We heard the sounds of the rain-forest birds and I was freaking. It was really cool. Just really cool.
However I will be honest, this week was a really hard week for me. Not a lot happened, the work was slow and I was just feeling quite useless. We did almost nothing. We taught no one. It broke 105 degrees every single day and I was dying from the heat. Nothing seemed to go right. Then Sunday came around, no visitors came to church and I was feeling quite sorry for myself. "Where were the miracles", I thought? Well, I got one. Yago, the eight year old who I baptized just a few weeks ago got up in front of every one to bear his testimony of this gospel. He approached the microphone with ever so much courage and not expecting it, yelled into it, falling backwards and thus becoming very embarrassed. He sat down again shaken up but what he had done and almost everyone was laughing. HOWEVER, he would not be silenced. He returned to the microphone with courage and determination to state the following phrases which penetrated my sad heart.
"When I was baptized, I felt such a spirit of peace and happiness and I thank God for this. I know that this is his church and his path for me because I feel the truth. I know the Book of Mormon is true. I am so grateful that God sent His missionaries to teach me these things so that I could be baptized and be here with all of you. I know they are sent from God. In the name of Christ , Amen."
I cried after these words for they truly opened my heart. I had felt as thought my work had meant nothing, that I was an unprofitable servant who was a waste of a white shirt and tie. But Yago told me otherwise. God spoke to me through him. God humbled me with the words of a boy in a brand knew white shirt, which was too big for him.
Then as if that was not enough, Maria do Carmo bore her testimony. She is the wife of Neyderson, who was baptized the same day as Yago. She spoke through her tears of the endless prayers she had given to God asking that her husband could come with her to church, stop drinking, and become the father of the house. She bawled as she said she often had lost hope because missionaries would come and go and he would do nothing to change. Maria poured her heart out in thanks to God for two Elders that had reached his heart and brought full joy in her heart.
Oh how God had proved me wrong and brought me down into humility, showing me His mighty works through His Elders. I realized many things, some a little too private to state here, but I am forever grateful for I learned and felt. Never had such a feeling of peace come upon me at church as it did this Sunday, confirming to me the truths I now know and what I have yet to learn.
"Christ never gives us pain we cannot support."
Sorry my letter does not have a lot of cool stories but this was the only real landmark moment of the week to share.
Eu vos amo,
Elder Asa Laws
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