A simple invitation

This week has been excellent. I have learned a lot. We had our Mission Leadership Council meeting this week and afterwards we gave the zone training. I learned so much at the council and at the zone training too. Im grateful it all went super well. Everyone is super pumped to work! We had 3 baptisms already this week and we have more for every week for the rest of the month! Im super happy because we have been working and following up nonstop. We have had some struggles in our own area with getting our investigators to church recently but the Lord hasnt let our hard work and sweat go to nothing. Something cool happened this week that surprised me. Last monday night I was on a division with another elder in our zone and we were with some members on the road on our way to visit a family. As we were stopped at the crosswalk, I noticed an old man who was stuck outside his apartment complex because the gate was closed and the gatekeeper wasnt there. I noticed the old man hitting the gate with his cane to try and get their attention. So I went over to the gate and asked the man if I could help him call the gatekeepers. The member who was with us called the gatekeepers while I talked to the old man. After quickly helping him out, the gatekeepers arrived and let him in. He kindly thanked us. Without hesitation I invited him to go to church on Sunday. Since it was monday I doubted he would remember on Sunday. To my surpise, Sunday arrived and he was there 10 minutes early sitting down with the elders in a suit and tie!!! We anxiously sat and talked to him throughout the meetings. He loved it. He was actively participating in every meeting. He is super intellegent and super humble...thats a hard combination to find. We will start giving him discussions tomorrow, and we already have members who will do a FHE with him on Thursday. His name is Luis! 

I want to tell you guys that I am so happy to be here in Rio serving the Lord. I love these people here and I love this work. I am going to dearly miss it when I come back home. I appreciate your prayers. They make a difference. I know this work is true and that the Lord will continue blessing us in every aspect of our lives as we continue to embrace this great cause.

20 Investigators

The work keeps moving along in Brazil. Just had this experience I want to share. The other day we went to visit one of our contacts and it turns out that this guy lives with 20 other guys that all work for the same company. They live in a huge apartment. Well we got to know every one of them and then rounded everyone up in a huge circle and we started teaching them, all 20. It was cool because all of them had different religions. We taught them the restoration in about 20 minutes got them all anxious to read the book of mormon, pray, and to go to church. All 20 said they would go next week! They felt the spirit in that short lesson and even accepted the invite to be baptized! We are going to follow up with all of them next week. We are going to try to commit and baptize all of them by the end of this month. Can you imagine 20 guys around 19-24 years old all being baptized on the same day?! How awesome would that be?! Take care and the Lord is truly hastening his work!
Love you all!

Filling up the Font

I have never gone through such a struggle to baptize somebody. About 2 hours before the baptism was scheduled we discovered that the water in the chapel ran out and the baptismal font wasnt even halfway full. It was not high enough to completely submerge a person. Bishop wanted to reschedule the baptism, but I was concerned about doing that. I said a prayer in the bathroom and asked what we should do. I felt like we needed to have the baptism that day.  I knew everything was in the Lords hands and that he would help us resolve the problem. For me, it was a great lesson on faith, works and prayer. The Lord didn't immediately show us what to do after I had prayed. I had tried my hardest to resolve the problem before I prayed, and then after I had prayed and asked for guidance I continued to try my hardest - asking everyone in the ward for any other possible way. Finally, out of the blue, someone told us about an underground water storage unit behind the church. We quickly went to the storage unit and opened it up. To our astonishment, we could see plenty of fresh, clean water, but with one problem, it was too deep to reach. So I decided to tie a thin rope to a bucket to pull the water out. With the help of the other missionaries, extra buckets that happened to be at the church, and a few members we were able to take out the water, one bucket at a time, and carry them one by one to the font. After about an hour and a half of manually pulling water out of the tanks, we managed to fill up the baptismal font enough to proceed with the baptism. We finished before the meetings were over and the baptism miraculously started on time. 

Elder Nascimento