After another week in Igarassu (the “oldest” city in brazil)
At The End Of The Day… The Day Ends.
It seems like every transfer has had some sort of vexatious event, or exciting adventure. It’s always just enough to keep me on my feet. This transfer is the continuation of the Elder Gist, Elder Gerhardt duo. Pretty straight forward, I don’t have anything more to say about that.
WOW This Is Gonna Be Such A Great Transfer!
As I took a break to carefully curated this email (like I always do) and hours of deliberation I remembered something I had said at the beginning of this transfer 6 weeks ago. “Wow this is gonna be such a great transfer!” And immediately after I had my apezix removed, 🙏 But to be honest this transfer was pretty good I love the area and there’s so many awesome people, But more on that later.
Wait There’s More!?
Fortunately this week we were able to start working somewhat normally, and almost immediately the blessing started pouring from the heavens. This week we found more people than I’ve ever found in one week, one after one we recieved references, found people, reconnected with people, and just in general had more people than we could handle. Each day we were able to help even more people. Following the counsel of our mission president we started focusing on helping inactive members, this week we helped recent converts reactivate, a family come back and more. In addition we helped a family that started off as just an aunt in a neighborhood, that had been taught by the missionariesfor a while, but everytime we came back to talk to her we found more and more of the family, who all live on the same street and about half came to church as well. We had so much help from the members and had such great experiences this week, definitely a week to never forget.
A Lot Can Happen In 20 Years
On of the people we met this was an inactive members who hadn’t been to church in 20 years, and as you’d expect a lot can change in 20 years. When he was gone the church met at a small house with a pool, and after a couple years of going and learning English from the missionaries he received the opportunity to go to Wisconsin and study there, and continued to travel around going to Germany and other places until he came back late last year, to the same house. When he arrived for the first time at the church he was mind blown, it had grown from a small house to a beautiful and large building with ac and the whole 100 yards. When he found out about the church app and the scriptures in multiple languages he was dumbfounded, he is incredibly intelligent and speaks 5 languages fluently, and was so excited to come back start attending church again.
Steadfast Until The End
When we think about what it means to be a follower of Christ I think it means being converted not just convinced. The last conversation I had with my uncle Ammon happened right before I left to come here. I visited his house, and we talked for a couple hours. Ammon had been suffering from ALS for a some years, and had lost most of his ability and control of his muscles. He had spent much time plagued with this disease. In this moment he could have given up his faith, trust and confidence, but instead he bore me his testimony. He bore one of the strongest testimonies I’ve heard about the truthfulness of Jesus Christ, and the Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints. He told me of moments in his past where he had lost his faith of the church an been nothing less than its biggest critic, but how he came to gain his testimony again and become steadfast. And he finished by bearing his testimony of Jesus Christ, In a moment I’m sure he knew would be our last together. To me this is the test of true discipleship, staying steadfast until the end, no matter the circumstances no matter the pain.
Ammon was a true disciple of Jesus Christ.
Matt 24:13 But the one who endures to the end will be saved.