Week of Wonders

January 12, 2015

 This week was interesting. It was filled with hours of walking in the hot sun, burning the whole day long, and eventually finding something good. That´s been the theme of this week- if you tough it out until the end, and trust in the Lord, youll find something good.
>    Basically as a missionary you can do a few things. You can visit people all day that are nice and like your visits, but will never come to church or get baptized because they dont want to. OR you can try and dig and dig and dig for the people who are ready to receive the message that we share, and who are willing to act on this message, go to church, get baptized, etc. This week we´ve been focusing more on using time to find the elites in our area. This means that yes you will probably see more results such as baptisms and ACTION of the people youre teaching, but it also means you will be spending more time in the sun, you will be more tired, you will want to stop more. But wait. Once you find a family who is ready to receive the gospel, and who listen intently to everything you say, it´s literally all worth it. Even though it´s the harder route to take, we´re finding that it´s a route we need to take if we´re going to see more results. Unfortunately, I think it may be taking a bit of a physical toll as well haha Tomorrow we´re going to travel 3 hours by bus to go to the hospital and get my companion´s back checked out. He´s been hurting quite a bit lately, and it´s time to get something figured out. Also, medically we have another sister in our district who is getting emergency transferred (a transfer that doesnt fall on the regular transfer day) out of our district, to move closer to a bigger hospital with more experience in physical therapy. This mission is a lot different than New York Rochester where the majority of the missionaries have cars, heating, and ac haha but Im loving it. Every time someone says ´´this heat is horrible isn´t it?´´ I just think of all the snow that is piling up at home and in NY and I smile to myself. Then I put on more sunscreen haha
>     But this week we had a miracle and found a family who is really ready to receive our message of the restored gospel. We were wakling with a kid from our ward, and we passed his old house. It was way in the back of some other houses, and we never would have tried to share the gospel with the people in his old house if he wasnt there. But we decided to try it, and the family who is living there now is truly golden. They received us with open arms, and we taught the couple and their two kids- and all 4 of them were listening intently and participating together. It was something you dont see every day, and I know we were guided to go there. We see miracles every single day. I have come to realize more that my time as a missionary will be unlike any other time in my life. Im really excited for the next phase of missionary life that will come next week. We have transfers again, and I think Ill probably leave Birigui to begin the end of my mission, probably in my last area. We´ll see!
>    But mom, Ive received two packages from home. I got one this week, with a lot of deodorant and peanut butter. Thank you so much I love it, despite the mandms only lasting a day because they got invested with ants. Actually they lasted more than a day because my comp took them out of the trash and ate what was left haha they dont have mandms here!
> Love.
> Elder Hirschi