July 25, 2011

Hey FAmily!!!!!




Good to hear from you! ;)
well, i finally got the date for the big day....i´ll be arriving in pasco on the 16th of august. I still haven´t got all the details on time and what not but that´s the day. It´s creeping up on me. And thank you so much mom for washing all my things and getting things in order...was garrett pretty upset about moving out of the room?? That was so nice of grandpa, i didn´t even see that one coming. I love them so much, how are they doing? Well, this week was pretty crazy once again. Trying to get everyone taught, find new people and get everyone to church. YEsterday was really tough because we´re teacing this family and theyre preparing for baptism and we went to get them for church yesterday and the mom had gone somewhere and the kids were at home by themselves and couldn´t leave. We´re going to have to remark their baptism day. BUt hopefully it all works out. The one thng that made me happy though was as we were getting people to go to church we stopped by one of our investigators house, Raimundo, and he was already to go. When we got to this area the elders had left a couple of white shirts in the house, so i washed them up and got them all nice looking and gave him one to use because he was worried about the clothes he had. He has come so far though. We had actually found him when we were teaching his nephew. The first thing we talked about was the book of mormon. He hadn´t heard anything about the joseph smith, but he took the book and read it. The next day we askd him if he had any questions or doubts and he said, "no, all the questions i´ve had so far have been answered as im reading the book of mormon".....i didn´t know what to say when he said that, i was so excited!!!! And then yesterday as church ended we asked him how he liked it and he said he really liked it with a big smile on his face. And this kid, he´s 17, and he´s the real serious type, it´s hard for him to open up when we´re teaching, but when we saw the smile on his face we knew that he really liked it and that he had felt the spirit there at teh church. THat really made my day. And it made me think that yeah, today wasn´t the greatest working day that i´ve had, the family we had planned on coming to church didn´t come, didn´t have very many lessons taught....but to see Raimundo in church clothes, come to church and leave with a smile on his face, that makes all the difference. It makes me think of that story, not exactly sure how it goes but the guy that was walking along the shore throwing the starfish(not exactly sure if it was starfish or not, but ya know) and someone came along and said "there´s a ton of them here on the shore, it won´t even make a difference if you keep doing that" and the man turned to him and said, "I made a difference for that one." We sometimes never know what will happen in one´s life after we´ve taught them about the gospel, after they went to church for the first time. BUt to know that i was a part in their life and gave them the chance to know of the truth is something i can´t even begin to describe. And when you see the change in that person´s life after they´ve been baptized....it´s a joy that i feel and i can´t explain it. It´s goign to be really hard to leave the people of brazil, yesterday in relief society we sang "GOd be with you til we meet again" And i got to thinking, wow i´m almost gone and i don´t knwo when i´ll see these people again" I just started to cry. These people are my family, they have taken care of me for over a year, they´ve fed me, taken me into their lives....i´ll be going home to my family, but at teh same time i´ll be leaving a big chunk of my family here. I didn´t think it´d be this hard, but apparently it is :(
Well, i better get going, hope you all have a good week and know that i love you all! Tchau!
com muito amor,
sister salisbury