Day 301: Good news, bad news.

Day 301: Good news, bad news.Good:

I'm healthy, happy, keeping busy, excited for Christmas, meeting new people to teach, feeling confident in my ability to teach, grateful to be fluent in Portuguese, making memories.

Bad:

Two baptismal dates fell through this week. It's frustrating to work for a month and a half with someone specific and see the near-result demolished. This Saturday was going to be the baptism of two boys, Milton (14) and João Vitor (9). It seems that imagining the worst of 2 options at every step, the worst always came out on top this week.

Still, with all of the obstacles that passed right up until the day of, it seemed everything would go well.

Milton gave up first, without any explanation (at first). Then João also decided the same.

Two large problems, one (familiar) lesson:

- lack of friends at church

It's important to know that these two boys had a testimony of everything we taught. Milton had stopped Elder Dos Santos and the other Elder who was here before me on the street and told them that through prayer he had received an answer about Joseph Smith and the Restoration.

We had read passages from the scriptures with them, marked others to read and we followed up, happy to see they were working well with commitments. They had gone to church several times. They were praying daily, going to church activities, etc. They had understood the importance of prophets, apostles, and priesthood authority. And, they had accepted a specific date to be baptized, and their parents had consented, signing the form and providing information on names and dates.

The problem here is that only João has friends at church. Milton, and another brother, Maicon, had been baptized at the Seventh Day Adventists, and have a long list of friends who go there. For a long while they had been inactive because of some issue that the church had with their mom, but this week the Adventists returned to make amends. For Milton and Maicon, the choice was easy; they only sat by the missionaries at the Church of Jesus Christ, and there aren't even a lot of youth at the ward here.

- lack of support from family

I was shocked to learn on Saturday that João's family members weren't even planning to go to his baptism (by this point Milton had already decided not to be baptized the day before).

We learned this when we met João on the street, we sat on the sidewalk right where we met him and talked for a while. His parents hadn't planned on going to the baptism either.

He told us he didn't think he'd be able to follow alone, and to be honest, it would be almost impossible. Nobody from his family at that moment was even willing to accompany him to church, which is around the corner from his house!

And there's plenty of other details, but it's a long story.

Anyway, as Gordon B. Hinckley said, every new convert needs (1) a friend, (2) a responsibility, and (3) to be nurtured by the word of God.

But these things need to be prepared before baptism. I feel like I've met too many people who were baptized and only continued to going to church a few more weeks, or even stopped after being confirmed a member, especially once the pair of missionaries who baptized them move on.

Missionaries here often talk about the members being a "second family", and everyone in the church from members to investigators needs to feel the same:

"...Ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone."

In summary, what I want to be able to do is avoid the situation that we encountered this week. There's not a much better unfortunate example of a seemingly subtle "wind of doctrine" and "sleight of hand". Milton told us on Sunday that they don't want to have anything more to do with the Church, which was alarmingly out of character and just really disappointing.

But we're working well with other people, thankfully. I wrote about a man who's a huge fan and student of the New Testament, and also likes to debate\discuss doctrine quite a bit (seems to be a point of pride that he scared the Adventists from coming back).

We brought this man, Wagner, to church yesterday! He seemed to really enjoy it, and noted that between all of the churches he's already visited, it seems to be the best organized. He didn't want to bring his family with him the first time, and didn't say why, but it's clear he wanted to scope out the situation first. He said he'll bring his family next time, when they get back from travel early in January. We presented and explained the Book of Mormon at his house (we had already taught the same lesson to his wife earlier this week) and he was genuinely interested. He also had recently watched a documentary about the martyrdom of Joseph Smith that was playing somewhere on Brasilian TV(?).

On that lesson, he ended with one of the best prayers we wait for an investigator to make: one with specific questions! He asked to know if Joseph Smith was a prophet, if the Book of Mormon is really something comparable to the Bible, if he should be baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ, and so forth.

Almost nobody in the ward was born a member. When we meet someone we're already imagining what they'd be like as members, and some people seem to stand out as those who would excel as leaders. And he's one of those people.

I’m excited to learn and do more here.

Until next week,

Elder Hopkinson