Called To Serve: Week 22

Dear Family & Friends,

A lot of good things happened this week! First, I want to brag on someone we baptized a few weeks ago, I think it's been three now. His name is Cristiano, and I've probably already talked about him, but he's so awesome you get to hear about him again. So like I said, he was baptized about 3 weeks ago, and before we taught him, he was an atheist, which is pretty rare for Brazil, honestly. He is very smart, very curious, and very eager to learn, so our teaching process with him went something like this: we would visit, talk about the gospel for a little bit, give him a pamphlet of the next lesson, come back the next day, and he had already read, studied, and accepted the whole pamphlet, and we just discussed it for a few minutes and answered any questions he had. He was really open and easy to teach, and he was baptized after two or three weeks. The story doesn't end there! He has his own copies of the Book of Mormon, Bible, and the Gospel Principles manual, and he has them all laminated and marked up because he studies them like every day!!!! Not only that, but he talks to his neighbors about the church and introduces us to people. AND comes to lessons with us and helps us teach! He hasn't even been baptized for a month!! He used to be atheist, people!!!! He is awesome - and something else - he used to have this really awesome smart phone, it was really nice, but he sold it so he could have enough money to buy a three piece suit, and he was rockin it at church yesterday! He also helped us wake people up in the morning for church. The time of our meetings recently changed from 4 pm to 8:30 am,so some people needed a little extra help waking up haha. So apart from all that, we have 2 baptisms we're working on for this coming week, and we're looking to set a lot of new baptismal dates as well, so wish us luck!

Something funny I found out this week from one of the members, is that the first fast and testimony meeting I was here, which was like my second week, I bore my testimony and unknowingly said "Jesus" with the Spanish pronunciation, not the Portuguese, which is like Jay-soos. but I said Hay-soos. so, kind of embarrassing, but pretty funny too haha. There is a part member family we visit a lot, and they have a four year old named Sofia, and she is always saying funny things. This last week, she asked me how much I weighed when I was born. I couldn't decide which was more funny, the question or the fact a four year old was asking haha.

Anyway, that's it for this week. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers!

Abraço!
Elder Poulson