Happy Easter!

Dear Family,

The transfers went smoothly once again, another miracle haha!  I am still here in the office and my companion is still Elder Pinheiro.  This week was awesome because my companion and I were able to baptize a man named Evanildo!!  It was really an awesome story.  He is the man that my companion and I found on the first day that we went to work in our area.  We grabbed the list of members which had ove 500 names on it and we picked a couple of families to try and visit.  We felt like we should visit them so we called them up and marked to pass by their house later that day.  When we tried to find their house we spent 20 minutes walking around searching and could not find it!  Finally we just sat on the curb and were ready to give up when the mother of the family showed up and led us to their house.  The mother´s name was Josefa, the son´s name was Wellingtom, and the father´s name was Evanildo.  Wellingtom and Josefa were both members of the church who go every week.  But even though they had been members for 18 years Evanildo had never been to church and had never met the missionaries.  So we taught him the first lesson and everything went perfectly.  We have been preparing him ever since but the preparation took a lot longer than usual because we could only work in our area 1 or 2 days a week.  But finally yesterday he was baptized and it was a really spiritual baptism.  I felt a strong Spirit as I saw the father being baptized, now the entire family is in the church and their next goal is to be sealed in the temple.  It made me really grateful for the family and I have and especially that everyone is a member of the church and that we are all sealed together.  Although this family is a different size than mine, lives in a different country, have a different culture and a very different style of life, they will be able to enjoy the same blessing of an eternal family if they stick to their goal of entering into the temple together.  Heavenly Father´s plan is all about famlies and as we share the gospel with others and see their progress, we develop more gratitude for their blessings that we have been given in our lives.  

This week was also great because it was Easter Sunday and we were able to remember the ressurrection of Jesus Christ.  Here in Brazil the tradition of eating fish on easter sunday is stronger than in the U.S..  Thank you all once again for your emails.

 

Love you all,

Elder Anderson