Hi:

This week was pretty interesting! On Monday we received a call that we would be going to a district leader´s meeting on the island of Sao Vicente, in Mindelo. I am serving in Sal. So on Wednesday afternoon we got on the plane and headed there. We stayed with the Zone Leaders of Sao Vicente, Elder Montes (who was in my MTC district) and Elder Nymeyer). The next day we went to a meeting with the Assistants and President Oliveira. It was a great meeting, we talked a lot about how our role as District Leaders is to inspire and elevate our districts. We also talked about making inspired goals and using our faith to achieve them. If we have prayed and received inspiration by the Holy Spirit of the things we must accomplish, surely these goals can be met. The question is if we have the faith sufficient to perform miracles and fulfill what the Lord has sent us to do.

Before we left to Sao Vicente we asked a few members to visit our investigators to see how they were doing and also we called them to follow up with their reading and praying. It went really well. We ended up coming back to Sal on Friday night with Elder Bruce (who was heading out to Sao Nicolau) and President and Sister Oliveira, who were coming to make a visit in Santa Maria.

This last week we were planning the baptism of Jezidel. She is 17. She was doing really well and keeping all the commandments and making great progress, but her mom wouldn’t let her be baptized. We fasted, we prayed, we talked to the Branch President to go and talk to her mom. We even went to her house at 11:00 am and waited for three hours to talk to her mom, but her mom was just avoiding us and didn’t want to talk to us. She knew what we wanted to talk about. We did everything we possibly could, but nothing seemed to work. On Saturday, President Oliveira called us and he said, ´´Elder, what are you going to do to help this girl that doesn’t have permission?´´ I told him everything we had done and told him that we were going to visit another time that day at 3:00 pm to see if we could find the mom. He said: ''Elder, before you leave, you need to read a few scriptures, pray and prepare yourself spiritually to get this done.'' The first story that came to my mind was Nephi and his brothers when they were commanded to get the brass plates. Getting the brass plates was not easy, not even close. When Laman went in for the first time, he was nearly killed. Nephi´s brothers wanted to quit and go back to their father in the desert. But Nephi knew that God doesn’t give an order without preparing a way. He told them that they wouldn’t go back to their father until the Lord´s order was fulfilled. So they tried again and they failed. Then Nephi said, ´´Let us be faithful, let us be strong, let us be as Moses who had such faith that he parted the Red Sea.´´ Compelled by the Spirit, not knowing what would happen, Nephi went in alone and succeeded. This story was perfect for our situation. If we just trust in the Spirit, believe and don’t doubt the Lord will prepare the way. On the way to Jezidell´s house I had no doubt that the Lord would prepare the way, I repeated in my head ´´Let us be as Moses, let us be faithful´´. We showed up sat in their living room waiting for Jezidel, literally five seconds after we sat down, Jezidel´s mom came out, she was dressed up in her work clothes and she was in a rush. This was the first time we have seen her. We asked if she had one minute to sit down, she said no, I have to go. Clearly the Lord put her in our path, we couldn’t fail. In a bit of shock and not knowing what to do, we said, can we walk with you to work? She hesitated a bit and didn’t say anything, we just got up and started walking with her. She was walking fast and was a bit surprised that we were going with her. We just started to converse with her about her life. We were super friendly and just became friends with her. We asked about her family, her background, where she was from, what is her work, what she likes to do and made it super natural. Soon enough we started talking about the importance of families and how the Gospel of Jesus Christ blesses families. We let her know that the reason we were teaching her daughter was to help her to follow Jesus Christ, stay far away from the temptations of world, keep the commandment and become a better person. She respected that. We told her that the only way for a person to follow Jesus Christ is through baptism, where we make a covenant with the Lord to always follow him. We asked her if she would let her daughter follow Jesus Christ, she said ´´Well, it is her choice, so if she wants to. “ The Lord truly prepared the way, the Spirit guided our words and now Jezidel will be baptized this week. Jezidel’s mom agreed to sign the baptismal form. That is a miracle.

At church this week we had 42 people. Our goal for the next coming weeks is to really strengthen the members, we are going to start training members every day.

We only had like three days in our area this week so we didn’t have too much happen, but this week, Jezidel and Judith will baptized. They are both progressing great, reading in the Book of Mormon every day and keeping the commandments, it’s gonna be super sweet!

Love,

Elder Rice