31 October 2011

Letter from Goya - 31 October 2011

Freckles, Halloween, Baptism

Dear Friends and Family,

The first thing I would like to inform you of this week is that I now have freckles. Lots of them! On my face! I don´t think Hna. Da Silva finds this as remarkable as I do--but I really don´t think I have ever had so many face freckles before. It is all this sunshine! I tried to take a photo to show you but I am not sure how well you can see them.

find the freckles


Second, Happy Halloween! We celebrated with an activity in the church this past Friday. It was a lot of fun and I even got to dress up. This Halloween I was Little Red Riding Hood and I wore my red dress and bought a piece of red fabric to make my little cape/hood. I also managed to find a small wicker basket that I filled with rolls and apples and carried around as an accesory. Hna. Da Silva was going to be the Grandmother but in the end she didn´t find everything she needed in time so she changed her costume and the last minute and went as an Indian instead.  



Last and most importantly, our investigator Marcelo was baptized and confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ this weekend! We met him a few days before General Conference when we were walking past his house and randomly (or not so randomly) felt impressed to knock on his door. We told him about the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and about how there is a Prophet and 12 Apostles today just as there were in the times of old and how he could listen to them speak, if he wanted, if he came with us to watch a session of conference that weekend. (Side note: this is the type of bold thing that I still can´t believe that I do as a missionary--especially when I think about how just a few months ago I was afraid to knock on my neighbors door to ask to borrow a bottle of ketchup. But when I step back and think about it, it is actually, truly, profoundly...cool, for lack of a better word.) I am consistently surprised and gratified that as I invite people to do things--to come to conference, to read the Book of Mormon, to pray, to exercise a little bit of faith, to try something new--that they actually, sometimes, DO IT. They let us in: to their homes, their lives, their hearts. Not everyone. But some people. And it amazes me how one moment I am knocking on someone´s door and the next thing I know I am sitting in widow´s bedroom singing her hymns or at the bedside of a sick child offering prayers of comfort and healing. It is unreal. And that is exactly how I would describe the experience of finding myself, only a few days after first meeting him, sitting beside Marcelo in the Sunday afternoon session of general conference listening to apostles speak and the tabernacle choir sing. And then, only weeks after that watching him enter into the waters of baptism to make covenants with our Heavenly Father and start on the pathway of discipleship.


I am happy. This weekend we travel to Resistencia to meet with Elder Christofferson. I am pretty excited.

That´s all for now.

Love,

Brooke

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