My name is Diana Martin and I am a not so secret agent for the Lord in beautiful Maceio, Brazil. I am serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for 18 months.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Change of plans

Dear Family,

This is the seventh week of the transfer and I don´t believe we are at the end of this transfer. Time really flew by. I was worried that the seven week transfer would be long and drag a bit but it didn´t; I wish it had! Time is passing too fast for my liking!

This week there was a change of plans. We had planned on going on splits with this one companionship in our zone but due to health problems, it didn´t take place. It was sad not being able to help out but it got even worse on Friday. We got a call Friday morning from our zone leader saying that presidente was heading to the stake center and wanted to meet with us and the zone leaders. Immediately. We started to get a bit worried because he didn´t say why. And something like this had never happened before. So we didn´t know what to think. But what we weren´t expecting was presidente sitting us down and saying that one of our sisters was going home because of health problems. She is new to the mission and would be ending training this week if she had stayed. When we asked if she would stay the week until transfers, presidente said no. She would be going home the next day. He had us call them up to come and talk with presidente. We stayed while he talked with her and let her know the harsh news. She cried, we comforted (or tried). It was a shock when she said Tomorrow I leave and Sunday I will already be in my home ward. It was a shock to my heart and  I felt cold at the thought. Just imagine. Something ending so soon when you thought you had all the time in the world. 

This makes me think a lot about repentance. This week we taught and thought a lot about repentance and how urgent it really is. We never know when this life will end and we never know what will happen in our lives. So we need to be ready. So there isn´t "oh, next week I will get baptized" " I will change tomorrow" No. It doesn´t work that way. We have to take advantage of the time we have because we don't know when it will end. We don´t know when our mission will end and when we will go home. 

This Sunday was fast and testimony. I love the first Sunday of the month. We started our jejum on saturday for a specific investigator. Sunday came and at the start there was not a single investigator at church and we got a little sad and when to our classes. The teacher in relief society mentioned a quote that I liked a lot. She said that "quando deixamos a fazer nossa responsabilidade, alguem sofre" Basically. When we don´t do what we should, someone suffers. Maybe our investigator didn´t come to church but if we didn´t try to help her, certainly she would suffer. If we didn´t do our part to teach, those here in Eduardo Gomes. Suffer. Interesting right? Soon after showed up a family we had begun teaching this week. A mom, dad, and four children. We didn´t expect that. But I love how we can be praying and fasting for one thing and that doesn´t happen. But God gives us something Better.

I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Sister Martin

PS I hope this was long enough. I ran out of time a bit. 

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