Working Hard or hardly working

August 19, 2013

Dear Family,

My recent baptisms. Wemmerson has already recieved the gift of the Holy Ghost and the priesthood and a calling. He has already talked about serving a mission with his girlfriend, who wants to serve a mission and is the strongest member missionary I have ever met. Marcelo is amazing but as he travels a lot (kind of like y'all, teehee) it is harder to know how he is progressing. 

After our baptisms, all of our investigators now are women with families. Which is perfect. Sister Moraes was perfect with the teenagers and Sister Baldomir is really good with emphasizing com the women. 

Reactivation is harder. The only lists we have for less active members are VERY old. The people on this list have been inactive for 15, 20 years. It is a lot harder to bring people back to the gospel the longer they have been inactive but we are trying. And the members here are really good about helping out and visiting less active members. 

This week we had a zone meeting. I knew that last week Elder Gauchay from my district in the MTC had finally arrived here in Maceió but it was a wonderful surprise to see him there at the zone meeting. It was like seeing someone from home even though technically I know him through the mission but I knew him before Maceió so that's the difference. It was also weird in an awesome way to hear Mother Martin again. This week we also had divisão and this time I went to the area of the sister training leaders, Benedito Bentes. It is VERY different from my area even though it is in the same city and I got to see Sister Huffaker, another recent American visa person. And it was the same feeling.   

Sometimes we need to relearn lessons. It is easy to trust in the Lord when things are easy but it is more important when things are hard. Saturday was rough. Appointment after appointment fell through and we were praying but it was getting harder to stay confident in the Lord and faithful. There is that fine line between disappointment in not teaching and helping people and losing confidence in the Lord. But we prayed and tried and Sunday we were blessed all the more. This instance our prayers were answered just one day after but often times we have to wait even longer. But it is always worth the wait. 

I love you and hope that you all can rest soon after all the travels and the craziness of life!

Sister Martin