MTC Week 1

January 10, 2013

We received a letter in the mail from Elder Johnson with this note: "Letters are more spiritual and my emails are more of experiences and updates."


Dear Family,

So this past week has been amazing.  The spirit is so strong here.  The other day we had a fireside and the theme of it was the atonement and charity.  The speaker said that we had to have charity for our investigators in order to convert them.  We can't treat them like they're just a number and we have to truly care about them.  So I tried to apply it in a lesson with our investigator.  We've taught our investigator Angela twice and she only speaks Portuguese.  Things have gone pretty well, but the spirit wasn't there.  When I bore my testimony on eternal families something just clicked.  I had to do my best with broken Portuguese to tell her that through Christ she and her family could be perfect and live with O Pai Celestial (Heavenly Father) for all of eternity.  When I did this the spirit was so strong.  We then taught her how to pray and she gave a beautiful prayer.  Even though I couldn't understand it all to well, I sure felt it.

On our first day we did this exercise where all of the new missionaries sat in a room and taught an investigator.  The first one was a Japanese guy and we went no where very fast.  It was the next investigator that was amazing.  His name was Carlos and he immigrated to America from Italy and his wife has been dead for quite some time.  He told us that his child, Falio, died three days after he was born.  Carlos told us of his guilt of not getting him baptized into the Catholic church before he died.  The priests told him his child was in limbo and Carlos couldn't deal with knowing he couldn't save his son.  A sister missionary shared with him D&C 29:46-47 "But behold, I say unto you, that little children are redeemed from the foundation of the world through mine Only Begotten.  Wherefore, they cannot sin, for power is not given unto Satan to tempt little children, until they begin to become accountable before me.'  She told him that his son was with Heavenly Father and that he could be with him again.  The spirit was so strong that it made it hard for me to talk.  It was amazing how powerful the spirit was and the influence it has on people.

Eu, Sei que o espirito santo e verdadeiro e Eu sei que mec anico e benecao podo trazo.  En nome Jesus Cristo amen.

Love,
Tanner