Teaching Ruan, baptizing Kauan, and realizing that numbers make a difference.

January 13, 2014

Questions and answers from Mom:

Is your favorite Book of Mormon prophet still Samuel?

Heck yes. Favorite missionary is Alma, favorite angel is Moroni, and the coolest dreamer of dreams is Lehi and Nephi.

Oh, and you can put the most faithful person as Nephi right before the coming of Christ, who his testimony was so strong nobody could disbelieve his words and were angry at him for it :P

Do you have a favorite companion so far?

Hmmm, they were all great. I like to think my most obedient companion so far is Elder Christensen, the best looking was Elder Doan, funniest was Elder Altamirano, and all the rest are really amazing and inspiring missionaries (I think all my companions except for 1 are now zone leaders :P )

How many companions have you had so far?

8

How many of those have been native Brazilians?

0

Are there any Brazilian customs you would like to adopt when you get home?

Eating with fork and knife at the same time, it is surprisingly efficient. Though I'm not sure if I like the large lunch thing they have going on here, or rice and beans every day (though I will eat them a lot more)

Customs? Like kissing people when you say hi to them? (I think that would be really weird in the states, not to mention, I don't do it here as a missionary). Really I don't plan on adopting many things from here in my home country, as much as I love it here.

Would you ever consider changing to BYUI?:)

As of right now? I haven't had that idea once :P

Who are you currently teaching?

Ruan (huah) though he doesn't know it yet. We just had a really hard week, and need to boost up our teaching pool because we only had him at church. We only teach people that go to church.

What do they like most about the gospel?

The people that we have taught usually like the message of the restoration, that’s the most life changing of them all.

What are they having a hard time with?

Ruan has problems with his mom letting him baptize. he has been going to church for 6 months, has to catch the bus when he goes making it hard for him to go, but he does so enough for a 12 year old (I don't think my mom would ever let me ride the bus as a 12 year old). We will talk to them this week and see if we can get his baptism worked out for this week :) pray for us!

As for that, we just baptized for the 3rd time in a row, a lad of 9 years named Kauan, who is the child of a less active coming back to activity. The mom is actively accepting it though the dad is a little mule (someone who doesn’t like commitment) and so we were pleased that Kauan baptized this week. We’ll keep passing them and try to help them out to keep active and going to church. This is a really good thing for them.

The rest of this week was just traveling, meetings, interviews, and ended up being a really hard week where our numbers were very low.

The thing I have learned about numbers here on the mission. Numbers matter. Baptism is the most important thing we do (since confirmation is the job of the Bishop) and to baptize someone we have to meet certain expectations. to reach those expectations, we find that the numbers say a lot, the averages tell us about how many people we have to talk to to find someone new that will go to church, and that number tells us how many people we will be able to baptize, which means one more person that is able to enter into the kingdom of God. When I got here, I thought numbers don't matter, but really, they tell us everything.

This week will be another week of miracles; I know the Lord will bless us. Glad to hear from you all! Write soon!

Elder Anderson