Time is Going By Too Fast

April 2nd

 This week was a good one! I always love watching general conference. But we got a Brazilian apostle!!! How cool is that??? That's actually going to help us in our teaching now, people will feel better about the idea of having living prophets now that there is one that's from their country, so were all super excited about that. I really liked all the talks during general conference as usual. One of the ones that was really cool though was from Elder Larry Y. Wilson. I don't have my notes with me right now, but I'll have to re-read it a few times for sure! And how crazy are all the changes that happened? No more visiting/home teaching, the Melchizedek Priesthood quorums are together now, etc. They're really cool changes that I feel will really help the church. I like the more personal focus in ministring to induviduals. The prophet and President Eyring also gave great talks about receiving personal revelation and listening to the Spirit.

 This week we had our Leadership Council in Ribeirão Preto, and it was super cool. Elder Pinheiro and I were asked to give a training about how to follow up with both our investigators and with the missionaries in our zones. But, we didn't have much time to prepare the training... Training new missionaries and trying to help the zone and keep track of al lthe missionaries has been a lot busier than we thought, so when we got to Ribeirão we didn't even have the whole training planned out. We did our best to seek revelation and help from the Lord in the small amount of time that we did have to prepare. So we made an outline of what we wanted to say and trusted in the Spirit. It was super cool to see how it worked out! We really felt the Spirit putting questions into our minds and things we could say during the training. In the end, it ended up being more of a council than an actual training, the other leaders really helped us out and gave great insight! We were all able to learn a lot and we were very grateful that the Lord helped us out even though we didn't have a ton of time to prepare. It was just one more confirmation to me that if we do our best, the Lord will make up for us!

 In the field, we're making some good progress with our investigators. We have 4 people that have lots of potential, Jó and her granddaughter Larissa, and a couple named Marcos and Denizete. What's cool is that during the first week here we tried really hard to become friends with the members and show them that we're here to help, and after that they gave us referrals for these investigators! Members can make our work so much more effective. Marcos and his wife Denizete said that they've never really listened to anyone who wants to talk about religion, but for some reason they just open up to us and tell us about their lives, problems, etc. They also said that they know it wasn't coincidence that we started to teach them. How cool! We've only been able to teach them twice, but we're going to follow up with them more this week.

 Our other solid investigatos, Jó and Larissa, are really cool as well. A member invited Jó to church and she went and then we started teaching her. She's super interested and she's already told a bunch of her friends and family that she really like the "mormon church" and said that she wants to invite people she knows to listen to our discussions! She has an ex-husband that's been in on 2 of our lessons now and he understands really good and askes really good questions. We're really being blessed!

 My comp Elder Silva is doing great. I really love his desire to work. Not sure if I mentioned it already, but he doesn't have a super good knowledge of the gospel but he's willing to learn, and really for me that's the most important thing. I was just commenting with Elder Pinheiro the other day that with everything we have to deal with, we really got good comps. There are some new missionaries that have lots of problems, so we're grateful we got who we did!

 Well that's my week. I'm looking forward to another busy week, it seems like we never stop! Time is going by too fast! Sorry no pics... I forgot my camera at home. I'll send them next week. Love you guys! Elder Odom