Good morning dearest family, This has been one of the fastest weeks
I have had so far on the mission, last week was one of the slowest I have had on
the mission. That was hard week for me, for me it was one of those refining
fires, and I am very happy and grateful to Heavenly Father that he gave me a
tough week like that one. Satan worked alot on me that week, not with normal
temptations, but just with thoughts of self worthlessness and self pity. He knows
that it's a weakness of mine, One of my biggest fears is to disappoint
someone, and it seemed like that entire week, he only told me that I was a
disappointment to everyone. He even got me to believe for it for a few moments.
I am glad to know that I am not a disappointment to any of you or my Heavenly
Father. And I am grateful that my Good Father in Heaven brought me low so that
he could take me higher. Its kinda funny how Satan makes our problems seem alot
bigger and alot more difficult, because now I'm looking back and everything
turned out fine. I really was worrying and stressed out for nothing, but I'm glad
the The Lord showed me how good I really have it right now. The Lord blessed us
abundantly this week, I prayed alot this last week asking what the Lord wanted
me to do different or what he wanted me to change. And the answer was always the
same. Just keep going and moving on and don't look back, have faith and the blessing
will come. So this week that's what we did we endured and persevered, we
continued and the Lord blessed us with much success. The week didn't start out
too great, Tuesday we just went out looking for a lot of less actives. We didn't
have any success though with that and we didn't find anyone at home We ended up
just getting burnt in the sun and making various contacts. We had our first
activity in the church that night, there was about 25 people that went, the
bishop gave a message and then it was the missionaries job to have a little game
with everyone there, we played game called I have never... which is where we
start in circle and everyone has ten tokens which we used little macaroni's and
then every person has to say something they have never done, for example I have
never ridden an airplane. And then everyone that has already ridden an airplane
has to give up a token, and the last four people that still had tokens at the
end won and got a prize, (oreos) yes I found oreos finally here in Brazil which
made me really happy. So that was fun and went well. Wednesday was a special
day, it started off bad as well we went and finally got a hold of a reference
that had been taught by the missionaries and was supposed to be an elect, and was
going to be baptized, but that was back 6 months ago when they had pulled out the
missionaries from our area because of some things with the ward. So this lady
named suzanna hadn't been in contact with the missionaries for 5 or 6 months. But
we got there and she was like well my sister is living with me now and shes
catholic and so I have started going back to church with her and I think I am
going to baptize my kids who are 3 years old and another that is 4 months old.
I was thinking the whole time about how messed up it is to baptize perfect
children. But we talked for a while and I nicely told her that she will never
have full happiness in life if she continues in the catholic church and baptizes
her children in that church. I just told her why we are baptized and what is
required in a baptism. So I just kinda let the spirit give her a bit of a
burning. So I left there a little bummed out cause we were hoping that she would
still be excited about baptism and stuff, but it sounds like she lost most of
that desire. I couldn't get a hold of her after that to invite her to church and
set up another lesson. After that we were walking and made a contact at the
house of a really fat gay guy that was dying to have us come into his house and
have a drink of water or something. I was just like naw we´ll come back another
day cause we are busy right now. So we left we were looking for houses and
making contacts with lots of people. We met alot of good people as well that I
look forward to going back and teaching this week. So I don't know why, but I
called sister in our ward to ask her about a house that she said is for rent,
I don't know why I called her honestly, but it was like all of the sudden I was on
the phone with her and I mentioned the name of a road called Marinha. After a
second a guy came up and started talking to my companion but, my companion didn't
really know what he was talking about, he was pointing out a road and was saying
this is the road marinha, I already knew that, but I felt the strong feeling that
The Lord had just delivered one of his special children into our hands, so I
knew that I had to make a contact with him and get his information, so I was
talking with the sister on the phone and making a contact with the guy at the
same time. We talked for a bit his name is Max and attends the Spirit Church,
which is a church that believes in reincarnation and stuff like that. He almost
made it sound like it would be a bad idea if we went and visited him. But I got
his info and then we went about our day. We went back Friday with a member and
taught him the first lesson, he understood it well and was very interested in
the Book of Mormon. He said that he would go to church on Sunday, because he
wanted to see how it was. We went back the next day with another member and
taught him again and he said he was dead set on going to church the next day. So I
called him Sunday morning and he said that he was already heading to the bus stop
to go to church. That made me super happy we got to church and he was already
there and had already had tour with one of the member that showed him the church
and introduced him to the members. The Lord was so good to us yesterday, JosÃe
came to church, but his wife didn't, because she is pregnant and was going through
alot of pain. I called him in the morning and said that he would go, we also
had another couple go to church that we had taught during the week that our the
daughter and son in law of a family that we helped reactivate here. There names
our Junior and Adrielly. Adrielly was really superstitious before she went to
church, because all her family had told her that our church is horrible and is of
the devil and stuff like that, but they went to church and they payed alot of
attention and I think they liked it. Its hard to teach them during the week, but
we will teach them again this week, hopefully we can baptize them as well
because they re married legally. So after church we taught max again in the
church with a member we taught him about baptism and he accepted to be baptized.
We asked him if he would accept our help to be baptized on the 8th of February
and he accepted. He said he felt a peace and happiness at church and he felt
that he was in the right place. He is 19 years old and is really tall. That made
me so happy and I know that the Lord blessed us and it was really a miracle from
Him. Please pray for max this week because he will be visiting his mom this week
until Friday so I don't want anything to happen that will dissuade him from being
baptized. I was so happy that the Lord heard my pleadings and blessed us with
investigators to church and a date. It has been a while since we have had such a
special investigator. And please pray for our other investigators as well, so they
can have the desire to be baptized. Well this week was great and we worked tons with members, we had 17 lessons with members present this week, hopefully we can
do the same this week right now. Thanks for your letters and lectures of
consolation haha I needed them. Today we are supposedly going hiking on trail
somewhere. Well I love you all and I am grateful for you all and for the many
wonderful blessings the Lord gives us. And I am grateful that he humbles us and
shows us our weaknesses. Well this computer has alot of problems with the a
button. So mom might have to do some correcting for me. Here is picture of a
nice house for rent that we found. If you look hard you can see the house in the
background haha. Love you guys so much! Have a great week!
-Love Elder Kennington
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