What goes down, always comes back up...

Oi Familia!

Well this week was better. Last week I was really down and out. When your body gets tired and out and the mosquitos are biting and the sun is burning...it is easy to get a little down. BUT this week went well. We arrived in the house of one of our investigators this week and before we said anything she asked to be baptized.....why can't everyone be this easy to baptize? She had a dream after we taught here the first lesson that she was going to church with her neighbor and arrived at the chapel here in Tibiri and told her neighbor she was a Latter-day Saint. Cool huh? She came to church so beautiful in modest clothes (EXTREMELY RARE) and immediately was fellowshipped. Severina helped her learn how to sing the hymns, the bishop welcomed her with open arms, the young women immediately crowded around here to help her feel at home, and even Leandro and Leandro (two of our recent baptisms) took down here phone number so that they could invite her to activities. She is very excited for her baptism this next Sunday and we are too. She will most likely be baptized with another awesome girl! We ended up having a bunch of investigators in the church as well, so that was nice. This week we had a conference with Elder Godoy (1st counselor in the area presidency of Brasil) and it was AWESOME! He has so much energy and spunk! He talked about a lot of cool things but the thing that really stood out to me was a story he told or actually an analogy. He drew a picture of a tree trunk that had been cut so that you could see all the rings on the trunk, or the years of the tree´s life. Some rings were darker than others and some rings you could tell had been damaged. He went on to talk about how one of these dark rings happen because a forest fire struck the forest that year and another ring showed that insects had invaded the forest that year. Through all these events the tree lived on until it was cut...and you could see its history perfectly....everything it passed through. He related this to our lives and said we are a little different than the tree. He said as we go through our lives it is almost inevitable to escape without a mark or blemish from sin...they just happen. We are imperfect and as the years and years of our lives go on, like the tree we acquire these marks....and then we are cut (aka die) and stand in front of our Maker....where He doesn't even need to ask us a single question...he just looks at our trunk (body) and our lives are completely laid out in front of Him....but the good thing is, unlike the tree these marks can be erased. The damage or mistakes can be completely erased in a way that we can stand before Heavenly Father without a single mark. He continued to talk about that this is possible because of Christ, this is the gift he gave us. That despite how many marks we have, we can stand pure and clean in front of God because of the atonement. I loved this analogy because it made me remember a time when we were all together at chimney rock. We were all walking down the trail when Dad stopped us at an old tree trunk and talked about the life of a tree. Ahhh what great memories we all have together! I cant wait to have more when I come back in 6 months!! Ahhh can you believe this week marks 1 year!! Goodness time flys!! Well I gotta go preach the gospel and baptize the folks aqui em Tibiri. Espero que vocês estâo bem! Te amo de mais!