Well, June is officially here! Last month was pretty great -- first, we had the baptism of a 24 year-old girl, who'd been investigating since September, and then on the 30th, we had the baptisms of two 9 year-old boys, whose parents are members, and went out for pizza afterwards at a restaurant called "Arte da China" with one of the boy's families.
Yesterday, a new Ward Mission Leader was called, and he must be retired or something, because we had a meeting with him right after church, and I was like "So when are you free?" and he was like "When am I free? Let me see.. all day, every day!" haha! That's a nice change! Our previous Ward Mission Leader was busy all day, every day! We didn't have a single meeting with him in the past 3 months! Now that we have someone who can actually go out with us and visit people, things are really going to be different! I'm excited for this month now.
What's interesting, is that a new Ward Mission Leader was called in the ward that Alissa is serving in yesterday, too, and, that after the baptism on the 30th here, there was also a wedding at 7pm at the church, just like there was after the baptism of her investigator 2 weeks ago! Parallels.. weird..
Anyways! Um.. what else.. We taught a lady who is Atheist about 2 weeks ago, and that was an interesting experience! Just about everyone here has a belief in God and Jesus Christ.. so it's pretty uncommon to find someone who doesn't believe in them! That was only my 2nd encounter on my mission with an Atheist, and it was very different teaching her. We taught about The Book of Mormon not with the usual aim to show that the church is true, but with the aim to show that Jesus Christ really was the Son of God, and not just a regular person, and that God exists.
She'd said that she used to believe in God, but then she felt like He stopped answering her prayers, and so I feel like she is just kinda mad at Him -- but she said she doesn't believe in Him. I asked her if she knew the answer to the question "Why do bad things happen to good people?" and she said "Right? Good question. What do you think?" and then I shared this scripture with her (from The Book of Mormon), which Alissa had showed to me at one point in 2013, which I have really come to appreciate during my mission:
Mosiah 3:7
"And lo, he shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than man can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people."
This scripture talks about Jesus Christ and what He went through here on the earth for us. Jesus Christ is definitely one of the best people who ever lived here on the earth, and He went through all of these terrible things! He suffered physically, and especially, spiritually, when he performed the Atoning Sacrifice, and then was crucified.
God doesn't let us suffer because he doesn't love us, or anything like that -- He lets us suffer, and have hardships, and struggles, because we need to have both negative and positive experiences in this life to truly learn the things that we need to. If life were just pure happiness, we wouldn't really learn much, now would we?
After I shared that scripture, a few minutes later, she said that because of that scripture, she became interested in reading The Book of Mormon, and that she's going to read it. I hope that reading The Book of Mormon can help her get her faith in God and Jesus Christ back!
Well, I've got to go now. I hope you all have a great week!
Feel free to email me with any questions or comments, or just to say hi! :)
Elder Canto
Photo from the baptism on May 30th
I love this family!
Photo from the baptism in early May -- not sure how the left side is blurry and not the right side.. maybe we were moving when they took this picture
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