Elder Gurksnis Goes to Brazil

Well tomorrow should be interesting...All I got today was that I need to pack my bags and be on a bus to São Paulo tomorrow at 7am. President is wanting to talk with me to see where I will be transferred to. It is super super up in the air so I really dont know what will happen, but im super anxious to know! But my last week here in Jardim Simus has wrapped up and man am I gonna miss it. Hard to think that I set foot here 5 1/2 months ago. Learned a lot of things, strenghtened my own testimony and hopefully of many others. This week we were able to baptize Michael!!! He is an awesome story that I told y'all about in my last email. He is a stud and im super pumped for his future. He is 26 but still wants to serve a mission lol. We'll see if it all works out right. Also got the chance to watch Rafael baptize his son Richardy. What a special and pure moment that was. So many feelings for this family and to see it come together like that was amazing. One of the members told me ...

Well to start off, our miracle worked out! (well honestly baptism alone is a miracle...). But Carla was baptized on Saturday and was super super happy with her decision. She has a great example in her dad to look up to and I know they will be strengthened together with her decision.  Another awesome thing from this week was Micheal. Well the story of Micheal goes like this. A few weeks ago we did a contact with this girl in the street, but it turned out she lived pretty far away. As she was walking away, Micheal approached us, drunk, asking about who we were. He told us half jokingly that he needed to rearrange his life and make better decisions and then told us to bring that girl when we came to visit him.  But turns out we went to his house to teach him a few days later and he has a huge desire to make changes in his life. We taught him about the Word of Wisdom and Law of Chastity and he made changes literally immediately in his life so he could follow these guidances we...

Well I'll start with a funny story from this week. So it was 6:29AM in the morning and our alarm went off. Literally as i was in the process of waking up my eyes saw this huge bursting of light and i thought it was like something outside that happened. I got up super fast and the only words i could get out of my mouth to my companion was "I saw a light!" (in Portuguese). Turns out that when I went to turn the bathroom light on our power was out again. So im almost positive when i woke up i saw the light in our room burst as our power went out. But being Mormon missionaries, some of you can probably imagine the laugh we got out of it for what i said.  This week has been a continuation of preparing a good amount of people for their baptismal dates. Its exciting the possibilities we have! I know God will prepare the right people for us in His time. We have really good friendships with our investigators which is super great because you gain a trust from them that you need...

The weeks pass so fast I hardly remember what happens now. We have been crazy busy finding new people and marking baptismal dates. With 3 weeks left in this transfer and probably in this area, the time is getting tight. We are gonna do all we can do to help these people enter into the waters of baptism.  I walked into to church this week and couldnt describe my happiness to see 9 of my recent converts (including the kids of Pamela and Rafael) and 5 investigators in church. We brought our awesome couple João and Carol to church this week and will watch a church movie with them tonight. Brought Rafaels brother as well which was so awesome to see him there with his bro. Brought the sweetest 77 year old lady named Amália. She already knew a member in our ward who invited her years ago. She is super super brave as her husband isnt wanting to go to church with her. We will teach them both this week and really focus on the temple and eternal families. I have printed out a ton of pict...

Really just on a roll out here with everything! We knocked a street one night this week and at the end i felt an impression to knock a door on the crossing street. We met a really cool girl Carol and her boyfriend João who are super excited about our message. The dad of the girl sat in and was just burning us with questions haha! I literally had adrenaline running and feel like i was totally prepared to answer everything that he had to say. We will work with those 3 this week to really create a good friendship.  We have enjoyed working with the ward as well and have received a few referrals that have great potential honestly. A lot of our best investigators are travelling this weekend which is a bummer. But we were able to mark 5 baptismal dates on saturday and sunday and are really excited to see the results of this transfer. Although its tough to postpone the progress of some people when life gets in the way, you gotta trust that the Lord is preparing them little by litte....