Elder Gurksnis Goes to Brazil

Well sooo much happened this week. and lots of reasons for me to be happy. Things are going well and I just felt super glad this week for how things are going on my mission. We baptized Amanda yesterday! So turns out she came to know us from our English class! And she had lots of interesting trials that I really enjoyed helping her with. I feel like we made so much progress with her and I love to see how much she has changed. She truly seems like someone who was prepared for us at this time by the hand of the Lord.  This week I was also able to return to my stomping grounds (my first area in Freguesia) and do a split. It was the coolest and strangest thing to be back there. I was tried so much in that area and truly feel like I came to know my Savior a little bit better and trust in Him during those 4 months. And turns out the Lord is blessing all my recent converts there! Carlos (my very first baptism) is marrying a returned missionary soon, Elaine is giving freaking lunch to ...

Awesome 2nd week here in Parada Pinto. We have been teaching an English class with the assistants who share a chapel with us. They have been going soooo well. We have like almost 50 people sometimes for me and Elder Peterson to teach. Its kinda crazy haha. Buttttt a TON of them are interested in the gospel after they see the church and see the way that we teach and stuff. We have got a ton of them to visit this week and even have a baptismal date set with a girl named Amanda who has always been in our classes. Praying everything works out with her this week! She came to church and yesterday and loved it. She has said that ever since we started to teach her, she has felt the Holy Spirit have a huge impact in her life. The spirit is always strong teaching her, and she has a great desire to get her life back in order spiritually.  The streets are pretty crazy here and sometimes very packed. We have been approached by so many drunk people its crazy. One of them was walking dizzily...

So....I went to talk with President last Tuesday and was told I was being transferred here to an area called Parada Pinto as a Zone Leader! I was super pumped. So pretty much this means that instead of taking care of 2 companionships, me and my comp take care of 8 or 9. I was super humbled by the call and know there are things I will learn here because of it. I am with Elder Hequer. He is a cool guy. 26 years old, born here in Brasil but lives in Portugal, and was baptized only 1 year before his mission! He is super knowledgable and ive loved the chance to teach with him. We have lots of work to do here in this area and am excited to tackle it with him. This week we had meetings and stuff but were still able to get out in the favelinha and work a little bit. It is totally different here than my last area, but im getting used to it. SO many people in the streets. We were able to find a cool RECENTLY MARRIED couple (of 2 months) this week and they liked church yesterday. Something te...

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...