Monday, October 22, 2012

The great question was asked, how do you get someone to commit. In Brazil, many Brazilians don't know how to commit to things; they usually accept everything, but don't follow through. But there are a few things you can do that help a lot. Commitments are a good way to find the elect. If the investigator is not committing then really they need to be dropped or put off to the side a bit. It is important to find their interest level the first visit. You can tell they have a little interested because they accepted the missionaries to teach them and with that you can help someone to commit. The missionaries could say, are you wanting to know if the book of Mormon really is true? Do you want to receive blessings in your life? (Promise specific blessings) then you need to go to church. Something like that. Then you boldly commit them, will you read the book of Mormon tonight? Will you come to church with us this Sunday? Will you keep the word of wisdom? Will you be baptised by whom that has authority from God? if they accept then it is important to follow up every day whether by visit or by phone so that they remember their commitment and to get them excited.  When committing, the missionaries always need to promise blessings and give there strong testimony like we learn in Preach my Gospel. If they just don't accept you can't do anything about it, they won't progress or get baptised so the only thing to do is leave the investigator in the Area book and move on. If they accept even if it is halfhearted you can show you excitement, and when they let you down by not doing what they promised to do, do like Elder Holland said, be devastated. Let them know they not only let down the missionaries, but more importantly they let down the Lord. Really inviting anyone to do anything in the first lesson is a great way to know if they will get baptised or not, and if they don't want to get baptised in the end then staying there is not fulfilling our missionary purpose. I hope this answers the question. Really is just depends on the agency of people if they want to accept or not, so the only thing we can really do is our part.

This week was great, we didn't find very many people, but we did our very best. Elder Millard and I were trying to come up with ideas of what we can do to find people. We had the idea to put a Book of Mormon in a tree and someone grabbed it, we started getting to know the workers in stores that we planned to visit every day like an ice cream shop, a small grocery store, and some other ideas. We didn't see much progress this week but we are happy and excited. Joao this week was hard to talk to, his is losing interest fast and we can never find him to teach and help him progress we are just hoping now that he will go to Church for a second time. Marcia too was hard to talk to this week because she wasn't at home at night the whole week. Tough times happen but the Lord will bless us for our effort in his time.

If you have any other question feel free to ask.

Love you all

Elder Sands