Singing and Testifying

“And if ye had  all the scriptures which give an account of all the marvelous works of Christ, ye would, according to the words of Christ, know that these things must surely come.”  3Nephi 28:33

Ok your questions: (Are you taking pictures and can you figure out how to send them?)  I have no clue how to do pictures.  I’ve tried 3 times and we all think that the computers here are just locked down too tight and so my first email from the field will be really huge and filled with pictures. There were no new Americans who came in this week so we still have the new sister but she is doing fine and she will be way ahead of anyone else her actual week.

So it started to rain this week, a lot. On Tuesday it rained during our actividade física where we have a small outside track, fastest 3 laps I’ve ran since I’ve been here. And that also means that it is getting cooler. Apparently the super hot temps when we first got here were the highest it’s been in 60 years.  Now it’s starting to cool back down and I actually slept under a sheet for the first time since being here. So this past Wednesday Elder Si. and I got brand new Brasileiro room mates they seem pretty cool, one has that accent where you pronounce all the s´s as sh´s its pretty crazy.

I’m glad yall got the recording of the our song “Abide With Me; Tis Eventide”- that was pretty awesome to sing. We had been practicing for 3 weeks and I tried to help everyone with technique and how we were going to arrange all the verses and such, it was good. The day before we were going to sing they told us, “oh yea, the member of the Seventy over all the missionary work in the entire world is going to be there, Elder Evans. So we were like ... well I guess we should practice more, haha, but it was really awesome. Elder Evans’ talk was interesting though, it was all about families and the need to have children and families, families, families… which is all great but they were like, “oh yea, don’t think about this for 2 years- but remember! haha.

So we have 12 days or something like that left here in the CTM- crazy! Irmão Brito said that it’s time now to essentially sprint to the finish.  He’s really encouraging us to fulfill our language goals and stretch even further (ex: 5 words a day 2 phrases memorizing different grammar points and memorizing scriptures) which doesn’t sound like a lot.  I’m sure we learn much more than that, but just on the spot it is crazy hard. So now we’ve started analyzing the grammar in the scriptures, never has it taken so long to read through 1 Nefi 1:1!  We’ve also upped our number of investigators we teach from 2 to 4 so we all have a set other companionship that we teach during our additional study.  That also means we don’t have as much time to prepare for any of our lessons, but it’s all good. Spiritual experience: We were doing practice teaching about the importance of the Book of Mormon and I was teaching Sis D. and she had this scenario where she had no time to read and her life was really crazy.  I felt led by the spirit to promise her that she could turn to any page in the Book of Mormon and read any verse and it would strengthen her testimony of Christ, so she was like, “right now?” and I was like, “yea right now”.  So she randomly flipped to 3 Nefi 28:33 and it was in Portuguese so we didn’t know exactly what it said, but it spoke of Christ.  She was awe struck and started crying and it was so powerful and the spirit was so strong and so I teared up a bit too.  Then I bore my testimony of the Book of Mormon and its testimony of Christ and it was just amazing… then we looked it up in English. haha It was a great experience.

“And if ye had  all the scriptures which give an account of all the marvelous works of Christ, ye would, according to the words of Christ, know that these things must surely come.”  3Nephi 28:33

I’ve gotta go now I love yall so much! Hope you feel better

Elder Pierce