Oi tudo mundo,

I am loving the good land of Brazil.

    This week was a long one, but a long one filled with many experiences. Good ones, things are great with the new companion. He is a strong willed missionary who does things a little different than I do. He is fun and we get along great. He is from Idaho Falls, Idaho. He graduated in 08´. He likes chocolate puffs cereal and he doesn´t like bacon flavored chips, which I have fallen in love with.

    Yesterday we went to seminary at the ward building to speak with a young man named Tiago. While there we met up with João Paulo, a teenager who was baptized on Easter. He was participating in seminary and answering questions that the kids who were born into the church didn´t know. After seminary we started to talk. I told him that he was going to start visiting people with us to prepare for his mission. With a smile he agreed and said that he needs to start buying white shirts. He then asked me ´´Have you ever though that maybe I would be called to the U.S. and knock on your door?`` I would die. I love that guy so much and words can´t explain my thankfulness to be a small part of bringing the Gospel into his life. He is an amazing kid I feel overwhelmed with joy when I think of the fact that he will serve a mission.

    We will have a family home evening in his house Saturday with some investigators and some members. It will be ´´A Noite das Pizzas`` or ´´The Night of Pizzas``. It will strengthen there family even more and give an opportunity to some other investigators to make friends in the church.

    This work, and all work in the Church, and all success, success worth achieving comes from the Lord. There is a scripture that reads ´´The devil will not support his children in the last day.`` Interesting. It doesn´t say that he won´t support them, just not in the final day of judgment. If you want success in the measurement of men, it is easy to attain, just forget about prayer, scripture study, going to church every Sunday and I promise the adversary will celebrate and give you a prize of some sort. Money, more selfish ambition, honor in the eyes of others. He might even give you money and success for a year. Maybe even until the day when Christ comes again in glory to reign over this earth. But, in that day, you won´t recognize him. You will be too obsessed with the things of this world. You aren´t serving Him now, it´s too late to start when he arrives. The adversary can fulfill all your lustful worldly desires easily. He can give you a life of luxury. But in that great and final day he will bring you down to an eternal pit of misery and woe.

   Heavenly father on the other hand has power of all things, material and spiritual, and you can find joy in this life and in the next only through Him. Only through the Son. Brad Nothum (The Grand-poo-bah) once told me that it is better to use a scripture in a talk than a pop song. Then the scripture he gave me was a chapter in the Bible about the Samaritan at the well. She was thirsty and she always returned to the well for more water. Christ told her that if she drink the water that he gave, she would never thirst again. She immediately wanted the water and begged for it. Only Jesus Christ the Savior can give this water through his mercy and Atonement. Drink of Him and never thirst again. Or Drink of the cup of the world that Satan is happy to offer and each drink you will thirst more and more until your pitiful rat race of a life is over and all your riches are gone and you are left to look into the eyes of the Savior who suffered and bled for you whom you so easily ignored. He is just in His judgment. The purpose of this life is to prepare to meet Him (Alma 34:32). You are the only person who can choose your Shepard. Will you be the Saviors sheep or the sheep of the evil one?

 

  -Elder Nothum