Hello Family and Friends,

       The new family that we met is amazing. Luciano went to church with us this past Sunday and he loved it. After Priesthood, he looked at me and said ´´Great lesson, huh?`` He has already read a big chunk of the Book of Mormon and we met him last week. He knows it´s true. The hard part is that his wife is a faithful member of another church and she doesn´t want to change. Two days ago when we arrived we met Luciano outside and he started to plot with us, talking about how he is pushing them to pray and how he wants them to have the same answer feelings that he is having. He reminds me Lehi, after he ate the fruit and wanted everyone else in his family to have it. We always ask them how they are feeling about the baptism on the 30th of may and he always responds great and his wife begins to look strangely at him, then he says
              ``I´m the head of this house and what is good for me will be good for the rest of my family´´

I like it a lot when he says that.

    He also responds to questions saying ´´nevermore`` as much as possible. for example. Luciano, do you believe that something dirty can live in the presence of God?´´

                  Luciano:(In a deep and wise voice) ´´Nevermore`` (Jamais in portuguese)

He is a miracle that God so mercifully gave to us and he will be a great leader in the church. He has three kids, Vitoria, Levanha, and Artor.


    The mission is filled with ups and downs and many moments of discouragement where you are left to choose to think that the Lord has left you alone or that he has left you to grow. A plant isn´t pulled up by the sun, it strives to grow to receive the most light possible. I often look at myself and my mission and try to evaluate how I am doing. It´s tough, because the mission is incomparable to any other part of life thus far. I only have my feelings to go off of. If I´m feeling excited, happy, energetic, and ready to give my all, I know things are going good. If I feel down, incapable, and crummy, I know that I am not doing so good. The hardest part is when your feeling great but someone else isn´t, you try to let it not affect you but it does. When you are with them all day and all night 24  hours, their attitude will be your attitude. I was left to think originally that if I continued my way and trying me hardest to always be excited and willing to submit to the will of the Lord that all would get better. Well, it didn´t. We had a multi-Zone conference where our Mission President talked about how the mission will reflect your future marriage and that the way you treat your companion will be the way you treat your spouse and so on and so forth. Well, I just realized that it isn´t enough to just decide that you are going to be better, or that you are going to be happier, or that you are going to do this and all will be well because you are doing your part. Nope. You have to strive to make the other happy, their joy must be your joy and there sadness your sadness, if the two differ, many problems will arise, problems that can be easily healed, or that can slowly get bigger and bigger until there is nothing left to fix, just a big hole. You have to be distressed when they aren´t happy and feel for them like Christ did when we suffered what they are going through. He wasn´t in the Gethsemane thinking
                        ´´Wow, this person brought this one on himself.``
 or
                        ´´Obviously that was a bad idea``

 He was the Master of righteousness who lived a perfect life and he knew how to overcome every temptation and sin, yet he didn´t look at us as a lost cause, he saw potential, he saw his brothers suffering and he did what the Father asked and drank the bitter cup of our simple mistakes, faults, pains, sins, cries, screams, yells, our darkest hour entered his soul billions of time that night in Gethsemane.
        If we are going to have any type of a successful relationship, we have to strive to ease the suffering and burden of the other. In time, we will understand them, just as the Savior understands us.
    Take up the cross of your spouse, neighbor, friend, and walk a few miles with it. You will begin to notice many differences in the way you treat and react to them.
   Or, let your pride continue to rule you and look for their weaknesses and faults, you will find many, and you will never be happy.

Love,
   Elder Nothum