Hey Everyone,
Briggs sounds like he is doing great! Maybe even better than I did. Maybe... ha-ha jk. He’s having a great season. I can’t wait until sectionals, I know if he gives his all he can make it to state.
Chandler sounds like he’s doing incredible, especially since he was out for a while. What he did with having me be his favorite moment in wrestling made me so happy. I love that kid so much. I hope he goes all the way, he deserves it. Plus he still owes me a state ring. Ha-ha I knew we wouldn’t see each other for three years, but it will be so cool when we see each other and talk about our missions.
Gannon got picked up again! That’s awesome! I’m so happy for him. Was he there on the field when they were playing? I can’t wait to hear more about this. I know he will do awesome.
This week has been pretty good, probably my best week of missionary work here in Boa Vista. This week started off with the leaders of the zone coming from Sal to do a division. It was fun. I was with a native all day, Elder Lopes, and it was pretty fun. He was kind of quite at first, but opened up a lot. He is such an example of what the hope of Christ’s gospel can do for someone. After that division blessings just started to pour out. My recent convert here, Natalia, went teaching with us so much this week and showed us all of her friends. She told us that this gospel has brought such an incredible light into her life that she wants all of her friends to know about it now. She showed us two new families who are incredible and she is helping so much. They both came to church this week and are progressing well! It was so cool to see how the gospel has touched her so much and now she just wants everyone to know about it. She showed me what it truly means to be converted to Christ. She is also now helping her whole family get baptized, so we will see where that goes. It made me super happy to see her so converted to Christ.
So when I got here the branch only was having a frequency of about 45 people. Elder Paredes and I have been working with a lot of less actives to help them come back to church. Each week there has been a couple more people at church and this last week there was 57 people! It was awesome! I forgot what it looks like to have so many people at church, it was kind of weird... ha-ha we also had seven investigators at church. This week was such a huge week of blessing and pushing the work forward. These next couple of weeks will be very exciting.
Something I learned this week was the power of Christ’s atonement. Christ’s life ended with him suffering for us. Why would he do such a thing? A question I ask myself time and time again. I will never be able to fully grasp how much this man loved us, which he laid down his life for us, that we might find joy and peace. Christ didn’t suffer so he could punish us, he did it to set us free from the pain of mistakes and shortcomings. Many times we may get down on ourselves, mad at our mistakes. We will let sorrow creep into our heart and poison us, making us think and feel like we are a failure, that god does not love us because of who we are and what we did. We will let pain and suffering sink deep into our soul and we will become lost. But this is not what life was ever meant to be. God made us that we might have joy. God sent his son that we might find peace and rest in him. No matter how far we feel we have drifted from god, we are never out of his reach. He is there. He will come to us. We need to turn to him. Allow the atonement of Christ warm our souls and cause sorrow to flee from our hearts. We need to choose to be happy and we must forgive ourselves. When we do not forgive ourselves we are holding back god’s love and Christ’s atonement and we cannot be fully healed. God wants to forgive. We need to be willing to forgive ourselves.
I love you all so much. I think about you and pray about you. I hope you are all okay. Never forget god is here for you and that you can never drift to far from his reach.
------Love, Elder Conway