Staying in Porto Nacional!

Hey family,

I'm staying in Porto Nacional! My exclamation is positive, because I want to stay here. Elder Santos is my new companion. And no, he hasn't already been my companion. And yes, it's just us here. Many people have this last name in Brazil. He's excellent. He's always in a good mood and we get a long very well. This week was very successful. We found a ton of new people to teach. We don't have control over whether they will progress or not, but at least we're finding people that are curious enough to hear the message of the Restoration. 

Our priority right now is Luziene, a member's friend, who is loving the Book of Mormon and has gone to church 2 times. She participates in the classes at church and has already gone to a family night in the ward. We will hopefully teach her the restoration tomorrow. 

Romilda is traveling this week so we haven't been able to teach her again.

This week we had many days in which we didn't know where we were going but found many great people. I have gained a much better sense over the last few months of how to know what to do when you don't know what to do. Following this new understanding of inspired thoughts, we found a man, Antonio. We taught him the restoration and he agreed to be baptized this month when he receives an answer that the church is true. We went back yesterday to see how the reading of the Book of Mormon went/was going. He told us that he wants some time to read it. We explained again the importance of pondering and praying about what he reads. He didn't seem as excited as he was the first time, but at least we have invited him and explained what he needs to do to get an answer. I remembered just now that he mentioned to us that he had a dream the night before we came of some discussion about religion on his front porch. He said he knew it would happen but didn't know it would be us. Pretty cool.

As we have found success in finding many people, I have become almost too conscious of how often we are going to find people who don't want to go after our invite to learn more. Logically, it makes sense that as we find more people, we're going to run into this sort of thing more often. But also, it means that are chances of finding more gems (which are people prepared to hear us) increases. It's a nice little gospel math lesson. When more is given, more is required. When more opportunity for teaching is given, more effort and sacrifice is required. There is no easy way out. I'm grateful for having learned this lesson.

I'm glad my companion is funny. His first day here, we found a garage remote control on the ground in front of a house. No one was home so we determined to come back another day. As we walk around the city, he clicks the little remote control to see if it will open any of the garage doors around us. We joke that whatever door opens is clearly a door that we should enter.

Yesterday I was asked to give a talk in sacrament meeting. My subject was huge--Jesus Christ. In part of my talk I talked about attributes of Christ that we can all acquire by observing examples of people around us. The Light of Christ shows us all what is good and what is bad. It is this influence that teaches us through our experiences. As I studied to prepare the talk, I thought about my brothers and parents and how each of them emanate an attribute of Christ. It enjoyed being able to use examples from my family to describe the attributes of Christ, such as humility, knowledge, diligence, charity and love. I'm glad that you have all shared parts of your lives with me so that I could share parts of your lives with others to teach about Jesus Christ.

I'm looking forward to hearing from Brandyn soon! 

Have a good week!

Love,

Elder Young