September 18, 2017 -- Aeroporto (Vitoria Da Conquista)

it was a week very good week. I learned how to make oatmeal and im feelin pretty sweet cuz now i eat breakfast and im not just dead all the day. also all that fiber is helping a ton with my poops so that makes life 100x more enjoyable hahahah oatmeal isnt actually that good but ya know ya gotta do what ya gotta do hahahaha i just put a ton of chocolate milk powder in when i make it so that helps a ton haha. animal count went up i saw some bunnies and was able to pet them it was super nice and relax and a lot of dead animals that were getting eaten by vultures so ya welcome to bahia hahahah people just leave dead animals in the middle of busy streets. 

tuesday we had a super dope lesson with elielton and geovana about temples and eternal familes! they are legally married which is actually more rare than seeing a white person in salvador so im super happy and they love hearing our messages. geovana is normally super quiet during the lessons but as soon as we started talking about eternal marriage she became a completely new person!!! they really are such an awesome couple and they do all the readings and THEY WENT TO CHURCH YESTERDAY ALONE I FREAKED OUT DURING SACRAMENT MEETING cuz they werent there when it started but they showed up in the middle. please please please pray for them. its kinda difficult because elielton works nights on the weekends so its really hard for him to get to church. 

wednesday we had a dope lessons with poliana about the restoration and the importance of the priesthood on the earth. she is part of the espirito religion idk what it is in english so lessons with her are super interesting and she is full of great questions. we also got the chapel ready for zone conference. thursday was zone conference and it was super good. recieving training from president and having an interview always makes me more excited so im super happy about that. and the best part was that the training was about the plan of salvation. and i got my paackage too and it had everything... but could have had more mike and ikes ahahah. then we did a little "pre interview" for ruan and his baptism. i asked him who THomas S monson was and he said "the man who invented the airplane right?" so we were able to have a sweet little teaching moment right there hahahha. it was hilarious hahah

on saturday i taught a sweet little english class and POLIANA WENT and we got to give her a tour of the church and i think she really liked it so i was super super super happy. teaching english is not actually that easy i was having a little bit of trouble even speaking it because portuguese is becoming so much more natural so i think the gift of tongues is real hahah. but i think having more activities like this english class is really gonna get our ward more excited so im anxious to see how it goes!

in my studies of the scriptures and conference talks i came across a theme that struck me really hard. alma and amulek are debating with zeezrom and they start to rock his world then alma says this alma 13:28

"but that ye would humble yourselves before the Lord, and call upon his holy name, and watch and PRAY CONTINUALLY, THAT YE MAY NOT BE TEMPTED ABOVE THAT WHICH YE CAN BEAR, and thus be led by the holy spirit, becoming humble meek submissive,patient AND FULL OF LOVE, and all long suffering"

i was then reading a talk from conference i forgot the name of the talk and who wrote it so bear with me hahaha. but he talks about simply doing the small things to strengthen our faith. the commandment most mention in the scriptures is to pray WITH REAL INTENT but it is also the most broken of the commandments. doing the small and simple things in our lives will help us to overcome any problems or difficulties. God and Christ want to lift us up but they cant if we dont tell them what we need! PRAY MORE

i love you all.

sam

[Sam also performed the baptism of a young boy from a part-member family this week.]