Ola meu familia & amigos!!
Its my
last week in the CTM and I cant believe that in a week from today I will
be in the mission field and teaching my own literal investigators in
Curitiba Brasil!! It is honestly going to be the worst leaving all of my
friends here as I grew closer to them. We have grown so close together
as missionaries and friends. I feel like I have been in this one
building for months and months but it has only been a month and a half
this coming Tuesday. My next email will be my first pday in the field!
This week has probably been the best week so far actually because I am
actually able to understand 75% of what is being said by my Brasilian
teachers and friends some of which don't know any English I may add lol.
We do a thing called split lessons and that is when you change
companions and teach with a Brasilian for about an hour and then go to
lunch with them. This past week one of my amazing teachers asked what are
your feelings about going into the field next week...( the keyboards
here are in Portuguese so no question mark for that sentence lol....) I
immediately said I am scared of not being able to talk with English after
the CTM because 90% of my companions will only know Portuguese. Then
immediately the whole district agreed that that was all of our fear. I
have some hope though because some missionaries said that after a year
its a chore to speak English even for a second. I think it would be
really funny if when I come home I forget how to speak English haha.
There is a scripture that Irmã Borges shared with us while talking
about the field and how its all hard especially with the language. Its
D&C 100:1. If you don't own a copy of D&C then you can go to your
app store and download an app called LDS library and get all them for
free right on your phone! No excuses lol!! It is now a favorite
scripture for me as word of comfort.
I have
a story to tell about my second proselyting experience... I just want
to start with how me and my companion got split from our district and
then it just started raining and then stopped so it was really hot for
everybody that knows what rain and humidity does to you... well its not
fun lol. So we are proselyting and we ran into the sisters in our
district and I saw that they were holding a wet and torn up Book of
Mormon.... I immediately was wondering what could of happened. So the last
guy I saw my friends Elder Dayton and Elder Haight talking to took it
from them and seemed interested and a couple minutes later that same guy
looked at Sister Bradford and Sister Braegger and started to tear the
book in half and threw it in a puddle.. The sisters then continued to
walk to him and picked it up and said "Bom dia" which means Good day and
then they walked away. This hurt my district and me so much and it has
effected our testimonies so much just from that experience and I didn't
even witness this with mine own eyes. As a representative of Jesus
Christ our redeemer I take it as a privileged to walk just a slight hair
in His shoes every day. There was a talk that Jeffrey R. Holland gave
and we watched it last night and he mentioned as a missionaries of Christ
we get to feel a little how Christ felt in his day. We GET to walk on
the outside bushes of Gethsemane where He suffered for our sins... As
much as it was wrong for that man to do that to a sacred book of God I cant imagine where he is at in his life to be able to do that. He must
have a lot of bad in his life to do that and that is why we serve. No
matter what somebody has done or will do we treat them as Christ would
treat them. The WORLD NEEDS the gospel especially in these days where
there is so much corruption! When I think this is hard I imagine what
Christ did for us on the day when he was crucified on the cross. Those
videos bring tears to my eyes... I have seen a video of a little girl
singing about the Garden of Gethsemane and it brings joy to my heart
knowing that is how much Christ loves us all. To suffer for us so we can
live again!
If you guys have not read The
Book of Mormon in your life for your life, I challenge you all to get a
copy! This is another testament of Jesus Christ and the word in it are
not just words but they are on paper for all the lives in the world! I
love you all so so so much and I know I would not want to be anywhere
else but here today! Until next week!
- Elder Hammond
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