Elder Hilton June 7, 2016-2018 : Week 104

Hey everybody!
How are you all doing?! I hope everyone had a great and fun week! We are almost into May which is crazy! I only have a week and a half We had a great week here with a lot of fun little adventures and lots of work. We are hoping for a miracle this week, because we will need one haha! But anyway, I'll just get right in to the week!

Last Monday like I said in the morning we had gone up to the historical center in Porto Seguro! After that we came to use email. Anyways, after using email we headed down the coast to try to find this other historic place that has a replica of one of the ships in the fleet of Pedro Alvares Cabral, the guy who discovered Brasil! So we got there at about 4:40 pm and they had just closed! We were pretty bummed because we had walked for like half an hour to get there and it seemed pretty cool. After that we didn't know what to do so we started to walk back towards the city center and found a cool place to go bowling. So we went bowling! Haha, it was a blast even though we were a bit rusty.

That night we slept in the Elders house in the center again and then in the morning woke up and we had a division. I stayed with the two elders in the center and Elder Christofferson went to an area here in Porto Seguro called Baianão. He was with Elder Kilidjian and Elder Gray, from our district!

So Tuesday was the division. I was with Elder De Jesus (from São Paulo) and Elder Barreto (from Cape Verde). It was a great time even though almost everything fell through. We ended up doing contacts and teaching some people in their doors. We found a woman whose husband was taught and baptized a long time back in Itabuna. We taught her and I invited her to be baptized to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost and she excitedly accepted the invitation. We also had a conversation with her husband and invited him to go back to church. The last thing I did during the division was a baptismal interview of a 14 year old girl named Micaely. She passed it and was baptized this saturday! After the division we met back up with the Elders and Elder Christofferson and I took a bus back to Eunápolis.

Wednesday we were back home after we got a quick bus the night before from Porto to come back home to Eunápolis. So Wednesday we had the whole day back in our area. We had a fun day as well with one failure. Irmã Branca had told us that she wanted to get to know better the life of Joseph Smith and stuff so we had thought that we would watch the 1 hour, Joseph Smith movie with her. We got there and she put the video on her laptop and then connected it to the TV. One thing we did NOT think about was the potential problem that the wifi could go bad. And like usual with these type of situations, the wifi started to go bad hahah. Rookie mistake from two oldies to not be more prepared. So after a good amount of trying we decided it wouldn't work and we just left a normal message. It was funny but we made up for it a couple days later. Anyways, Branca is doing great but she just doesn't feel like she has gotten her answer yet about the truth of our messages. She could get baptized any time and we think she is our biggest hope for this week to get baptized. We are praying!

Wednesday night we headed over to visit Jailton! He is Lucas' dad who is not a member. Lucas is the only priest in our branch and his step-sister is on a mission right now. Irmão Jailton has been to church twice now and he is a great guy. We got there and decided to teach a little more in depth to him about the Book of Mormon. We also felt like we could watch the Restoration video with him,the 20-minute one. Elder Chistofferson has a little USB drive with the video so we figured we could just plug it into the TV and watch it. It always works. So he put in the USB and when he went to click on the video all we saw was a big red X saying, "Format not supported"! Ugh! two failures with tech in one day haha. But it ended up working out because Jailton just watched it on his phone. After we talked about everything we asked him if he had prayed about our message. He sheepishly replied that he hadn't. We told him that he needed to pray and we taught him how to do it. It was really cool and he really committed to praying now. If he gets his answer he can also be baptized any day!

Thursday night we got to visit Israel and his family again! Man do we love that family. Every time we go, we laugh and have fun and also feel the Spirit and learn. Thursday night we had a little miracle because their whole family was there again! Second time in a row! Haha it was great. We didn't have a ton of time but we decided to bring back the memories for them of our first lesson. So we watched the 20-minute Restoration video. The video was fantastic! We felt the Spirit so strongly as we watched a humble farm boy get called as a prophet. After the video ended, we almost didn't want to talk because the Spirit was so strong. we started to bear our testimonies and practically we told them that they need to pray and get serious about all of this. It is sometimes hard to speak boldy but we were blessed to have the Holy Spirit so it really wasn't us doing the talking. They understood what we were trying to say so now we just have to hope that they really have the desire to find out if this is all true! (Spoiler: IT IS!!!)

Friday we made up for ourselves with Irmã Branca and we watched the Joseph Smith movie and it worked! We had gone early to the internet place and downloaded it so it would work without a hitch!! It all went smoothly and we had to have a little heart to heart with her too and speak boldly so she can understand how she can get her answer. We will see how this week goes!

Saturday we had a good lesson with Patrick! He is one of our investigators that kind of tried to get rid of us last week but we still had a lesson marked with him and he told us he would finally go to church Sunday and he actually DID! But we had a fun time too after the lesson when we helped him and his dad take this HUGE wooden table out of a house. We tied it to a rope and lowered it down over the balcony because it wouldn't fit down the stairs. It was a fun adventure and we sadly didn't have the camera with us! Only on the phone and the quality isn't good haha.

Saturday night we had a really cool lesson with this girl named Irana! She is Branca's other daughter that we didn't know existed until she brought her to church last week. She is 17 but is already married, or at least we thought, but I'll get to that. So we had marked with her last Sunday to visit her on Thursday but when we went there she wasn't home! Saturday night we decided to go by and we found her at home! We taught her the first lesson and it was awesome! She accepted everything and at the end we asked, "Irana, what do you feel now knowing that all of this that we said happened." She replied, "Well I am very grateful and happy because now I know which church is the true one, and I don't have to keep looking for it!" We were in shock and then I challenged her to baptism! She accepted! We gave her a pretty fast date because she only needs to go to church once more. We left excited but then on Sunday we were talking to the other girls in the ward after church and they said they thought that she wasn't legally married to her husband Samuel. We were sad to hear that because we had thought they were married. But we will find out this week! And if they aren't we just need to get them married and then baptize haha!

Sunday was a great day as well. We sadly did not have all the people at church that we wanted but we had 4! Irana and her "husband" Samuel came and Patrick too! And one other member brought her boyfriend who isn't a member. Everyone else didn't come because tomorrow (Tuesday) is a holiday here to everyone went out of town. But we had a great Sunday and the last meeting of the day was really cool because the District President gave a training on the new Ward mission plan thing that President Bangerter has been trying to implement in our mission for a month or so now! And we got a new, AWESOME, branch mission leader so we are super pumped about that! Sunday night we had to get a bus down here to Porto Seguro again and here we are! We are going to do a division, a city that is the furthest south in our mission. We still got another 6-7 hours of buses to get. We also might have to sleep in the bus station but we will see haha! We came down here and this morning we got to go to the boat thing! It was really awesome but the pictures are taking forever to upload so we will see if they work! But at least we got the ones from last week!

Anyways, that was our week! We are praying for some last week miracles for our compaionship and we are going to give it our all! I realized this is pretty much my last week in the mission. Only one more week of being called "Elder". This is so crazy. It has gone by so fast! I love you all so much! And I love our Savior!! Have a great week!

-Elder McKay Hilton