No Pain, No Gain... Baptism :)

Just when I thought that my health couldn't get any worse, I hurt my elbow last week playing soccer and the doctor put me in a sling lol. The sling got really annoying though, so now I'm just taking pain meds until I can completely straighten my arm again. But the work must go on! Anyways, good morning! I hope y'all had a fantastic week and let's get right into this email. 

This week I kinda lost a little bit of motivation to work. So to reenergize myself spiritually, I studied a ton about Christ's Atonement! (His suffering, death, and ressurection). Something really cool that I learned was God's divine and complete love for His children. Okay so we lived with God before coming to this earth. God was literally with all of His children. God loved us. But God loved us so much that he wasn't content with us just living with Him. But he wanted all of us to become like Him and have everything that He has. He literally gave up His son, Jesus Christ, and risked losing a bunch of His children, so that those who loved Him could have everything that He has. 

I like to look at it like this... Before coming to earth, He had both the presence of God and the ability to live forever. But after Adam and Eve ate that fruit, we lost those two blessings. But in conquence, we gained the blessing of a family and the opportunity to learn and grow. And that's where Christ's Atonement comes into play. Suffering and dying for our sins as well as ressurecting, enabled us to break the bands of both physical and spiritual death, entering into the presence of God and gaining the ability of live forever with Him. 

But how is this different than before? Thanks to the Fall of Adam and the Atonement of Christ, we now have the ability to learn, grow, and become like God in this eternal life and progression. We also have the privledge of doing this with our families and bringing them along with us! God is so good!

cool things that happened this week

- we had both zone conference and interviews with President this week, which was super fun! 

- we also had three exchanges this week, one of which we completely abandoned our area lol. 

- because of zone conference, interviews, and these three exchanges, we literally had no time to work in our area, and our area really suffered this week because of that. This next week we are going to go on the hunt searching for people!

- in one of our exchanges, we taught this man named João, who literally has so much faith! João literally contacted the missionaries on the street. He was drinking and smoking, but wanted to learn more about Christ. In one week of taking lessons from the missionaries and going to church, João completely stopped smoking and drinking, his vision has been nearly cured, and him bad back that he's had for many many years is all better! Christ literally works miracles according to our faith and João is a great example of it!

- we officially marked the wedding of Juliana and Anderson for the 19th of October! They even gave me the privledge of being a witness for the wedding!

- we had the baptism of Manoel and Marcelo on Saturday! It all started with a contact that Elder Bradford and I made on the street. Manoel was sitting on the curb with his dogs. Simple contact, handed out a Book of Mormon, and got his address. We returned to him house, no one there. We tried one more time before giving up. Manoel was traveling, but his good friend Marcelo was there. He greeted us well, gave us fresh fruit, and listened to our message. Manoel returned but they didn't want to baptized. After watching Rosa's baptism and a video about the temples, Marcelo and Manoel were all in and accepted a date. Well, on Satuday, the date arrived and the spirit was super strong in that room! Even with a bust elbow I was able to (barely) baptize Marcelo! Now they'll be going to the temple in three weeks with everyone else!!

That's about it for this week! My toe is getting worse, so I don't know if they'll be soccer today. But I also don't have too much self control when it comes to that, so we'll see what happens I guess. But I love you all and hope y'all have a fantastic week!

Elder Ware