Well it´s not every day that you get to interview someone with a big gaping hole in their neck with a swollen face and blood dripping from their left ear.
Meet Jeronimo.
Jeronimo lives in a little place called Riozinho de Baixo in the municipality of the great Paranaense metropolis of Rebouças, where the population of cows greatly exceeds the number of people, and none of the little farm huts have numbers, and letters are sent to a little wooden slot in the one room schoolhouse about 3 miles up the road. He and his wife first visited the church about 8 years ago. Unfortunately, they didn´t really want all to much do to with it, but let their two sons be baptized. These two young men served honorable full time missions and when they returned were permitted to open a branch in a city called Irati. Jeronimo suffered several life-threatening illnesses and was interned in a hospital for over a year. When the new missionaries arrived in Irati with fire in their bones they were asked by one of these sons to visit Jeronimo in the hospital and give him a blessing. In the blessing, he was given special promises regarding his health and about the importance of baptism. Well he left the hospital early last week and called up the missionaries... or rather his wife called up the missionaries and called them to come as fast as possible to review with him all he needed to know to be baptized. So we ran over there as fast as our J. Araujo Ônibus would take us to teach and interview him and his wife. I had the privilege to sit in his house with the Spirit testifying to every word of the Plan of Salvation and to hear him explain his experience, even though it hurt to talk, he wanted to testify to the things that he knew. Here in Paraná that´s one more family completed. The Lord does His own work, the only thing we can do is get in the way.
After the interview we had a few hours to kill so we prayed that we could find the family that the Lord had prepared for us, He of course knowing that we would have this extra time, even if we didn´t. I picked the street, my companion picked the house. Eléitos. There was a family waiting at home, deciding whether or not they would go to church, but talking about the problems they saw in having so many religions in the world today and talking about how they wished there was a Mórmon church that they could visit... (many of their relatives are members of the church in another city)... but they thought that their city was too small to have the church. So we taught them about the Restoration of the Gospel. The room filled with the Spirit and tears as they learned that Jesus Christ once again called a prophet, and that Christ restored His church to the earth, and that they would have the opportunity to become a part of this kingdom.
This is why I´m a missionary. I´m on a mission to find the people who I promised to find. To teach the people who the Lord planed for me to teach. And I am very humbled every time the Lord shows me once again, that He does His own work. And sometimes all we need to do is not get in the way.
Read the scriptures.
Watch conference.
Pray for the missionaries and for someone you can invite to hear their message.
-Elder House
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