August 6, 2014 Twenty-first Birthday Celebrations

Birthday Eve with Elder Sears and his roommates

The second of three birthday cakes missionary friends 

made to help him celebrate his 21st birthday.

                             Elder Sears with the cake made by Sister Heyer and Sister Solano 

(missionaries in his district)

August 6, 2014 "Quite Possibly the Best Birthday Ever"

Ola :D

Tuesday I turned 21! I celebrated waking up at 4:25 am to make it to zone meeting on the other side of the mission. Elder Frutos and I had been preparing for a week but until Tuesday morning on the bus the pieces still weren´t fitting. About 30 minutes before getting there things finally clicked. We´d asked everyone to study chapter 9 in Jesus the Christ along with D &¨C 93--both talk about Christ´s development grace by grace until he received of a fulness. We talked about what exactly is a "fulness" and what our potential is as missionaries and as sons and daughters of God. Understanding the limitless potential of those we teach and within ourselves is one of the most powerful weapons we have in the field. It´s interesting to note that God prepared both Christ and Moses for their respective ministries by emphasizing their divine nature and potential (see Matthew 3:17 and Moses 1:3-4). Fittingly, our understanding of our potential is the first thing that Satan attacks--he did it with Christ (Matthew 4:3, 6), with Moses (1:12) and he does it with us. Then we talked about growing grace by grace in our potential as a zone and set progressive goals--this week every companionship is going to close out 20 contacts per day, next week new investigators, then baptismal dates, then people at church, then baptisms. We bore our testimonies and I felt the Spirit was so strong. I was amazed to see everything fitting together so perfectly just in the nick of time. We planned 2 role-plays: one in which the missionaries needed to use what was taught about our potential to help their investigators to feel capable of preparing for baptism within the next 2 weeks, and the other to help their investigators overcome problems with one of the 4 major commandments (word of wisdom, chastity, tithing, and the Sabbath day). What was incredible is that we received phone calls from 5 different companionships during that week telling us that they used what had been presented during the meeting with their investigators and that it worked really well. Two were baptized last Saturday :) It seriously was one of the most spiritual meetings I´ve particpated in for a long, long time. I got a pretty sweet surprise at the end of it too. Seeing that it´d be my last zone meeting ever, wo of the sisters in the zone called me up front and did an animated reading of Mosiah 2, comparing me to King Benjamin and thanking me for everything I´d done on the mission. I was super surprised and no doubt got pretty red by the end of it, but I was super grateful. President, who was in attendance, stood up afterwards and thanked me as well. I was kind of awestruck with it all. I´d been struggling to look for some way of knowing if God was approving these last, rather hard moments of my mission Monday morning, and Tuesday at the end of zone meeting I received a very emphatic answer. I spent a long time on my knees that night saying thank you. More still, after the closing hymn several missionaries in the zone had a room filled with balloons and cake waiting for me, seeing that someone (ehem Elder Frutos) spilled the beans that Tuesday was my birthday. They all made a card that is definitely going in my scrapbook when I get home. It seriously was on the most rewarding birthdays ever. 

We continue to be blessed with small tender mercies in the area, but unfortunately our investigators continue to close off their hearts. Saturday morning we had 25 investigators confirmed for church. When nightime came along the number dwindled down to 12, but they were 12 absolute yes´s. Sunday not a single one showed up. I´ve seriously never seen anything like it! But as I told President in my weekly email, maybe one of the bigger miracles of my mission is that I´m managing to truly feel happy during the middle of it all. Don´t ask me how. There´s always an experience here or there to keep us going and keep us smiling. Tuesday night for instance--we went to visit a young member couple and I felt prompted to share Helaman 12:24. When I finished, Elton, the member, looked at me and said "wow, there´s a part of my patriarchal blessing that I never understood that I understand now because of that scripture you just read." It really does feel really good to minister, to be the Lord´s hands in the vineyard even during one of those moments when none of the trees seem to be bearing good fruit. Rogério, according to his wife, has calmed down a little bit but still doesn´t want to talk to us. But, we´ve managed to reactivate 3 people so far since arriving in the area! Lucia was at church last week for the first time since last October, and Erica for the first time 3 weeks ago since 5 years before that. She has a 12 year-old son named Gabriel that has a baptismal date set for the 17th.

I love you all! Thanks millions for all the birthday wishes. I got cards/letters from Grandma Julie, Sister Shell, mom and my family, the Savage´s and the Idiart´s. I´ll be responding shortly! 

Elder Sears

July 29, 2014 Happy Birthday, Elder Sears!

July 28, 2014 Growing Pains, Patience and Pure Testimony

Hello y´all!

First things first. A huge thank you for all of the birthday wishes :) I LOVED the photos with everyone holding up a different letter. I get to celebrate waking up at 4:00 a.m. tomorrow for a zone meeting 3 1/2 hours away by bus. Yippee!! My biggest present however will be seeing all of you in person so soon. You really are the best. Mom, I promise to treat myself to something today since you asked me to!

Guess who moved in on Tuesday?? Elder Frutos!! My longtime office friend that has already lived with me for 5 transfers on the mission. We´re not companions but we´re working in the same ward and living in the same house. That´s been a super huge blessing.

This week´s theme: I think God is wanting me to learn in 2 weeks the patience I should have learned in 2 years. I seriously have never seen so many difficulties in the work all in one week. We started the week with 30 investigators and 16 with a baptismal date marked. We now have 5 of each, and nobody went to church! That´s incredible to me! We confirmed personally with so many and they decided not to come. Something happened with Aldireine and her family because they shut the door in our face Friday night. We saw Bia in the street yesterday and she was trying to hide from us. All those miracles I said I´d report this coming week were very real, but the investigators involved in them are straight-up denynig clear answers they´ve received and telling us they don´t want us to come back. One of them told us it´s our fault his grandfather died, because the day he decided to read the Book of Mormon was when his grandfather passed away unexpectedly. I tried to explain to him that his reasoning was like blaming someone for giving you an umbrella because a storm came afterwards, instead of recognizing that the umbrella was given in the first place because someone knew the storm was coming. He didn´t want to accept that. Elder Frutos noticed I was a little put out and we talked a while this morning. I always have liked the imagery of me being God´s investigator. I imagine I´m at the part in the conversion process where the missionary takes away a smoking addict´s cigarettes. At first the investigator hates it and complains because it´s so stinking hard. Then he realizes that he´s progressing in a way he never could have without the missionary letting him use his agency in extremely difficult circumstances. All the hardships in the work have yielded some of the most spiritual experiences I´ve ever had on my mission. I wanted to share with you one of them that I described in detail in my journal:

"Miracle 3--writing this one pains me because it´s one of those Book of Mormon "signs and wonders" miracles that the people wind up denying and considering mere coincidence. A week ago we got word from Paula, a less active returning to activity, that her husband Rogério had finally decided to be baptized. We´ve been teaching him for 6 weeks and other elders for a solid year. I was thrilled at the news. When we heard it from Rogério himself he explained that late one night he was thinking about baptism and his future in the Church while holding his 6-week-old baby in his arms. There was a moment when Davi (his baby) turned to look at him with that piercing glare that only someone that was with God 6 weeks ago can muster. Rogério felt the Spirit overwhelmingly strong and decided he´d be baptized on August 10th seeing that his birthday is on the 11th. This is after dozens of baptismal invites from missionaries that he not once accepted. Davi had him finalized. 

Unfortunately our visit on Friday was not nearly as pleasant, although equally miraculous. We got there and Rogério wasted no time in cancelling his baptismal date. He "wasn´t ready." He said a bunch of colleagues at work started questioning his decision and he didn´t know how to answer their doubts. He´d smoked that day too, and Satan was making him feel completely overwhelmed and unprepared. I read with him in 3 Nephi 1, when immediately after the day, night and a day sign of Christ´s birth Satan did the same thing. Rogério understood that but wasn´t budging. We tried to help him recognize that the extremely clear answer he´d received with Davi was God´s expression of confidence in him that he could be ready. Everything else was worldly pressure. Then Rogério´s piercing question, "if I decide to put off baptism will God bless me less?" It was obvious he was hoping for an "of course not" for an answer, so that he could comfortably continue sitting on the fence and know that he wasn´t disappointing God. But the Spirit told me to answer "yes." I remembered President Monson´s constant counsel to never put off a prompting, together with the consequences Jonas faced when he didn´t do God´s will in God´s timing. So, I answered "yes." Rogério became furious. He stood up and started pacing back and forth and shouting at us. "I could ask any evangelical pastor around here what would happen and he´d give me encouragement, not tell me God would bless me less! Is that what you missionaries do then? You came all the way from the United States just to tell me God is going to bless me less?! I have a 6-week baby to take care of and you´re going to deny me God´s blessing?! I´m sorry but it´s a definitive NO. I´m not getting baptized in a church that tells me that God´s going to bless me less." He stormed out of the room, leaving us alone with Paula and Davi. Everybody was crying. I was furious. I wanted so much to shout back at him. I was hurt and extremely disappointed. We´d lost Aldireine and her family on the same day and honestly my desire was to hurl a Book of Mormon at him and say "the wicked take the truth to be hard." But i didn´t do that. We sat there in silence, teary-eyed, for a good 5 minutes or so. When I calmed down, I called Rogério into the room so that we could pray for him. I kneeled down, sobbing, and poured out my soul to God to help him understand. I repeated how much we loved him and pleaded that he´d soften his heart and overcome his fears. When I finished I couldn´t see anything. I asked Rogério if I could hug him and he didn´t respond. So I hugged him anyway. In that moment the Spirit whispered to me I needed to make him a promise. Still crying, I put my hand on his shoulder and told him that the next day, when he went to put a cigarette in his mouth, he physically wouldn´t be able to. He´d throw up at the taste. That would be his second witness that August 10th was God´s will for him, as he´d already made clear a week earlier. Usually when promptings come they come subtly, but I saw the exact phrases in my mind that I needed to tell him. It was something I´d never experienced before and utterly undescribable. We left and I noticed Elder Rodrigues was crying too. I pat him on the shoulder, and he told me he hadn´t cried for two years, ever since his dad passed away in a motorcycle accident. I told him I´d never had such a spiritually powerful and draining experience in 23 months in the field. I was devastated at Rogério´s decision and pride, but I felt so much like a real representative of Christ walking out of that home. There was a silent power with us for the rest of the night, something that I´d very much like to feel again."

So, that was just one of the experiences we had this week. It´s been extremely hard, but salvation has always been that way.

Love you all dearly!

Elder Sears

July 21, 2014 "Desculpa" (Apology)

Dear friends and family,

I apologize but I´m not going to have time to send out an email this week :/ I did manage to send a response off to all the emails I received, but I had to spend all my internet time trying to apply to the Provo MTC and my time´s up! I have some pretty sweet miracles to report though, so stay posted for next week! Love you all, and a huge happy 15th birthday to my brother Spencer :)

Elder Sears

P.S. Elder J. Rodrigues and I will be staying in Nova Vinhedo this transfer!

July 14, 2014 "This Is Not My Work"

Helloooo,

Don´t worry, I´m doing considerably better than most of the Brazilians after their 7-1 defeat against Germany :) It´s been a good week, full of spiritual experiences and lessons learned. I´ll get started then...

Wednesday was my last mission conference ever. It was surreal and a little sad and sobering at the same time. After lunch the assistants asked me to play a special musical number so I went with an arrangement of "In Humility Our Savior" that I brought with me. I felt good about it. Shortly afterwards I had the opportunity to bear my "exit testimony" in front of everyone. I´ve witnessed dozens of such testimonies during all my multi-zones but me being up there was utterly shocking and quite a bit sad to be honest. I shared with the group a scripture I´d found on the bus ride (Ether 4:19). It seemed to fit the situation perfectly. Our stake president taught 2 weeks ago in ward conference that when you bear testimony, the Spirit confirms to you the truth of what´s coming out of your mouth. I felt that strongly Wednesday. This church is true.

Friday to Saturday I was on exchanges with Elder Hanekamp in a nearby area. In about an hour or so I had my beliefs challenged and questioned and criticized more than they have been in a while. We were walking to an appointment when a man ran up behind us and handed us 2 anti-Mormon pamphlets printed in Grand Rapids, MI. How do I know they were from Grand Rapids? Because I only looked at the back of it where I saw the printing address before tearing it up and throwing it away :) Seriously people, what do you hope to accomplish by that, giving it to a missionary of all people? We got to the appointment where Tiago, one of their more difficult investigators, was waiting for us. The lesson was going just fine for 10 minutes before he started heavily questioning the plan of salvation and The Book of Mormon, pulling various scriptures from the Bible. We responded with other scriptures, to which he presented another interpretation. It got pretty heated pretty fast, and I made the error of presenting other scriptures to continue the debate instead of just bearing my testimony, letting Elder Hanekamp bear his, and walking out. The Spirit was entirely absent and I walked out feeling awful and empty. I prayed long and hard that night to get it back, and to know how to respond to Tiago´s doubts without causing mayhem (in particular our belief in pre-mortal life which he believes doesn´t exist). Sunday morning I came across a few scriptures in Job that served perfectly.

Job 37:24: "He [the Almighty] respecteth not any that are wise of heart." --> a gentle reproach for me trusting too much in me and too little in the Spirit

Job 38:2: "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?" --> an affirmation that Tiago´s reasoning really didn´t have reason

Job 38: 3-4,7: "Gird up now thy loins like a man; where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?...when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" --> a cry for courage, and proof that we really were in God´s presence and rejoiced with Him before coming to earth.

I felt such relief when I read that, and felt the Spirit return immediately. Good feeling :) I relearned a crucial lesson in the process that is the title of this email: this isn´t my work. I can´t do it my way because it isn´t my message. The only, only, only way to preach the gospel is by the Spirit.

Sunday we had a tender mercy. Remember Erica and Gabriel and Gustavo from last week? Well we showed up to pick them up on Sunday morning and nobody answered the door. I was pretty put out because she´d confirmed emphatically that she´d be ready when we stopped by, and she wasn´t even there. When Priesthood and Relief Society got over (here sacrament meeting is last) I saw her and her 3 kids in the hallway! I´d said a prayer 30 seconds earlier that someone would show up. Apparently she hadn´t heard anyone honk, but when she saw that no one would be passing by she gathered up the kids and walked there. She had a million and one reasons to throw in the towel and stay home but she went. And for a woman that hadn´t set foot in the Church for 4 plus years, it´s the second time in 2 weeks!

Flavia was there too. We found her and her family Monday night doing a street contact on our way home and were able to teach them twice this week. We left the first lesson pamphlet with them after our first visit and Fabiana, her twin sister, read it with her and filled out all the questions at the end of it. People, no one ever does that. It´s the second time it´s happened in 1 year and 10/11 months. We asked her what she understood and she said "well, basically Christ set up His church but it was rejected and then the apostasy started when a bunch of people started up their own churches in its absence. That´s why God had to call Joseph Smith as a prophet." Um, yep, that´s about right Fabiana! I was super impressed with her response. The family´s got a baptismal date marked for July 27th, but we´ve got a long ways to go still. Flavia being at church was a huge first step.

In other news, Eva from ala Castelo was baptized on Saturday!!! Elder Nelson and I taught her several times but she had some things to work out with the law of chastity first. She worked them out and Saturday was the day :)

Today I got permission from President to go visit Andreya from ala Ponte, who I helped baptize almost a year ago to the date. She´d called the office and told them she needed to talk. We arrived for lunch and you know what I found out? Her son, Kaique, is headed to the mission field in January!!! He was baptized shortly after I was transferred. And they have a sealing date marked in the temple for November!!!! I was thrilled beyond belief. They both have multiple callings and she said she has a testimony that nobody will take from her. She said that when she went to the temple for the first time to do baptisms she felt something so powerful that The Book of Mormon could be proved to be a lie and she´d still go faithfully because of what sheh felt and KNEW by the power of the Holy Ghost. Do you know how much that means for a missionary to hear a recent convert say that? She´s dating a returned missionary and she´s been tremendously blessed with a new job and a new house. Tell me that´s coincidence. I´m trying to send a picture but this stupid computer isn´t letting me. I´ll try the one next door.

LAST THING, PLEASE PAY ATTENTION! The mission office address is changing, so as of TODAY, all letters that you´d like to send need to be directed to the following address:

Rua Duque de Caxias, 645

Centro--Campinas 

13015-310

Brazil

All letter/packages previously sent will be forwarded on, so don´t worry :) Speaking of which, a huge thanks to my family for the Father/s Day card/letter. I got it last week and loved it!

Sorry this email was so long...gotta go now!

Love, Elder Sears

July 8, 2014 Book of Mormon Saves Marriages

Dear family and friends,

I´m terribly sorry I forgot to tell you that P-day would be Tuesday this week! We had a meeting yesterday and a multi-zone conference tomorrow, so today it is. I´m alive and well though.

We´re continuing to be blessed in teaching lots during the week. We had a few days where we got in 4-5 lessons. And some of these people are actually (finally) keeping some commitments so that we can actually help them and see some progress. Aldirene and her kids are progressing the fastest. We had a lesson with them on Thursday that I´d put among some of the most spiritual of my mission. Ivan and Aldirene have been having lots of marriage problems recently and 

we´ve been trying to work with them to save their marriage. During the lesson Thursday we tried to help them see how the gospel could resolve even the biggest grudges and grievances but it wasn´t having the effect we wanted it to. So we stopped and thought in silence for a little bit while we searched for what to say and how to say it. The only thing that came to my mind was "read The Book of Mormon as a family" so that´s the route we wound up taking things. I remembered all the many nights my dad would conference call in on our family scripture study and how good it was to be gathered together, even if it was by phone. We promised them that if they read 1 chapter of The Book of Mormon a day for one week, they´d see noticeable differences. That´s when André, one of the priests in the ward, asked if he could say something. He was noticeably touched by the invite we´d extended, because a few years ago his parentes were going through the same crisis and the missionaries came over and what did they invite them to do? Read The Book of Mormon as a family, one chapter a day, for one week. They did it, and he said it saved their marriage. André teared up while saying that (as did I) and the Spirit was burning in all of us as it testified to Ivan and Aldirene that it was indeed possible to make amends and save their family. When we returned for a follow-up visit we asked if they´d read. Unfortunately Aldirene and her daughter Amanda were the only ones that had. We asked her if she´d received and answer, and she said she´d felt a burning in her chest and she was ready to follow the Church whole-heartedly. She accepted baptism with ease, but we still need to work on setting a marriage date so that she can follow her desire. I was so grateful and relieved to hear her say she´d received a clear answer. It´d been a while since one of our investigators actually read and prayed with real intent, and longer still since one of them was able to recognize an answer. We walked out of the front gate in leaps and bounds. She came to church on Sunday with Bia, another one of her daughters, and we have another appointment tonight. She´s one of the few people on my mission I feel like I recognize from somewhere.

Another mini-success story: we found Erica and her 2 boys 2 weeks ago working with the ward list. She´s less active and hasn´t set foot inside the church for 4 years. Her two boys, Gabriel (12) and Gustavo (11) went to primary but were never baptized. Gabriel and Erica were at church on Sunday :) I was thrilled, more for Erica than for anything else.

Yesterday night was pretty good as far as teaching goes too. We went to visit an ex-investigator from a few months ago named Geraldo. He´s 30 or so and extremely set on the Catholic church. The type of investigator that asks hard questions to try to stump you, but that´s actually looking for the truth deep down. We reviewed the first lesson with him and he asked us, "where´s your proof then that authority ceased and didn´t continue with the Catholic pope?" We calmly explained that a pretty good indicator of authority is the ability to reveal new scripture, and seeing that the Bible stops after the apostles is proof in and of itself that prophetic authority was lost. He kept quiet for a little bit and then retorted, "but then your Church lost authority too!" I just smiled and said, "Yes, it did. That´s what we´re trying to help you understand! That´s why it was necessary that God and Christ appeared to Joseph Smith in 1820."

His response--"but then your church isn´t the primitive church."

"Why not?"

"Because anciently it was Peter as prophet and 11 apostles alongside. You claim to have a prophet and twelve apostles. It´s not the same pattern."

"Good observation. Actually, Christ served as God´s mouthpiece when He was physically here for His ministry, and there were 12 apostles alongside Him. Now it´s Thomas S. Monson and 12 others. It´s the same pattern."

Geraldo´s wife nodded in agreement, we testified, and left him thinking. I´m not sure how much potential he actually has but it was a good feeling to feel the Spirit working with us during the lesson to not be "confounded before men."

So, that´s about it for the week! Aside from the fact that we sang The Star-Spangled Banner super loud on the 4th for companionship study. And that Phase 10 has become a P-day tradition among us 4 in the house. I won this morning, haHA! :)

Love you all,

Elder Sears