Approaching an Apostle of the Lord

Hello all! I hope you have all had a great and blessed week!  There has been plenty of wonderful and miracles here!  

On Wednesday, after I wrote last weeks email, we had a meeting with the Área Presidency as well as Elder Carlos Godoy of the 70.  They all talked more and more about the temple open house and there was about 9 missions of missionaries watching through Zoom.  What an amazing unique experience! I'm so grateful for the many many unique experiences I've had because of the temple.  Many many meetings...

With all of these meetings we are beginning to realize how much work we have to do here.  As a mission, we want to being 6,000 non members of the church to the temple.  And every companionship in our Zone gets about 6 buses throughout the month of April to fill about 46 spots with the people we teach and contact every day.  So do the math!  That's right, it's a lot of people to talk to and get the word out!  

One of these activities was with a member in our ward.  João Paulo, is the stake mission leader, he's so gooooood.  He has absolutely zero fear.  So we literally went to a shopping mall and proceeded to go into every store on a floor and contact all the clerks and invite them to the temple!  One of the clerks actually was already invited and said she already went to General Conference.  Such a cool run in!  

With that as well, Saturday was a huge day!  We had a meeting with Elder Ulisses Soares of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles! But the chapel was actually out of our mission boundaries and started at 8:30, so that meant waking up at 5 and leaving by 6 to get to the bus.  Oh, and taking suitcases of Elder Nogueira because he got transferred.  The first bus took a while, and the next one we were on the wrong side of the street when it passed by the other way, so it set us back about 40 minutes but gratefully we were able to get in all okay before it all started.  

The meeting was so amazing and powerful.  I want to testify the truth of the prophets and apostles.  They ARE called of God, and they have one purpose, to make sure the children of God are being led and to bring them unto Christ.  Like that's it.  Sister Soares talked about the words of the prophets, how they really do share revelation.  When the prophet speaks, that's a point finish.  Elder Soares spent about half of his talk talking about the love President Nelson has for the missionaries.  It was a really great energy boost to know that the one man who has all Preisthood keys is praying for me here.  The second half is when he talked about how we as missionaries are called by revelation.  That means where I am right now in Rio de Janerio Brasil is exactly where I need to be.  I have to be honest, i don't know what that reason is.  Be that a person to teach or an experience, I don't know.  I don't see it being super different from any other mission in South America or the world.  However, I do have faith and trust that soon I will know, be that next week or in 5 years.  

With that, after the meeting we picked up my new companion Elder Johnson!  It's his last 2 transfers of the mission, so probably he'll be finishing up his mission here.  He's an American from Arizona and he's awesome!  We immediately got to work...after letting him get some rest.  He came from the farthest zone in the mission for the early meeting so he was up until 1:30.  

With Elder Johnson we have been contact machines.  On the street, on the bus, talking to less active members you name it.  Though a lot of it is repetitive, it seems like every day there is one really good lesson or contact that seems to be a cheering on from Heavenly Father.  It is very much appreciated to have that little boost.  And making it a lot less hot this week, praise the Lord!!! 

I hope all is doing well in your respective parts of the world!  You are all great examples to me.  I love hearing from you all!