Good Morning U.S.A: The World Cup (Week #65)

GOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLLL!!!!!

Hello all! I´m gonna be real with everyone, while the World cup is cool, and I would be loving this stuff outside of a mission, right now it is just a major distraction!

It is very cool to be in the atmosphere of it all. Brasil gets pretty lit for the cup, everyone as streamers going across the street, everyone is selling brasil jerseys, and you can hear fireworks going off basically every 5 minutes. Its cool for the expericence, but yesterday Brasil played their first gaime at 3 PM....our church meeting starts at 4 PM.... That one was a little rough haha. BUT it was incredible to see the Lord work miracles.

Because of the game of Brasil yesterday, we only had 2 of the 6 people waiting to be confirmed actually get confirmed. The other 4 werent allowed to go to church because they were either at home with a lot of family visiting and their parents wanted them to stay with family, or their parents didnt want them to leave their house because its super dangerous here while there is a Brasil game because well.....people dont thing as clearly as normal. So that was a bit rough.

But now the miracles! It was impossible to stay sad about the confirmations when we arrived in church and had more people in church this week during the Brasil church than last week!!!! On top of that there were 8 less active members who came to church yesterday that was the first time Elder Mortensen and I had even seen them in church!

The biggest miracle of all was the Baptism of Ingrid which happened yesterday...

Ingrid is the kind of person that when you look at, it could be easy to judge just because of her situation. She always was with her group of friends that hang out at a mini gang hideout. She was always surrounded with lots of alchohol, drugs, and all kinds of iniquity, but luckily we have a loving Father in heaven who truly prepares his children to receive his gospel! Ingrid is the sister of Ana Clezia, our recent convert who got married and baptised a few weeks ago. We want to teach and baptise the entire family of...well...everyone, so we started teaching Ingride 3 weeks ago. Starting with the first lesson when she cried during the closing prayer we knew she was one of Gods Elect. The more we taught her, the more greatful we were that we didnt just pass her by because of the way things looked from the outside. We found out she had never drank in her life, never used drugs, and basically was already living all of the commandments outside of going to church on Sunday. Every lesson we taught here she started crying in her prayers, and always thanked God for what was happening in her life right now. We found out that the group of ´´friends´´ she is always with are actually family that she wants to help. Yesterday she was baptised and literally was so happy afterwards!

Take that Satan!

Hope you guys all have a good week this week, and as far as the world cup is concerned, may the best Brasil team win!

Love,

Elder Ferrell

1) Ingrid´s Baptism