The New Relief Society Teacher.

Okay I thought about my week more during the week so I would have something to write about. This week after feeling like we were lacking good solid investigators we ended up having 10 show up to church on sunday and are now getting ready to fill up all the baptismal tanks on the islands! The church of elder (Igreja de élder) as they call it here truly is growing really fast! The mission average for baptisms last year was 25 a month...The mission average now is usually 125 to 140 a month! I think a lot of the difference is our new mission president. He was a CEO for some big company in America and as a child his family was all military... What that means for me is that he is running this mission as a fortune 500 company would be run with an extra drop of super shined shoes, extra ironed shirts and pressed pants as would be done in the Brasilian Army. As for my week... I have been unofficially called as the new relief society teacher... It's was a little bit of a challege as first because I showed up to church and then after 20 minutes of nothing happening in RS they handed me a copy of the teachings of Lorenzo Snow book I had never seen before in my life and told me I was called to serve! In the end though It turned out to be a good class. Yesterday at church I basically did the same thing, the only difference was I found out saturday afternoon. 

    Love ya,

 Elder Edwards.
January 28,2013

One Year Down, One To Go!

We got the wonderful opportunity to speak to Elder Edwards on Christmas. It was such a blessing. He is doing great and loving the work. His only complaint was the high price of food in the tiny market where he is living. Matt says he eats more rice and beans than he would like. If anyone was thinking of sending a package any time soon I'm sure some American food would be appreciated ;) Also, if anyone wants to send anything you can drop it by my house (Heather) and I can mail it with our packages. E.E hasn't been gone a full year yet but thinks that the Mission Pres. will send him home a transfer early so he is able to make it home for Christmas 2013 and to start school back up in January 2014. So, from here on out the posts will be labeled Year Two to reference back to. Love you Matty!

Bom Dia,

  This week I had a chance to tan and to even get a little red on the neck. The work here is starting up again. We had a lot of investigators and we baptized them and then during the holiday season we didn't find a lot of people because everybody was partying and doin' worldly things. I hope all is well and that you guys aren't freezing!!!

 

To Mission Pres,

 This week I truly saw the fruits of my labor. On Sunday, after the branch had been struggling to find worthy and willing men to fill the leadership positions I had a great opportunity to watch one of my recent converts named Ady, who may be the most converted convert I have, be called to serve as our new ward mission leader. We have also have started to teach all of Ady's family and to add to the joy of his new calling his mom, for her first time ever came to visit The Church of Jesus Christ. Ady went up to the stand and with all the sincerity of his heart bore his testimony about his love for his mother and his love for the gospel and how today he got to see them both together. I don't think that there was one person in the room who didn't have at least one tear in their eye. 
Then to add one more thing to the joy of it they called the father of our beloved family that just got baptized and married to be the 2nd councilor of the branch. With the fullness of my heart, today and I hope for all eternity, I know that Christ lives and that his gospel blesses families.

Busy Boy.

Elder Edwards has been working his butt of lately (10 baptisms this week!) so he hasn't had time to email everyone who emails him. Don't feel bad if you haven't heard from him in a while. Each week he is required to email his Mission President so Matt has decided to just copy and paste those emails for us to keep up on his work. Here is this weeks update:

Buenos tardes. I have been working on my spanish lately. I plan to speak it fluently before I make it home. I was planning on calling you guys about the same time as last year, maybe an hour earlier. This year I realized how awesome Thanksgiving is and how when you dont know what day it was until it passes its kind of a sad holiday. We didnt have our phone that day so the next day when we got it back we had recieved a bunch of Happy thanksgivings texts. Looks like everyone else knew what day it was. 

   This week is going to be CRAZY!!! This whole transfer we have been working with all of our people and planning their baptisms for the last week of the Transfer. Also our wedding, due to a poorly organized government, was delayed until tomorrow. As of right now we have 10 baptism that are all pretty solid for the end of this week. One baptism is kinda stressful trying to do everything, 2 is really stressful and exhausting, 3 is a killer. 10 is going to be a nightmare. Pray for us please... we are going to need it!

    Why do you have to get a cancer screenning? that sounds kinda scary.. It was good to hear that Katie got her letter I was hoping she was gonna like it. Thanks for saving my emails. You shouldve told me that. I wouldve been in more effort. I will email janet right now. Also I got the bank info finally i will send that back soon. 

        This week I took your challenge and I have been working to improve my morning and night time prayers. I have started praying for each investigator by name and taking each of their problems one at a time. I have really seen that the Holy Ghost will direct our prayers and also he will inlighted us about problems or doubts they have that we dont know about. This has been a valuable lesson to learn and I will definitely continue to improve on this. (to mission pres)

Testimony.

I´d like to share the story of one of our investigator with you. Last week we marked her with a wedding and baptism date and the whole family was excited. Two days latter we returned to talk to them again but her spouse wasn't there. We gave her a family proclamation and then she started to tell us about how she found out about the church.  She use to be a strong member of the Adventist church until one day she felt like it wasn't completely true. She said that everyday after that she prayed to God to find a true church that was right for her and her husband. After a while missionaries showed up in Relva and she felt like she needed to talk to them. She was too shy to stop them in the street so she just continued to pray and pray that they would show up at her house. One day she saw them walking behind her house and they were on the trail to pass by her front door. She waited but they never knocked. After that she was heart broken. The next day her husband was contacted by two Elders in the street and they showed up at her house, finally, and taught the message of the restored gospel.

When I heard this story my testimony that God is preparing people and putting them in our paths everyday grew and I know that we truly can find these people.

Love you all and hope all is well! Elder Edwards

Long Overdue Updates.

See additional post below. Sorry for the infrequent updates. Elder Edwards has been so busy that emails are shorter and less frequent. He is doing great and we couldn't be more proud of him. Can't believe it's already been 9 months!!!

 "Hello meus pais. This week was another good one. I took that one day plane flight to Praia because the President wanted me to attend a specialized leadership training. It was way good and made me feel like some sort of business man flying around like that. My companion bleeds blacks! My new companion is a fellow highland high rammer and we have been representing for the SLC and getting work done! This week Elder Ensign showed up and he is in my district. He is in the city right next to mine (Cova figuera) and he seemed to be in culture shock at district meeting. He is strugglying with the language but he has a huge testimony so he´ll be fine. And the area that we´re in nobody speaks portuguese. It is crazy to hear about all the new missionaries and changes in the mission work. I´m glad that I am going to be here to help them lead all out. Its not too good to hear the utes are sucking it up. Hope all is well with you. With love, Elder Edwards Oct. 28th"

October 21.

Hello my family. Its good to hear that halloween is here again. Im not gonna lie I forgot about that holiday, it doesnt actually exist here.. The bad news for the week is that I am in Sao filipe again so I cant send pictures this week. This week was the end of the transfer and once again, I am getting a new companion but luckily I am going to stay here in Relva another transfer. There is an active volcano and I do live at thew bottom of it. I really hope it explodes that would be awesome see. This mission is super weird though. Tomorrow I am going to take a plane flight to Praia, Santiago to pick up my new companion and then the next day Im gonna take another plane to make it back to fogo. This will be the first time in my life having a back to back plane trip in just 2 days.It was good to hear from you and about how life is going. I hope all stays well. Love Elder. PS GO UTES!

To Assomada And Back Again.

Ola. This week was a little bit crazy, a little bit bumpy and a lot a bit rainy but when it was all said and done we finished off this week with three baptisms. One of them was definitely the biggest successes I have all all of my mission. In my first transfer of my mission we meet an awesome college student who was close to finishing his senoir year. We was really converted and knew that this church was true but he would never take the next step to being baptized because his girl friend would break up with him and he needed her computer for college. We didnt know what to do with him and he basically was at a stand still. After 5 months of missionaries working with him and 7 different missionaries we finally helped him to take that next step and to be baptized and he asked for me to baptize him. Me going back to Assomada was a very rare thing to have happen in the mission. Now that all is said and done I know that he was the reason I had to go back there and it was great to have that experience! 
Love Elder Edwards