Sorry again that I won't be able to write a super long email cuz I spent a lot of time working on a T-shirt design for our missionary zone. But I wanted to tell two quick stories. Experiences that taught me something.
The first was with this guy named Emerson that we are working with. He uses pretty much all the types of drugs you can imagine. But he stopped drinking, so that's progress!! We went to an appointment with him and he said that he couldn't stay because he had to go somewhere. I asked him, "well what do you mean?" He said that he 'borrowed' some crack from a dealer, and the dealer told Emerson that he had until 7:00 to pay him or the dealer was gonna send someone to kill him. It was 6:10. I was certain that he was exaggerating about the killing part because he only owed him 5 reais (R$5), which is about US$2.20. But even so, Emerson didn't have 5 reais. So I said, "well, what are you going to do?" And he said, "well I'll have to find someway, I don't know...maybe stop a car or a motorcycle and rob from someone...I'm gonna have to do something". So I thought...we did have 5 reais, but I had this feeling that if we continued walking down the dirt road we were on that we would find the money on the street.
I asked Emerson if he had faith in God. He said, "well yeah, you have to have faith". I told him that we would find 5 reais on the road. So we started walking along and I'm like, okay let's find 5 reais. I was looking through trash on the side of road, turning over things, and Emerson was just walking along like 'whatever' with Elder Lierley. We walked some 10 minutes, and nothing. We stop near this one river and Elder Lierley and I are searching in the grass and stuff. I asked Elder Lierley, "hey what do you think...do we pay it for him?". And Elder Lierley responded that miracles don't come until after a trial of our faith. So we kept searching and Emerson starts getting nervous because it was already 6:30. He was like, "look, I gotta get going...I'll try to resolve something with the dealer, maybe do a job for him. If you guys could help me out I would thank you from the heart, but if you can't that's okay, because I don't want to take advantage of you guys...I know you guys are here to help me", etc. So we were like, just give God 10 more minutes...your 5 reais will show up. We kept looking and the whole while I was thinking, do I have enough faith for this to happen? During this the whole time Emerson was complaining. But then it hit me. I told Elder Lierley, "I think the one that's lacking faith here is not me or you", and he said "yeah, you're right". Emerson didn't have the faith to believe that God would provide the money even though we did, and he was the one in need of the miracle. Well, Emerson did get the money he needed...we ended up giving it to him. This was a learning experience to me on the principle of faith.
So, the other experience. We fasted for a family of three we've been teaching so that they would come to church...the last two weeks they were sick and they didn't make it. The husband ended up having an appointment at the hospital and his wife and daughter had some excuses for not coming. So, that was really disappointing and got me a little upset actually. But God was merciful and recognized our sacrifice, and at church we received a bunch of referrals of individuals to teach, and Anthony's mom [Anthony was recently baptized] visited church to see her son's confirmation as a member. These were great blessings to us.
About Christmas, I don't even know what to request right now...except make sure you send plenty of Reese's peanut butter cups! I love you guys and thanks so much for the emails and prayers! Have a great week!
Elder Bradford
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| These three pictures are from the Halloween party we had at the church (the donuts turned out great!) |
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| Here's how my insoles are doin'. |
