Mission Memories (part 4)

This post is about my mission. To see other simillar post, click on the mission tab under "labels."

I arrived in Pato Branco in August, which down there was near the end of winter. Elder Melo and I braved the cold winds and rain with holes in our shoes, and broken umbrellas. It was shortly after arriving in Pato that we were invited by a less-active couple, Irmao Tobias and his very small wife (both of whom had a very interesting story), to come have lunch with them where they lived, in a small town, several miles west of Pato Branco, called Mariopolis. While there, they introduced us to a woman named Rosa, and her daughter. They had been talking to lots of people in the town about the church, including preachers of other faiths, some of whom even came to General Conference with us in October! I guess they were trying to get a group going there so they didn't have to travel so far to go to church.

This woman, Rosa, had already known other sets of missionaries when she and her family had lived in Pato Branco several years past, but they had moved away and lost contact with them, and the church. She was very happy to see us, and invited us to come to her house and teach her whole family. We visited their "house," which was nothing more than a small shanty with some furniture, a stove, and 4 children. I had never seen such poverty. The children worked with their parents as seasonal field-hands, hand-picking beans or grapes on a plantation, for which they earned a small pittance-- barely enough to survive on.

It was shortly after this October General Conference that Elder Melo was transferred to another area, to become a senior companion, and I was asked to be a trainer to a new missionary. His name was Elder I. Sousa, from Rio de Janeiro: a carioca! So, I was going to have a filho, but, once again, he was older than me by a few years. We had a difficult time at first: he had been a paralegal in Rio, living alone, and working in the business district of the city, before he came to the mission. He was very particular about his things, and sometimes, just for fun, I would re-arrange them for him! He would flip whenever I did that. We soon got to be very good friends.

He was very outgoing and friendly with everyone we met and taught. Sometimes this was something of a problem, as our investigators began to see us as just friends, rather than teachers. Several months went by without much success. We were teaching lots of people, including Rosa's family, but were not able to commit any of them to baptism. We began searching out the less active members, teaching them, and asking them to refer us to their friends. One family we found, that of Irmao Jose, lived in a distant neighborhood from the city center where the church was. They began coming back, and they introduced us to a wonderful young couple with two small children, whom we began to teach all together! By doing this, we were able to help re-activate a family, and bring another one with them that already had friends and a support system! That was one of the best experiences of my mission.

It was the week before I left Pato Branco that we finally had baptisms, 5 of them: Irma Rosa, and her 4 children! The Branch was able to help them find a small, but clean and very sturdy house, in Pato Branco, so they could all come to church without much ado. They were very happy to finally be able to become members of the church. Their baptisms were a witness to me of the power of prayer and fasting, and the fulfillment of a promise that I received by the Spirit. By the end of my time in that city I had come to love the members of that Branch so deeply, that I wept to leave it. I had gained the confidence and friendship of Presidente Rufato and his whole family, especially his parents, with whom we had spent Christmas (my only Christmas away from home), and used their phone to talk to our families. I also got to talk to Shauni on the phone that day for a few minutes, because she went over to my parents' house. That was a great surprise!

There are so many other things I can think of, it would take 4 more posts just about Pato Branco to tell them all, but I'll spare you. When, after 7 1/2 months, I was finally transferred, I knew I would never forget the time I spent in the city of White Duck.