Boa tarde!!
We had a great week this week. I'm honestly feeling super proud of the work we got done. We've been seeing lots of miracles and finally lots of fruits of the work we've been doing.
We had an especially big miracle with our friend Ebono! We had been teaching him for about 2 weeks, and he is amazing. He loves the church and has a very powerful testimony. He had been wanting so badly to be baptized, but his grandparents weren't allowing him because they were thinking that he was too young. A few days ago we were teaching him the plan of salvation and during the lesson I was pondering about how we could help him to be baptized. I suddenly had the idea to have him write a letter to his grandparents and bear his testimony. He wrote about the things that he had learned with us, his desire to keep the commandments, and the example of Jesus Christ in his life. When he read his letter out loud to us, the spirit testified very powerfully of the truths that he shares with us. I won't ever forget it.
Later that day he went and read his letter with his grandparents. He said that they read it with him three times. And they wound up letting him be baptized! His grandfather even came to church with him and participated in the Sunday school lesson we taught. He was asking questions and sharing his own ideas. Afterward he stayed to watch the baptism and had a wonderful experience. It was an incredible experience to see the spirit work so hard on someone.
This week as a companionship we were studying and thinking a lot about how we could help our friends keep the sabbath day. Many of them say they will come to church, and many will accept our invitations, but when Sunday comes it's been hard to get everyone to go. So, as we were thinking about our friends' needs and how we could help them, we came across President Oak's talk in the last general conference called "The Need for a Church". We taught the same principles to our friends that he taught in this talk, and we had a better result this week. I'm grateful for the truths we learned together and how well we were able to apply it. I felt like I should invite everyone to read that talk and apply its truths as well!
Amo vocês muito!
Elder Larkin
