Marsh Mission Moments: Focus on the less actives

October 28, 2013

We had a good week in Brazil.

So last week we found a family of ten people in between appointments. Usually we try to focus on referrals from members, but we were not about to pass up the opportunity to teach 10 people at once! We stopped by the house on Tuesday. You wouldn’t believe that the entire family could possibly live there. 7 kids and one of their spouses share one room. We taught the message of the restoration, and they seemed very interested, so we left a Book of Mormon and asked them to read 2 Nephi 31. The next day we returned to see how the reading went and teach the plan of salvation. We were a little surprised to hear that only one of the family members read the Book of Mormon. When we asked why, they told us that their 14 year old girl kept it to herself the entire time. It turns out that she read the chapter and then wanted to understand the entire book so she started from the beginning and read all 22 chapters of 1 Nephi. That was pretty cool. She told us that she could feel her relationship with her Heavenly Father growing as she read.

We really tried to focus on teaching less active families this week. Our mission president promised that we would have baptisms if we started reactivating families. The bishop and his councilors gave us a list of 10 less actives that they wanted us to visit. It’s a bit of a sacrifice to try to visit all of them because our area is crazy huge. It takes about 45 minutes by bus to visit some of the people. So far though, the blessings have been much greater than the sacrifice. All of the families have been very receptive. They have promised to return to church and they still totally have a testimony of the church. It seems like all we really had to do is show up on their door step and invite them back.

There is one family we taught on Saturday that was extremely active a few years ago but for some reason just slipped away. When we stopped by we asked their 19 year old daughter to read Ether 12:27 which talks about humbling yourself and then Christ can make your weaknesses become strengths. She started to cry and told us how she had always loved that scripture and that she remembered reading it often when she was having a hard time. Everyone in the room could feel the spirit and we promised them that they would feel the same thing if they returned to church. They will be there on Sunday!

Also, I'm getting way better at soccer.

I love you and hope everything is well,

Elder Marsh

(He also sent photos, but he didn’t label them.)