Marsh Mission Moments: Speaking in tongues?

November 4, 2013

This week was inspirational. We had an awesome zone conference. Our president is so powerful and bold. We learned about how to go from just hard working and diligent missionaries to missionaries that baptize. He gave us three words: Ânimo, Ousado, and Dedicação, which pretty much means excitement, boldness, and dedication. People can see when you not happy. No one wants to join the church if the missionaries aren’t excited about what they’re teaching. Get excited! Being bold is something that I’ve been working on my entire mission. This week I made a goal of talking to at least one person every time we get on the bus. Let me tell you, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Most of the people on the bus have head phones on or are sleeping and just don’t want to talk to a stranger. Also it’s super loud and hard to understand what they are saying. It’s all part of the game! My contacts on the bus are generally different than street contacts. I usually try to start a conversation with the people and work the gospel in naturally. After talking for a while most everyone wants to know what I’m doing here. So far I have 16 bus rides strait that I’ve talked with someone. Dedication is so important. Whenever I’m tired, hungry, disappointed, or just really sweaty, I just think to myself: Just keep going! I don’t have time to waste! It’s only two years!

President Fortunato also talked about how to work in ward council meetings. We had one last Saturday. It was great. The bishop only talked about missionary work. Every quorum or auxiliary has a goal of reactivating 3 members by Christmas. It’s going to be an awesome time to work here. I saw our ward numbers this week. We have almost 800 members in the ward but only about 100 at church every Sunday. Our goa,l along with the bishop, is to reactivate and baptize enough people that we can have a church building of our own.

Meriele, the girl that read all of 1 Nephi in one day, is now almost completely finished with the Book of Mormon. She was at church yesterday and really liked it. That was awesome. The members are helping us so much now. We have so many new referrals. There were 8 investigators at church and 5 of them were brought by their member friends. So solid!

Funny experience this week too. We visited a referral this week that was kind of sick. I gave her a blessing and then after she asked me if I was speaking in tongues....nope...I thought I was speaking in Portuguese haha.

I love you,

Elder Marsh