Faith Is Blind

Hey mom,

As you know my new companion is Elder Antunes. This is his last transfer so he isn’t super motivated to work. We spend a lot of time ´´chilling´´ so I have had a lot of time to exercise and to study. My pants are fitting a little bit better.  I am trying to stay healthy. I don’t know if Elder Antunes hates me or likes me. He´s really hot and cold and really, really impatient with my language struggles.  When I have to ask him to repeat things a few times he gets really grumpy. He is also impatient with investigators. There are still things I am learning from him.  He’s giving me more responsibility because he doesn’t want to do much. Another thing that’s been tough with Antunes is he really likes to listen to music, American music. I already asked him to stop.  There is no way he will stop so after that, I at the least asked him to use headphones so I don’t have to listen to it, but he only uses headphones half the time. I have found that music is the FASTEST way to make me homesick. It made this week really tough. The music brought back lots of memories and longings for home. Today I am hoping to spend a little extra time on the computer to download a bunch of church music and piano guys music that I hope to use to drowned out the music my companion listens to. Hopefully I can leave this transfer a better missionary. Antunes has a goal to baptize every week during his last transfer. We had a baptism this last week and have another marked for conference weekend.

I am excited for conference but also nervous because it’s all going to be in Portuguese.  I won’t have it in English like in the CTM. I know I am gonna miss a lot of the messages. General Conference was a super spiritual experience in the CTM, but I am worried I am not gonna get much out of it because I won’t understand so much. We´ll see.

This week the power company or something in the government was under investigation and power to the entire state of Paraíba was off for about 10 hours. We had a lesson with an investigator (Maria Nilta and her 2 daughters) that night. We taught the restoration by candlelight. Elder Antunes was really impatient with them because they haven’t accepted baptism yet, and he didn’t want to teach the lesson so I taught the whole restoration. I gave him time to talk but he wouldn’t say anything and during the lesson he was huffing and puffing and sighing, totally distracting from the message. I got really frustrated. In the end the spirit was there and he shared his testimony. It was a powerful experience. I hope to baptize this family during this transfer.

I had another funny language experience. One night this week we ordered pizza to be delivered.  While we were waiting for the delivery Antunes went to take a shower. While he was in the shower, the pizza guy called to confirm the address.  It was a disaster because I couldn’t understand what he was saying and I don’t know our address or how to describe where we live in the area, so I just ran out into the street (almost forgot to put on a shirt) and yelled a lot as the pizza guy was passing by. I think for people watching it was pretty funny. The pizza was great so it was worth it.

I am trying to get a video that a recent convert took of me on his phone, but they have problems sending videos here. I don’t know if the cellphone companies don’t support it or what, but hopefully this next week I will have it. The uncle of this young man trains dogs, and so we put on an arm brace thing and the uncle loosed a German shepherd that ´´attacked´´ us (is trained to bite on the arm brace). It was really cool.

That was my week this week. I heard about Chad, man I thought I had it tough! He is a trooper. I will keep him in my prayers.

I have been thinking a lot about the atonement and Jesus Christ. With the extra study time I have, I have started reading Jesus the Christ again. I am trying to understand better the Savior as a person and someone I can really learn to relate to and love. I know that my faith needs to be based on Him. This last week I did personal study on faith as an attribute of Christ and it was edifying. I didn’t have a very good understanding of faith. I was thinking that because I hadn’t felt the spirit really strong or had big spiritual experiences, I didn’t have faith. But now I know that when we feel the spirit or have spiritual experiences, this is when faith turns into knowledge. Faith really is BLIND. It’s the actions we take, the things we do, WITHOUT a strong confirmation of the spirit or spiritual experiences. Its acting, with hope and confidence, that through our actions we WILL receive the influence of the spirit and have those spiritual experiences (when that faith, becomes a knowledge). I know that faith in Jesus Christ is very important so I am working to improve my ´´why´´ (the reasons I act and do the things I do) so I can have confidence and hope.  I hope that through my actions I will receive those spiritual experiences and gain a knowledge of Jesus as my Savior, that my mission is exactly where I need to be, etc.

Love you guys,

Elder Sork