Showing posts with label Repentance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Repentance. Show all posts

Monday, June 3, 2013

"Don't Let Things Get Out of Perspective..."

Sent: Monday, June 3, 2013 10:20 AM
Subject: Time flies


Well, I am sometimes a little bit of a fubeca with my emails and for that I apologize. But since I know you are all dying to know, I will tell y'all a little bit about my past few weeks! I have made it through another transfer and we are in week 2 of my third transfer here in Brazil, I am still in São Gonçalo with Elder B. Carvalho, we have a new Zone Leader living with us, and this transfer is going to be FILLED with success! I cant begin to tell you all how excited I am for what these next few weeks hold for us. We are working with some incredible people that we have found recently, and still working with the amazing people!

We have Edilene/Denise/Edilmar, a family we found as a result of a referral, and we committed Edilene to baptism yesterday since she was the only one of her family to go to church. We are going to baptize this family soon!

We also found Erica and her daughter Isabela who went to church yesterday and we taught them for the first time last night and brought Erica to tears. She has had a rough life and is a single mom, so she is in desperate need of the blessings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in her life. We committed her to be baptized on the 15th and we are going to be working very hard with her until this date to prepare her in every way possible!

Joares was traveling this weekend, but he is preparing to be baptized this Sunday. He wont admit it, but he knows this is the true church of Jesus Christ and he is going to be a great member! In fact, he taught the Gospel Principles lesson two Sundays ago about repentance  and did a great job.

We also have Denise/Douglas/Nicolas who were out of town this week and will be baptized this Sunday! These two kids are studs. Haha the day after we taught them about the Law of Chastity and the Word of Wisdom, they went to school and taught all their friends and their teachers! What great missionaries these guys are going to be! We are just working with their mom to help her see that delaying baptism isn't going to help her solve her problems and shes just delaying the promised blessings that Heavenly Father has for her!

Please keep these people in your prayers!

Other than that, we have some other people we are working with that aren't progressing so rapidly, but I know Heavenly Father is preparing a very special path for them to receive His blessings one day soon.

I want to share something we learned in our last training of new missionaries here with President Lima. He was talking about how we use our time and work with the members and said that it is more important that we gain their confidence than their love. With their love, they will encourage us to stay just a little bit longer after lunch to chat and relax. With their confidence, we will gain their trust and respect and they will recognize our true purpose as missionaries.

It's a principle we can all apply to life! Don't let things get out of perspective for you. Remember what your must do to return to the presence of Heavenly Father and don't let the love of people keep you from getting things done! As missionaries, we don't have any time to waste and as we have applied this counsel from our president this week we have seen results and been blessed incredibly more than in weeks past!

I know that Heavenly Father has blessings prepared and waiting for each and every one of us, but we must be obedient in order for Him to give them to us. Prioritize your life and He will be there to help you all along the way. This is the true Church of Jesus Christ. The Book of Mormon is the word of God and has ALL the answers to ALL our problems! I love you all and look forward to your emails next week! :) 



Com amor e fé,
Elder LeSueur

Friday, February 1, 2013

"I am being reassigned (temporarily)..."


I found out on Wednesday that I am being reassigned (temporarily) to the Florida Tallahassee Mission! Which, coincidentally, is also kind of deceiving because the only part of Florida in my mission is the panhandle and the rest includes about half of Alabama, half of Georgia, and a little corner of Mississippi. So needless to say, I will be kickin' it with the gators and swamp people for a little while! There is a girl in our Zone from that area and she said we will be fed well, so it looks like I'll continue packing on the pounds for at least another six weeks... She also warned us of using our manners correctly, you know, the "yes ma'am, no ma'am" kind of southern hospitality? Yeah. I don't think it should be a problem getting back into those Prosper roots, but I hope I don't get a bad reputation for forgetting to be polite!

Needless to say, I'm quite excited to get out of the MTC and do some real missionary work. The experience here has been great and it will definitely be weird leaving the people I have been around  for my entire mission so far, especially the 11 other guys in my District, but it's part of progressing! 

So the other reassignments from my District include Billings Montana, Seattle Washington, Baton Rouge Louisiana, Salt Lake City Central, and Provo Utah. Haha I had to laugh a little about the guys staying in the freezing cold up here for a little longer, but they're in one of the most successful areas in the US so I guess they are willing to sacrifice.

So this week has been extremely rough. I have struggled to stay motivated and diligent in my studies because there has been so much excitement! We have still done a ton of work and I have continued to learn, but I know I could have been doing so much more, so I found myself asking the Lord for forgiveness for wasting His time each night... It's something I'm working on so don't judge!

We have been blessed to hear mission stories from our teachers and have fun with each other since we wont really be seeing each other much after this week. I have grown to love each one of these fine Elders on a personal level and ithasn't been easy, but it has been a great experience! They each have strengths and have taught me so much, I'm so grateful for these past two months. I know this is a principle we can all apply in our lives as we are surrounded with a myriad of people with different personalities and different lessons they can teach us. I challenge each of you to find a lesson you can learn from each person you associate with and understand how that can make you a better human being. Some of the best lessons I have learned have come from times when I have struggled with my companion or struggled with an investigator, but the blessings and lessons that came out of it were worth the temporary displeasure. I want all of you to be the happiest people in the world and I know that you can be by finding the blessings in your life each day and constantly thanking our Heavenly Father for all He has given us. So do that for me and I promise you will see a difference in your life!

One more thing from the Devotional this week. Elder L. Whitney Clayton and his wife spoke about loving one another. A thing Sister Whitney said was that in order to enjoy the thrill and the rush of going down the hill, you have to endure the ascent up the hill first. We can do hard things! Ask the Lord for help and He will undoubtedly help you! Trust Him! I love you all and hope life is going absolutely wonderfully! Be happy and help others share that happiness! Eu amo voces!

Love,
Elder LeSueur