Hey everybody!! I hope you all had a wonderful week, because my week was awesome!!! I guess this week, I'll start from the best so you guys understand why.
1. We are out of quarantine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We still have a ton of restrictions on who we can talk to and what we can do, but we don't have to be inside anymore!! It has been great. We have just been trying to meet up with all of our friends in the area book. We can teach people as long as it is outside. While doing that this week, we ran into a guy named Ron, an old friend in the area book. He was super interested in the Book of Mormon, and seemed to actually understand what we said. He wants to go to church when we can go back. We also visited this lady named Flora. She is Samoan, and has been taught before. When we got there and started talking to her, she told us that she has been wanting to get baptized when church opens up. We told her she could get baptized now, so she is planning on the end of June!!!!
2. We got to have 3 meetings with Elder Klebingat. He is part of the area presidency here. Elder Klebingat is German, was baptized at 18, served his mission in Colorado, was called as a mission president of the Ukraine Mission at age 42, was then called to be part of the East Europe area presidency, then this area presidency, and now, he is getting ready to go to Africa to be part of another area presidency. He is only 52. It was super awesome to hear from him. He did a mission tour of 4 missions over zoom. Elder Atkin is a Zone Leader, so we had MLC (mission leadership committee) on Wednesday. We then had the regular meeting for the mission tour on Thursday with 700 missionaries from 4 missions. Then, coincidentally, on Friday, we watched the Worldwide Missionary Devotional that Elder Klebingat gave. It was a lot of time listening to him, but I could have listened for another week. It was awesome!! I learned so much! I wrote as fast as I could. I took 16 pages of notes! He completely changed the way I think about why I am serving, how I am serving, and what I am doing. I wish I could tell you everything about it, but I would need a couple more P Days. Elder Klebingat is super fiery, bold, and straight forward.
3. Our English Class for Brasilians is really picking up speed!! We have 35+ that live in our mission and are interested!! I am so excited for it!! I am really hopeful that we can teach some people because of it. Today, when we went to the mission office to pick up our zone's mail, we ran into Elder Schelin and Elder Stilson. Elder Schelin was at the CTM with me, and he is going to help with the English Class. We just talked for 30 minutes in Portugûes. It was so great.
4. We did a mini exchange with Elder Keil and Elder Walker. Elder Atkin stayed at the apartment and talked with Elder Walker. Elder Walker is a brand new missionary that got here at the same time as me. I went with Elder Keil to do some contacting at a state park. Elder Keil is training Elder Walker. We contacted five or so people in the 15 minutes before we had to go again. On the drive to and there, we just talked about training. I just talked with him about what's going good, what's going bad, and tried to just help him out a little. It went pretty well. Elder Keil is a good elder. He's only been out about 6 months, and just needs a little more confidence.
I just wanted to share one thought, my favorite thing that Elder Klebingat said. Elder Klebingat spent 45 minutes talking about why we are here. He talked a lot about the premortal life and the Abrahamic Covenant. He said that the best answer to why you are serving a mission is "because I am fulfilling a covenant that I made in the premortal life to gather Israel”. He talked a lot about how we are here because we proved ourselves during the war in Heaven. We are still fighting that war today.
Scripture of the Week:
3 Nephi 27:13 Behold I have given unto you my gospel, and this is the gospel which I have given unto you—that I came into the world to do the will of my Father, because my Father sent me.
Like Jesus Christ, who is speaking in this verse, we came into the world to do the will of our Father. He sent us.
I love representing the Savior in Brasil, I love my companion, I love the Gospel and Atonement of Christ, I love my family, and I love my Redeemer. I am ready and excited to work harder, learn more, and love better this week!
Love,
Elder Warren Matthew Dudley
Photo 1 - Elder Keil and I at Dash Point State Park on our exchange
Photo 2 - List of all of the Brazilians that are interested in English class
Photo 3 - Our zone did a push up stretch goal. Elder Atkin did like a million pushups each day
Photo 4 - My Desk
Photo 5 - The majesty of the Puget Sound. This is the view from the Mitchell’s house
