This has been such a good week! We have been able to get in touch with a good amount of Brasilian members now. The Abreus (less active), Da Silvas (less active, part member), and Fowkes live in Kirkland. A recent convert lives in Bellevue. There are four families of members that live in Bothell that we found on facebook. There are also a few families in Renton.
The english classes are going super well. English Classes are pretty much the only way we have been able to find and teach people, but it is going amazingly well. Every night, we have time to teach 3 english classes between 5 and 9. That is pretty much the only time people are home and not working. Teaching the individual classes works incredibly well for teaching the gospel afterwards. Here are a couple things that I have noticed about the english classes that have been really cool:
We have been able to meet with everyone consistently and multiple times a week without having appointments fall through. We are building real, solid relationships with these people. All of them genuinely love us and support us. It is rare for us to leave without being given food. All of them want to support the church as well. We have told all of the people we teach that we are trying to get the branch started, and all of them except one have said that they will be there when we can meet.
We have tried to make sure that we clearly explain our purpose in teaching these people both English and the gospel. We almost always are able to not just leave messages and invitations to hear more, but to actually teach the lessons and help people progress. We are seeing a lot of people truly progress. Because we are serving them and forming relationships, people actually listen intently when we teach the gospel and try to understand what we are saying.
The people that we teach English are actually keeping gospel commitments that we leave them. I am not sure if it is the relationship that we have with the people or the gratitude that they feel for learning English, but these people are actually doing what we ask. We have had so many people actually read the Book of Mormon, gain interest in it, and actually be able to teach us what they learned as they read! I have never had so many people keep commitments in my mission.
All of these people immediately love us because we love their culture and speak their language.
Our friends are becoming curious about us and what we believe. Oftentimes, we don’t even teach the lesson that we had planned because our friends ask inspired questions that we are able to discuss and that we use to teach the gospel.
This teaching pool that we have because of the English classes is honestly the biggest and most solid teaching pool that I have ever had in my entire mission. I have never taught so many people that have genuine potential. I think part of that is because all of these people are prepared by the Lord, and because they are different from the typical people that we find as missionaries. They are as a whole very motivated. They have come to the US to improve their lives.
We also figured out a very simple but extremely effective method to find new people to teach english. In the last two weeks of the transfer, I have friended as many Brasilians that live in Seattle as I can find on Facebook. Because of Facebook’s algorithms, almost all of my suggested friends are now Brasilians that live in Seattle. I don’t even have to search for them on Facebook anymore. They just pop up. As soon as someone accepts my friend request, We immediately send them a message explaining who we are and that we teach english. We ask if they have interest in learning english, or know anyone that would have interest. We have had so many people respond just in the last couple of days that we have started doing this. This would definitely work for any of the other language speaking missionaries in the mission. They would just need to find and friend enough of the targeted ethnicity that live in Seattle that their friend suggestions become others of that language group that live in Seattle. They would be able to find the specific ethnicities through Facebook groups or through their member’s friends. Up to this point, I have made over 150 Brasilians in the last 3 weeks. My suggested friends are almost all Brasilians in this area now.
We are now so full at night that we sometimes have nights double booked so that we teach 6 english classes in between 5 and 9. On the nights that we have double booked, we do an exchange with Elder Buhler and Elder Collingwood so that two of us go to three classes and the other two go to the other English classes. We don’t do this every night because that would take them away from their area too much, but we definitely have enough people that we could do that every night.
We have been in touch with some of the other Portuguese speakers. Elder Beardall, Elder Ward, and Elder Brammer all have good grasp on the language and enough experience to help out. Elder Justeson also might have. We don’t know about him yet. We are going to try and continue finding people that want english classes and are interested in the gospel so that we know how many people we could teach when the next transfer gets here. I could definitely see us needing as many companionships as possible.
It is so incredible to see all of this happening. I really believe that this branch is going to happen. We got close to getting some people on date this week. We did not get anyone new on date, but all of the lessons turned out really well and led to our friends progressing.
Photo 1 - Awesome food that Rita, Liv, Luiza, Ademario, Bianca, and Patricia gave us!! It was soooo good!!
Photo 2-3 - Brother Richardson of the Totem Lake Ward has a full on recording studio and guitar building shop
Photos 4-5 The drive out to Snoqualmie to visit a super far away referral
Photos 6-8 Our new amazing extended stay in Bellevue!! It is much better! We actually have a full sized fridge and a little space
Photo 9 - Me in the new room
Photo 10 - Lunch at Ademario and Patricia’s house!!
