The Place of Becoming: Week 10 of Hortolândia- [Subject Goes Here]

Miriam's Letter 👇

This past week was pretty fantastic!

Sister Casperson and I made American Caramel popcorn for a ward activity on Tuesday. The members were a little skeptical about it at first, but once they started eating, they appeared to have a few difficulties stopping.

A new Açaí place opened a little while back, so naturally we had to make a stop there and give it a shot for Sister Casperson's 16 month anniversary.

The stake did a caravan to the temple with the purpose of showing it to investigators and less active members. One of our investigators - Cicero - went. So far, he's loving everything he's learning about the church at the moment. He's already pretty close with the Relief Society president's husband, Daniel, and many people in the ward know him. So, naturally the next step for us was to invite him to be baptized. 😁He accepted the 20th of May as a goal so...🤞🤞

What else...?

Oh yeah!

Sister Brown and Sister Batista were robbed at gunpoint not 5 minutes from our apartment last Monday.

They're fine, don't worry. No harm was inflicted. They did, however, lose their phone (which was brand new, by the way), Sister Brown's bag and, worst of all, her little Book of Mormon that she's been marking up her entire mission.

Because of this event, we now are not allowed to be outside the house after 6:00PM unless we have a ride with a member.

And believe it or not, this new restriction has made our street contacting far more efficient, and we're seeing miracles because of it.

[Now, something Miriam told us over chat that she doesn't mention in her letter is that they have a new convert in the area named Felipe who used to rob people at gun-point before he met the missionaries, had change of heart, and joined the Church. Yesterday, Miriam and Sister Casperson were telling him about Sister Brown and Batista getting robbed. Felipe really likes Sister Brown and was bothered by the news. He hung his head down, shaking it in his hands and then asked, "What did the guys look like?" They gave the description that Brown and Batista gave. Felipe knew who they were. A look of justice and determination came over his face, "I'll get Sister Brown's phone back for her." He said. Miriam's eyes widened with surprise. I guess we'll see what happens with that.]

Spiritual thoughts:

We had a really good lesson on 3 of Jesus's parables in the Bible: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son.

The teacher, Léo, talked about some of the differences between them, and I thought it was interesting.

In the parable of the lost sheep, the lost sheep represents people who get separated from the church just because they're maybe not paying attention, and with love we must help bring them back to safety.

In the parable of the lost coin, the lost coin represents people who get separated from the church because of neglect, and we must light our candles and find these people to remind them that they are not forgotten.

In the parable of the prodigal son, the son represents people who get separated from the church by their own choice. And the thing that I thought was interesting was that, unlike the other parables, the father didn't follow his son, search for him and bring him back. He respected his son's agency, and, after suffering much, the son eventually returned. Sometimes a factor of repentance we need to take into consideration is simply time.

But what do all these parables have in common? Every time the lost item/person was found, they were received with love and rejoicing at their repentance and future and not rejected because of what happened in the past.

Now for a cool story.

A little while back, a new group of missionaries arrived in this mission. One of these missionaries was an Elder from Ecuador. While in the mission home, he saw a painting of Helaman and the 2060 stripling warriors. He asked Sister Card what it was a painting of. As she explained, the Elder got emotional and told her that in his country there's a story that's been passed down for generations (not by members of the church, mind you) about 2060 young men that went to battle for their country and not one was killed.

I'm just saying, guys....😏"