The Lord's Time Is The Best Time

Pessoas lindas na minha vida,

WOH. Seriously. Do you even know what kind of a week I had? If there were words to describe it in any language, I would use them. Unfortunately, there really aren´t words to describe it, but hey, I´ll give it a try. If I had to pick just a one word, I´d say it was a miracle.

More Fun Graffiti

Got to see Sister Kunz again.

Matosinhos is an incredible area, like seriously, I´m obsessed and I LOVED Caldas. The people are just so wonderful. I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. I must say however, the work has been a little on the slow side. Remember how I told you that I was kind of surprised that I stayed here with Sister Brundage? Well trust me when I tell you that President is an inspired man and God has a perfect plan. We have worked so hard and just haven´t seemed to find a lot of progressing investigators, that is, until this week!!!! Cristiana is marked for baptism for this Sunday!!! We´re praying so hard that everything goes through but she really is incredible. We got her and her whole family she´s living with to church this week and everything. Church was just a happy sight to see. Usually Sundays are stressful and we never know who we´re going to get to church...this week however it was just exciting! We had DOUBLE the people that we normally have. It´s just amazing...we´ve obviously been working really hard to steadily progress but not a lot that we did this week was that different, it was purely just the hand of the Lord getting people into those chapel doors. He´s so great.

So yeah, Cristiana is really amazing. First, when we invited her to be batized she said she really wanted to but it was kind of early. I got out the story in Acts 8 that talks about the eunuco (NO idea what that is in English) that was talking to Filipe about what would stop him from being baptized. All Filipe did was ask him if he believed in Christ and the eunuco said that he yes, he believed in Christ, that He was the Son of God. In that very moment they both went down into the water and he got baptized. After that story, I just looked at her and asked her if she believed that Christ is the Son of God. She looked back at me with tears in her eyes (and OBVIOUSLY I was about to cry too, you all know me) and she said yes. I asked her again if she would commit to being baptized next week and she accepted! The thing really is that ALL we need is faith in Christ, real faith in Christ. If we have that, we´ll do what He did and what He asks, just like Cristiana is about to do :) Heavenly Father really prepared her SO much long before we came into the picture. We´ve been trying so hard and He´s been preparing this area so perfectly. We´re really started to see the fruits of our labors and it´s a very special thing.

Our posh European pastry life

More posh European pastries

In other news, we have some new investigators that are VERY cool. For you soccer fans out there, this week we started teaching 3 Nigerian professional soccer players. WHAT IS MY LIFE. Oh yeah, GREAT. They´re super cool and they only speak English!!! They came to church this Sunday and I translated for them which was really cool and humbling too because I still have a LOT of Portuguese to learn! They´re awesome though and I´m really excited to teach them more and super nervous to teach in English...church turned my head into a crazy mix of languages but it´s definitely a fun adventure. Speaking of Portuguese I love that it helps me understand the scriptures on a different level. For example, Portuguese has 2 words to say ´bring´- trazer and levar. One means to brings something from there to here, the other from here to there, if that makes sense. Well when it talks about bringing souls unto Christ it is always trazer, there to here. It makes sense because it shows us even more that we have to be with Christ to be able to bring people to where we are. We have to come unto Christ and then bring others! Love it.

Love you all and love my mission! No place I would rather be than here for my 20th birthday! I´m getting old. ;) Wishing you all an amazing week!!!!!!

Beijinhos,

Sister Swasey