Tragedy Strikes

Wow interesting but unbelievable week.  This week started out great, normal routine, normal days of missionary work.  And then Friday hit.  And something happened that I would never in my life expect to happen.  The place where we live has a pool and some members live here too so they decided to have a pool party with all the people 18 and older.  So as that was going on we were returning from lunch and we saw an ambulance.  And we thought oh probably nothing, cause I have already seen thousands.  But as we were walking in we saw a member and asked what happened.  And he told us a kid in our ward died.  I didn’t understand at first so I asked him to repeat and so he repeated and said the same thing.  So we booked it to the back where the pool is and we saw a ton of our ward members shocked and crying and as we were walking back we passed the kid’s body who died.  I went into a little bit of shock cause that morning we talked to him and he was so happy and excited to be there.  We had no idea what to do so I pulled all the boys in that were there and we said a prayer.  A prayer for comfort and peace for us and for the family of the boy.  The boy that passed away in the pool has problems with seizures.  He ended up having a seizure in the pool and drowned.  It was horrible, but there are only good things that came out of what happened.  The boy who died went inactive for 6 months and 2 weeks ago we saw him and we talked to him about church and returning to church.  He ended up returning to church for the last two Sundays and ended up going to all the activities happy as ever.  And then he passed away this Friday.  What I learned from this was that God has a purpose for all of us and the purpose for this boy was to return to church and to return to live with God again.  He went to heaven on a good note.  

Another thing happened was that we are teaching one of his good friends named Jonas.  Jonas was devastated when he found out but we taught Jonas and his family about the plan of salvation and how his friend is so happy right now.   So this Sunday Jonas was baptized, and Jonas is now happy as ever knowing he will see his good friend again.  

One more sad but cool thing that happed with this experience was one guy in our ward that lives in the same apartment complex as us was having a super hard time with what happened because he threw the swim party.  So his wife called me and asked us if we could give him a blessing cause he hasn’t slept in two nights.  He looked so incredibly tired.   After the blessing we went to church and he showed up perfectly, not tired one bit, and so happy.  It was beautiful.  That was my week.

Love,

Elder Meyer

Blessings are so real

Another incredible week.  Monday started off cool.  We got a call from a member telling us we need to hurry over to her house because her friend was having a seizure.  Problem is we don’t have a car, we only have our feet.  So that meant we needed to run.  We booked it to her house, normally it’s a 30 minute walk.  We got there in five minutes and were able to give her a blessing.  Amazing thing about blessings is that they are so real.  She went from having a seizure to not being able to move or talk, to barely talking and moving her body, and finally to sitting up and talking perfectly fine all within about 40 minutes.  It was an incredible experience I won’t ever forget.  We ended up spending the day at the house and they made us dinner and everything.  After that the week flew by.

I got like a body rash this week that covered my whole upper body.  So we went to get it checked out and the doctor told me it’s because of the sun, sweating, humidity and the clothes we are using, haha, just perfect, right.  He told me it will never leave me in 2 years and I should be serving in Alaska.  Haha, then we went back home I said a little prayer and now I am perfectly fine without any little rash.  It’s crazy.  

And that is how my week went.  I love being a missionary.  Best thing to ever happen to me.

Until next week.

Love, 

Elder Meyer

#8months

  Great week this week, a lot of work but it was good. I was the only one in the house who decided not to get sick. So I had the double shift of work. Working with our investigators and the other group of missionaries we live with investigators. There were some pretty filled days, but it was good and so fast. We had 17 people committed to go to church and they were all ready and pumped to go, then Sunday came and it was raining like no other so most of them were hiding in their houses. Haha. But it's chill we had our mains show up at church with us and they were confirmed members. But I wanna talk about three things hat stood out to me this week. The first two are spiritual and the third is funny.

  The first spiritual moment is when we were with an inactive girl we found. She wanted to have family night so bad. So, we ended up having family night with her, and she was telling us how she wants to have an eternal family and a complete family on earth because it is only her and her little girl. And how she wants a husband super bad. So, I ended up giving a message on love and how even though she doesn't have a husband right now and a "complete" family, she has us, her little girl, and the ward as her family. And she just started to cry. It was super spiritual for me to see that now she is back in the gospel she is super happy again.

  The second spiritual event was on Sunday before church when we were going house to house getting our investigators to come to church in the rain. We didn't have a lot of time cause lunch ended a little late, and I wanted all our investigators to make it there on time at 3:00 or to take the sacrament at least. So, we are with a few of our investigators and it was 2:50 and we still had a few people to stop by. So, I told them to keep on walking to church and we had to make a few other visits. So me and Elder Stewart decided to run from house to house. We started running. During this moment I thought, never in my life would I be running down the streets of Brazil in church clothes soaking wet in a rainstorm all so people we were teaching could make it on time to take the sacrament.We really did lose ourselves in the work Sunday, and there is no other feeling like it. We ended up showing up on time soaking wet, and the moment we walked in it was time for the people we baptized to receive the Holy Ghost. We had to go up in front of everyone soaking wet and give the blessing with the bishopric. It was great! 

The third was funny.  So, we were walking to lunch one day after a rainstorm, and me being an idiot, was walking too close to the street where there was a huge puddle.  A car decided to go really fast and hit the puddle.  I ended up getting completely drenched while my comp was perfectly dry.  It was so funny for some reason.  And, yep, that is how my week went. 

Love, Elder Meyer

Conference Week

This week was dope! But, so unusually fast. We baptized Mathers and Davi after the first session of conference.  It was special.  They were nervous at first,but after they were so happy.  It was cool though cause our stake president is awesome and set up a T.V. for all the American missionaries to watch conference in a nice, cold room with air conditioning.  It was so spiritual, not going to lie.  It's ten times better in English.  When you can hear their voices and the amount of love you can feel when speak is amazing. 

 I noticed a lot about this session.  They focused a lot on love and caring for others.  That is what I have been doing a lot more lately, and we are having a lot more success.  My other companion was trying to make me to be someone I am not, and I know that is why we had no success.  Now that I can be myself again, we are having the best time with 10 times more the amount of success. Anyway, just be yourself.  There is a reason God gave us our personalities.

But, conference was amazing and super spiritual.  Selma told me she got the chills when she saw all the members in the conference center in Utah.  She tells me all the time her and her son will frequent our church forever until they die.  Haha. It's cool!  

Today we played American football with all the Brazilados.  You can imagine how that went. Haha.  Anyways, this week was dope.  Aste pox semana!  Amo voces!  

Elder Meyer