Elder Nydegger Serves in Curitiba: 75. Pay the Price

What´s good fam!

First off, shout out to the people who still read my boring emails, haha! But this week was another great week!!

This week continued to rain here, so it has been like a month straight that it´s raining. But rain means blessings, so we keep working!

But anyways this week was super busy in the office. No splits or trainings, but we were super busy preparing everything for the greenies coming, and for the missionaries going home.

Funny story of the week. On Thursday, we were sending an email to the Cape Verde mission to follow up about a missionary who will be coming from there to our mission. He has been having troubles with his visa, so he has been serving there. But anyways, I sent an email out, and when the reply came back, it was Elder Ryan Lunt who responded. Super funny to see that he responded calling me Joe! haha. One of the first times I have been called that in the last year and a half. Small world!

On Monday we have transfers, so it should be pretty busy. I´ll probably be staying in the office for one or two more transfers, but we will see what happens.

Even with the rain, and the business in the office, we were able to get some solid time done tracting and teaching in our area. We remarked Julia´s baptism for February 16th. She is ready for her baptism, but she is just having a really hard time recognizing an answer to her prayers. She is struggling to understand that answers for our prayers can be as simple as a feeling, thought, or impression. But we know that the Lord will answer in a way that will be best for her because He loves her and wants her to succeed.

We went to Willens house this week with a member called Rhuan. It was such a great lesson. We talked about Moses 1:39 - God´s Goals - Immortality and Eternal Life. We talked about how his goal of our immortality was accomplished with Christ´s sacrifice, and with our choice to come to Earth. This was an unconditional gift that we received. But Eternal Life requires more. This is a conditional gift given to us according to our obedience to God´s commandments. Willen has a testimony, but struggles to put it all into practice. We marked a Family Night with him for Monday night. It will be a great experience, and we are praying to know what we can teach to help him.

On Thursday we were walking to our last appointment in the rain, Telmo and Maria. We were tired, wet, and pretty far away from our house. We got to our last appointment, and no one was answering as we knocked. We waited, called, and finally this guy came out telling us that they weren´t home. We accepted and told him we would pass another day, and started to walk away. I had a wet Book of Mormon in my hands, and the thought came to me that I should try to give it to him. I told my comp that we needed to talk to him, so we went back to talk. His name is Lago and he is 20 years old. He lost his job recently and he is pretty nervous. Tonight, we will go back to his house to talk a little more about the Book of Mormon. I am so grateful for the Holy Ghost, and know that without him I can´t be a powerful missionary, and with him, my comp and I can´t be an instrument in the Lord´s hands.

This week at lunch with one of the members, she started talking about her testimony of a mission. She told us that everything we are doing now will pay off in the future. She said that maybe we won´t understand why we need to follow simple rules, or guidelines. But she said that if we strive to be obedient and work as hard as we can, we will be blessed in the future. She also reminded us that what we put into our missions, we will get out of it. Essentially she was reminding us to "pay the price in the present, to open up the future." It gave me some more motivation to continue to strive to be the Representative of the Lord that Heavenly Father desires. It gave me more motivation to submit to the Lord´s will and to follow the example of Jesus Christ in all I do. I love the mission, and wouldn´t trade anything for everything I´ve learned and for the experiences I´ve had.

Have a great week!

Elder Nydegger

I really need to take pictures more often.