Paraíso

The weather up there is sounding  like the weather down here nice and warm. My companion Elder Juliatti was transferred and my new companion is really cool and I have been joking with him for about 5 months that we would be Zone leaders together and here we are after all that time Zone Leaders in the Best Zone ever! I am with Elder Travis Thorup from Riverton Utah. He has only 3 months left before he goes home so it's looking like I might be sending him home haha. He is a great missionary and has a lot of experience and the funny part is we have the same amount of  time in Brasil. The beginning of his mission he didn't get his visa like some other lucky people that we know, and he had to stay in Louisiana for a few months.

We have been praying and fasting a bunch to be able to help our Zone baptize 15 on the 15th and invite our president to give a talk at the baptism service since he lives close to our area. Yea maybe we are crazy but, WHY NOT, my entire mission I have seen first hand that the lord Gives you what ever you ask in the name of his son that is right and just and he shall give it to thee. The mission of our Jesus Christ is to Save the human family, so me being a representative of him my purpose is the same. The world needs people who have big dreams and make huge goals and think "why not". People put so many restrictions on themselves and that keep them from reaching their potential, so what is keeping us back if we have so much potential? Lack of faith put in action. If you truly believe, and you work hard to achieve that to which you believe in, you will be able to reach levels that you never thought were possible before. We wanted to baptize 4 people on the 15th, but in order to do that they needed to go to church yesterday. When Elder Thorup showed up we didn't have these people so we decided to Fast and Pray. We went to an area that I didn't know very well and we went to work knowing that the Lord would bless our efforts. After a full week of work we achieved our goals. I have never found so many new investigators in all my mission, we have had so many miracles these past few days. We found a Women on Saturday night who live alone with 2 kids and she went to church and wants to be baptized on what day...yea you guessed it the 15th! to complete our goal! As I ponder about our week I think a lot about The brother of Jared in the book of Mormon. He had a problem with the ships, they didn't have air to breath neither light to see. So he prayed to the lord and the lord showed him how to get air, but the part about the light he didn't just give him an answer, but gave him some hints to help him out. The brother of Jared climbed up a mountain and took 16 Rocks out of a mountain with his own hands and polished them SO much that they looked transparent. To me it looks like he did everything that he could think of at that time. And what happened he prayed to the lord and presented his work and the Lord made a miracle and touched the stones and they lite up. We as the Brother of Jared did everything we could, we worked hard, planed with members, asked references and did everything and at the last minute of our tracking time on Saturday night we found Marineide the Elect...That Sunday morning I will never forget her and her children all dressed in front of her house waiting for us to come pick her up. Yea miracles are real when you believe. I love this work, this work is true and it is the only work that is too hard and has too good of a reward. Boa Semana para todos! 

Até Mais 

Elder Crandall