Conference weekend

Dear Family and Friends!

This week went by way to fast. I think it is because i was so excited for conference all week that it just flew by and conference flew by too. i cant believe it is already over. I loved it... it was in portuguese so i admit i didnt understand a whole lot but it was stilll great! :) Always is. I know like everyone else that the spirit we feel when prophets and apostles speak is the real teacher. And even though i didnt get all the words in Elder Hollands talk... WOW! How incredible. I remember the feelings i felt and it was great. I know my Savior lives. 

So a little bit about this week... We found some new awesome investigators. This new area is full of gold! One person i would like to talk about is Lucas. Lucas is 14 and his older brother, ivan, was baptized about a month and a week ago. Lucas came to the baptism and i remember wishing that we could teach him but i knew he lived in a different area. Well when we got to this new area we made sure to pass by. We have started teaching him and he has a baptismal date and he is solid! He is only 14 but acts older and mature about all of this. He even tries to speak portuguese to us and it is really sweet. And when he prays he really prays. He even did some missionary work the other day. He invited his friend to do some studies with us. Turns out his friend has a sister as a member. A great reference from Lucas! so lucas came to conferencia geral as well. He came to two sessions even and said he really enjoyed them. I love people who say they will do something and do it. That is one problem here in cabo verde. i swear we invited about 80 people to conference and none of which showed up. Even when we passed by and reminded a few of them everyday... nada! Frustrating. How could you not be excited to watch the words of a living prophet?? i do not know!!!

Anyway... So Lucas is great and progressing really well. I remember as we were doing some last minute inviting to conference on our way to the church before the last session we saw a few young less active members. We invited them and they looked like they werent going to come... i was getting teared up too. we just shared our testimony on prophets and they said ok... looked a little bad about it but went their seperate ways. As we walked to church i just thought about how people do not understand what is really important on the earth today! But then i saw Lucas... i thought that at least one... one person came and kept thier committments. even when none of his famiy came with him, even though he didnt have the nicest things to wear, even with all that... he came. And that gave me hope. tender mercies like that always give me hope. 

Another thing that was great this week is i realized the importance of contacting. A few months ago i remember sitting in a store waiting to pay our water bill and some guy walked in. i remember being in some kind of bad mood. thinking i wasnt going to talk to him... but then i just felt like i should. so we talked and we found out that he was actually a member. for like 20 years he has been inactive. So we invited him back but he lived in the other area and he kinda got forgotten. WELL this week we were walking past a few houses and we saw another person we had contacted a few weeks ago. We got talking and he said he needed to go to his uncles house. We were about to leave, but then noticed that his uncles house was the same house we had contacted a few days earlier! So we decided to walk in with him and remind them that we would be stopping by in a few days and get to know the boyfriend because we just contacted his girlfriend and their son... well guess who walked up to the door... THE same guy who we contacted about 2 months ago! The less active! He remembered us too! I got super excited and said that we left a book of mormon with his wife and he said he would start reading it again and i just got super excited. What a miracle. All those contacts intertwined into one big family that now has a huge potential to change thier life. They went out of town for easter but we are going to talk to them this week. i hope it goes great and he is ready to come back to church. and baptize his girlfriend and get married first too :) 

Well i know this church is true. I know this is the only way!!! I loved the endure to the end talk in the last session! I know that we have made promises with our father in heaven and he has promised us things as well according to our faithfullness. Endure to the End everyone. Even when it is hard. And pray and read. I have really made a goal to better my prayers. Heavenly father is actually listening. i know he is. And we can give accounting to him each day and night. He is listening and giving us direction through his spirit.

Love Sister Johnson