Elder Landgren: “Great Little Week”

Okay well this week we have had a great little week. This last week we are finally teaching people so we can practice Portuguese. Man mine needs work. I’m at least at the point where I can hold a conversation and say half intelligent things to people. My understanding is getting a lot better. We don’t have a fluent speaker with us so we literally have to listen or else we are in big trouble.

This week was really good as we had the opportunity to go and listen to Elder Bednar. Only one other time in my life have I ever been in the same room as an apostle. Oh my gosh. So the talk he gave us was on how to teach people more effectively. He taught us how to do this for three hours. So we sat there for three hours and it felt like 3 minutes. I can’t explain how absolutely incredible that man is. At the end he bore his testimony. All I can say is I cannot deny that that man had been called of God. I have never heard anything in my life that was that powerful. I really wish I could explain it but he taught us so much and it was so amazing. There are just no words to describe it. He did however challenge all of us to do something. Buy a little cheap Book of Mormon. Write a question on the front, read through it and mark every verse that goes with your question, and then write a one-page paper on what you learned after you’re done. Do this once a year for the rest of your life. After hearing that, it is now one of my goals. I will read the Book of Mormon once a year and ask it one question every year. He said he has done it for the past 50 years and seeing how amazing a teacher he is, that is what I want to do.

I wish I could explain better all the things he told us but I literally can’t.

Okay so dad that guy who said he was going to Israel, he came back but then got deported back to Portugal, so ya we don’t know where he is anymore. Also Symar is doing great. We have taught him everything but tithing, now he has decided to live the w.o.w., law of chastity and just about everything else we ask him to do. We were a little scared about the W.O.W because his dad owns a coffee plantation in Brazil but he said he’ll give it up so that was awesome. He has a baptismal interview this Wednesday and should be baptized this Sunday. He is a really cool guy. I wish you could meet him. He is just the nicest coolest guy ever and every time we go to his house he always makes us the best Brazilian food ever. He’s been to church 5 times now – every time for all three hours. He is super cool!

The next people who we have just started to teach are Carina e Carlos they are from Angola but were raised in Lisbon and have the best accents in the world. They are the first people from Portugal that I am able to understand. We found them by knocking on their door one day because we thought an old investigator lived there from back in 2009. So we knocked and this Canadian guy answers the door and says that the Brazilian lady moved a few years ago but there are some Portuguese people that live in the basement around back. So we go to the back of the house and knock on the basement door. Cornia opens the door and we start saying hi we’re missionaries from the church of Jesus Christ. Then she says I know you guys are Mormons. I visited your church a couple of times back in Portugal. A lot of my friends are members. Both me and my companion’s jaws just dropped. Mostly because having a Portuguese person know about any church other than the Catholic Church is absolutely unheard of and the fact that she had gone to our church a couple of times. Well they let us in and started talking. Apparently the dad, Carlos’ best friend, is the stake president in Portugal and his brother is a member already. Their daughter has a little cartoon Book of Mormon in Portuguese and they said they were sad because they left their Book of Mormon in Portugal. Well we gave them a couple. They were super happy and then he opened the book to Alma 32:34 and started reading and said that is my favorite scripture. Both me and Elder Frame were just blown away with what just happened. So we have an appointment with them next week on Sunday and hopefully we can get them to church. It is just hard because they work a ton and they don’t have much money so they are always working so we can only visit them on Sundays.

We had a couple more miracles happen like us teaching a man in Spanish for an hour and I don’t know how he understood us, but we found out that his wife is Portuguese and wants to join a church so he asked us to come over.

Again I hope my emails make sense. I only have an hour so I type really fast sorry.

Okay, the last thing, one thing Elder Bednar told all of us that really, really hit me was GET OUT OF THE WAY. He said that maybe a thousand times during his speech. He said to all the missionaries learning a language GET OUT OF THE WAY. To all the missionaries who teach with simply facts and their own knowledge GET OUT OF THE WAY. He said we are not the teachers the spirit is the teacher. Nothing you can say or do will convince these people to follow the example of Christ. You are simply the conduit for which the spirit has to go through. SO get out of the way. My whole mission I have been worried that I will never be able to speak this language very good. That my friends who are in Brazil or Spain or South America will be able to speak their languages so much better than me and that I will never get this language down. After that talk and hearing it, who cares? I didn’t come here to learn a language. I would have gone on a mission to Canada even if it was just English speaking. So I’m getting out of the way. I don’t care if my comp is better at the language then me. I am here to preach the gospel and teach people how they can feel God’s power in their life. So that is what I’m going to do. I will work my butt off to learn this language because that is what I have been asked to do by God but in the end if I don’t truly learn it, it doesn’t matter cause I can say I tried my best. So I’m getting out of the way. I’m done worrying and I’m just going to try to do what God has asked me to do and help these people here.

I love you all so much you all have a great week I will talk to you so soon.

love amor

Elder Landgren

te amo