Elder Lew is one of the Assistants and he will go home at the end of this transfer. It ends in two weeks, on November 2nd when I will have been here 1 year and 5 months. Time is flying by. You asked me to share some of the work with you. This has been a large struggle this last transfer in our entire zone. I am striving to help improve the work we are accomplishing, It is often on my mind. We did have an experience this week that really touched me and taught me a good lesson. Actually two. The first is about the importance of acting without delay. We were calling and following up with each companionships and seeing about the updates about references they have been receiving. One companionship was unaware of two references they had received from church headquarters. They went by there the following day and called us to say that the man passed away a month ago. I don't know what the situation was, but inside of me settled sense urgency. Not a sense of running faster then I have strength, but a sense of urgency and purpose in our work.
The second experience that really touched me was a man named Marco. In between the sessions of conference Elder Macfarlane and I (my friend who lived next door, is in the same group as me and is now in my zone) were talking outside of a pizza restaurant. We were talking in English and Marco began talking to us. We talked for a while and we said we would call this next week. Well I forgot. But when I remembered we decided to pass by his house. He looked out the window and said in a Brazilian accent with a huge smile, "just a minute guys". He has a very pretty well kept house and his wife is very sweet. Her name is Renata and they have a 2 year old son named Thiago. We talked for a long time and got to know them well. Marco told us about his first contact with missionaries, which was the experience that really touched me. He said that a few years ago the missionaries had marked to go by his house, but when they came he didn't answer the door because he had heard bad things about the church. After a new coworker talked about the church with him, he learned that it wasn't anything like he had heard, and when we talked outside the pizza place he was so kind. He went out to his car to get a picture of his son to show us. What I learned from this is that no act goes unrecognized. Whoever those two missionaries were that talked to him, I am so grateful to them for because of that initial contact, he was opened to our contact with him. Because of the example of his coworker, he learned that members of the church are not crazy. I felt the Spirit so strong, and as I talked about Eternal Families, Renata began crying. We didn't teach much, we just talked about the importance of what we do, and how we leave our families because we want to bring the happiness we have to others. It was a very sweet visit .
I'm going to try to send you a picture of this morning. I spent many hours just writing letters! Love, Spencer
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