This week passed by quickly, but at the same time, it feels like it lasted forever...times moves weirdly.
We had interviews and training on Tuesday this last week. We have them once a transfer, and it was my first experience with them. It was amazing! President Torgan teaches from the scriptures, and the insights and applications that he made were so insightful and clearly inspired. It made me want to be a lot better!
Something that I have learned more, especially in the last week is that when we pray specifically, we get specific answers, although they may not be quite what we imagined. When I was in the MTC, I prayed to have a native companion, because I thought that would help me the most here. What did I end up with?...TWO natives!! Heavenly Father more than answered my prayers, in a way I did not expect. This last week I saw how quickly prayers can be specifically answered as well. We have an investigator, Nito, who has been progressing, and we wanted to invite him to be baptized. I prayed the morning before we taught him that we would know if it was the Lord´s will to invite him to be baptized this next week. During the lesson, we invited him to come to another investigator´s baptism, and were talking about baptism. He said that he wanted to be baptized, and so my companion, Irmã NKutxi invited him to be baptized this next weekend, and he accepted. The Lord answered my specific prayer and Nito showed us his desire! I also have a more...interesting story.
I think last week I mentioned Julia preparing to be baptized. We had her baptism planned for 5pm on Saturday (this is the baptism we invited Nito to attend). I had prayed with my companions for her to have an ´´inesquecivel´´ (unforgettable?) experience at her baptism. We arrived at the chapel a little after 4pm to get everything ready. The baptismal font was all ready and full of water, but the water was bem-frio!! (semelhante to Lake Michigan this summer!) Júlia has health problems and has been sick, so there was no way that she could be baptized in that cold water...and the heater for the font was not working. One idea we had was to heat up water in the kitchen and add it to the font to raise the temperature. We tried this for about an hour, but it wasn´t having any success. Our next solution was to try another chapel that was already having a baptism and would have a font ready...but they had all already emptied the font. So the Elders in our district in Cascais prepared their chapel for us to use...and the font takes 2 hours to fill up! So, a lot of pandemonium occurred, but we finally had a baptism at 8 pm. It was definitely an unforgettable experience!!! We spent 5 hours at the chapel to have one baptism! (and of course this was the night we planned to have a three-way division, but these things happen) I think in the future I will be a little more careful with my prayers, and stick with praying for a spiritually uplifting experience!
But, I really do know that Heavenly Father hears and answers our prayers, even when the answers may not be what we want or expect. When we have faith and hope, we trust in Him and His plan for us, and recognize that ´´my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.´´(Is. 55) I am grateful that we can always pray to our Father in Heaven to know his ways!