This week was a really interesting one. It began with us going up to transfers at the Mission office. I got Elder Reichner (pronounced Richner). He has been out for two transfers so he is still "green". Besides the Sisters in Apollo Beach I am the only one left out of this last district. We have Elder Chugg and Elder Wismer in Riverview now.
With Elder Drumright gone I have been taking over the area recently. We've been running around stopping by people this past week and seeing who is still interested. Our Ward Mission Leader, Brother Young, went out with us after Correlation and we went by a few member families that moved in recently. This one family, the Rodriguez, have two unbaptized children and they said that we could come by and teach them.
We found a bunch of new people this weekend who said that we could come by sometime. They seemed to be interested in meeting again.
Not much else happened this week until Stake Conference came about. Elder Claudia R.M. Costa of the Seventy was there. He came to a Zone Conference in October and told a lot of good stories about missionaries being bold.
He told a crazy story of when he was the first Mission President over the Manaus Mission. I will do my best to paraphrase what he said:
There were many branches in the mission that wanted to go to the temple. The closest temple was the Sao Paulo temple. To get there they would have to ride a boat down the Amazon for four days. The boat was crowded and there was not much room but they sang the songs of Zion. A girl turned eight and was baptized in the Amazon River.
After the boat ride they rode three days on a bus to get to Sao Paulo. It was hot, tiring and cramped but they still sang the songs of Zion. Once they got to Sao Paulo they worked in the temple from 6:00 A.M to 10:30 P.M for five days. After the five days they went back to Manaus and the seven day trip back, a whole twenty day trip both ways.
Many of these people sold all that they could to afford the trip. The Branch President was a carpenter and he sold all of his tools to fund the trip. They were able to get all their stuff back and told Elder Costa that they were going to sell it next year for the temple trip.
All of this brought "Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel" to my memory.
Our ward had a Linger Longer thing after Stake Conference and we ate some finger food. It was good to socialize with the members a little.
This week for Thanksgiving we will be able to visit a bunch of members. One member, Brother Igunbor will be making a lot of food which may be good or bad.
That's about all for this week,
Have a splendiferous week and enjoy it.
Elder Fabricius
justin.fabricius@myldsmail.net
Picture of our last district with the Zone Leaders before transfers:
