april 24th 2013

Hey family!!

This week was a wonderful week. I just have one *awesome* story to share with you all:

So last wednesday we were out tracting, knocking on doors, and we were not having any success. There was even a drunk guy that threw beer at me and got my shirt all dirty and gross. We knocked an entire street without anyone letting us in. So, we decided to stop and say a quick prayer. Even though we were discouraged, we put our faith in the Lord.

We decided to knock on one more house. We sat at the door for a long time and finally a woman came up. I started introducing myself to her and before I could finish, she already opened the door and said, "Do you want to come in?" We went inside and shared the message of the Restoration with her.

A few days later we returned and she really opened up to us, telling us about her life story. She said that about a year ago her mother passed away, leaving her to tend for her two children alone. She explained that never before, in the five years she has lived in this house, had she allowed missionaries or evangelists or people from other churches enter her house.

The Tuesday night before we knocked on her door, she had a dream. Her mother appeared to her and said, "Tomorrow you will meet two people who will change your life if you let them". She asked in the dream, "Are they my brothers?" But her mother said no. Then she woke up.

The next day, she kept thinking about that all day. then, at 7:30 at night, at the exact moment we were saying a prayer on the corner asking for guidance, she said a prayer asking God to help her understand what the dream meant....Then...we knocked on her door.

We are helping her change her life around. this woman and her daughter are going to get baptized on May 11th!!! I am so grateful that the Lord performs miracles for us. I am also so grateful to be able to be worthy to receive inspiration from the Holy Ghost.

I am grateful for the priesthood. This past week I had the opportunity to give a priesthood blessing. I am so thankful that God trusts me enough to hold his priesthood power and that I am worthy to use it to bless the lives of families who are in need.

So I have a surprise for you...my mission president's son is going to the United States on vacation to visit their family in Utah....so I am sending a surprise to you guys with him!!

He said he is going to stop by the house to take a picture with you all for me :) I am sending a picture of us so you will recognize him hahaha :)

Anyway, I am doing so well! I love my mission and I love all the people here that I am serving. I love the ward I am in and will be sad to get transferred. This is my favorite part of my mission so far!

The weather is great. The beans and rice are getting boring...I still eat a pineapple everyday. The other missionaries make fun of me, but it is my new tradition! I am teaching myself piano and it is coming along well. I am also teaching myself Spanish - it is going great too! I want to keep studying it when I get home and be able to speak Spanish and Portuguese fluently.

I think I am going to make cookies today. I haven't made them for a while. The other day we made french bread pizzas, brazilian style, and ate them with plastic gloves. Then we had a family home evening and I made crepes and everyone freaked out and thought they were the best things ever!

Song of the week:

I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - U2.

Love you all!

-Elder Spencer D. Eastwood

April 17th 2013

Hello family! It is P-day again, the wonderful day of the week that is less stressful for me! There is still stress, just less of it. Like, for example, someone calling us at 6:45 in the morning and saying that they never want to go back to church...but anyway, that is a story for another time.

We had a great blessing this weekend with one more baptism! I am so grateful that the Lord has been so merciful with us. It is true that as we are obedient and keep the commandments, he blesses us in everything, in every aspect of our lives. How much I wish I could get it into people's heads that the ONLY way to receive blessings is to keep the commandments. I love the scripture in Mosiah 2:41. It has become one of my favorites!

We are working hard to find more people to teach and baptize in the coming weeks. I am very excited to see how the Lord will bless us! Thanks for your prayers and faith. I am grateful for everything that you do for me. I am looking forward to the next 7 months of my mission. I hope I can accomplish everything the Lord calls me to do. 

I am very excited to go back home and see you all again though. I have changed a lot. I am not the "old" Spencer anymore! I hope that I can live up to all the blessings and privileges the Lord has given me.

Well, that is about it. Yesterday some new missionaries got on the mission, so we got to have lunch with the mission president and his wife (which are the best days ever!)

Love you all! Stay happy!

-Spencer

april 11th 2013

Hey family!! This week was great! We had General Conference, which was awesome as always (I loved Jeffrey R Holland's and Thomas S. Monson's talks). We are so blessed to have living prophets and apostles to lead and guide us today! We got to watch the sessions live in our chapel here in Goiânia with all the other members.

The biggest blessing this week was the privlege we had to baptize a family in between the conference sessions on Saturday! Everyone was so happy and we had so much involvement from the members of the ward here. I am going to miss this ward a lot. I want to come back and visit them! I love the time that I have here and don't want to get transferred. I am getting nervous, because I think that transfers are coming up soon...

So this week we are preparing another person to get baptized. I am so happy and grateful that the Lord is blessing us so much. It is true that obedience brings blessings. That is what Pres. Monson spoke about at conference and I agree so much with him! When we keep the commandments, God is so much more willing to bless us.

I also learned this week that patience brings blessings. Sometimes, we have to wait for the things we want most. Nothing worthwhile ever came easy, or quickly. We have to wait for what we want most, rather than what we want in the moment. But waiting and having patience always brings the biggest and best blessings to us. How blessed we are to know the Heavenly Father will always make things right when we wait with patience and trust in Him completely. That is something I realized while studying my patriarchal blessing lately.

Love y'all,
Spencer

April 3rd 2013

Man, time is flying by! I can't believe it is already April. Time goes so fast. It really is our most precious resource, cause you can never get it back once it is gone.

This week was great. We are being so blessed by Heavenly Father. We are working really hard to baptize a family that we have found. We re-marked baptismal dates with three of them, and they will get baptized this Saturday in between sessions of conference. I am so excited! I can't believe how merciful the Lord is being with us. All of our hard work is paying off.

The ward is so much better than it was when I got here. I remember when I first got to this ward in November, I was kind of scared and overwhelmed, worried about what I would be able to do to help out. Well, it is A LOT better now and I love all the members here. I hope they value the sacrifice that we are making as missionaries to help their ward out. Sometimes I feel like we get overlooked and ignored a lot. But I know that Heavenly Father is proud of me and the work I am doing.

We will be praying for all these people to get baptized in the month of April. (We have 7 people being prepared for baptism!) I would love it if you could remember us and our investigators in our prayers.

The church is true and I love you! :)

Love,

Elder Spencer D. Eastwood