email 7/7/08

Email 7/7/08
First area: Currais Novos


dear everyone,

i hope you all had a fabulous 4th, and mom and the girls had fun in cali, i cant say i´m not jealous. this week for the most part was a patience tester in many small ways but i had a really cool experience i will tell about in a sec.

tomorrow we have to get up at 3 am to catch bus to natal for mission conference, where i will get all my letters/packages for the month and see all my mtc friends so i am excited. but not for the 3 am part. my friend jonne from the ward left on his mission this week which was pretty sad, he is my favorite person i have come to know here in currais novos and one of the nicest people i have ever known. transfers are a week from tomorrow and i will probably be staying here, but getting a new comp.

we found 2 new families to teach this week, both young couples with a baby who are very kind and receptive to the spirit. i am excited for them, they are one of the easier people to teach. everyone else is pretty difficult or always has some sort of road block. one girl we are teaching was progressing well then got fed a bunch of anti- crap we are working out with her, another needs to get married before baptism but needs to sign a document and has a phobia of writing her signature, litterally, like a real psychological problem that she has had to have treatment for, so we are working to help her with that. one lady lives in a 10´by 10´concrete room, with all her stuff crammed in there, so its very hard to teach with the spirit when we are crammed in that room with all her stuff, her 5 naked kids running around, old food everywhere, raw meat carcauses laying there and a million flies around us with a smell so bad i cant even concentrate. so teaching for the most part is not easy.

about that cool experience i had... so there is a less active lady in the ward who sadly had her baby die this week, they knew she was gonna die when they adopted her but it was still sad. anyway so while she was still in the hospital we went to visit the less active mom who was there with her. the next night, we went to visit the mom at her house and she told us that when we walked into the hospital that day, she saw 2 lights, or glows with us, like there were 2 angels with us. i thought that was really cool. (d and c 84:88) but that experience might be what brings her back to the church, and it also gave us the oppurtunity to teach her husband who is not a member. it was amazing.

hope all is well at home, thanks for all the support.

until next week!

-elder sherwood

D & C 84:88
And whoso receiveth you, there I will be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up.