T'chau Elder Lima, Ola Elder Nhamitambo!


Oi pessoal!

So, this week I am sadly without Elder Lima, he got transferred 600 miles away to a province called Huambo. He says that the weather is finally cool enough to survive, and the people are really awesome there. I'll miss him, we became really good friends, even though there was a language barrier at first. 

Now I'm with Elder Nhamitambo! Good luck pronouncing that one ha-ha. Even the people here can't pronounce his name. He's from Mozambique, so he speaks Portuguese, although he wants to learn English before the end of his mission, so now I'm the language professor, how the tides have changed. 

We had a pretty awesome week. We had to say goodbye to a lot of people that we were teaching because they stopped showing interest and stopped progressing, but that meant that we were able to teach a lot more friends! We were able to teach some siblings of people we used to teach, and we got some referrals from other missionaries to teach some new people. 

One really awesome lesson was with Eurico. He lives super close to our apartment, but his area is so hidden I never even knew that part of our area existed! He told us that he's been to many churches and has been searching for the truth, we taught him about the gospel of Jesus Christ, and how he can follow him and get closer to him. The spirit was so strong during that lesson, teaching people who are genuinely searching for the truth is a great blessing. 

This week I was reading in the Book of Mormon in Mosiah, the chapters where King Benjamin calls all of his people to speak to them. In his sermon, he talks about how he labored with his own hands rather than living off of what the people did for him. He then says that ``When ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are only in the service of your God``(Mosiah 2:17)

Being able to serve and teach people here is awesome, but we don't have to be at a food shelter or in Africa to serve our fellow beings. Service is one of the greatest things we can do in this life. No matter how we serve or who we serve, we get more back than we give in the feelings of love that we develop for them.

I invite you all to think of people who could use some service, and then make a plan to do it, no matter how small an act, when we truly serve people out of love, we are loving God and his children. I have served in many different ways on my mission, but no matter how small, each time I leave feeling lifted up and strengthened. I know as my focus on helping others, we really find ourselves and who we can become. 


Eu amo voces!

Elder Madsen


                       

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