8-1-11

Dear Family,
Well, this week has been quite the roller coster. Well we found these three investigators. They are brother and sisters. The oldest is Felipe the boy, he´s 20. His sister Bruna, who´s 16 and their younger sister Vanessa who is 12. They are Brazilian and they have known the elders for awhile, and they live right across the street from us. And they are a really cool family. So, we found them from the area book. And we have been teaching them from scratch. So, that is what we have been doing. And we marked them for batism on the 6 of August, so this coming weekend. And they accepted. And we have been teaching them with two member girls in our branch that are really cool and they have become really good friends and their names are Ana and Nicole. But the problem is is that Bruna and Vanessa are under the age of 18 so, they have to have the permission of their mom to be baptized. So, they asked and she said no because she thinks things are going to fast. So, we said we will talk to her but we still haven´t had the chance to yet. But they came to church and everything and then we had a lesson with them about baptism and the blessings that they will be getting because they have been a little nervous about it. And we had a lesson where we taught the Restoration and then we had each of them pray and they all three received a witness of the truth and all of them even said that. So, during the lesson we watched a little video and and during the video Vanessa walked out and the other two weren´t paying too much attention. So, we asked them what was going on and Felipe said that he still wanted to be baptized but that he though it was a little too early and Bruna said she didn´t wanna be baptized at all and Vanessa said the same thing too. So, we pretty much said that we would just be working with Felipe. Then we left their house, now over this past week we have been with this family everyday trying to help them be prepared for baptism and we formed a really strong relationship and they feel like family now. And when we left their house it felt like we had been kicked out of my best friends house. Now, we were feeling pretty discouraged after this and we were just ready to go out and find some new investigators. But we get a call to come outside of our apartment and Ana and Bruna were there and Bruna apologized and said she said that stuff because she was afraid of her mom and didn´t wanna displease her. And that she knew all of what we taught was true. So, we are still trying to get in to talk with the mom. But please pray for this family. They need all the help they can get to make it to batism this weekend. And when they are baptized I will tell you guys all about it. These will be the first baptism Vila Real has seen in almost a year. So, this is a vey special week for me and for Vila Real.
Thanks for everything you do for me.
Love,
Elder Spencer Jensen