Alright yall, so this email is gonna be kind of a downer, just to warn everyone. This week was definitely the hardest of my mission BY FAR. hands down. This week is transfers (which ill talk more on at the end of this email) but to sum up what happened this week, yall remember Joelma & Jr right? Our baptisms 3 weeks ago? the woman & her incredible family & her 9 yr old who asked us the first sunday when he could be baptized? the beautiful story/experience we experienced?
Well, to share with you what happened, me & sister s went over to their house saturday night to teach them one last time & tell them that we were being transferred BUT leaving them with the assurity that the other sisters that would take our place will love & take care of them too & that we'll continue to write them etc etc.
Well, we get there & Joelma looks me in the eye directly & says in Portuguese severly, "VerHoef, if you leave, I will never go to church again." At first I didnt take her seriously, I mean this womans awesome, but shes super dramatic & blows things wayyyy out of proportion. However, as she continued to talk to us she told us that we were "abandoning her" that "our mission with her wasnt over" "its not fair, God wouldnt do this to her" and that she went back to drinking and smoking because she "either finishes the path with us or she stops here."
As if transfers wasnt hard
enough she pulls that card on us. Its true, she hasnt been to church in 2 weeks because one week she was very sick & the other she had to work, but we still did family home evening with her, Irma Eliane, who lives 2 streets behind her visits her on a regular basis, Marcelo who baptized Jr helps Joelmas other children with house maintenance on a regular basis and we tried
so hard to visit them at least every other day.
Anyway, she continued to talk severly to us & I could see she was different. Sister S & I just listened. Actually sister s listened, while I cried silently beside her.
At the end, after trying for an hour telling her we dont have a choice, this isnt
our decision, its the Lords etc etc etc we just ended by singing the song we sung at her baptism from Primary, "I like to look for rainbows"
Through our broken voices and our tear stained faces we sang,
I like to look for rainbows whenever there is rain
& ponder on the beauty of an earth made clean again
I want my life to be as clean as earth right after rain
I want to be the best I can
& live with God again
at the end, Larissa (Joelmas daughter) was crying, we were all crying minus Joelma. We left and went back yesterday. (Jr promised us that hed go to church but after almost an hour of yelling, knocking on their doors & calling no one answered the door)
Yesterday the woman we talked to was
not Joelma. That was not the woman we baptized. The woman we talked to was bitter, angry & full of darkness, with an open beer and a mountain of cigarettes by her side.
Every time she talked it wasnt her talking. As I looked into her eyes, Joelma wasnt there.
"VerHoef, talk. Is this fair? Its not your fault, but its someones and it isnt God. If you leave I wont go to church. I'll face God on the day of Judgement & answer for my actions but if you leave I
wont go to church. You are abandoning me, like a child thats learning to walk you both entered my life to teach me to walk on the path & now when I still need you youre
leaving me."
As if with every word she was chipping a little away at an open wound.
Well, you can imagine how Im feeling now. Ive never wept as much as I wept the past two days. I couldnt
stop weeping. For the past two days I havent slept, I havent been able to, thinking of all the things I couldve done to save this woman and thinking how I can fix it.
But the most painful part, the most bitter part of all of this is Junior whos still young. Junior, who I see all of my nephews combined inside him. Without the support of his mother, what will become of him? What will keep him from getting into drugs & organized crime that runs rampant here in Brazil? What will keep him from sleeping around and getting 15 yr old girls pregnant which ALSO runs rampant here?
My greatest dream for him is to serve a mission, to be an example to his family, and now his mother is sitting in darkness with a can of pinga & a pack of cigarros.
Ive never felt like such a failure as a missionary before this time. It was as if she was
trying to make us feel horrible, well she succeeded.
Of course, theres nothing I can do. The Lord knows what Hes doing & I know that Im needed in another area. Theres nothing more I can do for them, but the pain, the sheer grandeur of the
pain and
hurt that I feel.;.. it cant be put into words at seeing this woman that was so full of light & hope & true happiness fall so hard and so far because of
2 sundays missed.
So my dear friends & family, my counsel I give & my request for you are these:
1.) NEVER NEVER MISS A SINGLE SUNDAY AT CHURCH. I dont give a crap whats going on. If youre sick, if you have to work, if youre tired or if its raining or snowing. NOTHING is a good enough excuse. If youre in a coma or youre dying, maybe, but even that could be argued. I NEVER want any of you to miss a single sunday at church. There is power and protection that is found there. Heavenly Father CANT bless you with forces & strength to enfront the evils and temptations of this world IF YOU DONT GO TO CHURCH. And if any of you ( you know who you are) are NOT going to church. GO THIS SUNDAY. Im completely serious. Ive seen the face of darkness & bitterness WITHOUT church. You cannot afford to put your spiritual safety at risk missing a SINGLE SACRAMENT MEETING. so GO. GO THIS SUNDAY.
2.) I would ask all of you to include Joelma, and especially Junior in your personal & family prayers. They mean so much to me, and Im suffering watching them turn away from the light and enter into forbidden paths.
moving on...
Okay, so transfers is today and Im being transfered to Antares (which is seriously 20 minutes away in a car from centro civico hahaha) Im literally going right around the corner from my 1st area! My new comp is Sister M (a brasilera from sao paulo) & shes FANTASTIC. Went on splits with her once & shes honestly just as crazy as me! Whichll be pretty fun :)
and on the bright side, we won a contest in our zone! Mom-->"Its a major award!" bahaha, but yah me & sister s won a contest a trophy (that wasnt ours that we had to get back, that was actually for motocross... dont ask me how our zone leaders acquired it...) and açaí which is the BEST stuff ever! its a fruit that i prefer in juice form with strawberry or other deliciousness inside. anyway, yayyyyyy!
em fim, I love you all. and there is NO real happiness that can be found in what the world offers nor is there any LASTING happiness that can be found in any other church other than the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. No other church can families be together forever and the promises of eternity. No other church than the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints
No comments:
Post a Comment