The Raleigh Family

Dear mom,

This week was awesome! We got a pretty big teaching group of people who are all really good people and we made a goal to baptize 8 people this month, which is for sure gonna happen! (see dads email for a description of the people and the plan) but we’ve been having lots of miracles and I think after this month the ward here is gonna be super excited about mission work cause they’re gonna be getting a lot of new members that they’re gonna have to help with! This month is gonna be sweet here!

It’s sad to hear about umbra :( you gave such a detailed description that I could see it all happening! Sad stuff... In gonna miss that cat. Hopefully he´ll be there in heaven when we get there. And Frankie too.

Sounds like the temple day was super awesome. It’s been a while since I’ve been to the temple. I hope I get to go sometime soon, but I think that I’m gonna be in this area for at least one more transfer which means like two and a half more months. Which isn’t bad because this area feels like home now and it’s gonna be sad to leave it someday. I for sure want to come back after my mission and visit all the people that I am meeting and working with here. I for sure love this place.

It sounds like everything is good at home and starting to settle down a bit. Good to know they didn’t get a super high maintenance baby. Haha. Anyway sounds like life is good there and I hope it keeps being good! Life is for sure good here and only getting better!

Love,

Elder Raleigh

Dear dad,

This week was super awesome! We made a goal to baptize 8 people this month and I think it might happen. We already had 4 people who were on track to be baptized when we made the goal and now we have 4 more that are a good potential! We have Reginaldo and Adriana, Felipe, and Anna who are all pretty much guaranteed and then at church this Sunday this women who has been a little less active showed up and she had two kids that are 9 and 11 that she wants to be baptized this month so that’s 6! And then last night we went and visited this woman who we had found two nights ago and they are super awesome! We started teaching the first lesson and when we got to the part where we were about to introduce Joseph Smith and after the apostasy she started talking about how she didn’t know how to know for sure which of all the churches are true and pretty much had like all the same problems in her life about religion that Joseph Smith had before the First Vision! It was awesome! The Lord has definitely been preparing her to hear the message of the restoration! So they´re probably gonna be baptized on the 25th if all goes well! So I think for sure were gonna reach our goal!

So these past 2 weeks me and my comp have been focusing a lot on trying to find people who are “elect”. When I first got to the field and heard people talking about "elect" it kinda like offended me in a way cause people made it sound like the gospel isn’t really for everyone, but as I thought about it more some people just really aren’t ready for the gospel in their lives! So we’ve studied about "elects" a lot. There are two scriptures that describe what it means to be "elect". One says mine elect hear my voice and don’t harden their hearts, and the other says mine elect hear my voice and follow. So what we’ve been focusing on is finding people who don’t harden their hearts and who have a desire to follow and ever since we’ve been doing that we’ve been finding awesome people who were just ready for the gospel! We are here to help people to come unto Christ, but we can only help them as much as they actually have a desire to find the truth. So this week we got a system down for finding people who are elect and the lord has been just blessing us with people who are ready!

Today we’re finally gonna clean the bathroom! Haha we’ve cleaned every other part of the house so it doesn’t feel like were camping anymore. And today it will be complete! Haha we’ve spent the last 3 p-days working on the house. Anyway that’s pretty much all that happened this week.

It sounds like life’s about the same back home, except it sounds like you guys are actually finishing projects that you start now! Haha the house is gonna be totally different when I get home! Don’t send me any pictures I wanna see how different it is when I get back.

I’ll be praying that everything goes well with work and hopefully things can start to settle down for you a little bit. Love you and nice hearing from you.

Love,

Elder Raleigh

Ps. also the new mission president is way more lax on the music we can have now. So if you could can you send me the music from that band I showed you a while ago called Whitley? All their music is super uplifting! Thank you.

Dear mom,

That’s crazy that we have a new person in the family! The baby pictures look really cute! That’s a pretty sweet name too! It’s good to know everything went well with the birth. Sounds like you guys are having a super busy week! That’s cute the Kacen was being all concerned with the baby and stuff haha. This week has been pretty awesome once again! Haha

So on Sunday the guy from that married couple we found came to church. (the one who said he had been praying to know what way he should go and then we showed up) and also the friend of a member who is really good too that we’ve been working with and it turned out the when we got there that every single class was about baptism for the death and temple work for our ancestors haha. I was a little nervous cause those are some pretty deep topics for your first time going to church. And so we had combined priesthood and relief society and it was all about that and then we had gospel principles and it was all about that and then we had sacrament meeting and it was all about that haha! So anyway we thought that they were gonna be all turned off by it all but at the end Reginaldo the guy whose married came up to us and pulled us aside and told us that when they started talking about all this stuff he started to remember his grandfather and then in the next class the feeling got even stronger and then even more strong in sacrament meeting! He felt like he really needed to do all this work for his grandpa! It was super awesome! And then we were at his house on Monday after that and he told us that he and his family are gonna “start participating in this church for sure” and that he wanted to do this work for his grandpa and then start doing it for all his family. He was super excited about it all. So this week was super good! Also Felipe liked it a lot too and we had a baptism after church and our friend Guilherme baptized his younger brother, Henrique, who we’ve been teaching so that was good too.

I'll attach some pics here then.

I liked both those quotes a lot. Especially the one by Confucius. Me and my companion have been talking about those kinda things a lot. We came to the conclusion that God is super awesome and the way we learn in this life is mostly through experience and what God does is He creates the perfect experiences for us to learn the things that we need to learn. We also were talking about what it really takes to really learn something and we talked a lot about how to really learn something it takes a “strain”. For example, if you are trying to learn math or to memorize something or even get better at a sport it takes a strain on your mind or on your body. So the reason that life is so dang hard is because it has to be hard for us to learn anything from it. The miracle of all this is that God always creates the perfect experiences for us to learn exactly what we need to learn in any given experience. And there are so many factors that go into everything that happens in our life that lead to the experiences that we have. I had to stop thinking about it because it was starting to blow my mind haha. So anyway if the moral of all this is that if life´s not hard it’s not worth it. I know that God lives and that He loves us and that we are here to progress.

Thank you for the quotes and for the update on what’s going on back home. I love you guys and glad life doesn’t sound too easy for you guys haha.

Love,

Elder Raleigh

Ps. send some music! My ears are dying here! Haha

Dear mom,

This week was kinda hard. Pretty much our whole teaching group kinda fell apart. And we didn’t end up having anyone come to church so it was sad. Also the woman we baptized went out of town and met someone and I guess she’s moving to that city with him now. She left today so we went to see her and give her and her son some presents. It was sad because she started to cry and I haven’t ever seen her cry before. Its weird because it seems like we just met her yesterday and she just got baptized, but it’s been a while now I guess!

Sounds like things are going good back home! Man the house is going to be way different when I get back, I might not even recognize it! So do you think that heather will probably have the baby this next week or so? Man that’s nuts!

It’s cool you got to see the Whiteds! How’s Tyler doing? It would be pretty cool to talk to him and see where he´s at in life.

So today we finally cleaned the house! And the front area outside our house! That’s why I’m emailing later.

Last night we have a pretty cool experience. So it was the end of the night and we went and waited at the bus stop and after like an abnormally long time a bus finally came. So we were riding on it and after like ten minutes they just stop and told us that they were at the last stop and they weren’t going to return to the terminal, which is where we needed to go. So we got off and had no idea where we were. So we asked some people if bus 11 passed there, which is the bus we needed to take. And it did. So then while we were waiting we looked in this burger place to see how much the food was, but we didn’t have enough money to buy any food. So we were walking out and this guy came running out and said he was gonna buy us a burger! So we let him. And we ended up getting his contact information and then bus 11 came but it just waited there for like ten minutes (I don’t know why) and all the bus drivers got off and were just chillin' or something so we got all there information to. So then we were riding home and thinking about how weird the situation was and were both sure that it wasn’t a mistake. We got kicked off a bus and had just enough time for us to get everyone’s contact information and get a free burger and 2 liters of coke and get on the bus to go home. God was for sure involved with it! Haha

Oh also another cool thing happened the other day! So we went to this house on Monday that we had contacted on Sunday night and we went in and got to know them a little bit. It was a married couple. And then started to teach them the first lesson. So we got to the part where we read the scripture James 1:5 and I asked them if they believed that god answers prayer, and before I could even finish the question he interrupted me with his answer which was yes. And then he started to tell us that he had actually been praying, for a while now, to know what way god wanted him to take and then we showed up at his door talking about Jesus and so he invited us in. At this point in the lesson his wife started to cry, which is kinda intense for the first lesson haha, and then we told them about the first vision and the book of Mormon and the spirit was setting the house on fire! So I’m pretty confident that this guy and his wife will be baptized because they are both looking for an answer with real intent and were both just really open. So I’m pretty excited about that!

Oh so now were allowed to listen to more music! We can listen to like any EFY music and also I think most of Enya would be okay so next week can you email me some music? Cause we are getting sooooo sick of our music! Haha we have two CDs and one is Mo’ Tab’...

I like that quote from Elder Holland. He´s for sure one of my favorites of the 12 Apostles. I like that parable. We have someone when I was in the MTC come and speak and he talked about that one. I can’t remember who it was but he said “God´s not worried about the time of day it took you to find the faith, just that you found it by the end of the day.” Something like that. And it’s totally true! Everyone has a different path to take here on earth that will shape us to who we need to be. And everyone who has faith at the end of the day will receive the same reward.

So yesterday when I was riding one the bus I was thinking about decisions and how they shape people’s lives and deep stuff like that and I decided that there are two type of people in this world, those who do things to try and discover who they are and those who do thinks because they already know who they are. I’m so grateful for the gospel in my life! I think everyone in the world has such a hard time really knowing who they are and what they want to do with their lives and what is really important. I’m just glad that through the gospel we know what this life is all about and we know what we need to do to be happy! I know that as we go through life we continually discover who we are, but I also think that best way to know who you are is to just live the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Love you guys and hope you have an awesome week!

Love,

Elder Raleigh

Dear mom,

This last week was super awesome as well. You’ll have to read the story I wrote in dads email about the woman with the Alma experience. It’s a pretty intense one.

Sounds like everything is going pretty well back home.

It’s cool to hear that everyone is starting to move out east! That would be super awesome if Chad got the job in Philly! We could go see them all the time! And also Philly is a pretty sweet city, except all the murders and drugs and stuff like that...

Good to hear that everything is working out with Jess. And good to know the Jacksons are such good friends! It’s for sure an answer to her prayers! And that is a pretty funny story about the battery! Haha made me laugh.

It’s pretty nuts that Heathers gonna be having another baby anytime now! You guys will have to send me pictures! Hope everything is going well with the baby, I’ll be praying for her.

Transfers were yesterday and I stayed here in the same area (Limeira) with the same companion. This transfers gonna rock! We got a bunch of people who are very possible to be baptized this transfer so it should be a really good and busy one. Today we’re gonna go and play some soccer with some of the members and try to get some investigators to go with us so that should be pretty fun.

It’s funny that you sent me a quote by Gordon B Hinckley cause my comps family did to but the one he got was ´you can be smart and happy, or stupid and miserable... It’s your choice` haha I thought that one was pretty funny, but also true. It really is just a choice that we make. We can live seeking knowledge and happiness, or we cannot, and be stupid and miserable. So I just hope I always stay on the side of happiness. I also like that other one you sent me. It really is true that people don’t just come into our lives for no reason. We all have something to learn and something to give.

I’ll be praying for you guys.

Love,

Elder Raleigh

Dear dad,

So what you said about the double helix thing is exactly what I was saying about to my companion this last week! I think I’m gonna like this talk! (I kinda pictured it as a circle and each category had like a bar that grew taller every time it goes around. That’s crazy we had the same idea of it! I think this talk is exactly what I was looking for so thank you. 

(See: http://www.lds.org/broadcast/misc/CES_2006_Eve_BednarDA_%20SeekLearningByFaith_00920_000.pdf)

Sorry to hear life is so busy there. Life is pretty busy here too. Yesterday was transfers and I stayed in the same area again, which is the city of Limeira in the State of São Paulo. I’m pretty happy about staying here. It feels like home now haha.

This week we’re gonna help some people get married so that we can baptize them so that should be a pretty cool experience. We taught them this last week and the spirit guided that lesson like I’ve never seen before! The girl had a crazy experience! So she kinda struggles with depression and this past week it started to have a really physical effect on her and her heart was having trouble beating and so they went to the hospital and she almost died! But in the moment she felt like she was gonna die she realized she wasn’t ready and she remembered all her sins and things she hadn’t resolved and remembered Christ. In that moment she put out the strength to say out loud “Jesus me salva” three times, which means Jesus save me, and immediately she felt better and her heart started to work okay again. So then we were there like a few days later and didn’t know that this had happened at all and she told us about it. And here is the miracle that morning me and my companion studied that part in the book of Mormon where Alma is struck dumb and suffers for all his sins and it is almost exactly what happened to her! So we read that to her and the spirit was super powerful! We all learned something during that lesson, but I think the main thing is that sometimes we are given things in this life that are way too much for us to handle but if we just call on the name of the lord he will save us. The only reason anyone ever falls and stays fallen is because they just don’t ask for a hand to stand back up. Through this experience we all realized the very real power that Christ has to save us. So by the end of this lesson they both had a baptismal date and a date set to go and get their marriage rolling. They realized that Christ saved her for a reason and that she should make the best of it now. At the end my companion asked them how they felt and they said it was hard to describe but they felt like they wanted to let out a laugh but didn’t know why and just felt at peace. It was a truly miraculous experience and I’m glad I got to be a part of it.

So that was probably the coolest thing to happen so far on my mission haha. So things are going really good here. And I’m working on the language still and on my conversational skills. I can pretty much have a conversation just until someone says a really big or uncommon word. Haha but I can pretty much understand everything that people are saying so that’s kinda cool.

I hope everything keeps going good back home! I’ll be praying for you guys! Man times going fast! At the end of this transfer I’ll have been out for 6 months already!

Love,

Elder Raleigh