Sister Selk: Família Marcelino

The Lord is definitely blessing the Sisters of Mafra. It is incredible.

We have continued to teach Silvio and Tina this week, but unfortunately today they headed back to their home in Lisboa for the next 3 or so weeks, so we have to take a break teaching them for a while, but they will return to Mafra sometime in October, so we are looking forward to that already. They are progressing well. It has been a bit more of a struggle to teach them than I initially thought, but I have no doubt that with time they will realize that this gospel is exactly the happiness and the family that they have been searching for.

The main event of the week was of course the baptism of Sebastiana, Kamila, and Luana! Wow. I love this family sooo much! Because we were preparing everything for their baptism, we ended up taking the bus to visit them every day this week. We saw a lot of miracles happen during the preparations for their baptism! One of the biggest miracles we saw was with Kamila. On Tuesday we visited just with Kamila because Sebastiana and Luis were at work, and it was in that lesson that Kamila told us that she still hadn't received an answer to her prayers and she was still unsure on whether or not she wanted to be baptized. Sister Ventura and I weren't too sure what exactly we should do other than to just love her, and pray that she would receive an answer to prayer before Saturday. During the week we continued to plan everything, we fasted especially for Kamila but made sure not to push her into anything she didn't want to do. Eventually Friday came and they were scheduled to have their baptismal interviews- the elders came out to their house to do the interviews, and everything went SO well!!! Sebastiana went first and we were expecting Luana to go next since Kamila still hadn't said anything to us, but when Sebastiana finished her interview, without saying anything, Kamila went into the room to be interviewed!! Sister Ventura and I just looked at each other and had got huge smiles on our face! It was incredible.

Saturday Morning was cheia da loucuras!! It was insane. It included losing autocarros, half baked food, and me being completely drenched in water for the baptism. haha I am pretty sure satan did not want this baptism to happen because this family is going to be such a strong family in the church, but luckily despite everything we were able to get there and had the most beautiful baptism!

2 of my favorite parts of the baptism:

1. Luis surprised Sebastiana, Kamila, and Luana and was able to baptize them. Ugh. So cool.

2. After the baptism while we were still at the church, Kamila asked what she needed to do to serve a mission, and was asking how a mission worked. This was amazing because earlier in the week when we had our lesson with her and she was having her doubts, I felt prompted to tell her that I thought she would be such an amazing missionary even though she wasn't yet a member of the church.

I am so excited to now help this family prepare for the temple, and to hopefully help Kamila prepare for a mission!!!

Yesterday I was able to give my first talk in church, and besides being completely red in the face from being so nervous, I think it went pretty well. I talked on faith, which was another blessing because faith is one of my favorite topics! We also had an investigator in church yesterday! His Name is Noah and he is GOLDEN! Wow. so elect. We taught him the first lesson, have another lesson set up this week, and when we talked to him this morning he had already read part of the Book of Mormon that we left with him yesterday!

Look out fam. Mafra is exploding with people ready to hear the gospel!

Also, this morning we went and did Zumba with one of our recent convert's mom and it was so legit! I definitely looked like a skinny white girl that didn't know how to dance amongst all the Brazilian and Portuguese dancers, but I was loving every minute of it!

Well fam. Como de Sempre- Amo todos de vos DE MAIS! Obrigada por tudo. Paz e Bençãos.

-Sister Selk

Also thought I would add some of the talks I studied this week that I thought were absolutely amazing:

1. The Grandeur of God-holland

2. Pattern of our Parentage-packer