8/11/14

8/11/14

This is week saw a good week :) We had a good week and our investigators went to the baptism of the investigator of the other elders!!!!!!!!!!!! It was super cool even though I was kind of freaking out because not many members came to the baptism. (If the elders there have a baptism go! Even if you don’t know the person just people being there helps!) but it still turned out well! I kind of did terrible on playing the piano! Elder Shields did a special number for her but I got super nervous and I couldn’t play at all it was frustrating because an hour before hand it was perfect :P   But it happens :P

Also we had a cool experience.  We cut our hair this week so we went and talked to our barbers about the gospel!  It was actually really cool we each taught the barber that was cutting our hair and then we talked about a lot of different stuff.  Then we were sitting there afterwards talking and they started talking about apocalypse.  I don’t know like everyone here loves apocalypse ....sorry I meant Revelations. It is called apocalypse in Portuguese :P   But she started talking about how it talks about all the different churches in the last days and I looked at her and said, that is what we are saying...we aren’t saying that we are just another church we are saying that we are the church of Jesus Christ restored to the earth through the prophets.  When I said that it hit me very strongly.  I had not been planning to make a declaration of that sort but it just came. It proved to me that the promise is true; to open our mouths and they shall be filled. It was a super cool experience and a great way we had to share our testimony! (They invited us back and our now our investigators ;p)

What other cool things have happened...I was able to do an interview for a baptism! THAT IS SUPER COOL and it helps me know that there are people out there :)

I was thinking this week about the types of missionaries that there are: the planters, the cultivators, and the reapers. It looks like in this area I am most useful to the Lord as a planter but honestly I am okay with that :)  I know that I am doing what I must to have a truly successful mission :) 

Love, Elder Pachner

8/4/14

8/04/14

You guys sent so many pictures that you forgot to actually send me a real email ;P

But it is okay I can imagine that you are all having a good time over there boating while I am sweating it out over here during what should have been winter. It is like 80 degrees during winter......I am going to die during the summer :P but I don't worry I just remember that I am almost half way done and that this will be my last summer on the mission?!?!?!?!?! isn't that just crazy!! Time has flown by like crazy!!!

This week was a cool week. We were teaching some of our investigators and they were asking about  the a scriptures that they didn't understand in the Book of Mormon. It was about the spirit world and so we started teaching about the spirit world again. So we started explaining and they told us that they don’t actually believe in the spirit world!  We started to explain and show them in the Bible where the Bible talks about the spirit world. In first Peter and then we talked about the thief at the side of Christ asking him to remember him.  Christ said that he would go with him into paradise.  When Christ was resurrected he told Mary that he had not yet gone to his father. So we were just like, so if this is what the Bible is saying then how could there not be a spirit world. It was very different and then we invited them to read the Book of Mormon because that was truly the only way that they could be able to know that the plan of salvation was true. It was a good lesson and it showed me how much it truly helps to study the lessons because if I had not actually studied in the morning I would not have been able to answer their questions.

I love you guys and I hope that all things are going well at home! :) 

Love you, Elder Pachner

7/28/14

7/28/14

This week was really good! It ended really sadly! For sacrament meeting we sang the Day Dawn is breaking...I wasn’t able to sing it very well but it made me think of all you guys and realize how very lucky I am to have a family like you.

This week was interesting! We watched a movie that was super touching. It was the Emma Smith movie. All my life I always thought of her as a kind of failure because at the end of her life she apostatized. But this movie showed something so different. It showed how much that she truly did for this church and how much she supported Joseph Smith. It couldn’t have been any old regular person to be able to go through the things that they went through. She had to be as strong as he was and in some ways even stronger. It was a really beautiful movie and I felt the spirit super strongly as I said.  I grew alot during this experience. 

                                                       

Also I have been learning something here on the mission....the harder I try to become a better missionary the more the Lord blesses me to become soo.....I know that looks kinda like a duhhhh moment but still it is something that I am seeing everyday!

Love, Elder Pachner

7/21/14

7/21/14                                                                                          

This week has been wonderful!!!!!!!! I cannot even believe how amazing this p-day has been!! This is one of the best things in the world to hear that someone that you had been teaching has been baptized! I will never forget this! It truly brings joy to my heart and makes me feel as though I am doing what the Lord would do.

This was interesting! We had a very interesting experience. We met a Nehor. which was a very interesting experience. Our appointment had just fallen and I was trying to think of something else to do.  The thought came to go to this mans  house....so we did. We went there and he called us in very nicely and started talking to us. He was a returned missionary who was now in active for about 30 years so we wanted to hear what happened....so he asked us

“elders do you want to know why I went in active”  I told him sure and then he told me he had had some questions about the church that had never been answered. And then he started to talk a brought up his questions.  Obviously I will not write his questions just as the writers of the book of Mormon did not write what Nehor said to the people. Let us leave it with He used the reasoning of men to try and persuade us that the church was not true. I let him talk and then I told him my thoughts. I said I do not know the answers to your questions but I know one thing I know that Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God. That he saw God the Father and his son Jesus Christ. I know that the Book of Mormon is true! I know this because I feel the spirit testify to me every single time I read or testify of it. I know that I am a representative of Jesus Christ here on the earth and of his true church. I know these things and that is what all your questions come down to...Wither you believe that Joseph truly was called of God. I felt the spirit very strongly as I bore my testimony to him. I realized how bad I had been feeling while he was talking....However unfortunately he brushed off what I had said and continued to try and break our faith. In the end we left. Immediately as we left I asked my companion how he was and if he was okay and he told me that it had actually strengthened his testimony. I was very glad to hear that. As we walked away I began to sing Joseph´s First Prayer and the spirit testified again to me that it is all true and that Heavenly Father really did appear to Joseph in the sacred grove.

I am so grateful for God and for the many blessings that he gives me! I am grateful that he strengthened my faith through this experience! 

I love you all and I bear you my testimony that Christ lives and that he loves each and every one of us. In his sacred name, Jesus Christ amen.

Love, Elder Pachner