WEEK #4

Hey Everyone!

Holy cow time is just flying! I can't believe it's P-Day again. This week just flew by. Well life at the MTC has pretty much been the same, but I had a couple way cool experiences. The coolest one is that on Tuesday night at the devotional, Richard G. Scott of the Quorum of the Twelve came and spoke to us!!! It was so cool to hear his voice. We were on the third row so we were way close to him. He made eye contact with me a bunch of times :) haha. He spoke most of the time on prayer, and how important it is to keep that channel open with God. We NEED to communicate with him. He is waiting to pour out blessings on us, we just need to be obedient and talk to him. It was funny, because after he finished his talk we sang a hymn and a Sister missionary was going up to say the closing prayer, but elder Scott jumped out of his seat and told her to sit back down and he went back to the podium and spoke for another few minutes. It was cool though I've never seen an apostle do that. He said he felt prompted to speak more and that he felt like someone needed to hear his last message. That was definitely me! Haha. He gave all of us an Apostolic blessing, that was probably the coolest thing I've ever experienced! I've never felt the spirit so strong in my life. He promised that the burden of learning the language will be eased as we continually pray and work hard. I love the apostles!

I seriously can't explain how much I love learning about the gospel! We have been teaching a lot and 2 of our investigators committed to baptism! They aren't real investigators but still, we have been teaching them for weeks and we have been making progress, now finally we got them to baptism :) Baptism is only the beginning though. Tomorrow we have to teach a real investigator in one of our training exercises. I'm pretty nervous but I think we will do good. We are planning on just getting to know them and talking about the Restoration and a little about the Plan of Salvation, depending on who we teach.

  Also this week I have been learning a lot about Joseph Smith. I love Joseph and I'm so grateful for his sacrifice. He gave his life for the building up of the Kingdom of God. I encourage you all to watch the Joseph Smith restoration movie. I love it. We watched it in Portuguese on Sunday and amazingly I could understand almost everything they were saying! I can understand a lot of Portuguese it just takes me a little longer to put together sentences and build sentences. I'm getting better though. It really is awesome teaching in another language. Because even though our Portuguese isn't the best, the people we teach can still understand our message and feel the spirit. My favorite thing is bearing my testimony in Portuguese. I just let the spirit guide me as to what to say and it almost always goes along perfectly with what our investigators needed to hear at that time. Cool stuff.

Well none of us have gotten our VISA's yet, so we are most likely getting reassigned stateside until they get here. I will find out where my reassignment is next week. I'm excited, it will be cool to serve stateside and get the hang of missionary work in my own language. Everything will work out how it's supposed to.

Well everyone, I love you all so much and I'm so grateful for your love and support! My challenge for you this week is to take a few minutes, when it's quiet and there aren't any distractions, and say a prayer of gratitude to your Heavenly Father. Don't ask for anything this time. Only thank him for everything you have been blessed with. I promise you will feel closer to Him and you will be more grateful for everything you have. I did it, and I can tell you that we all have so much to be grateful for. He has given us so much.

I love this gospel so much and I am so grateful for the influence it has on my life. We can experience true and lasting happiness if we strive to be obedient and live by the standards of the church. The Book of Mormon is truly another testament of Jesus Christ. I know it. Every time I have a question or am worried about something, I say a prayer and read the Book of Mormon. I receive my answer EVERY time. Guys, the gospel is true. God loves each and every one of us and wants us to talk to him.

Well I'm out of time but I hope to hear from you all soon! Ate mais tarde!

Love, Elder Kyle Payne

  "Olhos fitos na Gloria de Deus" (Eyes fixed on the Glory of God)