A Roller Coaster of Emotions!

Hello!  What a week this week has been! But first off I'd like to give shoutouts to my little brother Lee on his birtday! HAPPYYY BIRTHDAY BRO!!!!!!! It sounds like you have been having a great time there in Tonga and super cool that you went to that same little island that i did! Such a cool place for sure! But i hope you know how much i love you and how much of an example you are to me. You are such a stud! Love you tons and have an awesome day there in Tonga! Bula! 

As for the package, yes i did receive the dream package that was soooooo awesome!! Holy cow there was so much good stuff in that package!! For the first day i was scared to start eating the stuff because i knew if i started to eat it, it would be hard to stop myself! haha! The bummer of it all is that when the Jensens stopped by to drop off the package at the office, I was in the chapel finishing up district meeting! About 2 minutes later, i went up to the office and they had dropped it off! Man it would have been fun to see them and it was so close! haha but thanks so much Jensen family for dropping it off and for the pictures of Christ you gave me! We gave one of those pictures to a lady we are teaching and it helped her a ton! But thanks mom and family for the package. It was awesome! Wow how i have missed Reese's puffs! 

This week we got more missionaries in our zone as well. Our zone and the zone next to ours combined so now we have the biggest zone in the mission which is pretty awesome! But more responsibilty for sure! 

So this week was such an awesome week and a roller coaster of emotions! We have been teaching Polly a lot and have seen such miracles in her life. At the beginning of the week she was still a little closed to the idea of baptism because she still wasnt entirely sure. But then on Tuesday night, we had a lesson with her and watched that video with the dad and the son and the train. I think I've told you aabout it before but it's super good about the atonement. And then we watched another video of a talk by Elder Anderson called " You know enough" which as well is super powerfull! So already the spirit was super strong! Then like i said, the jensons had given me some large pictures of Christ all wrapped up and everything so we picked one and on the front put a scripture, moroni 10:32. We told her that night she had to read the scripture and then say a prayer and then after that, she could open up the gift. You could tell she was curious with what was inside. Bia, her 9 year old, wanted to open it immediately. Haha. So we left it at that that night. The next morning we were having trouble planning what we needed to teach her. We planned some scriptures but nothing seemed to fit. That same day we had a meeting with president so we went to the chapel along with some other zones for the meeting. During the meeting, president talked about the iron rod and Lehi's dream. When he first started, I knew that's exactly what we needed to share with her. I looked at elder oliveira and he felt the same thing! So that night we returned to Polly's house and taught the iron rod. It was so awesome! It was exactly what she was needing! Meire as well loved it a lot. That same day she had recieved an email from my old comp telling her to hold fast to the iron rod, but she didn't know what that meant, so it was an answer to her prayer, as well. But then after we followed up with the photo and she was so happy. She said she read and prayed and when she opened the photo and saw Christ, that she felt the spirit super strong. In the picture, Christ is holding a candle and she said it was as if the candle was real and actually burning in front of her face! She then told us this sunday she would be baptized! OH man i was so stoked! It was a series of miracles and it was so awesome! During the rest of the week we followed up with her and each day she got more and more excited! So everything was going great, until sunday morning. Mom told me not to keep details from her so here it is! Sunday morning we got to their house to go to church with them and Polly and Meire weren't there. Her son, anderson, was there and told us what had happened. At 5 that morning polly was already awake getting ready for church and was so excited for her baptism. At 530 her brother was going to the bus stop with his friend and the two of them were shot at close range. The friend was shot in the chest. Polly's brother had time to react and block the first shot with his hand, but then took another bullet in the side of his head. Luckily he didn't die, but the bullet was still lodged in his head! The friend died before getting to the hospital. i couldn't believe it! So needless to say, they never made it to church that day. The entire day i was extremely worried for the entire family, especially for Meire and polly. But i felt the spirit really strong during sacrament and during my studies, I learned a lot about patience! Last night we passed by to see if everything was okay and that's when polly told us all this. The brother is okay and will leave the hospital probably tomorrow. But what was way cool to see was how her testimony grew even stronger. She knows that she was so close to doing something so good and that's when it gets harder. She talked a lot and shared everything about how her life has been changing the last couple weeks, and how she was really depressed (we noticed for sure) but how these days she has been a lot happier. She said she hasn't cooked in who knows how long, but she has started cooking a lot more, especially desserts. She makes the best cakes. wow! We have definitely seen the changes in her life because of our message, which is so awesome!! She feels that this might be a wake up call to her brother as well so she hopes she can get him to go to church with her and watch her baptism.  It was way cool as well because the night before we watched Mountains to Climb with them, which fits so perfectly well with what happened. Such a crazy week and the baptism didn't happen, but still she was so happy last night. The happiest i have seen her ever and i know its because of this message! The church is so true and I am so glad to be able to help these people here in Brazil!! Pray for polly this week that we can get her baptized and on the right path! 

The church is so true and the Book of Mormon is proof. I know that if everyone were to read the book, really read it, they would know as well. Don't forget to share it with everyone! 

Love you all!!

Elder Holmes