Brazil, Bullying, and BOOYAH

So. The answer I have been waiting for for 9 MONTHS now concerning my fate of going back to Brazil or not. I received a text from my President that I have been permanently reassigned to the Virginia, Richmond Mission which I am super excited about. Of course I have bitter sweet feelings but I know the work is the same in any part of the world and any side of the veil. I love being able to represent Christ to my brothers and Sisters. So now that is out of the way...I have this crazy cool story about getting bullied BUT how God turned it into a missionary moment: To start off this story read this amazing scripture in 2 Corinthians 12:10 "Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong." ^This is how I feel right now because this past week I was cruising doing some Facebook work. My tactic is friend a bunch of people and message all of them too...it works quite well I might add. Well some lady got offended at my friend request and instead of simply "declining" it, she decided to make me a public example over social media! She screen shoted my profile and warned all of her friends of guys like me. She said "Why? Lol no I'm not accepting a friend request from a dude that's gonna try and tell me about Joseph Smith." I mean, that's fine because she's right...but then the comments got super nasty and it was crazy seeing people talk so bad about the church!

BUT then there was a friend she has on facebook who started standing up for me in the comments. She was so surprised that he was because he is this tattooed, rough looking drinker, who admitted to a lot of things in the comments. However, he stood up for me. He is a member who has lost activity and any more direction in the church for many years now. And not only that, we started messaging back and forth and he said that when he saw his friend post about me and ugly comments going off, he had "an awakening." He felt like he needs to pursure the course with the missionaries again because he felt God guiding him. Fast forward a few days, I passed his number and profile to some missionaries who live in his area and they were so amazed because he had already gotten in contact with them previously and wanted to start things up again with the missionaries and the church do to "some recent events" that caused this awakening in him. I just think it's so neat that God uses our persecution and trials in order to move forth his work. If anyone walked away with a bigger smile from some cyberbullying it was me!!! I'm willing to take that beating everyday in order to be a representative of Christ and reap the blessings of his gospel!! We learn about this same example (but on a much higher scale) in Alma 14 where innocent children and women were being burned in Ammonihah. However, Alma testified saying "the blood of the innocent shall stand as a witness against them, yea, and cry mightily against them at the last day." Love you all! Take care!! Elder Gardanier