Hello Family...

I love you guys so much and have been thinking about you lots today.

José and Maria are still doing awesome and are overcoming their habits to drink coffee and smoke. They are very special people! They prove to me everyday how much the gospel blesses families and changes lives. Maybe I said that already about them because its so present in teaching them. Their lives and attitudes and everything has 100% improved in the past month that we have been teaching them!

In the last email I think I talked about how we would have 2 more youth baptisms. One of them was Rafael, but his grandma won´t give permission for him to be baptized even after everything we tried, so if you can keep him in your prayers, asking that she and his father as well will understand and let him be baptized. They think he should have to wait until he is 18 to know for sure if this is what he wants. I can see their side, but he wants to be baptized really badly and knowing what I know about the blessings of baptism and the truthfulness of this gospel...they need to let him! Satan works in so many ways to stop the work of the Lord...it can be SO frustrating!!

Thatiane is the other youth. She is 15 as well and amazing. She is about as elect as they get and I am so blessed to know her! I think she´ll end up a general president of one of the auxillaries. She is awesome!

Carla (the singer) could use your prayers too. She is one of the sweetest people I know, and she really needs to start feeling the direction of the Lord more in her life. She is still having a hard time believing in the day to day application of the gospel. She is struggling a lot financially and with her dreams of making it big with singing. She wants to be able to provide for her son and family and help others and she usually has the weight of the problems of every one she knows on her shoulders. She is the type of person that just wants to help everyone. Example: This week she trapped a rat in her house but afterwards felt so bad for him that she started feeding him macaroni. She let him free outside her house after a couple of days of worrying about him! She is almost crazy in how much she cares for people (and animals apparently!!). Now she just needs to realize that God loves and cares for her just as much as she cares for others. That is where she lacks...her faith that any one, especially He, is aware of her. :(

Funny/crazy story: A few years ago a couple of missionaries found a young man and taught him about the Restoration. They left a Book of Mormon with him and invited him to read and pray. He read and prayed and received a confirmation that the Book is true. The missionaries asked him what that signified to him and he told them that it meant he needed to open a church about the Book of Mormon. No, I´m not joking...it actually exists! Its on the border of our area and another one. I´ve never seen it but Sis Santos said its there and that he somehow got the Book of Mormon to publish because he publishes and distributes them! Pretty sure that would be called apostasy! Crazy!

I am learning lots and growing and trying to be better everyday! I am very grateful to be here experiencing the work of the Lord and the blessings of the gospel in such a hands-on way. Missions aren´t for us, the missionaries, but we truly receive amazing blessings as a side effect of helping others experience the amazing love of God. How grateful I am to be a member of the restored church of Jesus Christ...its the most important thing I can be.

I love you!

Sister Knudsen