19 December 2016

19 December 2016

oi familia! im sending a lot of pictures today because i finally can! some are of the christmas conference and also when i got the christmas package with cookies! Also, at the conference, i got the envelope with all of your letters and i loved them! especially all of the halloween stories from the Kate Alli and Madelyn. i´m glad they love candy and the moon bounce so much! 

I look forward to skyping with you all domingo, it will probably be about 4 or 5 here, but i don´t remember exactly the difference in time. 

This week was good, the Christmas conference was fun, and we are excited for a bapstism this saturday! Gabrielle is a 12 year old girl in a less active family that we are working with. they are awesome and everyone supports her baptism! We are also continuing to wkr with pedro and his 2 kids and their neighbor. they are all interested and humble, it is just difficult to get them to keep commitments. 

This week i learned more about hope and how hope means working with pacience even when it is hard and trusting that God will fulfill hiss promises. 

I love and pray for you guys, enjoy the christmas season and see you Sunday! :)

12 December 2016

oi familia! how are you all doing! excited for christmas!

this week was challenging but good. i dont know if you heard about the plane accident but here it is allover the news and it is very tragic. yesterday we had an area brasil conference broadcasted from salt lake and elder holldand and sister oscarson spoke (sister oscarson spoke portuguese fluently and elder holldand bore his testimony in portuguese which was cool). tomorrow we have our mission christmas conference. the work is going well, there were some dissapointments this week but i am able to elarn from each one. i would love to write more but this computer had problems and my time is now up i'm sorry!

5 December 2016

oi familia!

it was a very crazy week, but a really good one. i can´t believe it is already december, the holiday season is going to fly by! happy sinter klaas day tomorrow! 

this week we made a lot of progress in this area. We had a baptismal date marked this saturday for Igor, but we will have to postpone it for a little while. But, a young woman who has been investigating for over a year will likely be baptized this saturday! She has been ready, but her parents would not give permission, but finally they gave permission so that was a miracle! We also started teaching a man named Pedro and his 2 kids (8 and 10 years old) that are really great and humble and they came to church yesterday and loved it and want to keep coming. They are a bit quiet and don´t say much but we are going to help them understand more. But the kids are so sweet i love them! I love Cruz Alta there are so many great receptive people being prepared that we are able to find each day and there are so many progressing! 

This week i was able to learn a lot more about the importance of charity and not just doing what you are supposed to, but really becoming a disciple of Christ that loves and serves others. It is when we develop charity, the pure love of Christ that we will be happy and content where we are, develop other attributes of Christ, and really change our nature. I had an experience this week where we found an inactive member and she was very cold and just reluctantly let us in to her house to share a message. it could have been easy to treat her the same way and not show much love or care for her, but i tried really hard to just treat her with love, get to know her story and really help her. she started to warm up a bit, we shared a scripture that the spirit prompted me to share and it was perfect for her situation. she said at the end that the scripture was just what she needed to hear. she said at first she didn´t feel like recieving a visit, but she was glad she did because it helped her and she wants to go back to church.  I learned that when we show charity and love for people, they can feel God´s love for them and there hear can be softened for the spirit to enter. 

I hope my englsih is making sense. i hope you all have a great week, i´m thinking about you all in this christmas season, remember to think about the love of the savior this week and try to help others feel this love too!

28 November 2016

oi familia! i hope thanksgivng was good. i am happy for rebecca and her blessing, the fotos were so adorable! i heard people say that mitt romney was chosen to be the finance secretary for president trump, is that true. (sorry this keyboard does not have a question mark...)

this week was great, it was physically callenging, but there were lots of blessings. a lot of less actives went to church on sunday for the ward conference. we found a lot of new investigators and a lot of couples and families. We also ave an investigator, Igor that is 16 and he wants to be baptized and has been going to church by himself for a while now. He just studies and works all day so it is hard to find time to teach him. but he is great and will hopefully be baptized soon! We are also working with Helena and Joel, Alceu and Elissangela, and Lucas and Luciele that are alll great couples with so much potencial! there is a lot of work to do here and i am excited!

the conference with elder Costa was so amazing, he told a lot of stories and gave a ton of great advice and it was really spiritual. He was also hilarious all the missionaries were laughing practically the whole time! 

This week I learned to depend a lot more on the Savior and the atonement that is always there to give us strength and comfort. I am learning to be greatful for challenges because they give us the opportunity to be humble and feel closer to God. They also give us the opportunity become more like Christ. I studied about how there is opposition in all things and when we have challenges we are presented with a choice and we can use our agency to chose to develop a Christlike attribute. This is how progression works. I learned a new mindset that whenever we face a challenge, instead of complaining or feeling bad for ourself, We can think of what Christlike attribute we have the chance to aquire, such as pacience, love, or faith. Then we can think of the choices necessary to aquire it and do that. 

Have a great week :)