22 May 2017

hello everyone. sounds like ou all are going to have a fun busy week! matthew, congrats on your ne job you will have in finland is it cold there? i hopoe everyone at home ha s fun memorial day weekend. 

saturday the baptism of Jonathan went well, it as very spiritual. He bore a nice testimony and had a lot of famil and friends there to watch that are not members. This week unfortunately Lilian who we marekd a baptism is passing through some serious dificulties and she doesn´t want to continue to be taught for the meanwhile. But this week we were very blessed with other things. An investigator we found named Darci went to church and just loved it. he is great! he is about 75 years old and we met him when we were helping another man with heavy grocery bags and he called towards us and invited us to visit him. At church it was very spiritual because he does not read and the lesson in gospel priciples was about faith and there was a story about a man who wanted to leanr how to read so he prayed and worked hard and was able to learn how to read. He was very motivated by this and wants to learn how to read and has a lot of faith that this is the true church. I als studied a lot this week about really loving and serving and being a Christlike example for others because that is when they recongize that we are representatives of the Lord. I firmly believe that Darci recongized this when he saw us helping someone with the heavy bags. 

29 May 2017

hello! sounds like you all had a very fun weekend! did the nats win? it was also a fun exciting week here with lots of rain. this week we had a lot of creative activities--- we started teaching piano and english classes at the church that we will give every saturday. we also were in the newspaper, a lady interviewed me and sister christensen (we were in a division that day) and they also announced the classes on the radio. we are famous in this small town! we also have great investigators, including a 14 yeard old girl, Joice, that went to a youth activity. at the activity we watched a cool new video from the chruch about the scriptures and the book of mormon and then ate pizza. Joice loved it and shared her testimony too about teh scriptures (she knows the bible very well). Looking forwrd to another great week! 

here´s a quote that i heard and i liked:

``Before you share the gospel with the world, you have to share it with your neighbor.´´

i love you all, have another great week and enjoy the warm summer! 

15 May 2017

it was great to talk to you yesterday! i´m sorry about my englsih. i will practice. it was fun to meet kelly, she seems great. happy mother´s day again mom. i won´t say a lot because we talked yesterday but here are some photos of São Pedro do Sul. or as i like to say ``Sião Pedro do Céu´´ because Sião means Zion and Céu means heaven... have a great week i love you guys!

8 May 2017

hello everyone! i don´t have much time but i have a lot to say! first of all, next week i will try to skpe 6:00 here which mught be 5:00 there. and.... we are STILL in Santa Maria!! we will finally go to são pedro today. but i have a great story because there really was a purpose for us being here. 

On monday, we walked the whole day and then when we started to work at 6:00, EVERYTHING fell through and we were tired and discouraged. It was 9:00 and we were close to home ut now we don´t go home until 9:30 and so there was sill 30 minutes to work. We were tired and wanted to go home, but i was praying silently to find someone and we decided to continue and knock more doors. It was dark and there was no one in the street and after many ``no´´s we passed a house and it called my attention so we knocked there and a young man came out and seemed really interested. it turns out his mom was baptized a year ago and passed away 5 months ago and he listened to the messages before and has visited church. We marked a day to return and teached him the basic steps of the gospel and invited him to b baptized and he accepted, went to chuch on sunday and bore his testimony that what he wants most is to be baptized and that God sent the missionaries to find him again. It was so spriitual and i leanred so many lessons. i learnedthe importance of being obedient and enduring to the end even when we are tired and it is had, because that is when the most blessings come. Also I was reminded that God is always preparing people and he knows where they are so we need to pray continually and always seek to follow the spirit and do his will. God works in mysterious ways and everyhting happens for a reason but i know that´s why we had to stay here for 2 weeks while it was tkaing a while to set up our new house. Miracles happen!

I lvoe yo all, ahve a great week, until mothers day!!

1 May 2017

Hello! so, it was for me to be in São pedro now, but funny story. I got on the bus to santa Maria and arrived at the bus station to find out that they had not yet arranged a place to live in São Pedro so i would stay in Santa Maria for who knows how long until they arranged everything there. SO this week we stayed and worked in Santa Maria which was interesting. It is way different here than the rest of the cities that i served because it is way more urban and there are tons of young, busy people and they are a little bit colder. It seemed to me like the ``New York City´´ of Rio Grande do Sul. We were just talking with everyone and finding new people to teach this week. It was good beause i learned a lot and also i think i learned a lot more about charity and treating others with love. My new companion Sister Costa is awesome she is from Cruz Alta and she is really sweet and fun! It´s fun to have another companion gaúcha! sometime this week we will rpobably get to go to our new area which will be another great challenge! but i am excited! It has also been very cold here this week. Winter is arriving!

congrats daniel with the graduation!! also mothers day is coming up, is there a specific time that i should call you guys? if not, it will probably be in the afternoon sometime.

something that i learned today in a talk that i read is that questions are good. it does not mean that we don´t have faith, but questions allow us to learn and progress, work to recieve revelation and aquire more faith. so whenever we have a question or dificuldade, we should ask God with faith and then study it out and we will be able to learn the mysteries of God. 

Have a great week everyone!