This Week's Work

Elder Corrêa, Maria & Elder Iverson

Now to our other investigators. Maria and Guilherme. They are doing very very well, and will be baptized, just a little later than we were planning. The only hold up is that we haven't taught everything, and with work starting again (we are in a holiday here Carlinval) it is only Sat, and Dom to teach them. But we had the great time to take Maria to the garden of the temple. Here the mom of the darling family (Ilizane) helped us teach Maria. We wanted to enter the waiting room, but the temple already closed. We made the best of what we had and shared a great lesson. We told her that her baptism will be on the 28th. She could feel the truthfulness and so she accepted, Her big hold up was coffee. But on Sun she told us that she will try her best to stop. And she will, she already has stopped for a few days. She substituted with a great thing: chá :)  

Maria & Llizane

For the contacts of the week. We had a crazy lady with a knife (it was quite large I will add) and the strangest arrangement of teeth that I have ever seen. She only had teeth on the top, but also only on one side of her mouth!!! and we started a contact with her and she said a few things that made me angry, and it is a heck of a good thing that we are missionaries and have to love everybody :) haha jk, she said that we are little babies to her, and that we didn't know how to cite her Catholic prayer, and that she knew Jesus more than us, and it was all fun, We ended with a nice "It was a pleasure tchau " :) 

We had another Catholic church member this week tell us that she didn't like our church because the Catholic church was easier, more liberal, and was easier to follow with her style of life . Maybe one day people will realize.

This week we fabulous, and the next will be also. I am praying for you all, and hope that you are finding the love of God in your lives, because He is helping, much more that you want to give him credit.

Com muito amor meus queridos 

Elder Iverson

Batismo :)

I guess you guys heard that we had a baptism or something this week, I won’t spend much time talking about that, but it was good....

I love how Lourdes is also doing Jace's signature "thumb's up"!  So cute!

 haha brincadeira :) 

The baptism of Lourdes was a great, great day. We changed the plans a lot. Elder Contigiacomo left for home on Thursday, and he wanted to see the baptism, and Lourdes wanted Elder Cont to see, so we changed the date to Wednesday. Which meant that P-day we had to sacrifice a little of our time and go to the interview. Elder Gonçalves interviewed her and all was 110% perfect. She is incredible. So the interview was Monday and all was good for Wed. Wed, we filled the font, and then had a lesson with Lourdes in the chapel before the baptism. We talked about the temple and the chance she has to be baptized for her mom and grandmothers. She was very touched and I hope and will work hard so it happens, to take her to the temple and do baptisms for her mom and gmas :) But the lesson was good, we prepared everything for the baptism that would start at 7:30, well that was the planned time. We had not a lot of people show up to the baptism at that time, including Bishop and the WML, ward mission leader, or here LMA. So we were only stressing a lot, and I was pacing and was a little stressful. Actually it is funny, because I thought to myself, tonight you won't even remember the stress before, so just leave it,

And I couldn't.... So we waited and waited and everyone was a little annsy* (I am losing my ability to spell in English, not that it was good before;) But everything was good, bishop showed up at like 8:10, and we changed into the whites. It is always good to dress in the whites for the baptisms and take the bathroom selfies before the dunk;) haha….So we started the ceremony. and all was very good, the baptism was a success. We had a double taker, with the foot being the culprit;) but the spirit was very strong at the baptism. We changed and the missionaries -the six of us- sang. We had Lourdes say the closing prayer (you could feel the spirit so strong as she gave a testimony in her prayer), and we ate some good food :) 

The family that we took a picture with is a darling family in our ward Carvalho. They are very supportive of everything we do, and help us a lot with the work here. Then it was a goodbye to my good friend Elder Contigiacomo, he is now at home.  It was a good time that we had to get to know each other. Then we ran on home, because it was a little late. 

Elder Corrêa, Elder Iverson, Elder Contigiacomo (left to right)

Just Talk

What I wish that I had known before my mission?

I wish that I had learned to just talk to people. I really didn't go out of my way to just talk to people, and I seriously look back at all the time that I wish I had taken advantage of, I want to go back, and just talk with everyone :) but we have only a little more than a year and a half :) and the other things, how to cook a little more.

Member Families are Awesome

This is family von Walwitz, they are incredible, and everyone speaks English, German, and Spanish, minus the dad :)  

The Beauty of Sāo Paulo

I was at a park and couldn't resist taking a deep in pondering picture. 

The Lord Prepares His Peoples

News of the week, Lourdes, she is going to be baptized on Wednesday by yours truly. We had a little change of plans because Elder Contigiacomo is leaving Thursday, and he wanted to see the baptism of Lourdes, so we moved it to Wednesday. A quick story about Irmã Lourdes. She is divorced with one daughter.  She lives with her dad, Italian. (PS, she speaks Italian and English) She is single handedly the most prepared person I have yet met. We taught her three times, the Plan of Salvation the first time, and then the Restoration (with the invite to be baptized) she received her answer the next day, and we taught her Friday, all of the commandments. She drank coffee and a little wine, but she said that she would stop cold turkey. And that tithing, she isn't working but she wants to find a job so that she can pay tithing! She wants a calling already, and loves Thomas S Monson. She is truly an elect person that God was preparing for us :) 

In other news Maria and Guilherme are going well. We learned that Guilherme samples wine for his job, and that will be a little difficult, but not impossible, and Maria thinks that she should wait, but that didn’t stop them from coming to church yesterday, and a FHE with Irmã Roseli Olivera. Let me just tell you about this FHE, there is a picture of the squad starting from the bottom left in the foto that we are eating around the table.  We have Guilherme, Rafael (son of Roseli), Roseli, Nair, the mother of a less active member in our ward(not member), Maria, Lourdes, and Elder Sales :) This FHE was perfect, the ladies (they don’t change, here they still are able to talk 3 conversations, and understand everything) they bonded and so did Rafael and Guilherme :) it is so neat to see the friendships that are forming, and the progress that people are making. 

Little Friends

This is Samantha. She is the darling 3 year old in our ward.