"Holey" Shoe

Our elect...Jessica, can´t be baptized until her mom gives her permission...which could take a while. Her mom doesn´t even want to listen to any of the discussions, but she won´t let Jessica get baptized until she learns more about the church.

The Lord blessed us by sending 2 investigators to church that weren´t invited by anoyone. Last sunday we had a fireside about missionary work and as part of the fireside, the youth went out on the streets and handed out pass along cards. They gave one to a guy named Oscar and this Sunday Oscar came to church with his mom! We´re going to visit them this week and we´ll see what the Lord has planned for them! Really...the Lord is preparing this branch to split. This past Sunday we hit the big 100. 100 people were in the sacrament meeting this past Sunday!!! On average we have in the high 80´s or low 90´s so this is huge!

On a side note...today I will be buying some new shoes. Yup...my black pair has a lovely hole in the bottom which is not so great when it rains. We´re going to go looking around today and. . . I´ll buy a cheap pair that will last exactly 3 months :)

these are the prison bars that are on our windows...and all the other houses here in Brasil. I think it has something to do with break-ins.

BIG PATO...our yummy cheeseburger that was super romantic for valentine´s day.

JESSICA

HAPPY VALENTINE´S DAY!!!!! I hope that you´re having a great valentine´s day. Today to celebrate Sis. da Silva and I are going to eat cheeseburgers at a restaurant called Big Patos. I love how creative these brazillians are.

Last night we had a fireside for all of the returned missionaries in the ward and all of the youth. Of course the focus was...missionary work. We as missionaries got to share some experiences of life in the mission field and then the youth got to hit the streets. They knocked doors and passed out pass-along cards to people on the street. This would be a great activity to do on a stake level. I love being a missionary and I really hope that the activity excited some of the youth to serve missions too. They learned in 30 minutes that not everyone wants to accept the gospel, but that doesn´t give your a reason to not share it.

We´re teaching a girl named Jéssica. She´s accepted to be baptized and I really love teaching her. In fact, in every lesson that we´ve left with her, she end the lesson by bearing her testimony. She doens´t realize that she´s bearing her testimony...but she already knows that the church is true and that she wants to be a part of it.

Future Missionary

This week was a rush to get everything going with our "modest fashion show." We were running around confirming with the members who were given assignments and the youth who would be modeling. When Friday night came around, I was excited but also nervous. I´m learning how to delegate responsibilities here on the mission, but I´m still trying to overcome the "if I don´t do it, it won´t get done" syndrome. Apparently Sister da Silva alos has this complex :) Well...we marked for the models to be at the church 6:30 pm to do a quick run through before the activity started 7 pm. Well...the activity didn´t end up starting until almost 8 pm and there were models still showing up 8:40 pm! I was stressed, Sister da Silva was stressed, but in the end, the members really enjoyed the activity. The youth hammed it up on our red carpet and our presentor (who talks about what each model is wearing) was Irmã Sandra, and she stole the show with her witty comments. The missionaries ended up running home, which is nothing unusual with a branch activity because they always go until late.

The branch is setting some great goals in order to accomplish the big goal of dividing the branch into two. They´re focusing on passing more references to the missionaries and reactivating families. We´re going to be super busy this transfer trying to divide our time between less actives and investigators...but good news...Elaine is going to be baptized this Saturday and one of our old investigators...Gilvani (I think in past emails I wrote Geovane). He was traveling the past 3 weeks and everytime we called him to see if we could mark a lesson, he said that he was out of town and didn´t know when he would be returning. For missionaries this response is the response of someone trying to avoid the missionaries. Well...to our surprise he walked into Sunday school yesterday! Not only did he come to church, but while he was traveling, he found a church in the city he was visiting and attended these past few Sundays. Sister da Silva talked with him and he said that he wants to be baptized soon...we marked next Saturday! So we´ve got 2 baptisms marked and we´re excited to be so blessed with such great investigators! What a great way to start of the month!

I love the area, my companion and the work. The mission is without a doubt the hardest but most rewarding thing I´ve done in my life. This is why we´re looking and focusing on sending some people into the mission field. I´ve written my recent convert in Rio Verde, Samuel about serving a mission. He´s going to have his one year anniversary as a member in April. One year after being baptized you can send in your papers, so I´m hoping he´s getting ready!