Boa Tarde Gente! How is everyone doing?? How was everyone’s weekend? Mine was absolutely wonderful and I absolutely loved conference! But I will begin at last Monday.
Monday: we spend the day at Irma Miriam’s house and made chocolate chip cookies:) they were so good and I didn’t burn them this time, ha :) mom you would be proud, my cooking skills are improving:) That night we had a family night in the house of a member and we talked about captain Moroni. It was so good! The sisters had their investigators there and we invited Iarley (a member who is leaving on his mission in December) and his Sister who is not a member. She liked it a lot! We are hoping to get her more interested in the gospel.
Tuesday: It wasn’t too much of a productive day. The elections for Brazil were this weekend and the secretory of the mission didn’t send out the bulletin on Monday so we had to get on the computers again and take care of all of that for Sister Alves and Sister de Paula. So we didn’t get to visit anyone in the morning. Feeling a little down we headed towards our next appointment which was with Jorge and Fransica, neighbors of some members in the ward. But they called and canceled. So we went to the church to re-plan our day. I had the feeling to visit Arlete, we came across her last week. So we called her and she was in her house! So we headed that way! But when we got there she wasn’t home, ha. We did know what to do. We had the idea to go visit a member that lived in the same quadrant. Ha we almost didn’t though because Sister Alves is so afraid of her. She says she reminds her too much of her grandma. But this Irma is pretty intimidating at times, ha. She has a loud powerful voice and loves to talk. She works in politics so she is a powerful women and what she says goes, ha. But im so happy we decided to visit her! She ended up having a reference for us, her niece! So in the end, our day was good :)
Wednesday: We had a district meeting and it was so perfect! Elder Shinigoski talked about listening to our investigators more and the spirit. It was exactly what I needed! I have a tendency to think about what to say next because im worried about saying things right in Portuguese. So it was exactly what I needed and it made a huge difference this week! We had lunch with Irmao Pedro, who has been like our dad here in this ward. He is moving to Sao Paulo and we are all so sad ha! But I am so grateful for him and his example he has been to me. We were also able to have our first lesson with Jorge and Fransica! It went really well! They were so receptive to the message of the restauration! It was so good! During our meeting this morning I thought about our investigator Luci a lot. And I had the feeling we needed to drop her. Crazy how the spirit works.... we decided to visit her that night and she ended up dropping us. I was surprised, but then not surprised at the same time. Right as we walked in I could tell something was different. Sister Alves took it hard but we must remember that everyone has their time. And everyone has the gift of agency.... whether we like it or not, ha.
Thursday: We were finally able to go to the market today and buy some food, ha! It’s always a good day when we have plenty of food in our house :) The afternoon wasn’t too productive. People weren’t in their house, or couldn’t talk with us then. And with it being so close to the elections, it was hard to talk to people in the streets because the streets were filled with cars, blaring the music of the candidates and making as much noise as they could throwing little papers around. Every candidate had a couple of songs and so for the past couple of weeks, cars would drive around throughout the day with speakers on top of their cars blaring the music. But this time it was an entire street filled with millions of these cars. But we were finally able to make it to the quadrant we wanted and we found Deusa. She is also a friend of a member and we were finally able to meet her.
Friday: We were able to teach Jorge and Fransica again so we started teaching the plan of salvation. Jorge had a question about how we have the gift of agency but god knows everything. So Sister Alves pulled out a scripture, had Irmao Itomar read it (a member in the ward) and Irmao Itomar spent the next 45 minutes explaining, ha. So we hope to continue this lesson with them this week :) We also had a FHE with a less active member and it was so perfect! She has three kids, 11, 8 and 5. I sat with the little girl who is 5 and she talked to me for about 45 minutes! I didn’t understand everything but she was so cute! They boy who is 11 is so smart! Sister Alves was showing him pictures of the stories in the scriptures and he knew most of them!
Saturday & Sunday: Conference was so good! I learned so much from every single talk! And I got to watch it in English which I was super happy about :) It was crazy though because there were about 7 of us Americans in another room watching it. It started out in Portuguese so on elder quickly ran and got a member, they came in and had no idea what to do. Jokingly they put their hands over the TV pretending to give it the blessing. The choir stopped singing and the speakers began speaking in English. Truly a miracle!! I loved how they talked about families a lot and the need to strengthen our families now. It’s so important that we are reading the scriptures, praying and having family home evening. The home is where we learn everything first. I learned so much but don’t have a ton of time to tell it all, ha. But I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and enjoyed conference as much as I did!
I know this gospel is true and im so grateful it is a part of my life! I know Thomas S Monson is a prophet of god and he leads and guides this church today. I know that we can only gain eternal life by living the gospel every day of our lives, by obeying the commandments and taking heed to the prophet’s voice. I am so grateful to be a part of this wonderful work of sharing this glad message with the people here!
Have a wonderful week.
Sister Steadman
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