"Crystals" in Cristalina.

This week was super good for me and my companion!!! This past weekend we were able to have a baptism! The brother of one of our members was baptized and he got to baptize his brother! Well.....it was an interesting baptism, haha. 

This week, finally in my mission, we found a family!!! We are soooo extremely excited! And this family is so perfect! It’s a Mom, Maria Eunice, and her four kids, Camila, Veronica, Victor and Rafael. They are the cutest! As soon as we met them they were super interested! They have been reading the Book of Mormon and read all the pamphlets that we give them! Maria Eunice was telling us that her two little boys are always reminding her that they need to read and they were so excited to go to church! They are progressing so well! Last night we stopped by their house to see how they liked church and we ended up marking a date with them! So they will be baptized on May 9th! We are super excited!!!! If you couldn’t tell, ha.

Also we have another investigator preparing for baptism on May 9th, Nivaldo. He is an older gentleman who lives alone. It was funny in the beginning with him because he had the hardest time understanding us! He was so focused on our accents that he didn’t pay attention to our message. But it’s better now. In the beginning he would always ask us, "does your church only have people like you guys?", haha but we reassured him and told him it’s full of Brazilians, ha. But he has been in church the past two Sundays and loves it! He’s really understanding everything and is progressing so well! We are super excited for him!

This week we also found some other people who I think have a lot of potential! So we will see how this week goes with them, :)

I’m sure loving it here in Cristalina! This city is full of Crystals!!  This city has soo much potential! I can’t wait for the day to hear that this town will have a ward! It’s so cool to see how far they have come. From only 6 members and having meeting in one of the members’ house, to now having almost 60 people in church every Sunday! It’s the coolest thing! I love this church!!!

Well I hope you all have a fabulous week! Keep reading the scriptures! I love you all!

Com Amor

Sister Steadman

Cristalina

Well my first week in Cristalina has been absolutely fabulous!!! First I’ll explain a little bit about this town.

Cristalina is in Goiás, and I have been told that it is the crystal capital of the world..... So there are little crystals everywhere! So we are always on the look for them. :) We are here with two sets of elders because this town is pretty huge! It’s got the small town look and feel but it’s big! There are farms on the outsides, we’ve got a nice center and there’s a good mixture of a bunch of different people here. But I’m absolutely loving it! The town is a little bit more elevated so everyone told me it would be a little bit cooler here..... Hahaha wrong. It’s super-hot here and the sun is so close to us so it’s super bright. But we have spent most of our time in people’s houses teaching this week. In such a small amount of time, we have met sooo many awesome people! This town is full of miracles!

So to start off with some of the investigators we have. One days as we were walking around with Elder Dias (Sao Paulo) and Elder Noyes (some super small town in Utah) a lady came up and asked if we could visit her dad and say a prayer for them. Her name is Iracema. So we went and visited them and they were super nice and receptive! She has an older lady that helps takes care of her dad and her niece and the niece’s daughter live with her. So it has been really good visiting them this past week. The little girl, Thalita is five and she is the cutest! She loves it when we are there! But they believe in everything we have taught them so far..... Which is good but we are more concerned about them really gaining a testimony about these things and knowing for themselves. So that’s one of our biggest challenges with people here. But some of them were in church yesterday and they loved it!

We’ve also worked with a less active member, Andre and he has progressed so much this week! He made a ton of visits with us and was in church yesterday!

Since we don’t have a ward here we as missionaries kind of run everything ha. Man it is quite the experience but we are loving it! Me and my companion taught relief society and it was really good! And we have 37 people in church yesterday, 17 of them being investigators! So we are slowly getting bigger. We are receiving some help from the stake that is closest to us and they are sending us some people to help us grow a little faster. So it’s going to be so cool to watch this area grow!

We’ve got a lot of activities throughout the week. I’m now teaching English on Wednesdays which was really cool! I have never taught it before so it will be super interesting but I’m super excited :)

Well that’s about it for this week :) I’m loving my comp and I’m loving this area! I’m so grateful to be a part of this work! We always say that we feel like the pioneers, ha. Starting from the ground up :) Of course it’s got its struggles but they miracles are so amazing! truly a blessing to be apart of this :)

Well I hope you all have a fabulous week!

Love

Sister Steadman