The Lord's Invitation

Well, just like always, another wonderful week has come and gone here in the wonderful Cristalina. This week was hot, and included a lot of work! But in the end it was good :) 

So to start out the week we had a family night with one of the investigators of the elders. It was a proud moment for me and my companion because it’s a family we found in the hospital when Sister Costancio was sick. But it was really good to spend some time with them and get to know them better :) But it’s just amazing to see how much the gospel really changes lives. The wife, Fabiana was telling us how much the gospel has changed their lives in such little time! But it’s so true! The moment we give ourselves to the Lord, the same moment he starts blessing us! I love seeing how the gospel blesses families :)

This week with our investigator, Denis, has been really good! He wants us to visit him every day so that’s what we have been doing! And he is already inviting everyone he knows to go to church and to sit in with us on our lessons, ha! But this week as we were going to visit him one day, we found him talking to his neighbor who is a pastor.... My first thought was “Oh Crap..." So we were introduced to the pastor and the pastor gave us his thoughts on baptism. I don’t know why but almost all of the pastors here think that people should wait 6 months or so to be baptized. It just doesn’t make sense to me. But we had a nice chat with the pastor, luckily for us he was very friendly and he just wanted to preach to us a bit. So we let him do his thing, then we were on our way. So we sat down with Denis and just kind of asked him how he was doing, how he was feeling. And he said, “I’m doing good. But don’t worry, I don’t listen to anything that pastor has to say. He just wants me to go to his church. But I don’t want to. And he wants me to wait to be baptized. But I can´t wait. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow!" hahaha we laughed when he said this but we were super happy! So Denis is strong and firm and will be baptized this Saturday!!! Woohoo!!! We are extremely excited :) 

But other than Denis, we just visited some contacts that we made in the street and have been finding new people, and cutting more people, ha. We had the opportunity to travel to another city yesterday with our group for stake conference. Our stake was divided and we are now a new stake. But we still haven’t become a branch... but it will happen soon enough :)

But one of the General Authorities gave a talk yesterday that I thought was so good! So lately, the first presidency and our leaders have been talking a lot about the Sabbath day and what we really should do on this day. So the General Authority (whose name I have forgotten...ha) went on to explain a little more about this. He started out by saying what would we do if we were invited by the savior to his funeral. How would we react... and so on. Then he went on a little more about taking the sacrament. That literally Christs body lays upon the sacrament table. It made me really think about what we do during the breaking of the bread to really remember our Savior. Are we playing with our phones, talking to others? What are we doing to keep the reverence? He compared it with our baptism. We weren’t baptized with our phones in our hands. When we partake of the sacrament it is like we are being baptized again. Our attitude during the sacrament reflects our love for our Savior. This made me really think about what I am doing to show my love for my Savior. 

Well that’s about it for this week! Next week is transfers, who knows what will happen! But I hope you all have a wonderful week! Be safe! And for this week, I want you all to remember to study the words of the living prophets :) (had to change the challenge because my dad has now stolen it from me, ha) Love you all!

Love,

Sister Steadman

The True Sadness of a Missionary

What a wonderful week it has been! I hope you all have had a wonderful week as well. :)

So this week we tried really hard to visit Luana every day and get her acting so she could be baptized. We visited her a lot and read a lot out of the Book of Mormon with her so she could learn how to relate the stories to her life and get in the habit of reading. It’s amazing to see how much we can really relate these stories to our lives :) So as the week went on she wasn’t reading. It’s not because she was too busy, it’s because she simply just doesn’t want to. So we got together with the Elders and had a family night with them. We talked about the atonement and really focused on what we need to do because he gave us everything. So we started out with an activity. We asked them questions, and they were tough questions, and every time they got one wrong, Elder Noyes did 10 push-ups. It’s moments like these I’m grateful we have Elders here ha! But we tried to show them what it was like for our savior. Oh the spirit was so strong! As of right now Luana isn’t reading the Book of Mormon, but her mom is and they were in church yesterday!!!!

We are also teaching the uncle of some recent members in our ward. With the elders he never did anything and never showed up to anything. So we had a good talk with him. And this week he stopped drinking coffee, he showed up to our bible study, fasted with us and showed up to church! All within a week! We were amazed!! I was so happy! He has a date set for this Sunday to be baptized so we are hoping he can stay strong!

We were also able to find some awesome people to teach this week! We are planning on setting more dates this week for baptism!

But there is one thing I have truly come to learn this week. ya it’s a bummer when we get rejected in the street or people just really don’t want to talk to us, but the hardest thing is when you have done everything for a family, taught them everything and they know it is true, but they just aren’t willing to take the little steps to be baptized. This is truly the sadness that we missionaries feel. Knowing that they have so much potential but they just don’t see it. But I am so grateful for this gospel and this knowledge that I have. I am so grateful to have this opportunity to bring others unto Christ. I love this gospel!!

Well, have a fabulous week! Love you all and read your scriptures!

Sister Steadman

Church house in Cristalina

Family Home Evening in Luana

Playing Soccer

Prayers Answered!

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

With Rain comes Miracles

Well another week has come and come! And it definitely was a different one!

Monday: we had a FHE with the bishop and his neighbor. Irma Queca and Irmao Leonardo. Queca is a less active member and recently married Leonardo and he has an interest in the church. So the bishop set up a FHE so we could get to know them and see what we could do to help you him progress. We tried to visit them again this week but because of the crazy weather, we didn’t get a chance to. They live really far away and we don’t know exactly how to get to their house ha. But this next week we are hoping to!

Tuesday: The day started out with an awesome district meeting! Our district leader is Elder Schinigoski and he is awesome! He is currently training a new missionary, Elder Patterson from St. George and it’s fun to watch them. Definitely reminds me of my first few weeks here. But I’m happy to finally have another American in my district!!! As we were leaving lunch, it started to rain and Sister Alves forgot her umbrella. So we ventured out in the rain for a bit and my whole back side was drenched within 2 minutes! so we waited under the covering of one of the house for a bit, just waiting for the rain to clear up enough that we could see where we were going ha. It was quite the adventure! We met with our investigator Marileny and it was so perfect! We talked about the Book of Mormon and made sure she really understood why it was important to read it. We asked her a lot of questions as well so we could better understand what she were wanting and how much she understood. She told us she has a desire to know if the church is true and to know if this book was true as well. She told us she would read and pray about it. And she even said the closing prayer for us! It was so perfect! We left extremely happy!

Wednesday: We had lunch with Irma Miriam today, one of the investigators of the other Sisters. Her sons were baptized but have fallen away. She has such a strong desire to be baptized and reads the scriptures and everything but her husband doesn’t want to get married. Normally when we visit Irmao Jardis, the husband, doesn’t talk to us and doesn’t associate with us much, but lately when me and Sister Alves visit he sits out and talks with us and same with her sons. We've had some great lessons with them lately so we are trying to have them gain more trust in us and slowly slide our way into helping them get back to church and possibly marriage. We have to be really creative ha. But our message for lunch was just with her. I shared a quote about hope and we had a really good talk with her. She is absolutely amazing! I really hope that one day she is able to get baptized! That afternoon we changed our plans. We said a prayer and me and Sister Alves both felt like we needed to go visit Sara and Guiamara, two girls that we were teaching in the beginning but we dropped them because they weren’t progressing. Along the way we were walking through the neighborhood with some super chique houses ha. And I’ve decided that during my time here I want to baptize at least one rich person. Every time I tell this to someone they laugh at me but I am determined! Normally we don’t knock on doors because Sister Alves really doesn’t like to but I decided to change that. So we started knocking and we came across a lady named Arlete. She is a journalist and asked us so many questions ha.  But we set up a day this week to visit her again. When we got to the house of Sara and Guiamara we understood why we were prompted to see them. They have been living with their Sister for the past couple of months and for things going on they are moving out and living with a friend in another city. We talked to them for a bit and I shared ether 12:4 with them. They were in need of a little hope. We were also able to write down their information and pass it to some missionaries in their new city because they were telling us how much they loved our messages and they wanted to have them again so hopefully the missionaries there will be able to help them. We also visited some members in our ward that night. The wife and daughter are members, but the daughter doesn’t live here anymore. The son is inactive and the dad was never baptized. So we talked to him and found out why but he is very open to having us over more often and having FHE’s with us! So hopefully we can help him out!

Thursday: None of our investigators were in their homes so we just started walking. We found a rich part of one of the neighborhoods near our house and I got real excited ha! So we started knocking. We came across a lady named Lucianna and we set up an appointment with her for this week! It was sprinkling a little bit but not too bad so we continued on. We had an appointment with Val and a member, Amancay so we started to head in that direction. I remembered that Val wanted my recipe for pancakes and the quadrant which Val lives in is right next to ours so I suggested we stop by our house on the way to Val's to get this recipe. Like five minutes after I decided this, it started to pour! When it rains here, it is not like Utah rain. The rain comes down all at once! It was slanted rain just like Missouri! Ha it was quite the adventure trying to walk through it! It took us forever to get to our house but we finally made it. It’s a good thing I had the thought to pass by our house because when we opened our door we found out that our house has a few leaks! But luckily only in our kitchen. So we moved all the books into the bedroom and started cleaning up the water. We spent about two hours cleaning and waiting for the rain to clean up a bit. I also spent this time working on our area book a bit. But the rain was crazy!! We had pots all over the place collecting the water. It reminded me of the movie the sword in the stone ha.

Friday: After two weeks, we were able to finally visit one of our investigators today and I’m so glad we did! We almost didn’t visit her because we had lunch in the south and she lives way up in the north but we both had the feeling that we needed to so we made the travel in that direction. Our last visit with her she hadn’t read the book of Mormon and was going through some tough things in her life. But when we visited her today she was so happy to see us! She told us she had read the Book of Mormon, we didn’t even have to ask! She told us how much she loved it and how light she feels when she reads it! It was such a dream to hear here say this! She still is going through some tough stuff in her life but she has a lot more hope now! We are so excited for her! She said she wants to get baptized and continue to learn more! It was so perfect! After Leila, we visited some less active members. Elis Angela, the mom, Atanael, the son I think he is 19 and Sofie who just turned 7. The dad is never there when we visit but we are trying to set up a FHE with them. But we talked to them about the importance or reading as a family, having family prayer and going to church. Elis Angela has started reading again so we encouraged her to read with her kids. Atanael was super interested in our messaged and participated a lot. He said he wants to return to church but me and Sister Alves thinks he has other motives for returning to church. He has a class with one of the young girls in our ward, Rita ha. It’s funny because he talks about her a lot. Ha but whatever it takes to get them back to church!

Saturday: We visited Marileny again today. And it was very different. We talked to her on the phone on Thursday and she said she had been reading the Book of Mormon. So when we talked to her about it she said it was really good and felt good reading it and felt good when she prayed about it as well. She told us there is a different feeling in her home when we visit. So we tried to talk to her about coming to church with us and talked about keeping the Sabbath day holy. The spirit just wasn’t there. She wasn’t really focused on what we were saying and didn’t have a desire to read more or go to church with us. It’s crazy how much the adversary works with people in such little time. But hopefully we can get her back to where she was this week. We didn’t really have a whole lot of people to teach so we tried visiting some references we had received. We tried to visit a reference from the elders in the area next to ours but she wasn’t home. So we decided to leave her a little note. As we were writing the note a man pulled up and was like hello Sisters! Ha we had no idea who he was but he knew who we were! He had talked to the same elders that day. He happens to live in the same house as that girl so it all worked out. We had a baptism in our ward that night and it was so perfect! Some investigators of the other Sisters were able to come and it was perfect for them!

Sunday: Leila didn’t come to church but Luci did! But we are starting to think that Luci just comes for us. So once she is done with her tests this week, we are going to sit down and talk to her about things. One of the Irmao's in our ward has some neighbors who are super interested in the church. They’ve come a couple of times, but the husband travels a lot so we haven’t had a chance to talk to him. But last night we were able to have an FHE with them and it was so perfect! Irmao Itomar talked about families and turns out they aren’t married. But they want to be married and baptized on the same day. And they already have a goal to go to the temple in January of 2016. Seriously every missionaries dream! We finally have a family and they already want all of this and we haven’t even started teaching them yet! We are so excited!!

Even though we didn’t have a lot of luck with our investigators this week, and we had lots of rain that prevented some work from happening, the week ended perfectly! We now have a family to teach, we received some references from members in the ward and have some great appointments set up for this week! I’m so excited! And we have general conference this weekend! I’m not sure what is going to happen but I’m so excited! But I have a challenge for you all. Before you sit down to watch it, write down any questions you have or write down the struggles you are having in your life right now. Prayer to the lord for help, and by doing this you will find your answers by watching conference. I know this for a fact. We are so lucky to have such a wonderful prophet to lead and guide us today!  Ha I miss Salt Lake so much but am so extremely grateful that I grew up so close to so many temples and so close to the prophet!

Have a wonderful week and remember to read the Book of Mormon! I love you all!

Sister Steadman