July 30, 2018

Hey everyone!! This week was awesome and full of laughter and joy! It is always the best when you can find joy in the work!. That sounds crazy about your new calling mom! It will be so awesome because you will have so much more knowledge of the gospel! I want one of those types of callings when I get back! It is so awesome to be able to have knowledge and share that with others. I know that Sister Holmes will do a great job! So Elder França lost his identity card and so we had to go to the shopping center and to Belo Horizonte and do a lot of things ha we still have to fix that problem this week too! 

We have been trying to just invite Gian to church every week and see how he is doing, because it is the hardest thing to find him at home. And so last week he came to church because we invited him and went to get him! This week should be awesome! We are going to see Renan today and so I know that the lord has blessed him and will bless us so that we can help him to enter the lords kingdom! This week it was hard to contact Luis and Elaine... it seems like they are running from us ha. And Vitor basically asked us all the hard questions about the church. We answered all of them but it is sad because he has little faith. But we are always inviting him to put his faith to the test and trust in god that he will answer his prayers! This week we were also able to visit a lot of less actives in the church. It was awesome and we have made so many friends! We hope that they return and we are planning on helping each one of them. This week we taught a couple of great people! Kelia, Alexandre, and Larissa. They are awesome. One is a mother of a family and we invited her to ask about the book of mormon, actually we did that with all three of them and they all said that they would! i am excited to see what happens and i know that The Lord is blessing us. Even if our numbers are not perfect. I feel like we all need to focus more on our testimonies and why we are in the church than the numbers that we gain. This week i saw that lots of people didnt have the desire to go to church. And i thought, why cant they understand the reason we go to church. We are at church to take the sacrament, help out our brothers and sisters, and to praise our Heavenly Father. What greater blessing is there?! Elder França is doing great and he is awesome. I love him a lot because he is super funny haha. I am going to miss him when i will have to go to another area! I love what you said about the example of Elijah. Do you remember when Grandpa gave me a blessing before the mission and blessed me with the power and teaching of Elijah? It made me remember about the miracle that happened with Denis and his car. How cool is that!! I love this gospel so much! Pray for our investigators, that they might open their hearts to receive the gospel! 

I did talk with President about Uncle Ed and he said that he is such a great guy! It was cool to talk to him about that! Thanks for everything you do! I love you so much and I am grateful for you in my life. I know that the lord has more planned for me on my mission and for afterwards. I am grateful that even in the hard times that i dont have success, i can still be obedient and praise his name forever. LOVE YOU!!

July 23, 2018 Happy Birthday Elder B - fun ward party

Hey everyone! Thank you so much for the Birthday wishes and ofcourse i miss you all so much! But i am so happy to be here in Brasil and my Birthday was amazing here. Thank you for everything you do for me!  I love our family! I hope you guys had lots of fun. I love the pictures that you sent me and It made me laugh when i saw Chris using my clothes... Hahahaha. But that is a crazy experience, I am grateful for that person who cleaned his truck and did that for him. That person who did that is a true representative of Jesus Christ, it makes me think of when Christ washed his Disciples feet! And that he did that because he loved them. I think it is amazing how we can see that there is so much trouble in the world but there is so much good. And the light always overcomes the darkness! I will definitely be praying for Elder Jewett. Of course i remember him ha he was one of my best friends and Austin and I would always go over to their house! I pray that the lord will have mercy on that man who decided to do that and I know that the lord received his child with glory on that day! 

Luis has basically been running from us and we weren't able to see him at all this week, he was always busy. We are praying that we can contact him this week so that he can come to church. This week was super cool and full of joy. One thing that i recognized is that throughout all of my mission there were times in which I knew that the Lord would bless me and I had no doubt, like what happened on thursday when we found 4 new investigators. But there were also lots of times in which I doubted, Like Captain Moroni, because of the wickedness of the people. But one thing i do know for sure is that God never forgets his children and will always bless them if they do what is right. We were able to teach a young man this week whose name is Vitor! He is awesome and had so many questions about the Book of Mormon and other questions. I was able to answer each one of them with scriptures and help from my companion and he asked us, "How do you find the answers so quickly without even thinking, did you study Philosophy?" And i responded that i had not studied that, but it was the Spirit who had helped me. It was really cool and he is super excited about next week and has been praying about the Book of Mormon! Also we taught a woman named Elaine and she is also going to pray about the Book of mormon. We are going to visit lots of them this week! Renan wont get back until next monday but we are excited to see him again. He is doing great! And reading the book of mormon! I love it when they decide to read it because it will help them so much! This week they also had a July Party in the church and it was so cool. We took pictures and we got lots of contacts! I also rode a mechanical bull hahahaha. And on Sunday, the relief society gave me two presents of food with a cake! I wanted to cry and the people here are so nice and amazing when you have a birthday. It was so cool. We have trusted so much in the lord this week and we know that the lord will always bless us, even if it isnt in the terms of a baptism. I know that the lord is always with me. It is amazing to feel his love and learn about his gospel! I love you so much! Dont worry i will let President know about Ed! 

Miss you so much! Love you too! I know that the lord has a purpose for me here in Brasil and i will stay strong until the end. I promised him. I also made a covenant with him that i would read the Book of Mormon every day for the rest of my life. It was amazing to feel the spirit and I will strive so hard to keep this covenant. And i know i can! I will use that money today probably because we are going to have to fix some problems at the shopping center today so if i buy something it is probably for that! I will pay close attention to dads email today and i will always strive to give my best to the lord. Love you!!!

July 16, 2018 Meeting the New Mission President and his wife

Hey everyone It has been a rough week and really tiring but i loved it so much! This week we saw a lot of challenges and we had some great spiritual experiences. My toes are doing fine, my one big toe is super swelled up and all crazy hahaha but i went to the foot doctor this week and she helped me out, i have to go again this next week! But i am grateful for the challenges. The challenges and frustrations are what make us stronger! 

This week was super cool because we had our first zone conference with President Castellano. He is so awesome. I love him a lot already. He is focusing a lot on our testimonies and focusing on the people. He doesnt really like to think a lot about the numbers. It was super cool to talk with him and have an interview with him. He helped me out a lot and told me not to worry about my numbers so far here on the mission. Because the Lord uses each one of us in different ways. And i thought a lot about that this week. On sunday we had our ward conference, and even though we only had one investigator there, we still had a great meeting. Our bishop talked about justice and mercy. The theme was the miracle of forgiveness. He talked about how we only ask god to be merciful with us and to act with justice with other people. I thought a lot about that. This week i prayed that our Heavenly Father could be merciful with our area and with the people and let his justice fall upon me instead. It was different to ask for that, but i am willing to suffer than to see others suffer. I just love how all of us can be forgiven of our sins, it doesnt matter what we have already done. God is merciful with us and he lets us repent whenever we want to. How amazing is that. He teaches us that we should repent as fast as we can so that we can receive all the blessings he has for us. This week was awesome just thinking about that. It was hard because Renan is traveling and wont be back until the end of the month. So we are trying to find more people and it was super hard this week. We didnt have that much success but i know that the lord saw our efforts. We found a man that is named Luis. He is awesome and he appears to be really interested in the book of mormon. We challenged him to read it and we will see on thursday if he will ready it or not! I hope he does because it will change his life. Its funny how when you see people having a hard time or not accepting the gospel, you just want to cry because of them. Because you know what they are missing out on. But i know that the Lord will bless them and will bless us as we try do to our best. The district is doing good and they are having more success so that makes me happy! And yes i am really good friends with Elder Lujan! He is awesome! 

 I am so grateful to be here and to become stronger through all of the hard trials and difficulties! I am always trying to have a great attitude and think of Jesus Christ. It is the best thing we can do!  Love you all so much! 

July 9, 2018

Hey!! That is so crazy about the fires in Utah, that is super sad because Utah is known for beautiful landscapes and Nature!! I will miss that but i know that the lord has purposes for everything!! I am so grateful to have learned that I can put my faith in him and do everything that is possible to think about him! It isnt easy but it is totally worth it. And dont worry i gave ties to Elder França hahaha he has kept it as a remembrance as of right now!! This week was crazy and really hard for us because of the World Cup, it is sad that Brasil lost! Especially because they lost because of an own goal hahaha how terrible is that. But it was literally hard to teach that day and we had splits with the other elders here in Nacional. I was with Elder Lujan that day and President told everyone that it would be best if they stayed at home studying during the game! And so that is what we did!! This week was hard because we didnt have that much success, but i saw the lords hand in everything. Renan is really progressing and when he decides to be baptized, he will stay strong in the church. As of right now he is our only investigator progressing ha. We are searching and searching for more and i know that the lord will bless us eventually, in his own time! 

But we had some great lessons with Renan and it was awesome to see how he is learning more and more about the gospel of Jesus Christ! He said that he is at 90 percent right now. He almost has a surety that this is the gospel of Jesus Christ and he says that he knows that he will feel that in his heart. He has had a small problem with coffee but he has almost stopped completely and i know that the lord will bless him even more when he stops forever. We were able to watch some movies from the church and watch some videos on the mormon chanal with him and he loved them all! It has been amazing to teach him. This week i saw the importance of Faith in my life. Yesterday i was really struggling because only Renan came to church and after that i just started to get really worried. I was grateful that he came to church and I was happy during church of course, but afterwards is when the adversary started to tempt me with so many doubts and worries. And it didnt help that my big toe, (the one that had surgery and the nail is growing again) started to inflame and hurt a lot. I think it is starting to become an ingrown toenail again. I called Sister Castellano and i hope that i can get in to the foot doctor soon! But I had to stay home for about an hour because of the pain, it was before our lesson with Renan. I read a lot about faith and i read the talk that M russell Ballard gave this last conference. And when he quoted Joseph Smith, i was comforted once again. He said that when all the forces of the earth and all the bad things push you down and you fall into a hole and then the mountain fall upon you, that you should not get discouraged and that you should go forth with faith and with courage. Elder França gave me a blessing of health and it helped me a lot too! I felt Gods love once again and i know that we should never discourage but have faith! I love this gospel and even with all of the doubts that we have and all the worries in our lives, we should not worry, because Jesus Christ overcame it all. 

I love you all so much! Thank you for everything you do and for helping me on my mission. Sometimes i worry a lot about the numbers and about if God is grateful for my service, but with all of you and with my savior i can feel that he is grateful and that when i am doing my best, he will bless me. I think i worry about numbers because of how much i worked hard in school to get Straight A´s and when i dont acheive the highest numbers on the mission i get worried hahaha but i know that it isnt about that. It is about the people!! And the love that I show! Love you so much! Have a great week! 

July 2, 2018 HALFWAY!!!

It is so crazy to even think about ... That this last week I hit Hump Day. But it has been such an amazing experience. Wow i just dont have words to describe it. And yes, I burnt a shirt! I had to because that shirt was basically already burnt because of how bad it was looking haha. But it was such a cool experience and i gave a talk too! In front of the other missionaries in our district, besides the sisters because we did it the night before the district meeting. But i love those pictures so much!! And of course i remember the camel!! I love Braelyn and I miss her like crazy. I miss you all but i am so happy to be here! Tell everyone that i love them and that I loved the pictures! And i saw Halli´s picture too and i loved it. It is crazy that one year has already finished and i am so ready for this next year! 

But other than that everything is great here! This week we had trouble with getting people to come to church but thats not new at all! But our new president got here on Friday and I havent been able to meet him yet! We get to write our mission president every week and i just barely sent him an email. And yes I did send one to President Fernandes too! I am excited for what he has to change and what he has to say! This transfer that we are in right now will be 7 weeks to help the new president and then it will become normal again with every transfer 6 weeks. But this week we were able to teach a lot of people about the Book of Mormon. It was so awesome! Renan is really progressing and he is thinking a lot about being Baptized. We visit him almost every day and we read the Book of Mormon with him too. He was the only one that came to church but i am grateful that at least he came! Amanda we havent had much contact with because i think they are traveling or something. Our other investigators are running from us, which is hard, but we wont give up! We found some awesome investigators though! We taught two teenages named Talisson and Alexandre! We also taught a couple of youth whose names are Henrique, Samantha, Paulino, and Rodney. Sandra and Rodney our investigators who had baptismal dates are running from us and it looks like they dont want to learn more which is sad.... But this week we are going to try a couple of more times with them! I have faith that the lord will provide more investigators and i know that he already has!! I think it is awesome how the lord always is willing to help his children. Every person that we talk to has a chance to know about the true gospel and to learn more. It is amazing how much he loves his Children. When we were teaching Renan the other night, we watched the talk that Elder Uchtdorf gave that is called Behold the man! I love that talk so much and when i bore my testimony about Christ, I started to cry in front of him and my companion. I love my savior and every time that I really think about everything he did for me i just cant help but feel his love! I love this gospel so much!!! 

Dont worry i will definitely pray for Utah! It also hasnt rained here in BH for a long time! I also loved what you shared about Girls camp and i am sure that it was very powerful! I love being able to feel the spirit. Especially when we helped out Denis, the spirit was so strong. Sadly the sisters who live close to him havent gotten in contact with him much and i am basically on their toes because of that! But I know that he will always remember that experience! Elder França is doing great he is loving every day and finding joy in it all! Patience is always the best and i know that this transfer i will learn so much! I am so happy to hear that all of my wonderful cousins my age are preparing for missions, It is the best thing that anyone can ever do. I am excited for Emma, Mckay, Zach, and Belle and i know that they will be wonderful missionaries!! Love you so much!! I am so happy here and i know that it is hard but the struggle is worth it! Love you and I hope you have a great week!! 

 Elder Lujan drew on the shirt and everyone who was present signed it! The last photo is our old district! 

June 25, 2018 Miracles!

This week we were able to work super hard but because of the World Cup, our numbers came out short in the end. We talked with so many people and they all said they would come to church but only Renan came this week. It was super hard. But I know that the lord is going to bless us as we work hard and dedicate our lives to him. 

I just want to say something that was a miracle that happened to me yesterday. We were walking on a street and there was a family and their car was broken down. It was night and the dad was outside the car while the mom and girls were in the car. We walked past them but I had the impression to go back.  I asked them if they needed any help. He told me I don’t know what is going on with the car. I need to get home but I can’t. His friend was also there. The father’s name was Dennis. As we were talking I felt in my heart and heard in my mind that we needed to say a prayer. I know that it was the Spirit talking. I asked him if we could say a prayer and he said yes let’s say a prayer. He asked me to say it. I started to pray. I asked my Heavenly Father to please bless this car  that it works right now so that they can get home safely with his family and that it works immediately. Then this is the best part by far, Dennis closed the hood and said now I know it will work. I know it will. Dennis got in the car and I turned to Elder Franca and asked if he had faith and he said yes, I said I had faith also. I know that this car will work. In that moment, he started the car and it worked. I have no doubt in my mind that it was the power of faith and power of God that caused that car to work, because it was not working.  But I know in my heart, because the Spirit told us to return, we were able to be God’s instruments. Dennis was so happy. He got out of his car and asked us for our names and who we were, and what we were doing. We told him we were missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ and we go to people’s homes to teach them about Jesus Christ. We had a message for him, we asked if we could leave this message with him another day and he accepted saying for sure. I want to hear this message. I knew that we needed to return because he needs to hear that message. And the only way we could get him to listen to the message was through our faith and his. It was such a great example of faith. I told my companion, never have I seen a great example of faith between all the people of Nacional.  We actually passed the reference to the Sisters because they are in their area. I know that through faith we can do all things, and the Lord allowed us to see this miracle yesterday. If we have faith we can know all things and know that this is the true gospel.

 But it was an absolute miracle and i know that the lord provides miracles in our lives when we are faithful to him! Pray for our investigators because a lot of them appear like they are running from us but we wont give up! Renan is doing good and has received all of the lessons, he only needs to feel like he should be baptized now. Amanda we didnt get to talk to this week but this next week we will see! We met some awesome people this week too! Rodney is a guy who is the same age as me and he is awesome! We are helping him a lot because he is mixed up in the world of drugs. Aparecida is an older woman who is awesome and has already received the missionaries once before! She is super nice and we want to teach her too! Sandra didnt come to church yesterday so we are going to focus on that this week ha! Jaine and Guillerme we didnt even see this week.... its been hard to talk to them and we thought they were going to come to church with Maurilo our less active we are teaching and they didnt so that was sad. But we are going to work super hard to help them feel the love of god that you can only find in his church. I love the gospel so much and i want these people to see the importance of the gospel in their lives. All they need to do is listen and the spirit with tell them. I know that this gospel is true and the this gospel is what matters. I talked with Elder Lujan for a long time about conversion and how it is important to have a testimony for yourself firstly because so many return missionaries fall away from the truth and we cant do that!!! Especially because when you know and feel Christs love, you will never go back to those wordly things., Love you all so much!! 

My companion is doing great hahaha i love him so much. He is so funny and so strong and so it has been awesome these past couple of weeks. I am aways looking to be more humble and so he helps me. I loved the ring you sent and i did see the engraving. It is so awesome and reminds me of Lord of the Rings. Our new mission president comes next friday!! And so that is when President Fernandes with leave the mission. Sad. Love you all!

June 18, 2018

This week was awesome!! We worked super hard and we tried to visit everyone of our investigators haha but sadly we werent able to visit every one of them. Because the more part of them werent at home or just didnt answer us. But Gian is doing great and he is going to receive his answer today we hope! We had to stop teaching Renan for three days because he traveled but we have an appointment with him today! He is so awesome!! 

We taught a woman named Sandra yesterday and she is super awesome. And really humble! We are going to bring her to church next week and she wants to get to know our church! But amanda came to church yesterday and she always likes it! We are finally going to teach her this friday and so that will be amazing. Jaine and Guillerme also told us that they will all come to church this next week! She feels more comfortable coming to church with her husband who is less active. and he doesnt work this sunday so it will be perfect!!! Leslie and Aldeir havent even talked to us and so that is hard hahaha but we still pray for them every day! 

This week was awesome because of our last Zone conference with President Fernandes. Wow was i sad... he is so amazing and i am going to miss them so much. When i hugged him to say goodbye he just said "Elder BEST!" it was super awesome. And i took a picture with him! It was so funny when he gave his talk and it was super spiritual! I loved every second of it.

I gave a talk at church yesterday and i talked about how we can serve Christ more in our lives. I said five simple things! 1. choose who you will serve today 2. obey the commandments 3. forget yourself and remember others 4. small and simple things are what make the difference 5. serve the lord in all aspects of the gospel! it was super cool and i loved being able to speak to everyone in our ward. But wow do i love the gospel! Those who do not have time or do not make time for the gospel are missing out on the best happiness that you can feel in your life!! (Alma 27:17-18)  I love you all so much!! Have a great week and never forget to remember the Savior!!!!