Week 1 in Piraquara!!

12-2-13

Dear Family,

Happy Thanksgiving!!! I am SO grateful for you! I actually forgot it was thanksgiving ‘til my Zone Leader mentioned it Thurs night, but I was feeling very grateful for you this week :)

Good news is: Gilmar got baptized yesterday! But I’m not in Bacacheri so I wasn’t there. I´ve been transferred to Piraquara to ‘whitewash’ (Elders Left Sisters enter) and finish the training of Sister Constantina. This area is awesome I am so excited. The ward is fantastic and I love the people here. They are so humble and friendly.

I´ve also discovered that whitewashing an area and training is a lot harder in another language, in a different country, without a GPS, car or cellphone. I was back to sleeping on the floor and cold showers the first few days as we tried to get a house together that was livable, and it’s difficult starting totally from scratch with no investigators or anything. But I have great expectations for this area and I know the Lord will help us to be able to help this ward. It was so fun because they are SOO excited to have sisters here.

One fun connection - I met the RS Pres. and her Sister in-law and they had already seen my picture and knew my name because they found us on fb or something, anyway when she saw me she said, “I’m from Paraguay and there was a sister that taught me who has your last name now. You don’t by chance know a Rachel Edwards?! “  Such a small world. J She said when she saw me she thought, “Wow she looks exactly like Hermana Edwards husband and she has the same last name! J

Also really cool this week was we had Elder Jono? (I don’t know how to spell his name). He came to speak to our whole mission which was really good. He spoke about having faith and being obedient. It was kind of difficult because I was translating for some other Americans, but 6 weeks of speaking Portuguese I’m still slow as well. I was so focused on trying to translate so it was difficult to get everything out of the message, but the spirit was very strong :) That is one crazy blessing for sure. Because I’m in a new area training, I have to be able to understand and speak pretty good and it’s amazing just in the couple days of getting here how the Lord has blessed me to be able to understand and speak a lot.

Quick funny moment this week: We came back to teach a new investigator the 2nd time. We were asking about what she remembered and she was talking about "oh and that prophet who had the vision... what was his name... justin.. justin bieber?" Haha. Oh no I guess we need to do a better job teaching the restoration ;)

Craziest story of the week - we met the son of a lady we are teaching and he was very intrigued and said we could come to his house the next day and teach his family. So obviously we were very excited. We get there and he had like "irmãs and irmãos" or pastors or something from his church there. We instantly had a bad feeling so we decided we would just share a scripture testify, pray and go. But during our prayer to leave they went crazy and were "speaking in tongues" and they tried to "cast devils out of us" so we literally had to run away out of the house. It was nuts, but oh my goodness it made me so grateful for the gospel and an understanding of what the Holy Ghost is. They believe that their screaming and crying and saying all kinds of crazy things is the holy spirit. I am grateful I can see and testify each day that the Holy Spirit is a feeling of peace and love and a still small voice.

I have been able to feel the comfort and guidance of the Holy Ghost on a daily basis. I felt especially grateful one day this week I was feeling a bit overwhelmed and thinking, man why is it that every time I start to have a success in an area I get sent somewhere new and start from scratch all over again? And as I was having these thoughts I felt a very overwhelming comfort of the Holy Ghost of how truly blessed I am. Blessed to have the restored gospel in my life, and to have the best family in the world, and to be spending my time doing the best thing I could possibly be doing right now! We are so, so blessed family! And when it’s hard we need to remember how blessed we are :) The gospel changes lives! And we are blessed beyond measure to have the FULLNESS of the RESTORED gospel in our lives!

I love you so, so much!

Sister Lewis