it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!... conference!

3-24-14

Dear Family,

Can you believe next week is General Conference already?! I don´t think I´ve ever been so giddy about anything! Ah so happy! We have a big countdown in our room. People say it´s like Christmas, but it´s better than Christmas :)

This week we FINALLY moved houses. It has been quite an adventure. The first day we were back to sleeping on the floor and cold showers. Makes me so grateful to live in a day, age and country where we have hot showers and beds. We´re so spoiled. And then on day 2 the water just stopped working all together, so it made for some adventures, but it definitely lets us know we´re missionaries ;) The members have been good to help us out.

Since Elder Gaverret visited last week we´ve started using the Book of Mormon a lot more and oh how I LOVE the Book of Mormon! It is the greatest book in the world! I know the prophets and everyone always say that, but it´s true. The Spirit is instantly so much stronger! I’m reading about the Sons of Mosiah right now, and those chapters suddenly become so much more powerful and real as a missionary, and it´s amazing how even though it was more than two thousand years ago, it still is so applicable! No I don´t use swords and I haven´t been thrown in jail yet, but I think I can definitely understand so much more what they went thru. I Wish I could share some of my notes with you because I loved learning about them, but time is super short this week because the computer didn´t work the first half hour, but read the Book of Mormon it is SO powerful! I love you all so much! Thank you for your prayers and your support. They are felt thousands of miles away!

Love, Sister Lewis

"...Because I'm happy..." 17 March 2014

Dear Family,

Thanks for the birthday wishes! I kind of understood how mom feels when we always asked what she wanted for her birthday and she would always say "good kids" and I´d think no but what do you really want? Well I felt the same way on my birthday, when ppl would ask what I want for my bday. “I just want you to go to church and read the Book of Mormon! I just want you to be ‘good kids’ :)

One of the highlights of this week, we had Elder Gavarret from the Brazil Area Presidency visit our mission. My favorite part was actually before the meeting with all of Curitiba we had a meeting with just the leaders - the 20-30 Zone Leaders and District Leaders and then the 2 STLs - me and Sister Américo. (We were a little outnumbered.) But I loved what he and President Monteiro talked to us about how we need to have more faith as leaders in the mission. The energy and enthusiasm and faith of the mission starts with us. He shared Moses 6:31-34 which I loved. When Enoch is questioning why he is being called and the Lord didn´t tell him, ‘oh because you´re really qualified and you’re really great’ (because usually we aren´t) instead he said, “Trust in Me. My spirit will be with you so trust that I will take care of you!” And then I love the last thing he says "Therefore, walk with me." That is what we are called to do! Not do be amazing powerful teachers, but to have faith in the Lord and walk with Him! During the meeting with everyone he talked about the importance of retention and seeking for those people that will be strong - finding future priesthood leaders and families - and remembering our recent converts and keeping a responsibility for them. He asked some missionaries if they knew how many of their recent converts were still active and I was grateful I could think in my head that I did, but definitely need to do better at continuing to help and encourage them.

After the meeting he picked one sister and elder to interview and then interviewed me and then the assistants. Such a blessing to be able to talk one on one with a General Authority! Someone so directly inspired from God! He lived in the states for a while so he did my interview in English which felt really weird at first because I had to think about everything I was saying, but it was really cool and I left just feeling so inspired! First thing he did was ask me about my family and I was grateful to get to talk about you :) He talked to me a lot about being a leader and was just really uplifting and made me feel like yes, you have a great responsibility here and you can do it!

Something else I was thinking about this week - I was thinking about how much I love being a missionary and I thought, I think I was a pretty happy, confident person before my mission, but I´ve realized that being a missionary I feel like I have found a whole different kind of happiness. Not that I won´t still love playing sports, going out with friends, going camping, or all the other things I love to do that I don´t do for a year and a half, but I have found another level of happiness. In striving to change my desires to be the Lord´s desires, I find happiness in serving others, in doing hard things. I can feel like even when it is hard I´m at peace because I know I´m doing what the Lord wants so even when It´s hard I’m still happy! And it´s not like I wasn´t before, but when we are changing and becoming better we are happier. And even after the mission I hope that I will still continue to grow and progress and find other things that open up new windows of opportunities to be even happier. It made me realize that sometimes with my investigators, it´s not that they aren´t happy (a lot of the time they aren´t and they know that) but there are a lot of good ppl out there that are happy and we still teach them, not to tell them they aren´t happy and need to change, but that there is so much more that they can have! You think you´re happy because you don´t realize how much more is out there! In learning and growing and becoming like your Savior, you will find so much happiness that you didn´t know existed! So we have to be that example so that they can see our love and happiness from the gospel and want it for themselves!

I love yall and hope you are changing and becoming better each and everyday!

Love, Sister Lewis

Photos -Yesterday after church our ward had this big surprise churrasco for Sister Américo and I because her birthday was Sunday and mine was Saturday. And we had the best cake I have ever had! We really do have the best ward. :)

10 March 2014

3-10-14

Querido Familia,

I feel like I just wrote you since Pday was switched last week, but it has been another wonderful week in the mission. We were blessed to find some really wonderful individuals this week and I think it was the least stressful sacrament meeting of my entire mission. Leticia, 18, just moved here about a yr. ago and she works every day and is kind of shy so hasn´t gotten to know a ton of people here. Her mom passed away a yr. ago and it is just her and her 16 yr. old brother living here, but they are incredible jovems. She never has anyone to visit so she gets so excited when we come and she prepares tons of snacks. She loved learning about the Book of Mormon because she loves History. I love teaching people who are truly humble and so prepared. We went to an extra sacrament meeting Sunday morning because Leticia had to work in the afternoon. Then in the afternoon we had Emerson and Felipe: A dad and son who I also feel are super prepared to progress in the gospel. Emerson lived in the US for 8 yrs. and Loves America. He said the Americans were so welcoming to him so he said if he ever met an American here he would be sure to treat them the same. So that was a blessing. You can definitely keep the 3 of them in your prayers!

Another quick line I loved this week from Elder Corbridge´s "The 4th Missionary" - The third missionary strives to be a great missionary, but the Fourth Missionary strives to be a Great Servant. That is so true. You can be a great missionary and see success, but the missionaries I admire the most aren´t out here to be known as a great missionary, they´re truly here to serve the Lord; And the same with the people that I admire most in my life. Their whole goal is to be a servant before the Lord. Think of the Savior - His whole desire and purpose was to do the will of the Father. 

President taught us something interesting this week in teaching that I want to remember in the future as well. (I think it´s good advice for anyone who teaches - which is pretty much all of us in the church) There are 3 things that we need to teach our investigators. 

1. What to do. 2. How to do it.   3. Motivation to do it

He said too often in the church we do a lot of the first (telling members what they need to do) and a little of the 2nd, how to do it, but rarely do we do the 3rd. If we want our investigators at church we can’t just tell them to go there and tell them how to get there, we have to tell them why and we need to use the scriptures to let them know not only that they should, but that they NEED to be there and why individually they Need it! He talked about how we can use this with any principle we are teaching. What is tithing? How can you pay tithing? And then motivate them to keep this commandment.

I thought it was a good idea of something to think about and to ask yourself if you´re covering all 3 of these in your teaching.

Anyway, I love ya´ll and am so grateful for your love and support. 

Love, Sister Lewis

5 March 2014

3-5-14

Dear Family,

I’m writing you on Wednesday this week because all of Brazil was on Holiday for Carnival, so nothing was open Monday. I am so grateful this holiday is finally ending and that I will only be here during carnival once. J  To add to the craziness everything was en greve (I spent about 10 min trying to remember what this is in English.. I think it’s called a strike? when no one wants to work because they want more money...) anyway so we didn’t have onibuses and had to cancel our meetings because no one could get to Curitiba, and lots of exciting stuff, but all that is finally over with. On the plus side there were way more people in their houses during the greve, but in general this didn´t end up working in our favor too well. All of our baptisms dropped either because they were traveling, or they didn´t want to live the commandments... (Carnival is a holiday where you can do whatever you want from Saturday ‘til Tuesday because apparently God isn´t watching, and then Wednesday -today - everyone repents.) Anyway it was super frustrating and heart-breaking to see how “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die" is exactly how people felt here. But I was able to learn a lot in the process. I left a house pretty discouraged because after much conversation about the law of chastity, our investigator decided that she didn´t want to live the law of chastity yet - and this seemed to be the theme of our day. But my verdinha companhiera was a really good example and as we left the house and I just wanted to give up I was so frustrated trying to call people to repentance and she said "well lets go knock some more doors!" And I was thinking you know what, you´re right. It doesn´t do anyone any good to sit here feeling frustrated at the world. It really is our decision whether or not we want to be happy. So we said a prayer and went on our way. It was pretty dark and during carnival so everyone was drunk and no, we didn´t find some miracle family, but I realized, just the same, we can choose what we want to do in hard situations and whether we want to let ourselves be upset because of the decisions of others or choose to be happy and make the best of it. She was a great example of that.

Speaking of companions—I have Another New companion! #16! I’ll finish training her so she´s kind of my 7th filha. Sister A Santos is a rockstar and didn´t even need to finish her training and I’m sure she is doing great in Santa Felicidade, but it was sad we only had 2 weeks together. But anyway my new comp is awesome as well, Sister Palomino. She´s from Lima, Peru, but she studied a yr. at BYU-I and a yr. at BYU, so it has been fun for the first time since the states, to have a comp who knows my culture and can laugh about the same things. She’s an awesome missionary too. I think being an STL here just means you get new companions every 3 weeks so you kinda work with all the sisters because the other STL of the mission has been having quite a few transfers too.

I was reading “The 4th Missionary”, this week (love that talk I think this is the 3rd time studying it during the mish) and I loved how he talked about for us to truly change, we can´t just be doing what we´re supposed to, we have to actually change our will and our desires to be in line with God´s will and desires. It’s like if you fast or do service with a bad attitude, what good is it doing you? It’s the same with missionaries. It’s easy to go thru the motions, following the rules, giving the same lesson, and all the while thinking about other things, looking forward to the day that you´ll finish this so you can be happy, but in the long run this really isn´t easier because you are struggling between what you want to do and what you´re actually doing. But if you can truly learn to love what you´re doing, you won´t just get somewhere, you will become something! I thought about how the same applies to us in the church. You can begrudgingly accept every calling and get thru doing your Visiting Teaching because that´s what you´re supposed to do, and do the assignments you´re given, but when you´re truly changed, you WANT to do it. You are looking for opportunities to serve, you´re asking the missionaries who you can help, asking the bishop which less-actives need a friend because it´s in your nature. I loved the way he described it and truly our purpose is to become like God so we have to learn to make our desires His desires! It’s the same with investigators too. It isn´t doing a whole lot for them to force them to do what´s right; We have to help them WANT to do what´s right, want to keep the commandments, want to be at church. Alma talks about clean hands AND a pure heart, And my favorite thing is seeing that truly change: When people no longer have that desire to do evil, but to do good continually. Marguerida is a beautiful example of that. She has stopped, drinking, smoking, and coffee, all in about 2 weeks, even though the people around her are all doing that stuff still, because she has the desire. Not just because we told her she shouldn´t do that but because she doesn´t want to do it anymore. And you can see a glow in her that didn´t exist before because her heart has changed.

Anyway I love yall and hope you have a wonderful week as well.

Love,

Sister Lewis

24 Feb 2014

Dear Family,

I was excited to hear Joseph got called to be a ward mission leader; ours is going to be moving in the next couple of weeks which was sad news for us. It really makes such a huge difference to have the help of members and a ward mission leader who helps out so much!

We were able to witness another miracle this past Saturday with the baptism of Eliana and her 2 kids - Mariele and Leonardo. It was once again a crazy day trying to make it all happen and it was more than an hour late as usual, but just the same she told me afterward she had never been so happy in her life :) This is what I love so much about being a missionary. Seeing these people find true happiness. It is incredible! And they were beaming even brighter Sunday after receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. It has been nice that one of the biggest problems here is that this ward is growing faster than they can handle right now. They´ve never seen this happen before so our ward leadership is running to keep up with it, but it is a good problem to have.

I also got a new companion this week - Sister A Santos. She´s 21, from Belém, and she´s great. She is one of the quietest people I have ever met in my life, but she is super sweet and humble and will be an incredible missionary!

We had a heart-breaker this week. Lédio, who has wanted to get baptized so bad, but when we showed up unexpectedly for his interview and he wasn´t living the word of wisdom too well so we had to put it off and he got pretty upset about it. It´s hard to see how often people give up the best things in life - the things that will truly make them happy - for the things they want in the moment. But when we can learn to control that, the blessings are incredible!

Another mind-blowing experience for me - we were teaching this woman the restoration and afterward I asked her if she´d like to know if this was true - if Christ´s church was here again on the earth. She said, ‘oh no I believe you. I know what you are saying is true. I know that this is the Church of Jesus Christ’. I responded – ‘so you will be coming with us to church this Sunday.? She said, ‘ah no I like to spend Sundays with my family. I couldn´t believe it. You´re telling me you know that Christ´s church is here again on the earth, but you aren´t running to get there? What?! But I guess that´s why no matter how well we teach, it doesn´t make a difference if they don´t want these blessings in their life. But we keep going and we are being super blessed to find those that are ready! It really is incredible how much the Lord is blessing us here and how much he is in the work!

I love all of you! Keep being wonderful examples and sharing this incredible blessing that you have!

Love, Sister Lewis

17 Feb 2014 baPtism!

2-17-14

Dear Family,

Today we start up a new transfer and even though I´ve only had Sister Araujo for 3 weeks, I will be getting a new companion. I get to train again woot woot! Filha #6! But Sister Américo, Pereira and myself will still be the Sister Training Leaders of the mish. This week has been super hectic between getting ready for transfers, moving houses (we should finally be moved in tonight.. I hope) and 5 baptisms! We were super blessed this week! Friday was the casimento of Carlos and Silvia and it was so great to see them like Newlyweds again (they are newlyweds but they’ve been living together waiting for a divorce so they could get married for a super long time so it was a great blessing) and then their baptism Saturday as well as the baptism of Adeula, Marguerida and Pedro. Adeula said it was the happiest day of her Life! (And she is 72 so that´s pretty cool). Marguerida - wow she is one incredible example of seeing the gospel change people. Her husband is a Less active, but only didn´t go because his wife wouldn’t go. It was a miracle how we ended up finding them thru a sequence of events. We found Pedro (husband) while knocking the door of his son. He told us he was a member and about his wife. We asked if we could talk to her. He said we could but he would just give us the address because he was scared to introduce us because missionaries and members have been trying for years to get her to go to church. So we went over there and wow the Lord truly does prepare people for the right timing! Every time we told ´someone that Marguerida was going to be baptized they would respond something like "what! no way how did you do that?" but truthfully we didn´t do anything different. She told us that the day before we got there she had thought for the first time that she needed to start thinking about church and then we showed up! Her family wasn´t at church with her the first Sunday because they didn’t think she was serious, but she was there and because of that we were able to teach her son Pedro as well and they both got baptized on Saturday (Pedro´s Birthday.) And she has a completely different light about her it is absolutely amazing!

It´s been really cool as well to see the changes that are happening with this mission. People think of Brazil in general as a place that baptizes a ton, but Curitiba was always kind of the exception for that. Apparently in the Brazil mtc if you said you were going to Curitiba it was always like - oh I’m sorry to hear that. You’re basically serving in the US or Europe then. The culture here in general is a lot more closed and when Pres. Monteiro got here (a couple months before I got here) they were baptizing less than we were baptizing in the states. And then the mission split so there were half as many missionaries. But he is so smart and with the changes that have been made in this mission we´re baptizing in a week or 2 as many as used to be in a month! And I think it´s the timing too. The Lord really truly is hastening the work. The people here are ready to have the blessings of the gospel!

One more cool thing I heard this week - The Book of Mormon is the most important book in the world and one more reason why: - how many times does the Bible talk about the atonement of Christ? How many times does the Book of Mormon talk about the atonement, what it is, why, how it´s important in our lives? And the number of times it says the name of Christ is more than any other scripture as well! There were numbers of each, but I don´t remember the numbers, just thought it was pretty cool. It really is another testament of Jesus Christ with the fullness of the gospel!

Thank you for your prayers! If you could keep in your prayers Lédio (he´s preparing for baptism this Saturday but has been pretty sick) and Eliana and her children, Marielle and Leonardo.

Love yall tons!

Sister Lewis

10 Feb 2014 I Love to see the Temple

Dear Familia,

Do you realize how blessed you are that you can go to the temple?! I just wanted to cry the moment that I saw it when we got into Curitiba. What a blessing to be in the house of the Lord. I LOVED the new film. I used headphones because I wanted to hear the actual voices in English and then did the rest in Portuguese which was interesting, but wow what an incredible experience.

We were very blessed to have a sacrament meeting with lots of investigators again yesterday. Definitely some people you can pray for this week to enter into the waters of baptism:

Joanice - she has a date for this Saturday but she had a date back in October and fell thru. She’s the mom of a young man in the ward and she is awesome, just struggling at committing to it, but she’s living the commandments and going to church and I feel confident in doing this the Lord will confirm to her this is right.

Adeula - the healthiest 76 yr. old I’ve ever met. She is crazy about health but she’s receiving the benefits from it. Word of Wisdom is definitely not gonna be an issue for her. She never leaves her house without her son driving her but she had promised us she would be at church and her son didn’t get back from work to take her so she called up a taxi and was waiting for us at the bus stop. It was the first time in who knows how many years that she left the house like that, but she keeps her word! Great blessing!

Lédio and Anderson - Cousins who are finally realizing that there should be more to life than drugs and alcohol and we´re hoping they will have the faith to overcome a lot of addictions and have the blessings of the gospel!

Jennifer - An awesome 11 yr. old (Niece of Denise - our recent convert with 6 kids) she is great and her cousins always talk to her about baptism they are the best missionaries, but we need her parents hearts to be softened and let her have this blessing!

Marguerida - Knows the church is true, but just struggles with committing to go to church each Sunday because she hates to leave her house and its about 1/2 hour drive to get to church, so we’re working on helping her have the faith to sacrifice 4 hours each week for the Lord! Her husband we found out is a Less-active but ready to come back to church if she will go! :)

Also exciting announcement is Carlos and Silvia (family that Rachel taught in Paraguay and have been waiting for a long time to get her divorce finalized so they can get married and baptized) are getting married this Friday and Baptized on Saturday! So excited for them!

I had a cool realization yesterday during church. I thought about how the first time we had about 10 investigators in church I was so stressed and thought I was gonna pass out after church, but the beautiful part about the gospel is that everything can be overcome with faith. As I was sitting there yesterday I just felt so calm thinking that I’m doing my part, this is the Lord´s work and He will take care of His children and it is their agency and their opportunity to accept this blessing, all we can do is have faith and not spend time and energy being worried about things not in our control. I thought about how on earth mom raised 14 kids, but it’s like she always says that it’s thru the gospel! When we have faith in Heavenly Father, nothing can completely overwhelm us. We just do our best and trust in Him.

I also thought it was interesting this week that someone was saying – “ya know all these churches are out there just arguing about who has the right doctrine. The Testemunha Jehovahs are saying their interprestation of the bibles is right, the congregação cristão do brazil is saying they’re right and you Mormons just think your interpretation of the bible is right.”  I thought, you know it really is not about who´s interpretation is right. That´s the beautiful thing that you find only in the Church of Jesus Christ is that we aren´t trying to prove we have the right translation of prophets in the past, because we literally have a prophet today! My goal is not to follow the right translation but follow God and he literally is at the head of this church! That is why it is a living church and it is literally His church with a prophet today! And because it is a living church with direction directly from God - that is why it is changing people’s lives! It was really cool after church yesterday to hear a couple of members tell us how amazing it was to see the literal change in Nelma after just 3 weeks of finding the gospel. Totally different countenance and attitude and now she’s helping us with missionary work!

I love, love, love seeing the gospel in action in the lives of people here!

Love you so much!

Sister Lewis

Here are some pictures from our day in Curitiba with Sister Monteiro.

3 Feb 2014 It's hotter than Hades, so go to church! (it has A/C)

2-3-14

Querida Familia,

So this summer has been the hottest summer that has ever been on record here in Curitiba and I absolutely believe it. I have never loved cold showers so much in my life! And no one has AC here. Only in the church, so it should be that much more motivation for everyone to go to church! :) I loved getting a caixa (pkg.) from you this week! Laura the clothes you picked out were perfect, and the family pictures and pictures of Baby James were so so cute I loved it! And we made cookies Americana for the Baptism with our chocolate chips and my American roommate and I are in heaven with the Peanut Butter so thanks ;)

Nelma got baptized on Saturday!! Woot woot! She is so awesome! Sometimes when we get ready for baptisms I get nervous of whether they will ficar firme in the church, but she is already so excited to be a visiting teacher and serve in the church and she will be such a blessing to the ward here! The baptism was beautiful and afterwards she stayed in the water for a little while longer and just cried. It was amazing.

Other Exciting announcement for this week: I get to go to the temple on Wednesday!!! I thought I would never get to go in my mission because the only reason we can go is if one of your investigators goes thru the temple But I won’t be in one mission for an entire year so it wouldn’t be possible, but this last month January was pretty exciting - every month they send out an email with announcements and recognize the companionships that have 5 or more baptisms in that month. This past month there were 5 duplas and all 5 duplas were sisters!!! So clearly the 3 of us STLs of the mission and Sister Monteiro (Mission Mother) were super stoked and she got permission for the 5 of us duplas to go to the temple this week! (We were pretty excited to tell the assistants that the elders need to step it up because the sisters are doin’ all the work . J  I’m especially excited I’ll finally get to see the new film!

Other crazy thing for this week is we had an emergency transfer so Sister Constantino got sent to somewhere in Curitiba and my New companion is Sister Araújo. She is awesome. She’s from Manaus (or as she says - Manawsh) and she is a worker and I love it. We were literally running in the streets several times this week trying to get to all the people we wanted to visit.

We´re being so blessed. I’m so grateful to be here doing the greatest work on earth! Love you all a ton!

Love Sister Lewis

Photos:

-Nelma´s Batismo

-Excited about all of my American things that came in the caixa :)

-Picture from Nelma´s batismo

- My new companion, Sister Araújo from Manaus. One more reason I love Piriquara is because we arent in the city. We´ve had to climb over the train twice this week because we have investigators that live in the middle of no where and it is beautiful here! But super quente!

Love you!

27 January 2014

1-27-14

Dear Family,

Wow what a great week! Absolutely crazy but so great! The Greatest blessing this week was being a part of seeing Denise´s family change their lives and choose to be baptized. I really just love that family so much and I have so much respect for Denise. They were so firm to get baptized on Saturday but when we arrived on Friday Denise told us they couldn’t get baptized anymore because the Pai não deixou - he said they couldn’t get baptized. We tried to visit the Dad but it didn´t turn out too well. He lied to us about who he was so there wasn’t much we could do. We found out Denise has custody of the kids, but the dad pays for the agua e luz and the little bit of food they have and he told her if she gets baptized he won’t pay for anything anymore and he won’t talk to them and she was scared of what he might do to the kids. After much prayer we went and shared some scriptures with her about when we put God first he takes care of everything else. After a minute she just looked at us and said “okay we´re going to do it”. I wanted to cry because I knew what this meant for her. She was risking going without a home and without food or clothes for herself and her 6 children, but she just said if that´s what God is asking of me right now, that´s what I am going to do.

We arrive on Saturday to pick them up and the dad was out front in his car. My heart dropped, but he just said a few choice words and left. So they went forth and had, I think, the most beautiful baptism I have ever seen. One by one the 3 baptismal age children, (Chaue, 11, Taynara, 10, and Chaun, 8) got baptized with their mom and walked to the other side of the font. I could just see them going thru the temple to be sealed already and being the most stellar future missionaries. They really will be such awesome missionaries. Even though they literally have nothing, they never complain about it and love each other so much. And rather than sit and watch tv or get into trouble, they love to read the Book of Mormon together and the Liahonas we give them and they play together. They are all so smart! It was cute; 10 yr old Taynara told us about how  their dad was telling them all kinds of awful things about the church. (He´s the son of a pastor and has a lot of misconceptions about the church). The mom testified to him about the difference she could feel at church. When he told them how stupid it was for them to get baptized Taynara proceeded to tell him how he needed to get baptized too because the bible says you need to get baptized by water and the spirit and, he never received the Holy Ghost: :) Too cute. We were pretty excited to hear that they understood what we were teaching so well ;) It was also cool to find out how clearly the Lord was in the work of their family in so many ways, but one specifically - the first week we taught them they didn´t go to church and we were pretty disappointed. But that week she had a dream that she needed to go to church and take her 6 kids with her, so she was firm the next Sunday and has remained firm ever since.

The confirmation was beautiful as well. We had 10 Confirmations in Sacrament meeting!!! It was crazy and our mission president and his wife and the Stake President and counselor came to our meeting to see what was going on here and "find out about this onibus thing."  One of the challenges has been that Piriquara is waiting for our chapel to get built so we have to drive to another city for church and it has been a huge struggle for the ward but over the past month the numbers have been growing like crazy. I think the frequency is almost double what it was in some meetings when we got here and we´re working on the stake and mission helping us get an onibus every week so we can get some of the menos ativos there too. Anyway it was a pretty incredible meeting. The Spirit was super forte!

Another quick miracle this week was finding Nelma. One of the most beautiful first lessons I have ever had - she was so prepared!!! We were teaching about prophets and she was like "Yeah but today there are all kinds of people that say they are prophets but it just doesn’t feel right because they don’t have the authority to just say they´re a prophet". Then as we taught about how Christ established his church she said - "yeah but today in this world, where are these 12 apostles now?!"—(music to a missionaries ears). :) As we testified of the restoration and the prophet Joseph Smith she started to cry and just said "Eu creio. Eu creio." This is a Perfect example of how the Lord prepares people and then the Holy Ghost converts and we get to be the ‘in between’ factor giving the information.

The Gospel is true and I love you!
Love, Sister Lewis

Photos:
Batismo de Denise e Familia

Pintando a casa do Denise

20 Jan 2014

1-20-14

Dear Family,

Highlight of this week was that we had a crazy Sunday absolutely full of investigators! We had 15 Investigators in Sacrament Meeting yesterday! A new record, plus a million kids. Between our investigators, their kids, the other sisters investigators - and the Assistants have been working in our area so they had some investigators too - we brought over 30 ppl to church! We rented out an onibus so we could go pick up all of our investigators it was nuts.

And then on top of that, the other highlight of the week was Eduardo´s Baptism! He is doing so awesome and it was wonderful to see the changes he is making in his life. His step-dad, Luiz, came to the baptism. He hasn´t been to church in a really long time but is such a good person. He has a book of Mormon already because he did construction for the church several years ago and he still remembered it. We´re hoping we can help him see the blessings he can have in his life, not just for his son!

Denise came with her 6 kids and they were a riot, it was great. I love those kids to death. It was so cute; we were teaching them on Saturday and invited them to see Eduardo´s baptism and afterward Chaue timidly asked "Do you think I could get baptized today?" I wasn´t sure if I understood him right because you never hear that! It’s just too good to be true, so I asked his mom what she said and she repeated the same thing. At 11 years old he is already so mature and sensitive to the spirit. We´re hoping Denise will let him and also Taynara (who also asked to get baptized) to get baptized this week and were trying to help her get over smoking and want to be baptized as well. 

I also gave a talk in sacrament meeting so in between giving a talk and playing the piano and trying to entertain a million kids - by the end of the night I was absolutely dead, but it was wonderful! It is incredible how much the Lord is blessing us! There are so many good people here! It is so cool to see the ward growing and the members and leadership have been so grateful to us and they are so good to help us out so much.

I also felt overwhelmed with gratitude getting to talk about Families and Love in the Home. I talked about Elder Uchtdorf’s talk, ‘Regrets and Resolutions’ and how we don´t want to waste our precious time here. I also talked about how we can have this happiness in our families; the answer is in “A Proclamation to the Family”. I used the part about "successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love and wholesome recreational activities." I talked about how we can implement these attributes in our families and talked a lot about the example of my parents. I closed with the invitation to live these principles individually and in our families, and to share this secret of success and happiness with the world because we are SO, SO blessed to have it!

I love yall and am so grateful for your examples as well!

Love, Sister Lewis

[interjection by Whitney --somehow I don't know where these photos are. If anyone has them, please email them to me. thanks!] 

Photos:

Eduardo´s Baptism

The onibus with Denise and her kids 

13 Jan 2014

Mom, thanks for the quote I love that! I cant tell you how true that is! One of the most frustrating things about Portuguese is that I can’t express just how much I love the gospel! I had someone ask me one time "What if you found out all this wasn't true" And I said if all this wasn't true I wouldn’t even exist and there would be no point to my life! The very fact that I exist and want to be happy means there is a God and this is the way he has provided for us to have true joy! I received an assignment yesterday to speak in church next week on Amor e Lar (Love and Home) and I just kept crying as I tried to prepare my talk because serving a mission makes me realize how overwhelmingly blessed I am to have the gospel (the way that we can have love in our homes) and to have the family that I have!

So glad you get to spend this time with the Masons! Give them lots of kisses for me I love and miss those kids!

Love, Sister Lewis

1-13-14 Dear Family,

First off: I loved the quote mom sent about how when missionaries know the gospel that is all they want to do. It is so true! It’s like an obsession, but a really good one :) We had a conference with the whole mission this week and President gave the most emotional talk about the Savior and the atonement, I don´t think anyone made it thru without crying. But it truly is our motivation. It´s what keeps us going thru the hard times. He reminded us that when we feel desanimo, that is what we need to think about is what the Savior went thru.

Last week AnaClaudia (one of our recent converts) wasn´t at church and we were a little worried, come to find out she had finally found a job last week but with this new job she has to work every day. When she found out she had to work on Sundays she went back and told her chefe she would only be working there one week because she needed to be at church on Sundays. I love how much recent converts love and recognize the importance of the gospel! 

It was also really cute that Hilda (another recent convert) told us our first time after church that she never wanted to wear a skirt and was concerned about going to church because of it. This past week when we passed by she was so, so excited to inform us that she had made 2 new skirts out of some old curtains she found so she could look "chique" at church (She’s the cutest 74 yr old on planet earth. I attached a photo of her with her new skirts that she sewed)

We´re teaching a lot of youth right now and they are so awesome. We had so many people promise they would be at church and I thought it was a bit ironic that everyone always talks about how the youth are so rebellious today but when we went to go get our investigators it was all the adults that flaked out and the youth that came to church and were so awesome!

One miracle of the week - we found this couple, Renata and Pablo, turns out that Pablos parents are members now and he wanted to be baptized too but where he lived didn’t have members so he decided not to be and he just moved here a month ago. They both loved church and were excited to hopefully get married soon so they can get baptized!

We found the cutest family in the world this week too. It’s a single mom with 6 kids and the oldest is 11, but these kids are so smart and so well behaved. We showed the restoration video and the 11 yr. old was totally enchanted. Afterwards we asked him why he was so into it and he said he felt like it was speaking specifically to him. He and his sister love English so they each give me ten words every time to teach them and Chaue is making a song in English from them. We brought them a bunch of old Liahona magazines last time which they all loved too it was cute. They couldn’t go to church this week, but we´re confident we’ll get them there next week :)

We are being so blessed right now. Sacrament meeting was all about missionary work yesterday and we had several different leaders in the ward come talk to us this week and thank us for the changes that are happening in this ward and how the missionary work is moving. It´s true the work is hastening!

Love you!

Sister Lewis

Photos:

-Hilda with her chique new saias

-You are always soaked here. Either from sweat or rain. It will be SO hot and then it will just rain like crazy!

-Our district has more Americans than Brazilians this transfer so we all had lunch together at Subway.. about as American as it gets here J