26 May 2014 Flood and Fasting and an Inspired Mission President

5-26-14

Dear Family,

We had lots of fasting and prayers that this week we would find elect individuals and we were blessed to find a lot of elect individuals! We had 15 Investigators at church yesterday! woot woot! Literally when we got to church, between investigators and their kids we had more investigators than members in Sacrament meeting. The Lord´s hand was definitely in the work this week leading us to find some wonderful families. It was one of the most stressful sacrament meetings I´ve ever had, but I´m hoping we can not only bring a lot of people in, but teach these members how to take them in too because it´s something that´s been a struggle in this area in the past. Please pray for Tereza and Lourdes and their kids that they will have faith to take the first steps for entering the Lord´s kingdom! As well as Leir and Ron; Junior; Kawane. It will be a crazy week, but I know we will see miracles!

We also had kind of a crazy Monday last week with our house flooding. The washer broke while we were all in bed trying to get over being sick and when we woke up there were a good few inches of water all through the house, and most of our stuff got soaking wet. Also the last couple days have been some of the wettest, coldest days of my life. Welcome to winter in Curitiba. But the blessings are supposed to be greater when the sacrifice is greater right?

I was thinking the other day about how a lot of you asked on Mother´s day why our mission is baptizing so many more; how it went from being the least baptizing mission in Brazil to one of the highest. And so these are a couple of things that I’ve observed from my experience serving in another mission and talking to other missionaries. President Monteiro does a few things differently that I think have made a huge difference in the success here:

1. We usually don´t leave people with a question of - you need to find out if this is true. We don´t place doubts in their mind, only ask them to confirm what we are saying. If they felt good during our message they already have a basis of a testimony. Why ask them to doubt what we´re saying? So instead of saying - read the Book of Mormon to know if this is true, it’s more like "Look, Christ´s church is here on the earth again and you have the chance to go and be there for yourself!" And then as a missionary you have discernment in how to help them gain that testimony. Some people believe just because we say it´s true; others believe it´s true when they go to church and others it´s because they read the Book of Mormon and know it´s true. So there are a lot of different ways to help them gain that testimony.

2. We focus a lot more on getting people to go to church. People can read the scriptures and pray and be inactive, but you can´t go to church and be inactive. And if you have an investigator who loves you and hearing you speak, but won´t go to church you can´t ever baptize them and they can´t really progress.

3. Everyone always explains the ‘What’ you need to do, and usually ‘How’ you need to do it, but we emphasize a lot on the WHY. You can tell them to go to church and how all day, but hardly anyone will go if you don´t give them a reason why. The same goes for baptism; So we use lots of scriptures and help them see the specific blessings they can have in their lives by acting.

4. President is so good about how we use our time. He made some changes so our meetings, transfers, planning sessions, etc. they are shorter and more efficient so we have more time to work.

Those are some things that I think President has changed in how we teach, but also I think a huge thing in this mission is that there is a lot of focus on your desire and your faith. Usually in missions there is always a lot of talk about exact obedience, but what I´ve noticed is if you truly have a strong desire to do the Lord´s work and be a good missionary, obedience is just natural. If missionaries want more than anything else to do the Lord´s work, there´s no chance they´ll get up after 6:30 because they´ll be getting up at 6 to study more. They´ll never leave after 10: because they want to be out the door at 9: to have more time to find more people, they´ll never hang out at members houses instead of  work because they know that their time is precious and they want to use it how the Lord would have them use it. 

Anyway I know most of you aren´t full time missionaries, but those are some things that I personally think have made a big difference in our mission´s success in baptizing.

I love all of you a lot and am so grateful for your prayers and your support.

Love, Sister Lewis

Photo of trying to clean up the flood in the house... :)

19 May 2014 Never giving up --> miracles

5-19-14 

Dear Family,

This week we had an awesome conference with Elder Torgam from the 70. Thursday we had a meeting with the Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders of the Mission in Curitiba all day that was super good! And then Saturday he came here to Ponta Grossa and had another meeting with all of Ponta Grossa. He talked about how anyone, any church, can talk about Christ, but only WE can levar (bring/take?) Christ to their homes. What an incredible blessing and responsibility we have to be His representatives! The only way we can do that is if they can see Him in our countenances, and feel His spirit when we are there.

 Our purpose is to bring souls to Christ, but that also includes ourselves. We need to be repenting every single day because that is how we become better, is by repenting/changing through the Atonement of Christ.  We talked a lot about excuses and how excuses impede our ability to use the atonement in our lives. Like Alma´s counsel to Corianton in Alma 42:29-30, if we excuse even our little sins, we are rejecting the ability for the atonement to work in our lives to change us. I was thinking about this a lot because in every aspect of our lives, how often do we make excuses or rationalize? But the people that can humble themselves, recognize their weaknesses and let the atonement change them, those are the ones who become something in life. Those are the ones who have success. Success doesn´t come from good luck. 

Yesterday morning we had several good families lined up to go to church and I was so excited feeling like we were finally getting things going. As we went to get them, each one dropped for a lot of different silly reasons. Church was about to start in 1/2 hour and we didn´t have one single investigator to go to church. I was sitting there thinking, “wow I can have all the excuses in the world because I felt like I did everything I could”, but I really don´t feel okay with going to church as a missionary without bringing a single person so I turned to my comp and said okay we’ve got half an hour and we need to find someone to go to church right now (my poor comp is super sick right now and doesn´t even have a voice to talk let alone run around finding ppl to go to church) so we just went down the street and I started talking to every single person I saw and I invited them to church. (I found out that usually at 8:30 in the morning people aren´t usually inclined to go with some foreigner to a meeting that will last 3 hours). But anyway after about 1/2 hour of rejection we found this nice old man who said he would go to church with us. He had a wife and an11 yr. old son at home so we ran to church, got a car and went back to find their house (which turns out they live in a Catholice Seminary because he works for the Padres haha) to get this family of 3. I thought about that experience afterward and how I could have just felt really frustrated and given up and given my District Leader all the reasons for not having anyone at church, but that´s not what we were called as disciples to do. We were called to forget ourselves and go to work. I know that when we truly do--that is when we see miracles. 

Elder Torgam also talked a lot about companion unity and how we need to be united in 3 things - Our Purpose, Our Goal, and Our Vision. I think that goes within our families as well and that´s why it is so important that we have the gospel because that is what unites us to have the same Purpose, Goal and Vision! At the end he invited us to find a spot in the chapel and for 10 min. pray with our companion to feel the atonement; to feel a little bit of Gethsemane. That was literally one of the most powerful spiritual experiences I have had in my entire life. The spirit in that room was like being in the temple. There was just a peace and quietness and feeling of love so strong it felt like you could almost touch it. You just wanted to sit there forever so you wouldn´t lose it. 

I know that the reason that spirit was so strong is because of the Atonement. There is nothing that brings the spirit more powerfully than the love that the Savior has for us and His infinite sacrifice that He made because of that love. THAT is what I want the people here to feel and that is what I want to feel every day; the love and the power that exists because of His Atonement. I know He lives and it is because of Him that I get to see the lives of these people change! I Love the gospel of Jesus Christ more than anything else in the world! 

Eu amo todos voces muito muito!

Sister Lewis

12 May 2014 Hello Ponta Grossa

5-12-14

Dear family,

It was so fun to get to see so many of you yesterday! I’m So blessed to have the best family in the whole world! I told you most of what is going on already, but I heard it was hard to understand so just a quick update:

I got transferred from Piriquara. It was the hardest move I’ve ever had. My last night there we had a big FHE with the whole ward practically and there was lots of crying and laughing and I have definitely felt some ‘saudade’ for that area my first few days here, but we go where the Lord needs us right?

I’m now here in Ponta Grossa (it’s basically its own mission but with the same mission president) in the ward Dal Col. They want to split this ward so they took out all 3 companionships of Elders and sent all 3 Sister Training Leaders to the same area and basically we are leaving our STL responsibilities this transfer and President just wants us to get a boost in this ward. So pray that we can make it happen because even though I´ve been blessed with a lot of success in other areas, I know it´s not because I have some really amazing ability, I´ve just been blessed with a lot of elect individuals so I pray we can find a lot of them here too and live up to the expectations!

My companion is Sister Moser - my first American comp! She is awesome. She studied at BYU-I before the mish and took a class from Hyrum and loved him as a teacher. She´s the 9th of 13 children from Vermont so it’s funny when people ask us about our families because I’m pretty sure they all think Americans have crazy huge families now.

We had one of the Elder´s Recent converts get confirmed yesterday and she is one of my favorite people I have met here in Brazil. This girl is awesome. She´s 22 and has  twin little boys  that are 1 yr old. She gave up playing soccer for Cambridge for her family. She found the gospel and totally gets it and it’s amazing! She hadn’t slept for 3 nights straight because of work, school, and two 1-yr old boys, but just the same after literally being up the entire night she got her mom to come take care of her sons at 8am so she could make it to sacrament meeting. She already is willing to sacrifice a lot because she knows it’s true! Makes me think about when we complain about our responsibilities in the church. She’s known about the church for less than 3 weeks, but she already understands how important it is to keep her covenants and be there.

The gospel is true. Love y'all lots! SO grateful for you!

Love, Sister Lewis

5 May 2014 Leaving Piraquara with a bang

5-5-14

Dear Family,

So the sad news of the week is that I´m leaving Piraquara. After spending the first half of my mission opening new areas every single transfer I finally got to an area to stay in and I´ve  been here for 4 transfers - almost 6 months, so it has been my baby. But I know it´s time to go. It was a pretty sweet experience to sit in Testimony Meeting yesterday and think about the last 5-6 months - and think about how ridiculously much I love all of the people that were sitting in that room. After church and after our baptisms I went to ward council and at the end announced that I was getting transferred. It was pretty bitter-sweet. But Bishop was really kind and we were able to talk a little bit about the changes that have happened in this ward since we opened it in November. Church attendance yesterday was about twice what it was when we got here, there have been about 40 baptisms which is a lot more than what we normally have had in an entire year in Piriquara, and there has really become a spirit of missionary work and reactivation in this area. The Lord´s hand truly has been here and I was so blessed to get to be a part of it! I´m just sad as I wanted to be here when the chapel finally gets finished because it was my goal to split the Piriquara Ward, but I know that they will get there :)

And I got to spend my last Sunday doing one of my favorite things in the world to do as a missionary - baptize J Yesterday we got to be a part of seeing Maria and Odivo get baptized. Maria´s family came to church finally and they were there for the baptism! That family is amazing and they will be incredible members of the church when they all follow Maria´s example J Divo has really been making a lot of changes too and it was so cute to see how he just bit the bullet even though that water was so freezing cold. When he got out and got his towel he ‘booked’ it, but clearly forgot where the bathroom was so I was chasing him down the hallway trying to help him find his way. Poor guy, but after getting past the freezing cold he said he felt amazing J I’m so excited to see both of them keep enduring to the end and continuing to see the blessings that the gospel brings!

We are so blessed to have the truth and to get to share it with everyone! I´ve also been thinking how blessed we are in the church to have so many people that we love so much! I´ll have my last FHE tonight with pretty much the whole ward, and I was just thinking about what a blessing it is that we get to know all these incredible people who influence our lives so much.

I love you all so much and am so grateful for you!

Love, Sister Lewis