30 June 2014

6-3014

Family!

How great yáll are together in Utah right now! Family reunions are the best!

This month has been a month of sacrifice and miracles - I guess that’s how missions are though :)

At our last mission conference at the end of May, President gave a really good talk that I think I already mentioned, but he talked about the Canaanite woman who was pleading with Christ to heal her daughter, but he ignored her, and told her the dogs don’t eat the crumbs from the masters table, but she continued to show humility and persistency so he healed her daughter because of her faith. This idea came up a lot with me this month and I thought a lot about this idea of how much we can accomplish just based on our desire and faith and persistency. 

Not too long after hearing President´s talk my comp and I were talking and praying about our baptism goal for this month. I was thinking about this idea of how we set our own limits. I thought about, “Okay what is my desire, how much am I willing to sacrifice”. I felt like we should set a goal of 17 baptisms for this month. For anyone who´s served a mission you know that´s kinda a crazy goal. That´s like as many baptisms as normally would be in an entire mission. After talking to my comp and praying about it, she agreed that we should go for it. At our district meeting they asked for our goals, and when we said ours everyone thought we were crazy and unrealistic, but we felt like it was an answer from the Lord so we were going to strive for it.

I started to think about this idea of desire, persistency and faith a lot this month and I started to see this example a lot as I studied - The Nephites when they were with Christ and he told them to prepare for the morrow, but after seeing their desire, longing to hear more, he changed his course and blessed them and they heard words so marvelous they couldn´t be written. I read an example the Savior gave in Luke about the judge who gave into the will of a woman just so she would stop bugging him and he compared that to how the Lord listens to the pleadings day and night of the elect. The Savior taught that anything we ask with faith, that is right, the Lord will give us. That is a really powerful promise! 

Think about John and the 3 Nephites; The Savior didn´t ask them if they wanted to overcome death, it started with them thinking of this idea and having this desire. "The sky´s the limit" and that´s true and something I´m learning more and more is that truly we, humans set our own limits! I think the Lord saw our desire and willingness to do whatever it takes and he blessed us with incredible people to teach this month. I can´t tell you how many miracles we saw this month and we were able to do something out of the ordinary, not because we´re really great missionaries or teachers or anything like that, we just showed our faith and willingness to sacrifice and the Lord blessed us; But it definitely wasn´t without a price. We´ve both had the flu pretty much since the start of the month. We had some nights that I told my comp I would go with her but she would just teach the whole lesson because I couldn´t even talk and then we´d get there and my voice would come back just enough to teach. We left the house at 7 or 8 in the morning some days, we got robbed at gunpoint (lost our scriptures), and lost about 1 day of work/week because of the world cup (people are crazy. I’ve seen 4 car accidents, and the swat team in the last 3 days). So it´s not like we can just say – “I want this, it´s a good desire, I believe it can happen and then it happens. But my faith was strengthened a lot this month about how much the Lord can do thru us, and how much He will trust in us, if we will but show our faith and be willing to work, because like Elder Holland says The work of salvation was never easy.

I also realized that I´m always telling you about the baptisms, but actually one of my favorite parts, is seeing the changes that happen afterward. Seeing people let go of addictions, seeing families come closer together and prepare to go to the temple. The gospel of Jesus Christ is amazing! It´s truly the only way to happiness. Just wish everyone in the world would realize that! :)

Love y´all! Have a wonderful week together! Ill be thinkin’ of you! 

Love, Sister Lewis

23 June 2014 Largando el cigarro!

Dear Family,

This was one of those weeks that you just feel so lucky to be a missionary. It was so cool to see Patricia and her 2 daughters Jaqueline (15) and Stephanie (14), and Pedro and Doraci changing so much as they strived to live the gospel! Patricia was really struggling with cigarettes, at least 20/day but we made goals with her all week to get her ready for her baptism and we were so excited when her last day she went the whole day without smoking so she was ready for baptism Sunday! She said she was pretty much just praying all day long because we had a rule that every time she wanted to smoke she had to go say a prayer. They also are used to living off of coffee (like all brazilians) so it wa a sacrifice for them to stop buying coffee and just have herbal tea everyday. But man the house has just become a different place with them saying daily prayers, reading a scripture from the Book of Mormon everday. That light they talk about in peoples eyes. Yep its real. Anyway their baptism was beautiful and those 2 are already really great examples for the other Young Women. 

Pedro and Doraci was a miracle too as they both worked to largar o cigarro this week as well. Doraci is on fire about the gospel. It was so cool because she´s started telling her friends about it too. She totally gets the restoration and she had some of her evangelical friends visiting this week and she showed them the picture of Christ in the Americas and told ém - this is Christ´s church that he set up here on the earth, and that same church is here again its called A Igreja de Jesus Cristo dos santos dos últimos dias. The rest of the churches today are churches that man created! Shes reading the book of mormon faster than i am and their 7 yr old, Alini, is in love with reading the Liahona and is already excited about her baptism. Speaking of, it´s so cute, our recent convert Terezinha (baptized 4 weeks ago) has a 6 yr old son, Nicholas, and every time we go over there he tries to convince me hes 8 because he wants to get baptized too. :)

Keep Anna and her daughters in your prayers. She wants to get baptized, but is having a hard time with smoking as well, and her husband is a bit hard, but I know it´s all going to work out right with faith!

It´s amazing how life really is so simple. Just do your best to follow what Jesus Christ taught and what Heavenly Father is telling us through His prophets, and your life will be so good and so happy and youll get to be with your family forever! So keep living the gospel! Keep being an example because that´s really what draws people to the gospel.

Love you all a lot!

Sister Lewis

World Cup -- Go Ducks!!... oh... Brazil 16 June 2014

6-16-14

Photos: 1. getting ready for church with some of the kids

Dear Familia,

So I had my first taste of the World Cup in South America, but to make it even better it´s here in Brazil and some of the Jogos are here in Curitiba so this place was wild. We also had a lot of meetings with Stake Conference and President visiting Ponta Grossa this week, so it was so hard to get time in to work (we´re not allowed to leave the house from the time the games start and through the rest of the night. People are so nuts. But it was fun because it feels like Game Day in Eugene for Oregon football, because there´s green and yellow EVERYWHERE (every house and car has a Brazilian flag and every person a Brazilian jersey or t-shirt) and everyone´s ‘havin’ a festa’, but amidst all the craziness you can still feel the spirit and it makes you think about the bigger perspective.

We had kind of a rough weekend because we had 6 really solid dates for baptism this Sunday, but a lot of crazy things happened so all 6 got moved to this week in literally the last min. My comp and I have still been sick all week and Friday night my voice had it too, so for 3 days I’ve hardly been able to talk which makes it a bit difficult, and then Saturday night is always super stressful trying to get everything ready and when we woke up at 5:30 Sunday morning, our house was flooded because our washing machine broke again, so unfortunately we had a lot of things working against us. But on the plus side we have so many great people the Lord has trusted us to bring into His kingdom so I know we´re going to see lots of miracles these next couple weeks! Duraci is so ready and wants to get baptized so bad, but her husband Pedro is struggling with drinking and smoking, so pray for him to have the faith to overcome! Also Patricia and her 3 daughters Jaqueline, Stephanie and Leticia are so awesome, but Patricia as well is struggling a lot with the cigarro. It´s interesting because in my setting apart it talked very specifically about helping people overcome addictions, and I was thinking about it this week and I think at least 10 of my recent-converts have had to overcome smoking. It’s a big problem here in Brazil. Oh and George he is awesome too! He was a miracle. We found him last week, late at night, the last door before heading home, and he just welcomed us right in and has loved learning. He woke up super early to go to stake conference and he was waiting in the rain for us for almost an hour. He’s a champ.

We had stake conference Sat and Sun which was SOO good! Wow, I loved the talks, and maybe I’m just biased but I LOVE hearing President Monteiro speak more than anyone even when it´s not specifically to us missionaries. Anyway so Bispo got an onibus to take everyone to conference and with pretty much just recent-converts and investigators and missionaries, we had over 60 people on the bus. (Picture attached). There were so many good talks about families and just being a more god-like people. We are so blessed to have so many great opportunities to be edified by one another every week in the church!

I also loved the training that President gave us Saturday morning. He shared some things that Elder Nelson talked to the local leaders about a couple of weeks ago when he visited Curitiba. He talked about one mission that was having a lot of success in Korea and the Mission President, when asked what they did different he said "our missionaries don´t ask for referrals. They earn them." I loved that. Work hard and be that missionary that the members want you to go visit all their friends and family! We also watched the John Morely (I think that´s his name...) story, who took the trek west and settled in Alpine, UT and walked to Salt Lake every week at 2 am to work on the temple. I remember watching it back home once, but it was interesting because President had us watch it with a little different perspective. He asked us e Hto think about what is our story that we are writing for our life? In the movie it said that there exist 2 kinds of people in this world - those who act and those who are acted upon. (Something like that in English.) We need to be the doers, those who act. There was one line that he said something like "certainly the Lord has many people who could do this work, but the calling is mine." I loved that. Yes the Lord has plenty of other missionaries, but only we are called to our specific area and we have specific people we need to help. The calling is ours. What are we sacrificing for our calling? President told us that to enter the celestial kingdom, we don´t just need to be living the law of chastity, tithing, Word of Wisdom, etc. No, to enter the Celestial Kingdom you too have to have a good story. To sit with Abraham, Moses, Job, Joseph Smith, our Pioneer Ancestors, etc. So what will your story be? We have the opportunity to choose each day! The sacrifices may not be small, but the blessings are great!

Love you! So grateful for all of you!

Sister Lewis

 2.  - Onibus for stake conference

3 - With Isabella (President´s daughter) shes my favorite teenager i will miss this girl a lot.

All in the same day was Dia dos namorados (like valentines day), and 1 yr in the missão for sister garcia, and the world cup, so clearly we had to celebrate with pancakes.

 World cup. so I look terrible in this photo because I've been sick and the sun is in my eyes, but this is what you see on pretty much every house right now.

Muggings. 9 June 2014

6-9-14

Dear Family,

So happy to hear about new little baby Gideon! I think there´s nothing better than baptisms except new babies :)

This week was exciting and crazy as usual. Monday we went back to see Lurdes and Therezinha and their families. We found out that one of the daughters had gone out the night of the baptism and was attacked. She is in the hospital but can’t move or talk or do anything and all the doctors were saying she probably won’t make it. This obviously came as a bit of a shock to us. We thought, “okay what can we say to help them right now?” But we just shared some scriptures about faith and hope and I was absolutely amazed at the way that they reacted. Instead of being angry with God, they told us that it was because they were baptized and that they´re going to church, that their daughter is still living, and during the week as we visited they told us each time of the blessings that they are receiving. I have been so impressed by their faith. They are an example to me.

I also got to do some exchanges with some sisters this week which were so awesome and we were blessed to see so many miracles; finding some super elect individuals and giving that area a little bit of a jump. We set some goals. As I was heading back to my area I thought how amazing it is that the Lord gives us the ability to help people. We were able to make some adjustments and set some goals that I knew weren´t from me.  I know that when we are willing to serve the Lord, He gives us what we need. It is pretty amazing!

We also had kind of an exciting day yesterday getting robbed in the middle of the day after church. Thankfully they just wanted our stuff and nothing to do with us. After the police report we decided to go look around a bit in the area that they had run off to, and we found a ton of our stuff which was a huge blessing! We found our scriptures, identification, and some things that I was pretty sad about losing, so we really were so blessed that everything turned out the way it did! The Lord definitely takes care of his missionaries :)

Love you, have a great week!

Sister Lewis

some photos

2 June 2014 Week of Miracles

6-2-14

Dear Family,

Congrats Corwin and Katie on new baby Parker. Also, I loved hearing about many missionary experiences from all of you this week :)

This week we also were blessed with a LOT of miracles. Sunday night my comp and I went thru and counted 17 miracles in 24 hours! It was one of the most stressful weeks of my life, but the Lord helped us and everything worked out right.

Yesterday we got to be a part of the baptisms of 8 wonderful individuals.

Kawane, who we´ve been teaching since we got here (I hardly ever stay with investigators for an entire month so this is a big deal) told usFriday that she finally decided she was ready to get baptized! So we were super excited for her. She will be an awesome member of the church and future missionary. She never misses seminary or mutual and she’s helping her mom with going back to church.

Then there´s the families of Lurdes and Therez-- Just finding them 2 weeks ago was kind of a miracle. Our first couples of weeks in the area were frustrating because things always start out kind of slow. There was one day that was especially frustrating. We left a lesson at 8: something and we could have just taken the last 1/2 hour to walk home but we decided we weren´t going to pass an entire day without something good happening, so we said a prayer that we could find one good family to teach. There were 2 little girls walking down the street so I decided to just start talking to them. They looked at me a little while and then started to laugh. I eventually realized they thought our accents were really funny. I asked them if we could go meet their parents so they took us to their house and then proceeded to call all of their cousins, nieces, nephews, grandma--the whole world to come listen to these 2 Americans that they thought were hilarious.

 I’m not sure they understood anything we said, but hey that’s one way to get in the door. I’m pretty sure they had never met anyone outside of the state of Parana, let alone Estado Unidos, so it was quite the event for them :) Anyway, we taught the whole family and 10 of them went to church with us on Sunday which was quite the event getting them to church and keeping them at church. And then this last week we taught them about baptism and most of the kids were excited about it, but the moms didn’t want to get baptized. We eventually figured out that they wanted to be baptized, but their other church helps them out so they were scared to get baptized and not get that help. We talked to them a lot about faith and putting God first and they agreed, but then Friday and Saturday they were scared and just didn’t want to anymore. It felt like there was nothing I could say to convince them it was going to be okay, but I felt like they were supposed to get baptized this Sunday, so I told them we would just get them ready for baptism and they could decide on Sunday. 

So we got there Saturday and the Dist. Leader did the Interviews for the kids, but then the moms were like ‘no that´s just for people who are getting baptized’, so we said – “no, just have a conversation with him it will be the same as when you talk with us.” So they went. Then we started filling out the baptismal forms and they said, "You don’t need to do it for us because we’re not getting baptized."  I told her, "Well we´ll see, let’s just fill it out just in case you decide you want to get baptized with your kids”. Then Sunday morning arrived. The moms and one of the sons told us they didn´t need to bring anything because they still weren´t getting baptized, so we just said, “okay well see”. That night not one of the members said they could help us with getting our investigators rides to church the next day. Great-- how are we going to get this family with a million little kids to church tomorrow especially because it was supposed to be tons of rain and cold the next day. So we fasted and prayed like crazy for sunshine and yes God answers prayers.  We paid for one family to use the bus and the other, we got to their house at 7:30 to walk this family to church. There were so many miracles in getting them to church and only losing 2 of the kids, but anyway we got them all to church only 25 min late. 

After church we got all the baptismal suits (also a crazy miracle because somehow in one night all but 4 of the baptismal suits disappeared so it was a mad rush to find 6 more.) We took them in the bathroom and told them to put the suits on. We were ready for them to tell me they didn´t need them, but nope they just said alright, and grabbed the suits and put them on, haha but then one of the kids told us he still didn´t know, so we said, “Well just put this suit on to take pictures and then you can decide”. So he did it and it was a crazy service but all 8 of them got baptized! There were moments where I was like, ‘What the heck am I doing”, but then afterwards it was very clear why. I have never seen that family so happy, yet so calm-- Ever. There really was such an obvious change in those moms and all of those kids and that was what was so sweet. To be honest, the service itself was insane and I was soaked and running around like crazy but when it finally all settled and we had a chance to talk to them, that was when I was able to see-- wow, this is a different family. And that is what the gospel of Jesus Christ does for us!

I wish I could individually go thru and write out for you all the many miracles that we saw this week, but needless to say we were very blessed. Seeing those baptisms take place, I felt so strongly that there is no way that we could have done that without the help of the Lord. The fact that we made it thru that day was a miracle because we were really sleep deprived this week, but the Lord always makes up for our weaknesses!

Love you lots! Go help someone change their life!

Love, Sister Lewis