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.
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