28 july 2014 last transfer!

7-28-14

Dear Family,

This week we´re going into my last transfer and I was told that I was going to get another new filha (would be #9) but then was super excited to find out that it´s my filha from the states, Sister Gearheart! I trained her in SC my last transfer there and she has been there the last 10 months and finally got her visa! So I´m way excited I´ll get to have my last transfer with her, here.

This week we had the baptisms of Sidnei and Jonathan. I’m so excited for them, they are awesome! Jonathan will be such a stellar missionary he was definitely an elect investigator and Sidnei was just so ready for the gospel! One of my favorite things about this week is that we had the opportunity to help a lot of people really understand the whybehind the commandments and see the blessings when they live them. Sidnei was a great example of that and he has become such a different person! It was so cute this week he really wanted a bible and wanted to wear a suit to church so he could look like the rest of the guys there because he told us he didn´t want to just be a ‘part way there member’. He wants to do everything that God wants him to do. So we were able to find a bible in our house and our LMA donated pants, shirt and tie for him and he just looked so good at church :)

We also were really blessed to find this awesome family this week. It was definitely inspired. We were knocking doors the other day and met this older lady who was super catholic and clearly was not really interested, but in talking to her she mentioned something about her son’s family and we just felt like we wanted to meet them so a few days later we went and found their house and the spirit was so strong. They´ve been to a lot of churches but haven´t stayed in any of them. When we shared the first vision the mom started to cry and at the end when we had Sergio (the dad) say the prayer she started to cry again. They were so excited about reading the Book of Mormon and going to church. That´s why being a missionary for Christ´s church is the best because you get to tell people who are hungry for the word of God about this amazing thing called the Restoration that can bless their lives so much and teach them about how they can follow Christ which is the best thing they could possibly do with their life! Unfortunately their daughter Diani who´s pregnant had some complications Saturday night and they were in the hospital all of Saturday and Sunday so they didn´t get to go to church. But pray for them that things will work out and they can be there this Sunday! Also Bruna who was supposed to get baptized yesterday, we were able to convince her mom to authorize her baptism, but Bruna knows her mom doesn´t really want her to get baptized so she decided she didn´t want to anymore. So they could really use your prayers that her mom will soften her heart and support her in this decision.

Anyway I love you all a ton and hope you all have a wonderful week!

Love, Sister Lewis

21 July 2014

7-21-14

Dear Family,

It is incredible how fast time passes on a mission.

This week we finally moved apartments (I think it´s like my side calling to go whitewash all the areas that need new apartments because this is my 4th time doing it.) But our new house is super chique. I think it´s the nicest house I’ve set foot in since my first area that was super rich. It even has "hot" water in the kitchen (it’s more like lukewarm, but that’s still a big step up and I’ve only seen this in one other house as well) and it has 2 bathrooms hallelujah! But we didn´t have electricity all week because of some complications so we used candles all week, 2 of us gave in and took cold showers but in the winter that´s the world’s worst so we started walking to our old house at night to take showers and then come back. It made things interesting.

I decided a mission is good mom prep - you have to have snacks, paper, things to color, and the Liahona, every Sunday to keep the kids distracted during Sacrament. SIster Monteiro told us that during church are the 3 hours you work hardest and that is so true. I’m always burnt out by the end of it.

We had mission conference this week which was awesome! President is so inspired I could listen to him talk all day.

Really cool experience this week. We´ve been having a hard time finding Really good people these past couple of weeks and we were praying this week to find that elect family. We all felt like we needed to go to this one neighborhood in particular so the whole night we knocked doors there and didn´t find anyone really promising. So in planning that night we prayed again – “Heavenly Father where do you want us to work tomorrow, we know there are people out there that need us”. We felt even stronger that we needed to go back to that same area because we hadn´t found them yet. So we went back the next day and I was feeling so sure ‘there is gonna be some elect family here. Probably a Mom, Dad and 8 kids of baptismal age’ or something like that. We got to a house and a young mom let us in. When we got in there were pictures of Christ and temples on all the walls. Shortly after that we discovered she was a less-active. She had fallen away some time ago when her husband left her. This week she had been feeling really discouraged and she said she just didn´t know what to do but to pray and the night before she said “Heavenly Father I can´t do this anymore please send angles to my door to help me”. The next day is when we showed up. She cried a lot and was so determined she needed to come back. She even wrote goals on her wall, without our suggestion, to read the Book of Mormon, do family home evening and in bold at the bottom ‘Go To Church’. It was another testimony to me of how the spirit knows who needs us and when and we Always need to follow that guidance. She started inviting all of her friends to hear the missionaries and I think she´s our best ward missionary now. It was so cute to get to church and see her and her kids sitting there. She walked all the way there alone and got there early. It just puts a smile on your face :)

Pray for Marcella, Sydney, Jonathan and Bruna. They were all at church yesterday and are doing so great and we don´t want them to lose their faith and enthusiasm about learning about the restored gospel!

Also there´s a cool video on the church website called "Unto all the World" about missionary work in Brazil that they showed at our conference. You should all watch it and be those wonderful member-missionaries that make our work possible!

Love you all!
Sister Lewis

Photos - With Sister Moser, Silva and Bergloff at Mission Conference

- Hair and makeup in the hallway because we didn´t have electricity in our apartment all week :)

14 July 2014

Sister Santo and Sister Moser - Time do Amor (Team of love) a little weird but i thought it was cool haha

Dear Family,

So while all of my siblings are having lots of babies, I had my 8th daughter this week também ;) (8th time training in missionary terms.) This is my 19th companion. I think i could set a record with the most companions in a mission haha Her name is Sister Santos and she´s from Brasilia. She´s awesome. Just jumped right into the missionary lifestyle so natural I don´t even feel like I´m training. Plus I still have Sister Moser with me which is fun so I´m back to being in a trio. Best part is it always brings in new energy to have new missionaries! 

This week felt a little slow because there were tons of world cup games (finally ended thank goodness.) and unfortunately this ward doesn´t have a lot of really strong leadership so they´re having a hard time keeping up with lots of baptisms so we have to use a lot more time trying to get the members to integrate with our recent-converts and help them so that they will stay strong too. I gave a talk on Sunday and was able to lovingly remind them that as members of Christ´s church they aren´t just here to take care of themselves, and help others when it´s convenient. The last thing the Savior taught His disiciples was to feed His sheep and that the Lord told us we need to waste and wear out our lives giving our whole Heart, might, mind and strength. If we aren´t making time to help others we aren´t keeping our covenants. I think it got to some of the ward members because we had a couple of them afterwards come tell us that they were going to go do their visiting teaching this week or going to visit so and so (they probably got tired of how many times we´ve called and reminded them these past couple weeks to do their visiting and home teaching...) but it really is so important!

One of the saddest moments of my mission this week - I went to go visit a recent-convert that has been so strong. They got baptized a month ago and gave up smoking, coffee, and drinking and have been going solid for 2 months, we´ve been talking to them about the temple and everything and then last week a family member was sick so they went to go see him in the hospital and weren´t at church. And just that one week off made a huge difference. We went to go see them and had a great message prepared about getting them to the temple, but I felt like I needed to ask them how they were doing with living the commandments and ask them specifically how they were doing with smoking which seems strange because they had been doing so great for so long. But, they had fallen back into the old habits that week after not going to church. Doraci, the mom, was just so heart-broken and discouraged. She started crying and said, "I am reading the book of mormon everyday, we're praying everyday, going to church, so why hasn´t God done a miracle and taken this desire away from me? You see those pastors who just cure people on tv why can´t i have that miracle in Christ´s church?" It was rough, but we did our best to explain to her about God´s plan for us and learning from overcoming addictions and temptations of the natural man, and how she will be so much stronger and be able to help others overcome their difficulties as she overcomes it. We showed a video about the Savior and the atonement and how it wasn´t easy for Him. The spirit was really strong and I hope they can have the strength to let go of these addictions so they can truly have the fullness of the blessings that God wants for us! 

I hope all of you are answering the Savior´s call and feeding His sheep. Go visit those recent-converts and less actives! They need you!

Love you,

Sister Lewis

 the trio -- Sister Lewis, Sister Moser & Sister Santos (Lyn's 8th new missionary!)

Sorvette with a bunch of the Sisters in Ponta Grossa

Happy 4th of July from Brazil!

Dear Family,

Happy 4th of July and Family Reunion! Loved hearing about all of you being together :) Brazil was playing so we all had to be home at 5 and my american comp (Sister Moser) and I, had an independence day festa with our roommates. We sang 4th of july songs all day, had french toast for breakfast with vermont syrup and peanut butter (were getting everyone here hooked on peanut butter. Maybe one day brasil will give in.) and made hot dogs and' had s´mores over the stove and watched a church movie in english. That's about as American as it gets being a missionary in brasil.. but we did our best ;)

Best part of this week is we had an awesome training with president and had interviews. So good! I especially loved something president shared. He´s a successful businessman and shared with us 4 things that not only will guarantee you to be successful in working, but in life:

1 - Never need to have an instruction repeated. (if you are someone who needs it twice your salary is already cut in half. 4x and you have to be treated as a child.)

2 - Every instruction/assignment you receive, you complete.

3 - You get along with any person you are placed with.

4 - You accept correction easily.

I feel like my English translation is not nearly as beautiful, but I thought it was super good counsel, and SO applicable in the mission. He also said he wanted to give us some counsel as a father, not as our mission president but what he would say to his daughters. He said when you´re dating, try to find out as much as you possibly can about the type of missionary he was on his mission. If he got up at 6:31, don´t marry him. And Sister Monteiro got up and told the Elders the same thing applies - if she didn´t honor her priesthood leaders on her mission, if she was constantly calling and complaining, don´t marry her either. If you want to find a good spouse after the  mission, you need to make those changes now! They´re so cute I love seeing them speak together :)

I also loved a quote she shared from President George Albert Smith that says mas-o-menos this: "Our eternal happiness will be proportional to the way with which we dedicate ourselves to helping others."

Missions are the best! So blessed to get to serve one :)

Love you all!

Sister Lewis

Photos

- Sister Bergloff. One of my favorite sisters who just got transferred into my zone so we´re finally not the only sisters in our zone!

 4th of July photos. while everyone else is celebrating another brasiliero victory, we´re celebrating american independence :)

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