Week 5 in Brazil

I will begin this week´s email with an apology. Last weeks email was nutso and I realized I haven´t been doing a great job telling the stories that really matter.

This week was a week of miracles. We had some really powerful lessons. We have one investigator that was found completely by accident. We taught her for the 1st time this week and she is the definition of prepared. We taught her about the Restoration and she stopped us several times throughout the lesson the give answers to questions we weren´t even asking. When we talked about Joseph Smith and His question of which church was true, she interrupted and said "I have that same question in my life!" She was so open and so thirtsy for the truth. The spirit was so strong and when Sister McQuivey was telling about the 1st vision I was fighting tears. The spirit just screamed to my soul "It´s true!! It´s true!!".

 

She has a baptism date for next week.

You guys. I know that Jospeh Smith saw Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father. I know it. I know God loves us and that we´re His children and that He doesn´t want us to be confused. I know He has a plan for each of us. I know that through the gospel of Jesus Christ that was restored back into it´s perfect form is on the earth! I know that through this gospel we can have real, lasting, deep happiness in this life but more importantly for eternity. What a miracle! What a gift! It´s so true and I know it.

We have been praying and searching for more young women for our ward. All of the baptisms we´ve had this transfer have been YM. We are always searching and we´ve been yet to find any with potential. On Saturday, we were walking down the street to an apointment and we heard a group of little voices yelling for us to stop. We turned around and saw 8 YW age girls running after us. They asked us what we were doing and after telling them they all wanted to go to church with us and to learn more. I think we´ll baptize all of them :) 

I was just laughing about it all day. Ask and ye shall receive. Ask for little girls to teach and they´ll come running at you asking to be taught the Gospel.

I love it here. I love Brazilians and their fascination with my blue eyes. Yesterday a random man stopped me on the sidewalk, grabbed my hand and said "You have the eyes of Jesus". He had to repeat it like 5 times because he was a little tipsy and I don´t know Portuguese but it was a pleasant experience nonetheless.  

My language abilities are really coming along. It´s so liberating to be able to kind of communicate with people. I´m getting really good at chuckling, smiling, nodding, or frowing at just the right time to fool people into thinking I can understand. It´s a little dangerous. It works really well until someone asks me a question and then my cover is blown.

Other happy news of the week is that we had Ward Conference this week and the closing prayer was the boy who was my first baptism last month. He had a white shirt and tie on and it was just perfect. Happy, payday moment for sure. 

We also had another baptism of another young man! It was lovely! He´s from a very humble area and has 7 younger siblings.. After the baptism, his younger brother said he wants to be baptized next.  

My challenge for this week is to strenthen your testimony of the Restoration. Read part of the Book of Mormon, pray to HF with an open heart to confirm or reconfirm the truthfulness of the Restoration, listen for an answer  and I promise as a servant of the Lord that you will receive a confirmation. It´s true. It´s really, really true. 

Hugs and love from Brasil!

Sister Brown