Christmas week!

It doesn´t even feel like Christmas. How sad.
Aparently, for the people of Fortaleza, Christmas"Natal" isn´t a super big deal. Needless to say, I missing apple cider, lights at Temple Square, SNOW, and Christmas carols just a little.

But, the work of the Lord moves on! This was a week of more miracles! We got here with practically no investigators and no work being done ,which is super not normal for this area. Sister Alcantara and I have been working our cute little tails off this week to find new investigators. I LOVE my companion. She´s from São Paulo, 20 years old, SUPER bold and hilarious. She has such a firey testimony and is just incredible. We are having a blast, hard core testifying, laughing our heads off everyday and loving life!

On Saturday night we were walking down the street to an apointment and I got an impression that we needed to bater a porta (knock the door) of a casa that we were passing. We clapped outside the gate and a 14 year old girl and her mom answered. Sister Alcantara is super crazy and just said "Hi. We´re here to share a message with your family and we want to come in and share it with you."

And they just let us in.

We then gave the most spirit guided powerful lesson of my mission. This woman was waiting for us. She said that she was leaving the church she´d been attending because it just wasn´t feeling right and that she had been hoping that one day she´d find the true church (This is like unheard of. Everyone here just believes that all paths lead to heaven). We taught her about Joseph Smith and bore powerful testimony that we have a living prophet on the earth today. We told her that we have been praying everyday to find people that the Lord was preparing for the truth and that we knew the Lord had been preparing her.

OH! It was just amazing. We literally floated home that night.

She came to church the next day and we´re planning for her to be baptized on Sunday.
Miracles you guys, miracles.

The other miracle that happened was earlier this week. We were walking down the street and like Saturday I felt that we needed to cross the street and talk to some ladies that were sitting outside their house.

We talked for a while, taught the Restoration and the woman at the end of lesson said "Oh but I already know youre church is true."

Huh? Seriously. She had been taught by some Elders a few years back and had received a strong answer from the Lord that the Church is true. She´s also 50 years old and has a SERIOUS crush on Jospeh Smith. She calls him her kitty and told us she wants to die and marry him in Heaven. True story.

When we invited her to be baptized she had some concern that we couldn´t uncover. We were digging for her concern for a good 5-10 minutes when it just came to me that she didn´t want to be baptized because she has a problem with the word of Wisdom and has fear. I told her that I´d gotten an impression from HF that he wanted her to be baptized and that I knew that her problem was that she was afraid to give up smoking. She just stopped, looked at me and said "Thats it exactly. How did you know??". "You´re like him!" Pointing to a picture of Joseph Smith. I told her I was a resprestative of Jesus Christ and the He and Jospeh Smith and I wanted her to be baptized. We were able to mark a baptism date with her that day.

I dont know how it´ll all turn out and íf she´ll be able to shed her fear and be baptized but it was an amazing exerience nonetheless. I LOVE being a missionary! I love teaching the gospel and sharing this happiness that I have with the people of Fortaleza.
Thank you for your prayers and love! Please remember Christ this week and the sacrifice that he made for all of us.
I love you!!
Sister Brown