Monday, July 11, 2016

Week 1 in Arcoverde!

Oi oi oi everyone!!
This week has been absolutely wonderful. I am loving Arcoverde and being a missionary is such an incredible blessing!
Arcoverde is super pretty! Super clean and green and it´s not hot!! Definitely a huge blessing haha. The people here are super good too. I think it´s a little more developed than my other área was, and so I´m feeling a little more at home. But goodness, we have been very blessed here in Arcoverde! Only 1 week, and the área is already progressing! Thankfully we´ve had two young women, who are preparing to serve missions, go out with us everyday this week to show us where things are. Without them we would have been very lost all week haha.
We´re going to have 2 baptisms this week! One of the baptisms is a woman named Dejanira. She´s probably in her 50´s and she is such an amazing example to me. She has had a very very hard life and has a lot of health problems. But she´s so willing to change her life and follow Christ. Everytime we give her a chapter in the Book of Mormon to read, she always writes a summary of the chapter in her notebook haha. I´ve never had an investigator so dedicated to learning about the Gospel. She lives super far from the church too. But every Sunday she leaves her house an hour early, walks really slowly because of her health, and alwalys makes it to church on time. She´s also working on quiting drinking coffee and so she´s having a lot of bad headaches. But whenever we talk to her about it, she just says "it´s good, I´ll get used to it" haha. She´s super awesome.
Our other baptism is a 10 year old girl named Gisely. She has Family that are members of the church. She´s been searching and praying for a while to know if she should be baptized and hasn´t felt like she´s had an answer. But this Sunday she said that she had a really good feeling in church and know that she needs to be baptized :) I´m grateful that we have a Heavenly Father that listens to our prayers and always answers them.
Sister Costa and I are working together really well and working really hard to find God´s elect here in Arcoverde. I´m super happy and super humbled by the incredible amount of help that we are receiving from Heavenly Father. This week I´ve been studying a talk entitled, "The Atonement" by Elder Russell M. Nelson. It is a WONDERFUL talk and I highly recomend it. I´m so grateful for our Savior, Jesus Christ, who suffered for all of our sins and felt everything that we go through in this life. I know that He knows perfectly how to comfort us and help us and that He loves each of us so much.
Boa Semana a vocês!!
Sister Anderson

Day #1 in Arcoverde!
Left to Right: Dayene (one of our guides this week), Sister Juarez, me, 
Sister Sanguino (from Colombia), and Sister Costa (my comp :))

The road we live on and all the colorful homes! 

"The Atonement" by Elder Russell M. Nelson