Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Week 5 in Arcoverde!

Olá!!
Another wonderful week down in the books! Sister Costa and I are now entering the last week of the transfer! It´s definitely gone by super quickly but at the same time I´ve grown and learned so much!

Joseane is finally going to be baptized this week!! I´m super excited for that. She´s so cute and has such an awesome testimony of the church :)

This week Sister Costa and I were able to teach a lesson with Dejanira (our recent convert) this week and it was super special. At the end, she bore her testimony about joining the church and she said something that I loved and wanted to share with everyone. She said, "I didn´t find missionaries, I found daughters. I didn´t find people, I found a family. I didn´t find a church, I found a home." It´s so true that the church is this way. It´s a home, and we´re all family trying to make it back to our Father in Heaven.

We were able to find a super special family this week! Their names are Fernanda and Samuel and they have a little girl who´s 3 and a little boy who´s 8. They´re really searching to know if the church is true. Fernanda said that when she prayed to know if Joseph Smith was a prophet, she felt really good and had a strong desire to go to church. And then when she woke up the next morning she said that she still felt really good and calm. They weren´t able to go to church this week, but they should go the next week, and so I´m really excited for that. They´re daughter is SUPER cute though. She seriously laughs at anything haha. She´s the happiest child I know. BUT, she thinks I sound really funny and so everytime I talk she just sits there and laughs haha. And then the other day, in the middle of me talking she said "seu nariz é muito gordo!" (your nose is really fat!) hahaha. I had to remind myself that she´s only 3 years old and wasn´t trying to be mean haha.

Sister Costa and I had a cool miracle this Sunday! An inactive in our ward who hadn´t gone to church for many many years went to church this week!! When Sister Costa and I visited her earlier in the week, we felt inspired to share a General Conference talk with her. I left my Liahona magazine with her so that she could read it and so she "came to church to return it" haha. The talk that we shared with her was the talk by President Uchtdorf, "He Will Place you on His Shoulders and Carry you Home." I love love love this talk. And I love it so much that I´m going to share a part with all of you :)

"Obedience is the lifeblood of faith. It is by obedience that we gather light into our souls.
But sometimes I think we misunderstand obedience. We may see obedience as an end in itself, rather than a means to an end. Or we may pound the metaphorical hammer of obedience against the iron anvil of the commandments in an effort to shape those we love, through constant heating and repeated battering, into holier, heavenly matter.

No doubt about it, there are times when we need a stern call to repentance. Certainly, there are some who may be reached only in this manner.

But perhaps there is a different metaphor that can explain why we obey the commandments of God. Maybe obedience is not so much the process of bending, twisting, and pounding our souls into something we are not. Instead, it is the process by which we discover what we truly are made of.

We are created by the Almighty God. He is our Heavenly Father. We are literally His spirit children. We are made of supernal material most precious and highly refined, and thus we carry within ourselves the substance of divinity.

Here on earth, however, our thoughts and actions become encumbered with that which is corrupt, unholy, and impure. The dust and filth of the world stain our souls, making it difficult to recognize and remember our birthright and purpose.

But all this cannot change who we truly are. The fundamental divinity of our nature remains. And the moment we choose to incline our hearts to our beloved Savior and set foot upon the path of discipleship, something miraculous happens. The love of God fills our hearts, the light of truth fills our minds, we start to lose the desire to sin, and we do not want to walk any longer in darkness.13

We come to see obedience not as a punishment but as a liberating path to our divine destiny. And gradually, the corruption, dust, and limitations of this earth begin to fall away. Eventually, the priceless, eternal spirit of the heavenly being within us is revealed, and a radiance of goodness becomes our nature."

 I´m going to put a link to this talk and also to another talk from General Conference that also talks about remembering our divine destiny. I was really touched by these two talks and everyone should definitely read them :) I know that God is our Heavenly Father. We´re literally His children and we have more potential than we know. It´s so important that we always remember that. We are here on Earth with the purpose to make it back to our Heavenly Father one day and live with our families for eternity. And I´m so grateful for a loving Heavenly Father that prepared a perfect plan, making all of that possible.

Love you all!! Boa semana!

Sister Anderson

He Will Place You on his Shoulders and Carry You Home

I am a Child of God