Bom dia!!
It´s been an exciting week of General Conference, elections in Brazil, teaching hippies about the Plan of Salvation, and seeing God bless and help our investigators!
But really, it has been a wonderful week, and I am so very grateful for the love I have been able to feel from my Heavenly Father. He is truly blessing us and helping us in this work.
Our investigators are doing well! Zelia and Joaquim went to a couple sessions of General Conference with us and they were even able to do a fast with us this week, and so that was really special!
So Sister Costa and I have two investigators named Carmen and Genildo that we have been working with for a while. They´re an older, married, couple and pretty funny. Carmen is always SUPER excited about everything haha. And Genildo is a lot more serious and stubborn, but super intelligent. The problem is that they LOVE to talk and so it´s been hard to find a good opportunity to teach them all of the Restoration in one visit. But finally this week, Genildo stopped talking and said he was ready to listen to us. And so we started to teach the Restoration and it was honestly one of the cooler experiences I´ve had teaching about the Restoration of the Gospel. I could truly feel God helping Sister Costa and I to teach with power and authority and with the Spirit. It was incredible the way that Genildo changed as we started to teach-- he suddenly became VERY interested in what we had to say. At the end of the lesson, we asked Genildo if he would read the Book of Mormon and pray to know if it was true and he just sat there staring at us. And then after a lot of silence he finally said "Well, if this thing here is true, it´s going to change everything!!!" haha. And it´s so true. The message of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ definitely changes everything.
I hope everyone loved General Conference! Here in Brazil, because not everyone has access to computers and internet, everyone goes to the church to watch it! Listening to it in Portuguese was a little bit of an adventure, but I know that God blessed me to be able to understand. And more than anything, He taught me the things I needed to learn through the Spirit. Something that I love about General Conference is that it´s an opportunity to be connected with all of you again! Even though I´m here in Brazil, we are listening to the same prayers and singing the same hymns and it made me super happy to know that!
After the Sunday morning session of Conference, a member of our ward introduced us to a friend of hers that´s interested in the church, named Fernando. We were able to teach him with her in the church and it was SO COOL. He is definitely one of God´s children prepared to receive the Gospel. The Spirit in the lesson was so incredibly strong, and at the end of the lesson, he accepted baptism without hesitation :)
I hope that everyone paid super good attention to Elder Oaks´ talk about missionary work!! Study it this week and then APPLY the things that he taught! This truly is the time for missionaries and members to work together! We were only able to find Fernando because of the member in our ward! The role of the members in missionary work is ESSENTIAL!
There´s been elections going on all month and they finally ended yesterday! But that meant that after leaving General Conference we found all of Arcoverde partying. Brazilians get really excited about things haha. There´s always a lot of drinking involved, super loud music, and HUGE groups of people together. It was a little hard leaving General Conference after feeling the Spirit so strongly and returning to the world. But that´s the purpose of General Conference-- to prepare us to return to the world and have the strength and faith to do what is right and find JOY in our journey!
Love you all!!
Sister Anderson
