I hope everyone had a wonderful week and ate lots of turkey for me! This week was a little slower... not much happened... BUT, the work goes on!
So... Thanksgiving in Brazil doesn´t really exist. Black Friday, yes, but Thanksgiving, no. My Thanksgiving consisted of going to district meeting in Garanhuns, and thankfully there are two other Americans in my district! And so I received one "happy thanksgiving!" and one "happy turkey day!" haha. My "Thanksgiving feast" consisted of the member that said they would give us lunch, forgetting, and then taking us to a supermarket that sells sandwich type things-- a "lanche" here in Brazil. But seriously, it was all good haha. Nothing to complain about, just a little funny to me.
Okay, I think my favorite investigator that we have right now is a woman, named Viviani. Her husband is a less active and she has two of the cutest boys! We were at her mother-in-law´s house the other day, and so we decided to talk to her and she started crying and expressing to us her desire to help her family and husband and be baptized and active in the church. She´s so cute! Her husband is wrapped up in some difficult things, but he is really wanting to change, and so it´s always really cool to teach them. After a pretty rough day that happened this week, we were headed to their house, and her 6 year old son, Alison came running to me yelling "Sister! Sister!" and gave me a big hug. It helped me to feel a lot better :)
Other than that, things are pretty chill in Arcoverde! Something that I studied a lot this week was about prayer! And goodness I learned things I had never realized before! I am so so grateful for the opportunity we ALWAYS have to talk to Heavenly Father. It seriously saves me on the mission. I studied the talk from General Conference entitled, "The Lord Teaches us to Pray" by Elder Uceda and it has changed the way I pray! I´m going to copy and paste a part of it for you guys to read! God is truly listening the MOMENT we say "Heavenly Father" and whatever happens afterwards is truly His will for us!
"At the very moment we say, “Father in Heaven,” He hears our prayers and is sensitive to us and our needs. And so His eyes and His ears are now connected to you. He reads our minds, and He feels our hearts. You cannot hide anything from Him. Now, the wonderful thing is that He will see you with eyes of love and mercy—love and mercy that we cannot fully understand. But love and mercy are with Him the very moment you say, “Father in Heaven.”
So a moment of prayer is a very, very sacred moment. He is not one to say, “No, I will not listen to you now because you only come to me when you are in trouble.” Only men do that. He is not one to say, “Oh, you cannot imagine how busy I am now.” Only men say that."
Love you all!
Sister Anderson
Some silly pictures we took today haha
