Going Strong in Casa Forte

Boa tarde gente! 

My good news of the week-- Transfers have come and gone aaaaaand I´m going to stay here in Casa Forte with Sister Guimarães another transfer!! This is her last transfer on the mission and so I´m super excited for the miracles we´re going to see! 

This week was good :) Nothing too exciting or out of the ordinary, but definitely very blessed! I think one of the best things has been teaching a woman named Silvania and her 16 year old daughter Sabrina! They are a reference that we received from a member a couple of weeks ago and I have been amazed by their eagerness and desire to learn about the Gospel! We invited Silvania to start reading the Book of Mormon from the beginning to the end... When we went there yesterday to visit her, do you know where she was?! The book of Mosiah!! Like a good chunk of the Book of Mormon read in just a couple days! She said that it was all she did one day and couldn´t put it down and that her family started to think she was going crazy! Hahaha. But goodness, I am so grateful that God puts people into our path who are so willing to follow Him and Jesus Christ and learn of their truths! There´s truly nothing greater :) You guys will definitely be hearing about their baptism here in a couple weeks :) 

For anyone who´s curious about what happened about the Chinese woman, Della, that showed up in church-- we weren´t able to contact her again this week! I think the number she gave to us is outside of the area and we aren´t able to get a hold of her. But I am DETERMINED this week to find her! If I have to, I will show up and the Chinese Consulate and ask if I can talk to her hahaha. I´ll let you all know how the hunt went next week! 

I love this Gospel!! I love being a missionary! There truly is no greater work we can do here on this earth than to help Heavenly Father´s children return to His presence! But that work has to start first with ourselves and in our families! I am so very grateful for the personal conversion that I have been able to experience on my mission and I´m so very excited to continue on in that progression! 

Love you all! 

Sister Anderson 

An Easter Miracle!

Hey guys!! It´s been a really good week :) 

To start it off, on p-day we went to Pina, mine and Sister Guimarães first area, to visit some of our recent converts! It was a good drive down memory lane and was so wonderful to see the people we taught when we first arrived on the mission! (It was Sister Guimarães that found Camila and Fernando and then I arrived in the area in her place ad continued teaching them :))

Other fun activites from the week included a Zone Meeting, interviews with President Bigelow, a district activity where we all met up together in a park and talked to people and gave the magazines from the church, and eating a lot of fish!! To explain the fish part, it´s a tradition here to only eat fish during the Easter weekend! Kind of interesting, but also super delicious! haha

And to top it all off was our Easter miracle! We´ve all heard of Christmas miracles right? But apparently Easter miracles are real as well! On Sunday, at the end of our church meeting, a Chinese woman, named Della, showed up, only speaking English. And so I went to speak English with her (it was a challenge haha)-- So to the side of the church there´s a Chinese Consolute. Like a Chinese Embassy type thing-- I´m not going to pretend like I understand exactly what it is haha. But anyways, Della´s husband is the Chinese consul...? I still don´t know exactly what that is tood, but I´m pretty sure it´s cool haha. Like close to a Chinese embassador haha. But anyways! She started telling me how she always passes by the church and feels something really special, and so she wanted to learn everything she could about the church! We invited her to come back that afternoon and watch the other ward´s meeting with us and she went! The whole time I was really worried because I knew she wasn´t understanding anything and I didn´t want her to get bored and not want to come back haha. And so I prayed A LOT for her to feel the Spirit and that that would give her a desire to learn more. After the meeting, she explained to me that she could feel the Spirit and Jesus very strongly in her heart-- a great feeling of peace and comfort-- and how excited she is to come back next week! We´re going to visit her in her home tomorrow and I´m VERY excited to see how it´ll go :) 

I´m so grateful to have met Della, but I´m even more grateful for the Easter miracle that was given to everyone of us!-- The ressurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ! I add my testimony to the testimony that the Prophet Joseph Smith gave of him, "that He lives!". I know that the Savior lives. I know that He overcame death and becasue of that, we too will live again and be able to return to the presence of our Heavenly Father!

Love you all! 

Sister Anderson 

Milena and her girls!! 

Camila :D

My wonderfully hilarious district! 

DIEGO WAS BAPTIZED

To start off, everyone needs to understand just how much of a miracle it was that Diego was baptized! 

Diego is a young man, 18 years old, who started searching about the church about 9 months ago. When he started out, he was an Atheist-- didn´t even believe in God. It took him about 4 months to receive an answer that God is real. And after that, the last 5 months he has been searching for an answer that this is Christ´s church on the earth. During all this time, he has gone through many missionaries, has made MANY questions, and has played around a lot with the sisters haha. Various times, his "baptism" was planned and then he would show up just to say that he wouldn´t be baptized. And so, needless to say, when he told Sister Guimarães and I last week that he wanted to be baptized, we were a little hesitant haha. But guys, it really happened. He was baptized this Saturday and comfirmed on Sunday! The feeling I had as he entered the water was truly unreal. On Sunday, he bore his testimony about how he was able to receive a testimony and it was honestly one of the most powerful testimonies I´ve ever heard! I´m so grateful for the way that God works in our lives and can change any heart! 

This week has really strengthened my testimony of prayer! Saturday afternoon, we taught a brother and sister named, Adrielle and Atílio. The lesson was so wonderful! They understood so well the message of the Restoration. We invited them to Diego´s baptism and they said that they wanted to go! When we went back that night to pick them up for the baptism, the mom pulled us to the side, with tears in her eyes, and said that that afternoon, moments before we had arrived, she had been praying for God to "send her a light" to help her children, and then we showed up :) She said that she had never had a prayer answered so quickly before :) 

I know that God is real! I know that He hears and answers our prayers and loves everyone of us so very much! 

Love you all! 

Sister Anderson 

Photos from the baptism!! 

I LOVE GENERAL CONFERENCE

Hey everyone! I loooooved this week and I hope everyone has enjoyed it as well! 

To start off, Sister Guimarães and I learned so much this week about exercising our faith to acheive the goals we make! Everyday, we made very meaningful goals of how many new investigators we would find and who we would mark for baptism and every day, we saw the hand of God making it happen! But we also learned a lot about how we have to do our part to act before God will help us! 

Another miracle from the week! DIEGO´S GOING TO BE BAPTIZED! I haven´t really talked about him before because I never thought that he was actually close to being baptized!! hahaha. He´s been an investigator and attending the Church here for about the last 6 months and doubts EVERYTHING. Let´s just say that he´s a complicated investigator. But he was finally able to receive an answer from God that the Church is true and it was really special to hear about how he received that answer. He´ll be baptized this Saturday and we´re very excited :) 

Like the title says, I just love General Conference so much, like I know everyone does! The Spirit and love from God I felt was just overwhelming. It truly is a moment where the heavens are very close to us :) I´m so grateful that we have a living prophet today to lead us and guide us! All of the words of the prophet and apostles were perfect and I could truly feel the Spirit testify in my heart that they were saying the things that God wants us to hear! And now we have the next 6 months to apply them in our lives and received the promised blessings! 

Love you all! 

Sister Anderson 

Awesome members of the ward that help us a lot, along with our recent convert Rafaella! 

A Sister who was in the CTM with me, but had to go home for medical reasons!