From Portuguese to English

                                                                                                         June 13, 2016

Hello Family,

I just want to tell you all that I love you and that I'm settling into my new area...

Here are a few pictures from the church site with the Sister Training Leaders. 

When I was being picked up from the church office to my new area in Ferreira, an American Irmã picked me up, named Bridget, and she doesn´t speak a lot of Portuguese, so I had to speak English the entire time. It´s really interesting because here in this part of Brasil, in our Ward, there are a lot of American families and they use headsets to hear the translation of the sacrament meeting in English. We had dinner with Bridget one night, and we taught her and her family a message about the Book of Mormon in English. It´s really strange to revert to English, and to force myself to talk in English. It´s funny because Bridget told me that I have a British accent in English....oh no, what is Portuguese doing to me? 

 

Also, when I arrived in her house to eat dinner with her family, I had a lot of trouble remembering to speak English, and a lot of her kids whispered to each other, ´´Is she American?´´. 

Haha, wow, it´s difficult to speak English, but I´m really working on it!

Another funny experience: Saturday afternoon, I received a call from the secretary of the Ward, and he asked me to give a talk in Church. This has never happened to me yet in the mission, so I was taken by surprise. So, yesterday, I gave a 15-minute talk in Portuguese about repentance. I trusted in the Lord with my Portuguese, and was able to feel the Spirit as I testified of the importance to repent every day in order to free ourselves of sorrow, and to use the grace of the Lord. Soon afterwards, in Gospel Principles Class, the teacher asked me to teach everyone about the steps of repentance because he had known I had studied up on it for my talk. Lets just say I feel REAL welcome here in Ferreira haha.

 

And, it´s really difficult to find new investigators here in this area because it is really upper class, and basically only has buildings with security in the front.



But on Saturday, we worked in a neighborhood that is the farthest neighborhood in our area, that is full of houses, and is a poorer part of the city, and ended up finding an eleita!! Her name is Claudia, and her two sisters are already members of the Church, and her nephew is serving a mission right now. She came up to us because of our mission tags, and began telling us that some of her family was part of the Church. She already had a Book of Mormon, and we shared a scripture with her from the Book of Mormon, and testified of its truthfulness. She is going to read more of it, and pray to know it is true. We taught her of baptism in the first visit, and she didn´t accept a date yet, but she said basically that if it is the will of the Lord to join the Church, she will. She is super Methodist, but has a huge desire to follow Heavenly Father´s will. A desire is all it takes to change.

 

I love you all, Please pray that this week we can be led to find some of Heavenly Father´s elect. In a really difficult area, we are going to rely a lot on the powers of Heaven. HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEK!!!