Dearest Family and Friends,
It´s been an awesome
week! I am at São José do Norte again because we decided to go to the
beach this time because it is so sunny and nice out (it was weird to
hear that there has been some snow already back in the states)
Last thursday I got mail for the first time out in
the field (it is all sent to the mission home and we only get it about
once a month) Thanks for all your letters! Its bad to brag and I need to
stay humble, but I got the most letters of anyone in my zone :). Not a
big deal though. Special thanks to the Activity day girls! It was so fun
to get those letters.
Yesterday when we got to church, I was asked to give
a talk in sacrament meeting. As missionaries, we always are supposed to
have a talk prepared and I was kind of expecting it that morning so it
wasn´t a huge surprise. It went really well I think. I spoke about the
gifts from God that are freely available to us if only we ask and are
obedient. He wants to bless us with protection, strength, and love
(shown through the atonement see John 3:16-17) and all we have to do is listen, obey, and accept his gifts.
Yesterday in church we had several investigators and
a whole lot of less actives! We worked a lot this week with some less
active members and had many of them come to church. We visited Ionice
and her son Mateus this week and invited them to come back to church,
and Ionice was super funny. She said she hadn´t had time that week to
dye her hair and her roots were showing but that she would come anyway.
And she did!
In portuguese, you can add the ending -ão to some
words and it means a bigger version of the thing, like amigo is friend
and amigão is a super great friend. I can´t remember the grammatical
term for that, but anyway. An orelhão is a little telephone booth thing
shaped like a giant ear (orelha is ear). Also, one that I thought was
funny was the word for coffin- caixão. It literally means the big box or
the ultimate box (caixa).
A cool experience we had this week was teaching
Wagner, an investigator we found as a street contact. He is the one I
mentioned last week that we taught on the street in the rain. He was
smoking when we found him, so we knew that might be an issue. We taught
him about the restoration last week, and this week we taught him about
the word of wisdom. He is super eager to hear the lessons and is always
waiting for us. He said that he knows that God sent us to help guide
him. We challenged him to live the word of wisdom and set a goal this
week to go from smoking 15 cigarettes a day to 5, and he said that he
would rather just stop entirely! He is so willing to make changes and
even though it will be hard, I know he will be blessed. Please pray for
him this week to have the strength to make those changes.
Erik, Eduardo and Lucas all came to a young men´s
activity this week. We had churrasco (super intense barbecue where the
meat is on giant spears and stuff) with chicken and they played soccer
and it was really fun. The young men are great and helping a lot with
helping them feel included.
At the member´s houses, we always share a spiritual
thought and this week a couple of times I shared 2 Ne 31:10. I know that
if we persevere to the end, we will be happy during the process and
ultimately inherit eternal life and happiness. Sometimes it is hard to
do all the things we know we should and sometimes it is hard to see how
it will all work out, but that is when we have to exercise faith in
Jesus Christ by doing the things we need to and repenting daily so that
we can have the Holy Ghost to guide us.
I love you all and love hearing from you! Thank you for your love and prayers.
Love,
Sister Smith
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