Elder Atunes Encourages Missionary to Use the Scriptures in Teaching Invesigators

Minha Querida Familia, Today is the last day of my fifth transfer!!!!! This transfer was really good. We met our goal of 5 baptisms, 2 of them being men. This week was a good week, we had the opportunity to start to teach the cousin of Brandon, Marilia, and she got baptized yesterday. Really it was a miracle because every time we went to their house before she didn't want to know anything about anything because she already had her religion. I´m catholic is all we heard. But after she went to church and watched Brandon's baptism everything changed. She asked me on Sunday if we were going to visit them that week, and visit is what we did. She wanted to keep going to the catholic church and our church and didn't want to get baptized so soon, but by the second time we visited she had such a desire to be baptized. And Sunday Brandon received the priesthood, and he is already wanting to serve a mission!!! It was the first time that I saw someone receive the priesthood (do we say receive the priesthood in English? I don't even know anymore) And guess who baptized Marilia? Fabio, the baptism we had the first week of the transfer!!!! It was awesome to see the progress of all of our recent converts!!!! This week we had a mission conference with Elder Antunes of the seventy. He is SO AWESOME. SO EXCITED AND HAPPY. It was pretty funny because he pretty much told us all that we needed a lot of improvement, but he did it in such a fun, happy way. This week we had a lot of fire to do our best. A big point that he made is that we need to start using our scriptures, and its something that is so true. I wasn't using the scriptures a lot, and this week I used so many scriptures and they really helped invite the spirit to teach. When we teach without them we are teaching solo, but when we use the scriptures we let Heavenly father, Jesus Christ and the holy ghost teach because we use their words. Every lesson I taught this week I really felt the help I was receiving. Reading Franny´s emails makes me really grateful to be in Bra This week Brazil is going through a revolution or something of the sort, all the members are enjoying going to the protests because they say the government of Brazil is really really corrupted, but no worries, nothing too extreme in Vila Prudente. Hope everyone has a good week!! I bought a new camera this week!!! THANKS TO EVERYONE who helped!!!!! I´ll be sure to take lots of pictures and send them to all of you!!! I´m happy to see that all of you are good. Give away a Book of Mormon this week, I promise you won´t regret it!!!!!!!! PS- Is it true that missionaries can really use Facebook now?!?!?!?! Desi

New Area Lots of Investigators

Dearest Family!!!!!

This week was SOOOO crazy. So much change!!!! I got transfered to a new area called Vila Prudente in the BIG CITY of São Paulo as the senior companion. My new companion is Sister Lima from Recife, Brazil. I think President put us together because of our size. haha. both short short short... I´m so excited to be here because I had an experience in the MTC where I met a girl from Brazil thats studying at BYU that was participating in TRC where we teach actual people and try to learn about them and what they do and what not. Anyways she wrote down the names and addresses of her family when I told her I was going to serve in Sao Paulo. She didnt even know what mission of Sao Paulo they lived in, but she told me if I served in the ward of Vila Prudente to go visit them and try to help them join the church and be baptized. I had completely forgot about her, but the week before transfers I found the paper that she had written down everything and where else does her family live but Vila Prudente?!?!?!?!?! I´m excited to go visit them and try to help Samanta and her family!!!!!!! 

This week was so busy and crazy. Being in the city is A LOT different that São Jose dos Campos because their is SOOO many people and so many cars and so much pollution and so much business and craziness. The ward here in Vila Prudente is HUGE and has a lot a lot of people really rich and affluent in the church. One member just got called to be a mission president in a new mission that´s going to be opened in July here in Brazil. Another member is a professional piano player and he plays in sacrament meeting with all sorts of cool and beautiful renditions of the hymns. I´ve never heard a piano player as good as him!!! It's awesome!!!!! Our Area is HUGE. It includes a lot of really rich neighborhoods, but also includes a lot of really really poor neighborhoods. It was an interesting experience because for the first time I entered something that they call a Favela. Kind of like the projects, but its like little streets with a bunch of huts piled together with a bunch of people living in small spaces. Look it up on Google!!!!! 

A lot happened in the short week that I´ve been here. A lot of really GREAT things!!!! We had a wedding on Saturday and baptism on Sunday which was cool because the sisters have been working with this couple for about 6 months now so that they could divorce from their other spouses to get married to baptize Fabio (samanta already is a member) Just like Adriana and Donizete in Morumbi. Fabio is so AWESOME and I know he is going to be a great leader in the Church. The Wedding was BEAUTIFUL. Samanta looked like a princess and Fabio looked like a prince. The Baptism was also really really special. The members here love him!!!!! I felt the spirit more strongly than I had in a really really long time!!!!!!

Another miracle that happened this week is that we had worked so hard the day of the wedding and heard 5 people repeatedly say to us: look, we really think you guys are really nice and we like you but we already have our own religion. But.... we kept going strong without getting discouraged and on our way to the wedding someone called: SISTERS!!! It was a member that lives in our area, but goes to a different ward. She was with her nieces and nephew that haven´t been baptized and she explained that they had been going to church in the different ward, but that they had been wanting to take the missionary discussions and be baptized!!!! and the next day they all came to our ward and we´re going to start teaching them this week. Heavenly Father really prepares people and puts them exactly in our path. WOAHHHHHH!!!!!!! 

 I miss MORUMBI a lot more than I thought I would. It was hard to leave my first area I cried a lot because I love the members and my recent converts SOOO much and I´m sad to miss Adriana and Donizetes wedding and baptism, but I´m really really happy to be here in Vila Prudente and even though its a lot of work and more stress than I´ve ever felt in my life I know that it´s exactly where I´m supposed to be and I know that I have a lot of work to do here!!!! I LOVE YOU ALL

Desi