´´Be ye therefore very courageous to keep and to do all that is written´´

OIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!

So.... This week was a another GREAT WEEK. It started out pretty slow and we had some major bumps in the road, but the bumps hardly matter because it ended so good. Yesterday was the baptism of Raquel. Raquel is a 15-year old young woman. Who is SO awesome. A couple of weeks ago we met her because we were looking for a different investigator who lives in the same divided house. Our other investigator wasn´t home, but Luis (Raquel Dad) opened his door and told us that she wasn´t home and asked who we were. It just happened to be really outside this day, and he invited us in and told us that his teenage daughter was home, so we took advantage of the situation and asked if we could share a message with him. He accepted even though he wasn´t very interested. As we were teaching Raquel left her homework to start listening. She told us that before we had showed up she had a feeling that she needed to find God, a path to follow, and that all that faulted was us knocking on her door :) She and her sister Rafaela and their friend Geiza went to church with us for the last two sunday´s. We always invited them for baptism, but they always felt like it was too early. This week as we taught Raquel we invited her for baptism and she told us that she knew that it would be something good, but that she was SCARED. We shared the scripture in Alma 7 that says not to fear baptism, and we felt really prompted by the spirit the whole entire lesson. She is such a good example of courage to me. I know that she was scared because her sister and her friend thought that baptism was way too early, and that she was CRAZY for wanting to be baptized. But she decided that it was necessary for her. She has a desire to follow Jesus Christ and she didn´t let fear get in the way of keeping and doing all that is written in the scriptures. She didn´t let it get in the way of following the promptings of the Holy Ghost. ANDDDD because of her example Rafaela and Geiza felt the spirit so strongly during the baptism that they want to be baptized next week!!!!!! The baptism was such a spiritual experience for me as well. I LOVE Raquel and Rafaela and Geiza so much. They are such beautiful daughters of Heavenly Father and I know how much happiness the gospel is going to bring in their lives.

Sabrina, another investigator we have been teaching for a long while now, has also decided to be baptized on the 14th!!!!! Announced yesterday during Sacrament Meeting. She is also a great example of courage to me. Her mom is dying of cancer and she feels so helpless, and yet she still has the courage to put her faith to test and follow the savior Jesus Christ. 

Courage is to not be afraid, especially of doing what is right. I know that it is necessary to live the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I know that all of us can apply this principle in our lives. As a missionary, I know that sometimes it´s hard to have the courage to go up to random strangers on the street, sometimes it´s hard to have the courage to commit investigators to baptism on the first lesson, sometimes it´s hard to have the courage to always follow the promptings of the Holy Ghost. I also know that when my heart takes courage and I keep and do all that is written, the Savior blesses me. I feel so blessed to be having such great experiences on my mission. I feel so blessed to be in such a great area with such a great companion. I feel so blessed to be seeing so much success on my mission. I know that I am helping the Lord help and touch the lives of others. 

Never Fear. Be of good courage.

Desi      

Our Desire to Share the Gospel Takes All of Us to our Knees, and It Should, Because We Need the Lord's Help.

Something I learned this week is that a testimony truly is powerful!!! We have been teaching a man named Jefferson from Bahia, and it´s been hard to get in contact with him because he works so much, but this week on friday he called because he needed help with his living situation because he lives in a place where people are always drinking, swearing, and doing bad things. We called the bishop to help him, and the next day when we called to see if we could meet with him he told us that we could, but he didnt feel like studying and that he just needed a friend. Hmmmm...... Ok I thought let´s go be his friend, and we listened to him talk about his life and things that we´re going on, his goals and dreams in life, and I mentioned something about my family and showed him a picture. He asked me, So if you have such a pretty family why did you leave them to come here??? When he asked me why I left my family it made me really reflect, why am I here?????? I thought for a second and what I came to the conclusion to is that I´m here because the Lord has given me everything that I have, it was the Lord who gave me such an awesome family, it was the Lord who has given me the gospel and I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior. I know of the importance of the gospel in my life and in the lives of other people. I know that Baptism is not an option, its necessary. So I shared my testimony with Jefferson, he said he didn´t want to study but I shared a scripture anyways. 

1 Nephi 9: 6 `But the Lord ^aknoweth all things from the beginning; wherefore, he prepareth a way to accomplish all his works among the children of men; for behold, he hath all ^bpower unto the fulfilling of all his words. And thus it is. Amen.´ I felt like I was actually being prompted and inspired by the Holy Ghost, it was the best feeling I had all week. And now Jefferson wants to become a member of the church and be baptized!!!!  I was really happy to see the message that he sent us saying that he wanted to be baptized.  

I hope everyone has a good week, and don´t forget to write. It makes all the difference

Sister Bruno

Our Desire to Share the Gospel Takes All of Us to our Knees, and It Should, Because We Need the Lord's Help.

Something I learned this week is that a testimony truly is powerful!!! We have been teaching a man named Jefferson from Bahia, and it´s been hard to get in contact with him because he works so much, but this week on friday he called because he needed help with his living situation because he lives in a place where people are always drinking, swearing, and doing bad things. We called the bishop to help him, and the next day when we called to see if we could meet with him he told us that we could, but he didnt feel like studying and that he just needed a friend. Hmmmm...... Ok I thought let´s go be his friend, and we listened to him talk about his life and things that we´re going on, his goals and dreams in life, and I mentioned something about my family and showed him a picture. He asked me, So if you have such a pretty family why did you leave them to come here??? When he asked me why I left my family it made me really reflect, why am I here?????? I thought for a second and what I came to the conclusion to is that I´m here because the Lord has given me everything that I have, it was the Lord who gave me such an awesome family, it was the Lord who has given me the gospel and I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior. I know of the importance of the gospel in my life and in the lives of other people. I know that Baptism is not an option, its necessary. So I shared my testimony with Jefferson, he said he didn´t want to study but I shared a scripture anyways. 

1 Nephi 9: 6 `But the Lord ^aknoweth all things from the beginning; wherefore, he prepareth a way to accomplish all his works among the children of men; for behold, he hath all ^bpower unto the fulfilling of all his words. And thus it is. Amen.´ I felt like I was actually being prompted and inspired by the Holy Ghost, it was the best feeling I had all week. And now Jefferson wants to become a member of the church and be baptized!!!!  I was really happy to see the message that he sent us saying that he wanted to be baptized.  

I hope everyone has a good week, and don´t forget to write. It makes all the difference

Sister Bruno

Sister Trainer

Today I start training a new sister, Sister Amaral from the North East of Brazil!!! Hope everyone has a good week :) Desi

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

The Power of Fasting

This week was great. We had the baptism of Brandon. Everything was so inspired and prompted by the Lord. He is the son of a member from Bolivia who moved back to Brazil a couple of weeks ago. The Saturday before he went to church with his mom all the people we had confirmed to go to church with us cancelled the last minute and when we told our LD he told us that we should pray for an elect to be at church the next day, and that we did and Heavenly Father truly sent a true eleito. The first time we went to visit him after we saw him at church he didn´t even want to listen to us. He seemed very closed off and said he was leaving so he couldn´t talk to us. Later his mom told us to back off a little bit because he told her that it seemed like we were exorcists and that we wanted to remove the evil spirits from him hahahahahaa. But this week I felt a strong prompting to go back and talk to him and when we got there it seemed like a completely different person, very open to everything. Brandon is a very intelligent young man, who knows a little bit about everything. The first time we truly taught him I felt the spirit so strongly, and decided to fast the very same day, and everything that happened afterwards with him was truly inspired from Heavenly Father. Sister Moura our sister leader felt like she needed to do splits with us, and teach him about the plan of salvation, the next day a member called  and told us that he felt like he needed to help the missionaries and he went and visited Brandon with us. The baptism of Brandon was so spiritual too. Bishop Marcelo said that he saw in the eyes of Brandon that he was going to be a great leader one day!!!! I´m so happy to have helped the Lord bring another sheep into his flock. We are also helping a single mom, Luciene, stop smoking to be baptized. She went to church this Sunday and loved it, and can´t wait to be baptized. It´s been really cool to work with her too. I know that through faith she can stop smoking soon!!!!!! Tomorrow is mission conference, and I`M SOOOOO STOKED because a general authority, Elder Antunes from the seventies is coming to speak. President Ferrin asked us all to start a fast right now so that we could be prepared to feel the spirit and learn things that will help us with our missions. I know it´s going to be an awesome experience Next week is also transfers, but I´m hoping that me and sister Lima get to both stay because we have been getting a long so great and she works hard!!!!!! I know that Heavenly Father blesses us when we are obedient and truly trying to serve others. Love you all, sorry for being so whinny last week. Hope everyone is doing good and trying to share the gospel!!!!!

Using Soccer as a Finding Tool

 This week we had DIVISIONS..... I stayed in my area with Sister de Jesus it was fun, we laughed a lot!

This week we made a lot of contacts because we were needing to increase our group of teaching. Our district leader gave us some advice. He told us that whenever we see kids playing on the street soccer or something like it to start playing with them and then ask them to meet their parents. Seemed ridiculous to me. But when I saw kids on the street I thought I´ll never know until I try right? We started playing this wierd game they play here called taco in our skirts it was fun and the kids loved us, and they all want to go to church now. Unfortunately their parents werent at home so we marked to visit them during this week. Let´s see what happens? 

This week we started teaching a man named Elineu who seemed really receptive, but after church yesterday he wanted to talk to us outside of the church and basically told us he wasnt going to come back because he didnt agree that sex was a sin because the talk in sacrament meeting was about the law of chastity... It was a wierd situation. He says he wants to find a wife and have kids and have a happy family. As I explained to him that only through the gospel of jesus christ is how he can have a truly happy family that will live together forever and how he will return to live with heavenly father I felt a firm assurance that the things that I was saying were true. I felt really really really sad afterwards, but I know I can say without doubts that I did my part in teaching him about the gospel of jesus christ.

The mission is passing by fast. Tomorrow I will be out for exactly 8 months!!!! Can you believe it???

Hope everyone has a good week!!!

Sister Bruno

Premortal Promise to Brazilians

Minha Familia Linda!!!!!!

I´m loving serving here in Vila Prudente. Living in São Paulo is surreal, its HUGE!!!!!!!! So much commotion.My companion Sister Lima is great, we frequently get asked if we are sisters!!!!  

My recent converts Debora and Carlos received the Holy Ghost yesterday, and I couldn't be happier for them. They both are so special and I know that the Lord will find many ways for them to serve. 

 This week was a good week, but a hard week as well. We taught a 40 year old women named Lucia who had gone to church last Sunday. It was interesting because even though she´s 40 years old she has a hard time understanding a lot of things so you have to teach her like you would teach a child, but she was really receptive and I felt like the spirit helped me SO MUCH while teaching her and when we invited her for baptism she accepted right away, but when we returned she told us that she could only get baptized in her mom´s church, Deus e Amor. But it was hard because she wants to get baptized because we put it in her head, but her Mom would only let her get baptized in her church, but shes 40 years old!!!!! It was discouraging to try to help her understand that only baptism with the priesthood authority will value in the eyes of god and sad to see that she didn't even want to understand. And as the week went on the same exact thing happened again. We invited for the baptism they accepted and got excited about it and the next day she didn't want to because her husband is Buddhist and said she couldn't. These situations are always hard because you don´t want to stop visiting them, but you have to be careful because their are more people that want to hear the gospel and are willing to go to church and progress and have situations that allow them too, but it still always leaves me sad to have to cut people from our group of teaching.

 This week my companion is going to another area because of a fight that another group of sisters had, so this week should be interesting without her, but I´m excited because we are going to start teaching the son of a recent convert who just moved here from Bolivia and only speaks a little bit of Portuguese, but he seems really awesome and I´m hoping that we can help him feel the spirit and accept to start a new life centered in Christ through baptism.  

I´m loving the mission and I´m having great spiritual experiences. It´s not always easy, but it´s definitely been worth it. I know that the Lord sent me here to Brazil with a very specific purpose. Perhaps before this life I made promises to some people here in Brazil that I would find them and help them understand the gospel of Jesus Christ so that they too could return and live with Heavenly Father and their families forever!!!!! I´m happy to be serving and to be meeting so many special sons and daughters of God. 

EU AMO MINHA FAMILIA!!!!!!

Sister Bruno

Two Baptisms in Vila Prudente Ward in Brazil

I didn´t have time to get online this week, but this week was really good we had 2 baptisms, Carlos and Deborah!!!! It was a really spiritual experience for them and for me. Hope everyone has a good week!! I promise to write more next week!!!!!!! 

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