March 17, 2014

Querida Família,

WOOHOO!!  BOSTON!!  You guys are going to love your mission, and you won´t even believe how fast it goes.  I promise you won´t want to come back if you just give everything to the Lord.  The thing I´ve learned this week is that fear is the opposite of faith.  You will never know what´s going to happen in the future, but you don´t have enough faith in our loving Heavenly Father if you´re afraid of that.  Happiness is guaranteed for the faithful.

The purpose of goals and planning isn´t to decide how and when the Lord will bless you, but how hard you will work and what the Lord knows you can do.  We make our goals thinking of specific families and people, but when those people fall through, which happens A LOT, you have to keep working and having the faith that God has something else in mind.  Still no baptisms this week, but we have two more Sundays and 4 people marked their baptism for this week and it´s going to happen!

Yesterday we saw so many people at church we wanted to see!  Janete finally came and we got to tell Julia her daughter that she was there.  She couldn´t even believe it.  She brought her boyfriend too and we´re going to start teaching them.  It was so awesome that she came, even with her ex-husband there and the whole ward knowing she left. 

We found two people in the area book this week, Allison, 19, and Felipe, 17 (not related) who were both almost baptized and we don´t know why they weren´t.  We were able to contact BOTH and they BOTH still want to get baptized!

Another two investigators were also at church, Janaina and Antonio.  Antonio is an older man and we are helping him quit smoking.  Janaina is about my age and has a daughter and we´re also helping her quit smoking.  Her dad said he would FOR SURE come to church, so sure that he gave us his cell phone and told us to keep it until he came to church.  hahaha... yeah, he didn´t come.  It was hilarious though.

Winter is beginning here, and I´m not sure if the rain is much better than the heat here... we saw two fish in the road.  Physically, sometimes I don´t even think I´ll be able to survive another day on this mission, but if you can get past that it´s just the best thing ever.  At the end of each day I know without a doubt that the Lord was helping me just to be able to walk. 

So we didn´t do much differently, but I´m learning that faith isn´t getting your hopes way up and expecting that God will grant your every whim and make all your investigators be at church and get baptized, but it´s trusting that he will bless you for your work.  It´s just always in His time, and He always has something for us to learn.  Miracles happen every day and if we don´t notice them, why would God send us more?

Carla and Alex love us, they are still reading the scriptures and praying and they are my favorite investigators ever. Carla always cries and she is so sincere with her questions.  They are still trying to get to documents they need to get married,so it´s gonna be a little bit of a wait.  UGH, like a whole month for someone to be baptized?  Is this what it´s like to serve in the united states? ;)

I love you all so much and can´t wait to hear about your own mission adventures.  Boston is going to be so great, even if you don´t get to see monkeys and dinosaurs :) Brasil is the best, the church is true!

Always make sure you´re converted to the Savior and not to anything else!  Feed His sheep!

 Fiquem felizes, Jesus te ama

com amor e carinho,

Sister Moore