August 18, 2014

Querida Família,

It sounds like you guys are doing great work and living the dream on your mission!  I love your pictures. Sorry I don´t take that many pictures, I don´t walk around with my camera and I also don´t look that cute when I´m working haha... just sweaty
.

So we´re still going through a little bit of a trial of patience and faith... but the miracles are going to happen.  Arriving in the area was a whole lot of excitement, and the pool of ´´eternigators´´ in the ward made it look like we had a lot more progressing investigators than we really did, just because everything´s new to us.  But that doesn´t mean the miracles aren´t going to happen.

I gave a training on setting goals on Tuesday for the Sisters in our zone.  It was really fun to do and preparing helped me think a lot about faith and our expectations.  I asked them why we lower our expectations and goals on the mission.  In PMG in the part in Chapter 1 ´´A successful missionary´´ it says that when we lower our expectations, our faith will weaken and our effectiveness will diminish.

The reasons we lower our expectation usually come from dissapointment, pessimism, discouragement.  I know I´ve done this before: you don´t succeed in your goals for the month and so you just lower the goal for the next month so that maybe you´ll reach it.  But is that the kind of missionary and person we want to be?  Change the plan, pray for direction, try again and be patient, but keep hoping for the best results.
 

I was feeling pretty cool with our 3 baptisms that were super solid this week and our other possible baptisms.  But, what I gave my training on was unfortunately tested.  V is progressing really well, reads everything, is super excited about the baptism, but suddenly her family had to travel on Sunday.  L´s grandma yelled at us and told her her grandson didn´t know anything and wasn´t going to get baptized when we went to take him to the interview.  When he didn´t go, we thought C was going to give up too, but he told us he´d go on his bike and meet us at the chapel.
 

Sitting in front of the chapel, we were sure he wasn´t coming.  But we just decided to read Hebrews 11 while we waiting, you know, to keep our faith strong.  The second we finished, he arrived on his bike like he said and passed the interview.  That was a miracle.  Sunday, he arrived at church with a towel in hand and everything ready to be baptized, but then told us he was hungry and left to buy food.  Never came back.  Someone assaulted him and took his bike, and he ran home scared.  So.. not exactly a cool ending, and who knows if he was just running from the baptism.  But we marked his baptism for next week and we´ll have more time to see if he´s really ready.

People like this are stressful to work with but I also love it.  He is like a little kid, life has never really given him the chance to succeed, but he is so humble and even though he can´t read, he´s learned how to pray.  In his own way, he understands the things we teach him.  The coolest thing is how L was helping him.  These guys are over 20 years old, but people have only told them their whole lives that they can´t do anything.  We´re going to keep working with them and let them show that they can make a promise with God, but we´ll see if they can endure to the end of this week.
 

Sunday night we went to a farewell party of a missionary leaving from the ward and a bunch of returned missionaries bore their testimonies and shared experiences.  I felt a little bit lacking in experiences of finding and baptizing families like they had, and I left a little sad.  But this morning I was reflecting on my mission and I wouldn´t regret it if I had to leave today.  But like Alma said to Amuleque, they can´t kill us because we still have work to do.  I need to build my faith and trust a lot still, but I know my mission has been so far exactly what I need it to be.
 

I´ve found that you can´t decide how people will use their free will, but God put them in your path for a reason.  We also have the agency the choose if our missions and our lives will be successful.  If we´ll work hard or be lazy, if we´ll be happy or discouraged, if we´ll be agents to act or objects to be acted upon.  Don´t ever give up!
 

I always pray for all of you and for your missions.  Enjoy every second.  I love you all so much! 

Santa Rita is still the best area.  The church is still true.  The Book of Mormon will help you draw close and stay close to Christ more than any other book.  Have an awesome week!

Com muito amor,

Sister Moore

August 11, 2014

Querida Família,

This is the best area in the world.  Other than the house, which we call Castelo de Greyskull, the Elders did some great work here.  On Saturday Sister Alves and Sister Sales baptized 4 people, a family and another mission-age man.  We brought ten people to church yesterday, 6 investigators and 4 less-actives, and we have about eight people who potentially can be baptized this week.  I don´t even know where to start..

The first day here, a 14-year-old boy, Jefferson, who was baptized just a few weeks ago was waiting on our street because he wanted to meet us and show us around.  That day we ended up just following him and then meeting another member and they just led us to all these people and we never even had to look at our plans or think about the time.  There are a lot of Young Women in this ward who I already love so much who are preparing to serve missions and are helping us so much.  

Mili, one of the Young Women, has a mom, Cristina who has already been to church many times but just won´t commit to be baptized and live the word of wisdom.  When we met her she liked us right away and I just told her straight up that we were going to baptize her and she just laughed and said she´s a sinner but set an appointment.  We taught her and Mili and it was very led by the Spirit. Mili doesn´t want to get her hopes up again but she bore her testimony and expressed how her mom´s baptism is the thing she wants to see more than anything.  Cristina accepted baptism for the 17th, but didn´t go to church yesterday because she was sleeping. We are just praying for a miracle that the spirit can really touch her heart and convert her.  Sometimes you just need Sisters ;)

We met Vanessa, a 16-year-old, while contacting her less-active friend.  She is just super elect, read the pamphlet we gave her, went to church, loved it and wants to be baptized.  We even saw her later on Sunday during a contact and she told the guy we were contacting to go to church because it´s awesome. (We marked that guy´s baptism and he´s bringing his nephew to church too next Sunday :)

Carlos, same thing.  Super prepared and willing to keep the commandments, but doesn´t read and understands a little more slowly.  He was very happy at church and went with Luiz, a less active recent convert.  We might have to baptize Luiz again because the Elders didn´t leave records.  Think the Other Side of Heaven when they tell him none of his work counts. 

Other than that we have two other teenagers who have been going to church, Joyce and Joelington, whose parents won´t sign their papers.  But we already talked with Joelington´s mom who is hard hearted but became much more open after we talked to her, and especially after her son said the last prayer.  

A lot of other miracles happened, but those were just a few highlights.  I have so much faith that this is going to be a transfer of reaping what other missionaries have planted instead of just planting planting planting.  The ward is really good, the bishop has really good goals for the ward´s growth and wants us to baptize every day.  I am loving it so much here.  It´s the hilliest area I´ve ever had, but it´s very beautiful here.  There are a lot of 300+ year-old restored buildings and we have views of just GREEN.  Santa Rita is just a little more inland than João Pessoa.  We walk everywhere and take the bus to meetings and things outside the area.  

Sister Cavalcanti is an amazing companion.  She´s from São Paulo Capital.  She was baptized at 15 and was raised just with her grandma, who is over 80 years old and writes her letters, not emails.  She was the only member in her family until right before her mission when her grandma, who at first didn´t even want to let her get baptized, was baptized.  It was really hard for her to leave her grandma alone, and sometimes she doesn´t receive any emails.  Her email address is alana.cavalcanti@myldsmail.net if you want to write her.  I think it´d be cool.  She is such an example to me and is an amazing missionary.  I lived with her in Prossind when she was new and now she´s super confident and the Sister Training Leader of our zone.  I love her!

It´s so great to hear such great things from you guys! I love the ´´Jesus, Others, Yourself´´.   Being a missionary is the best isn´t it? Heavenly Father loves us so much and He hears our prayers and always answers.  If you want answers to your prayers, read Alma 34.  We have to do EVERYTHING we can after praying, because God won´t do things for us that we can do for ourselves.  

I love you all so much!

Sister Moore

August 6, 2014

Lindíssima família!

I love your pictures.  Haha it really looks like kind of a vacation, but obviously not because you´re already doing amazing things!  One Sister here who waited for her visa thinks that the church in the US will start to grow faster than Brasil because the members are getting involved.  Who can say if that´s true, but it´s so great to here about so many miracles!  It inspires me a lot.

ANYWAY... the reason I´m writing so late is that I got TRANSFERRED.  Already!  It was kind of sad because I felt like I was just getting to really know and love the members there.  But now I´m here in Santa Rita with Sister Cavalcanti and two other Brasilians.  One is like a foot shorter than me and it´s awesome.  I don´t know anything about this area because we´re opening it and it´s the first time they´ve ever had sisters.  Yes, that means we were left with an elder´s house.  Oh my gosh.  It´s horrible.  I feel like a homeless person invading an abandoned factory.  But that´s okay, opening areas that have never had sisters is the best.  We´ve spent the day walking around looking for a place to email.

It was a good, way to short, transfer in Ipes, and as always, we had a lot of good things happen right before I left.  We were going to mark the date of a wedding and baptism of a super elect couple, baptize A who´s been investigating the church forever and now doesn´t have to work on Sundays, and I was just getting to know the members.  It was a really cool week but it´s all left me now and I can´t think of anything but this new area.  

I´m in the same zone as Sister Sciammarella. All of my companions are dying. It´s her, Sister Seal and Sister Johnson´s last transfer.  I´ll get to see Sister Sciamm every week and that´s just a blessing for me.  Time is flying but now I feel like my mission´s just started again.

The biggest miracle for me this week was a personal experience with prayer.  I feel like the whole transfer I was just carrying this stress that I didn´t know the source of or how to get rid of it.  I just never felt like I was at peace with myself or my work, always doubting if I was doing things right.  I had already prayed about it, but I really just came to the point I had to know if I was trying enough or too hard.  I prayed with that kind of sincerity that you always tell your investigators to do.  The words of scriptures I knew just came to my head and I asked if I was just trying to comfort myself or if it was the comforter.  It was obvious in my head the answer, but a feeling of true peace just overcame me.  Like I never wanted to move from that spot.  Then I just told Heavenly Father everything I was worried about, the way I would to my own parents.  My answer was just to trust in the Lord and not in myself, and He will bring out my true best self.  And also that the things I want to change in myself won´t just change immediately.  

The next day was Sunday, when everyone loses their mind.  No one came to church.  A was sick and didn´t come to his baptism.  But I just kept thinking about that answer I received and nothing seemed to bother me.  I did all I could and people made their choices.  I just enjoyed taking the sacrament, listening to the testimonies of the members.  Our district sang at the Elder´s baptism and it was beautiful.  Afterward I also got to comfort two different less actives going through horrible things, people with no peace in their lives.  We sang hymns and listened to them.  It seems like it had been a long time since I´d just enjoyed the spirit like that, without thinking about what me or my companion is doing wrong, without thinking about our numbers, or when we have to leave for our next appointment.  

Never lose sight of the ´´why´´ of the Gospel, and your testimony will be that much more powerful, your work will be that much more efficient.  I know my Savior lives and loves me.  He died for me.  I don´t have any doubts.  If you feel like you´ve wasted time, or like your best efforts aren´t enough, or you´ve messed up, or you´ll try when a change happens, just STOP.  Right where you are is the perfect place to begin being the person the Lord wants you to be.  

I love you all so much!  I hope you have tons of success and miracles big and small!  Make it an awesome week!

Um abraço,

Sister Moore

July 28, 2014, One Year!

Querida Família,

As I complete a year on the mission, I´ve thought a lot about my mission as a whole.  I can´t say I never did things wrong or that I was exceptional.  But what really matters in the end is who I´ll be when my mission´s over, because it does end like anything else.  I´ve spent a lot of my life comparing myself to others and my mission as well, but as I´ve really looked at everything, God has given me so much.  These are just a few things I´ve learned and am still learning:

1. God knows where he wants us, more importantly, who he wants us with

2.  How to work and stop making excuses

3.  You need to have faith in the right things

4.  People you think are perfect are not

5.  Everyone has potential to be perfect, look for the good in everyone

6.  It´s not such a sin to be raised in Utah (my awesome companions :)

7.  I do in fact want to get married after the mission

8.  It´s better to pray for strength than for change

9.  I have an amazing family

10.  I still think too much about what others think

11.  Laziness in the end will probably be the worst sin

12.  You have to love yourself to love others

13.  If you don´t love someone perfectly, you just don´t know them perfectly

14.  The gospel IS in fact the solution to everything

15.  How to study the scriptures

16.  How to listen

17.  Always think about how you say things

18.  Laugh at yourself 

These are a lot of things that came directly from the mouths of my companions or other missionaries, but things I´ll always keep with me.  I realized this week what my life was before the mission.  A LOT of hours of doing absolutely nothing.  I´ve never even done anything in my life for a year and a half without a break or without giving up.  The difference a mission will make for the rest of my life is immeasurable.  Not all of it is fun, but it´s important.  I know that the Lord is aware of me when no one else is.  He has provided all I need to become like Him.  

I love you all so much and hope you have a great week.  It sounds like you are doing great things.  Be as kind to yourself as you would be with others.  I expect the next 6 months to be the most life changing!  

Com muito amor, 

Sister Moore

July 21, 2014

Linda família!!

Itainá, the girl who was a referall from the Elders AND members last Sunday, was baptized!  It really was the most smooth baptism of my life.. she is just that elect.  It´s always the youth whoa re like that.  When we followed up with her after teaching the restoration, she just said ´´I don´t usually like to read a lot, but after reading that pamphlet you left, I just wanted to read it again and know everything.´´  She´s pretty shy, but she told us with a big smile she wanted to be baptized.  The spirit was so strong in every lesson and she was just so prepared.  She even went to a YW activity.  I think one of the biggest miracles was that the ward did EVERYTHING at the baptism.  The YW sang, someone made brownies, they had all the talks and messages lined up, usually things the missionaries have to do themselves.  I´m just very grateful for the whole thing.  The church is true!  Her mom came to the baptism and I hope she´ll have the desire to come to church and be taught too, and her older sister too.  

Another miracle this week was finding an elect less-active, Diego.  It turns out a different Diego who was also baptized used to live in that house, so this Diego was just confused as to how we found him when he was baptized in another ward.. LONG ago.  We just taught him from the beginning because he didn´t remember anything.  He even asked us if he could be baptized again.. just a reminder that our success isn´t always in our numbers.  Did I mention he´s in a wheelchair?  He was mistaken for someone else and was shot several times, leaving him without use of his legs.  He wheeled himself to church alone.  So cool!  The Lord really wanted us to find him.

Miracles happen every day, and looking for them really is a skill that you have to practice.  If you just write the good things that happen each day and realize God´s hand in all things, it can change everything.  This week, I´m not sure who we´re gonna baptize.  We finally got a hold of A again and marked and appointment with him 6:00 tonight.  Running into him in the street again was a miracle.  He´s still curious about everything but I think he may have problems with commandments so he´s not really too committed about baptism.  But that´ll change ;)

It´s so fun to hear about your mission, mom and dad.  Mom, you are so enthusiastic in your letters.  I bet the Sisters love spending time with you guys :)  I loved the things you said about companions.  You can´t build zion if zion doesn´t exist first in your home and with your companion!  I´m learning a LOT of things about that, and I hope it at least helps me someday with my future husband.  Something Sister Seal taught me is that ANY problem with your companion is just a problem with yourself.  

That´s so sad to hear about Uncle Lars.  I know dad had a very special relationship with him and I´ll always remember good things about him.  

I love you all so much! The church is true and Heavenly Father loves us. He wants us to enjoy the journey, so remember to laugh!  If you can only be good at one thing, be good at smiling :)

Abraços,

Sister Moore  

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July 14, 2014

Querida Familia:

Here´s a picture of me and Sister Christensen in our area.  Can you find the church?  :)  

Please send my love to ALL the family.  Claire Olivia is so cute and those pictures were really good.  Ali still looks so pretty after having a baby!  Mom and Dad, I hope you are already loving the mission in this first week.  I want to hear about all the little miracles and cool experience that you´ll have as representatives of the Lord!

It´s been basically the same thing here, we had an investigator at church, 20-year-old D who just doesn´t seem that interested.  She was a referral from a member, which is a miracle in and of itself, and seemed like she was in the perfect situation to be looking for God in her life.   From what we already knew about her life, the meetings were all perfect for her situation, but she just had no reaction, to church or to the first lesson.  It´s just kind of driving us crazy, she was making every excuse for us to not pass by and teach any more and didn´t even accept a copy of the Book of Mormon because she wouldn´t have time to read it.  After church our leaders who share the same chapel asked about her and just told us to go find someone who had already been to church who will be our baptism for next week.  Elder Gomes gave us a reference of a girl who had been visiting the church with her cousin who he had taught.

Now here´s the miracle, we didn´t know how to find this girl, but we decided to contact another reference from the same member who introduced us to D.  The reference she gave wasn´t interested in going to church and lived with her boyfriend, but before leaving we asked who else lived there and she said her younger sister.  It turned out her sister WAS the reference the Elders gave, a 17-year-old named I.  We marked 2 Nephi 31 for her to read and marked her baptism for this Sunday!  Today we´ll pass by and follow up.  It was a good way to end the week.

Besides that, the week was a little frustrating but at the end of each day I feel something good had been done.  We are working with T, an 18-year-old who is basically a member but her mom won´t allow her to be baptized.  She´s been going to church in another ward with her cousins for months.  Just meeting her has been awesome, and she´s going to help us teach her neighbor R, who didn´t go to church because of a death in the family but really is interested.  

Another miracle I think was just last night when we went to a member´s house.  The dad used to be a bishop but now they´re starting to go inactive.  Getting to know them a little better, we ended up just talking about hymns.  They had a keyboard and they let me play hymns and we all just sang together and felt the spirit fill the house through music.  For me it really was special.  I have such a strong testimony of hymns now on the mission and the power they have to bring the spirit and worship God.  The habit of singing a hymn when your thoughts aren´t where they should be really works.  We should never overlook them, God ordained the hymnal to be made three months after the church was restored.  Christ and the apostles sang a hymn before He performed the atonement for us.

It´s funny you should mention J, I had the feeling to write her a letter this week.  I don´t think she´s doing very well.  I always remember her in my prayers specifically.

Missions are hard, they always will be hard.  You never really figure it out, and I think it´s meant to be that way.  Once you think you know what you´re doing, God puts you back at square one.  

I´m just grateful for my Savior and for His church.  He gives us so many blessings and is always there for us.  I made a list this week of promises from the Lord and things I merely want.  It really gave perspective to my desires and focus.  Our biggest goal should always be to return to live with our Hevenly Father and to love one another.  I know this church is true, the Book of Mormon will help any one who reads to feel closer to the Savior.  

I love you all so much!!  Seja feliz!

Com amor,

Sister Moore

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July 7, 2014

Queridos Elderes e Sisteres :)

It´s so fun to see you guys as missionaries and to imagine you doing TRC and all that..  I still am not completely sure how to explain exactly what it is you´ll be doing on your mission but I know you´ll bless many lives!  I´m sad that Nick wasn´t baptized.  I´ll keep praying that he works it out.  

Our people last week all turned out to be not so great.  We´ll continue to try to talk to Alexandro, but he´s just been at his girlfriend´s house the whole week after he had surgery.  N and V are a part of some intellectual, non-religion group and they just wanted information to bring to their group and talk about us.  It was really irritating... not the first time someone has faked interest just to turn our words against us in the end.  You can always tell the difference in the spirit of those lessons and you just have to leave.  

We´ve been working really hard this week and it´s been really hard but one of those weeks I feel I´ve learned a lot.  Sometimes you just have to be in a situation you think you can´t handle so you can learn to trust the Lord.  And it´s been going a lot better than I thought already!  I´m learning so much about how to communicate with others and make them feel I care about them, and how sometimes it´s up to you to make a situation funny or less tense.

The miracle came at the end of the week when our zone fasted for everyone to have someone at church to be baptized the next week.  They came late, but all at once four investigators arrived together, three are friends and another we did NOT expect.  A is a 20-year-old who Sister Christensen was working with before but we dropped him because he didn´t seem interested. But we saw him on the street with his friends last week and invited them to come and all three came.  R kind of follows the crowd but accepted baptism, I is more committed than all of them and the most interested but doesn´t technically live in our area, just spends all of his time here. A's been looking up things on the internet about the church so he at least is thinking about it a lot, enough to come to church.  Today we´re going to talk about the Book of Mormon with them and get them pumped about the truth!!

J was the other guy who came.  We had taught him the first lesson  and I think he has problems expressing himself and is a little bit of a scorpion (someone who just wants to talk to sisters)...  so we´re going to teach him with some men from the church to see what he really wants.  He really did seem to like church a lot and he was all happy afterwards when we talked to him and said he had prayed after the first lesson and already feels God is blessing him.  He was really excited to read the Book of Mormon.  We´re trying something new where we only have our investigators read a few verses and we give them a specific question that the verses will answer.  Sometimes we don´t think about the fact that people don´t really know how to read the scriptures.  

I have such a strong testimony about the Book of Mormon. I was reading in PMG today about the reasons why each writer wrote their part in the Book of Mormon.  They really saw our days and this Book is for us to teach us how to live to return to God!  When we carry this book and present it to people, we really need to remember how valuable of a treasure it really is to us and for the world. 

Pray for us to be able to really baptize. Usually the hard part is getting people to church, but here that´s not the problem.  But this is a great ward and the Lord is trusting it with SUPER elect people.  The members here really have a focus on sending each new convert to the temple and they really take care of each other.  

 I have just one more bit of sad news this week, that Antonio, my recent convert, passed away last week.  Sister Johnson called me and they're going to keep working with his wife Joselia.  I´m grateful to at least have given him the gospel at the end of his life.  His health problems kept him from doing many things, but he always wanted to be at church and in the end he did stop smoking.  Now his spirit is happy and resting and he doesn´t have to suffer with his weak heart any more.  

I love you all so much and I´m so grateful for all the things the mission is teaching me and the person God is making me.  I love my Savior and the peace and hope He can give us in our lives. I´m thankful for his love.  I hope your week is awesome and that you face all the challenges and heartbreak of the mission with patience and hope.  We´re on the winning side!

Com todo meu coração,

Sister Moore