Ahhhh this week was so amazing!! General Conference, awesome new people to teach, and lots of new things learned!! I also found out this morning that I´m being transferred to a new area tomorrow! I´ll be serving with Sister Downs old companion, who is a brasillian! my 1st Brasillian companion! I heard the area I´m going to is super small. We´ll see!! I´m excited, but also sad to leave this area. There are so many people here that I love so much! But it will all work out :)
So Monday night we had family home evening with Alberto and his son and some members! We taught about Conference and talked about how we can prepare for General Conference. We tried to play pictionary but nobody understood the rules besides us, so it didn´t go as well as planned, but it was still fun!
Tuesday was SO awesome!! Everybody was home!! This never happens!! wWe met this really cool old man, Braz. We were walking in the street and we heard ´´sisters´´. So we stopped and asked him how he knows baout the church and he was like ´´Oh i was taught by the elders a long time ago. I was almost baptized but I changed my mind at the last minute!´´ So we taught him and he is the coolest guy ever! He was a marine and so he´s travelled everywhere and seen lots of things. He has a Ham radio set in his house that he uses every night to talk to people around the world. It turns out that he didn´t understand everything about Joseph Smith. When we told him this he was like ´´Oh if i would have known that, I would have been baptized!´´ We told him he can still be baptized and we´re going to teach him this week! well..Sister Sowns will..I´ll be in a new area. But that was super cool! At the end of the night, we taught Alberto. We had left the word of wisdom pamphlet with him in our last lesson and so we asked if he´d read and he told us he´d read it and that he was really needing this lesson because he wants to quit drinking coffee. Nobody says that in Brasil! He is so awesome!
On wednesday we taught a new investigator, Ruth. She´s a really sweet person and wants to know more about God. After that we taught a new referral we got from a member! There were 4 people we taught, Gracyele and Gracyele, who are twins. They have the same name but you pronounce each one just a little differently for each girl, and 2 guys, Rena and Gabriel. They are all in their early 20s and they were really cool to teach! They all have different beliefs and backgrounds, but they are all really interested in the church and learning more. They all had tons of questions and were awesome to teach! We also taught Alberto again that night and talked about the Law of Tithing. It went very well.
Tursday morning we taught Itamar, the investigator that came to church in his suit! It was an awesome lesson. He read the intro to the Book of Mormon and is really excited to read the rest. We talked a lot about how to receive an answer from God and he said he will derfinitely pray. He already knows SO much of the truth!! We arranged for some members to read the Book of Mormon wit Neto during the week. It can be hard to understand everything as a new member of a church. I think it's a little like being a new missionary in Brasil, learning Portuguese. After a little while you expect to know more and to understand more, but you get discouraged because it´s not coming as fast as you´d like it to, and the challenges that at first were funny, become really frustrating! But I´m glad I have this experience of learning a new language because I feel like I can better understand how it feels to be a new member of the church! It was so awesome because Neto told us that night that he has been thinking a lot about serving a mission!! that would seriously be the COOLEST thing ever! We taught Alberto that night too about eternal marriage and read the family proclamation with him. Lots of his questions are about the family, so I think it´ll really help him! While we were teaching a lesson that day, there was a GIANT rat running through the house. It ran past us about 4 times during the lesson and the person didnt even notice. I came to Brasil afraid of snakes, but I see more rats and cockroaches than snakes... another great thing about Thursday is that we ate at SUBWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!! Man i love American food... subway has never tasted so good, that´s for sure!
Friday we taught Danielle. We invited her to conference and she said shed love to come! She is trusting us more and more each visit and I´m excited that she wanted to watch with us! That night, Alberto´s son went to seminary for the first time! We introduced him to a member the other day, and ever since then they´ve been really good friends. I´m really excited to see what´ll happen now! We taught one of my favorite families that night as well. The mom visited church for the first time last Sunday, and she said the only thing she didn´t like is that it starts at 9 am. She´ll get used to that! We mainly taught the mom and read through the family proclamation with her to help her see how the gospel will really bless her family.
Saturday and Sunday were SOOOOO amazing! I especially loved the Saturday session of conference. I got to watch these sessions in English, which really was a blessing. The only one we watched in Portuguese was Elder Gogoy! I loved his talk and even though I didn´t understand everything, I think I got the main point of it! Our stake president is American, so he watched with us. It was so cool to be watching with all the other American missionaries! I got so many answers to my questions, and there were so many things that were said that our investigators needed to hear. Sadly not everyone came who we invited, but Alberto´s entire family came so that was a blessing! It´s funny because I loved watching conference when i was serving in the D.C. South Mission, but as a missionary in the U.S., you are constantly working with members and feeling of their spirits. here, we leave our lunch appointment and it can sometimes be a little lonely. I feel like we´re exposed to a lot more of the world than we knew existed, so watching conference made me so happy! I loved feeling united with the rest of the church members around the world and thinking of all you guys watching with me! I didn´t eat scones, but we did have some Pringles and Doritos to feel a little more american..haha
I´m not gonna lie, I´m nervous about this transfer!! I have loved working with Sister Downs and have loved this area. I know that Heavenly fFther knows what´s best for me and that He has people prepared for me there and lots of work for me to do!! I hope you guys have an amazing week!
I love you soooo much!
Sister Pehrson
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