Monday, March 2, 2015

Learning, Growing, Improving

Helping Carolina clean up at the chapel

District meeting with President Castro

Elder Shirley at the dessert bar

Fun lunch at Per Tutti

Late afternoon in Noemia

Lunch with President Castro at Per Tutti

Member/missionary activity

President Castro with Julio and Rosangela and family

Another beautiful Sabbath morning as viewed from our apartment

Cute sisters!  Sister Harrick (CA) and Sister Saavedra (Peru)

Soccer game in field across from the bus stop

Subway is coming to Cachoeira!

March 2, 2015

Whew!  We sure know it when the President of the mission comes to town!  We were really kept busy when President Castro came to Cachoeira this week.  He also brought a couple of his good assistants with him, Elder Snow (Winnemucca, NV) and Elder Booren (VA).  We all met together for District Meeting.  President Castro and his assistants joined in with us for the practice. President Castro knows his scriptures and is a powerful leader.  He is also very personable and we were happy that we had the opportunity to spend a little time with him.  He asked Elder Shirley to attend the evening meeting with the District Presidency.  Sister Shirley “hung out” at the chapel, visiting and helping Carolina Torres clean up.

Early the next morning we were invited to go with President Castro to visit the 4 Sister Missionaries in their apartment and study with them.  (We got up early and baked some bread to take.)  It was a great study period, but we got a work out.  We each had to share something that we had recently learned from our personal scripture study. The Sisters had been warned that they would be doing that, but we didn’t know.  So it was pretty spontaneous.  Then we each had to teach a portion of the lesson about CPTA, which means convidar (invite), prometer (promise), testificar (testify) and acompanhar (to follow up).  We are supposed to include all of the points of CPTA when we teach or present lessons.  We had two minutes to prepare our individual portion.  Add being asked to pray to those assignments and you can see that we didn’t get off easy.  And there we thought that we would just get to go along and observe!  Silly us!  But the challenge was good for us and we survived!

Following the visit with the Sisters, we took President Castro to visit at the home of Julio and Rosangela and their kids.  Fortunately, everyone was at home.  It was an excellent visit.  Julio seemed really pleased.  He told President Castro that they might not get all of the paperwork done in time to get married before we go home, but probably before President Castro goes home in June.  President Castro told them that he would like to attend the wedding.  (We told Julio that we still need that picture of him proposing to Rosangela).  President Castro led a nice discussion, involving Rosangela a lot too.  He asked her to tell us what difference the Gospel would make in her life.  She answered beautifully!   President Castro also asked Rosangela to say the closing prayer.  She has not prayed before when we have visited.  When we visit, Julio usually says the opening prayer and calls on Sister Shirley to say the closing prayer.  But President Castro didn’t give him that option.  Rosangela was nervous, but said a beautiful prayer.   President Castro agrees with us that they are a special family.  They have a lot of potential.  We hope this family is able to bless their new baby and their 3 year old, get Julio and Rosangela married and have Rosangela, Julian, and Emanuele baptized.  That is a lot of blessings in the coming year for this family.  We pray for their success and happiness! 

Following our visit, President Castro invited us, Elders Snow and Booren, and two of the Sisters to join him for lunch.  The luncheon appointment for the Sisters had fallen through.  They got the call during our study period.  Of course, we went to Per Tutti.  The Sisters have not had the opportunity to go there.  So that was really fun!

We do love President Castro!  He is a spiritual and powerful leader. He is amazing!  He asks a lot of those around him.  He expects us all to measure up and he inspires and encourages us to be able to do that.  He really has a nice way about him.  
  
We followed up all of this in the evening with a missionary/member activity that Elder Gorham and Elder Costa had organized.  We didn’t have a huge turn-out, but had a big enough group to have a really good time. We were delighted to see Elivelton and Bruna attend.

Our week was filled up with visits to members as well as non-members.  We had good visits with José, Elivelton and Bruna and others.  Our lesson with Thais and her mother, Gabriele, was postponed because of a huge rainstorm.  Gabriele said that the roads were terrible out in Promorar where she lives.  No one even wanted to go out of their houses and more rain was forecast.  So we will do that last pre-baptism lesson this week.  We also haven’t been able to do our FHE with Claudia and her family and President Glauber.  Now President Glauber has started evening classes during the week.  Weekends are hard for Claudia.  So that is postponed for now.  But we did have some good visits with Claudia anyway.  We managed to visit her three times during the week.  We stopped by to see how she was doing.  She wasn’t feeling well.  She had cancer in the muscle of her leg about 7 years ago and then it came back.  She is ok now, but she still has pain.  She had just been to the doctor.  She is also trying to quit smoking.  We have tried to support and encourage her.  She requested a blessing.  So we returned with Elder Gorham and Elder Costa to give her a blessing. She has a lot of faith in blessings.  Then we stopped by on Sunday, after she failed to come to church.  She had been requesting a Doctrine and Covenants.  So we delivered that to her and read a little from it.  Her new medication was making her tired and a little sick.  But she invited us to join her and her daughters for a “hymn sing-along” this week.  They love to sing and they love the hymns and the primary songs.  They know a lot of them.  Claudia’s son, Samuel, is interested in music.  So we hope to be able to involve him a little too.

We have had a good week.  We have been “stretched” a little.  But we think that is probably good for us.  That seems to happen a lot on a mission.  Guess we do that to others too.   That seems to be what life is all about…learning, growing, improving!   Hope you are all doing well too!  We love you and miss you all!  Keep on doing good things!  Lots of Love!

Eu te amo!          

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