Everything Will Work Out

Bus station on transfer day

Another puppy for Artur:  "Lobo"

Artur playing the guitar

Cake at the birthday party

Dusk from our veranda

Elder Shirley made milkshakes for everyone on P-day

Goodbyes on transfer day are never easy!

A great dinner with Luciano's family

Great food on a hot, humid day

Leticia:  celebrating her 15th birthday

Leticia changing to grown-up shoes at Festa dos 15 anos party with her Dad's help

New restaurant in the neighborhood

Our table at the birthday party

P-day at our place with the sisters on their last day together before transfers

Pretty view looking out of Jose's door

Samirtza and Lorena making "pastels"

Samirtza at her candy shop "Cacao Show"

Samirtza, Daniel and family and grandma Lorena

Sunday dinner with Luciano's parents

The new district following transfers - only 3 who speak English counting us!

These three are leaving:  Elder Freeman (MO), Elder Gorham (CA) and Sister Harrick (CA)

Young Women from the branch at the party

March 16, 2015

It seems like the less time there is left, the faster time goes.  Maybe it is because we are trying to fit in all that we can in the remaining time.  We have faith that “everything will work out”.

The Sisters came to our place on P-day for lunch and to send pics home. It was a fun afternoon!   It was a little bittersweet as it is transfer time once again.  Sister Harrick (CA), Elder Freeman (MO), and Elder Gorham (CA) were transferred this week to other areas.  Including Elder Campbell, who went home, we lost four English speakers.  We now have a new group consisting of six from Brazil, one from Argentina, one from Chile, and one from Peru and three of from the USA.  Missionaries here in Cachoeira now are Elder Costa (BR) and Elder Purificação (BR) in the Marina Branch.  Missionaries in the Uniâo branch are Sister Saavedra (Peru) and Sister Cabajero (Argentina), and Sister Oliveira (BR) and Sister Carvalho (BR).  Elders in the Cachoeira branch are Elder da Silva (BR) and Elder Mackay (Boise, ID!!)   Caçapava Elders are Elder Latorre (Chile) and Elder Soares (BR).  Elder Soares served in Cachoeira a few months ago with Elder Buhler.  We are excited to have him back!  We like this Elder a lot! We are always glad that we ourselves can remain here in Cachoeira.  We will have been here for the entire 18 months of our mission.  We love Cachoeira and the people here!  It has been a wonderful experience to serve here. Unlike the young missionaries, we have had the opportunity to serve in all three branches of Uniâo, Marina, and Cachoeira.   

We had some requests from the missionaries to see them off at the bus depot, so we did.  It is never easy to say goodbye.  But besides some tears, we see excitement and new energy.  As always, the new group looks like a great group!  It is also a bit sobering for us as this is the last transfer that we will be here to witness.

We met with Gabriele and Thais again this week to help prepare Thais for her baptismal interview with President Glauber on Sunday and to make sure that they had a plan to wake up on Sunday and get themselves to church. We wanted to be sure they felt good about everything. We were worried after last week when Gabriele and Thais slept in and missed church and the interview.  The baptism had to be postponed a week. We wanted to be sure that they understood how important it was to be to church on Sunday for the interview.   Family is good to support one another.  They all assured us that they would help each other get to church on Sunday. We also had a good visit with Claudia and Natália at the home of Claudia.  Claudia walked us out and quietly explained to us some of her concerns about her family and her wish for them to turn their life around.  She asked us to join her in prayer this week for them as well as for her as she is still trying to quit smoking.  She has a lot of faith in prayer. She expressed her testimony to us and told us that she knew that things would work out!

Anyway, Thais’ baptism is set for Saturday, March 21, at 2 pm. Elder has been asked to do the baptizing.  We were delighted when Gabriele and Thais came to church on Sunday!!  This was the first time for Gabriele.  She had been really hesitant.  But she came!  Thais went in for her interview.  Gabriele joined her later to help fill out paperwork.  Exciting!  Juliana came too.  Claudia had a bad headache and didn’t come.  That was the first Sunday in several weeks that she has missed.  Natália stayed home with her.  Debra has yet to come.  Carla and Iná (the great grandma) were all there too.  They are all planning on coming to the baptism on Saturday and singing the special musical number, “Secreta Oraçao” (Secret Prayer).  We are looking forward to this!  Since Thais is eight years old, this will count as a branch baptism, not a new convert baptism.  Can’t wait to see it actually happen!  It will be a big weekend coming up.

It’s been a long time since we visited with Nilson from our English class.  He works in a store just down the street from us.  We stopped by to say hi and he told us that he had been watching all of the Mormon Moment videos that we had given him and would like more.  We plan on getting him some more and also hope to get the missionaries in the visit them.  The challenge will be finding a time when Nilson and his girlfriend are home.  Between work and school at nights, they are gone a lot.  He also requested that the missionaries visit in his home and not Carla’s as her parents are strong in their Lutheran faith.  We are hopeful things will work out with him too.

We had good visits with others.  We are still working on our list of people who need visits and lessons before we leave.  We seem to be adding to that list as people keep giving us more names of people they would like to see us visit.  We wonder if we will be able to get through the list.  But it is fun trying. 

Artur seemed anxious for us to visit this week.  He surprised us with some guitar playing when we arrived.  He was fixing a guitar for a neighbor.  He actually plays well.  As far as baptism goes, we don’t know if things will work out before we leave.  He is still coming to church each Sunday and seems to really enjoy the visits from the missionaries, us as well as the young Elders.  President Glauber calls him the eternal investigator.  We have hopes that things will eventually work out!  He also had another cute little puppy that he named “Lobo”.

We were happy to hear on Sunday that Elder Costa and Elder Purificação were able to give the first lesson to Rosangela and Julio and family.  Julio actually helped with the lesson.  We hope to see Roseangela, Julian, and Emanuele baptized.  Emanuele turns eight in May.  We hope everything will work out!  We visited there too.  Julian turned 11 on Monday.  We gave him the illustrated children’s version of the “Stories of the Book of Mormon”. 

Nelson, the pan-maker was at church on Sunday.  He told us he had another one of his dreams.  His dream indicated to him that he had better go to church.  We need to pay him a visit this week to get the details. 

Turning 15 years old is a big deal for girls in Brazil.  Families hold big celebrations for the occasion.  Some of them are pretty big celebrations.  We were invited to attend the “festa dos 15 anos” for Leticia, a young lady in the Marina branch.  It was fun and very interesting.  She looked beautiful.  They held it in a large hall.  It was decorated beautifully.  They had lots of food and music.  Everything was in purple!  Family each took turns talking about Leticia.  It was fun to hear her story.  She was adopted by Alves and Lucimar.  When Lucimar was expecting, Alves dreamed that they would have a girl.  He saw her in his dreams.  But they were surprised when they had another boy.  It was only a short time later that they were surprised with an unexpected opportunity to adopt Leticia when she was only one day old.  They knew that she was meant to be in their family!  It was a touching story and so fun to see the celebration.  It was particularly interesting to see her father help her change from simple flat shoes to her grown up high heels!  It was a touching tradition.  But it was a late night for a couple of old missionaries like us. As it was a long ways from our apartment, we had to catch a bus.  On Saturdays, buses are few and far between.  We found ourselves wandering some dark neighborhoods looking for bus stops, etc.  But things worked out!

We had two invitations to Sunday dinner this week.  Although we visited Luciano and his family last week, he sought us out early in the week and told us that we just had to come to Sunday dinner and try out his mom’s cooking.  We accepted the invitation.  He was right!  His mom is an excellent cook.  We had chicken, rice and feijoada, and all of the trimmings.  They are all so nice to us.  They had a table that seated four.  They had us fill our plates first.  Then one by one, his mom called in the rest of the family.  She filled their plates and they went to eat in other parts of the house.  I hope we left enough food for everyone that followed us.  It was a really nice lunch!

We received another invitation to Sunday dinner mid-week.  We have been trying to set up an appointment with Daniel and Samirtza and their family.  She is a fairly new member.  Daniel comes from an active family.  He was Elder’s Quorum President earlier.  But recently, they have fallen into inactivity.  Work seems to have gotten in the way.  Samirtza works at the chocolate store, “Cacâo Show” (Chocolate Show).  We like to visit her at work, of course!  The smell is heavenly.  They have a chocolate waterfall!  She is super busy with Easter coming up.  She took our phone number and said that she would call when they had time to see us which would probably be after Easter.   (Yeah, right!)  But to our surprise, she called a couple of days after our visit and wanted us to come to Sunday dinner.  We couldn’t do dinner, but we scheduled a visit Sunday evening.

Bus systems were shut down for 1 ½ hours late afternoon on Sunday.  They were having a “manifestação” or protest in downtown Cachoeira, right in front of our apartment.  There were people on foot, bikes, in cars, trucks and tractors and on horseback.  They honked horns and carried signs and flags calling for the impeachment of Dilma, the woman who is President of Brazil, because of what they view as corruption in the government.  Buses were at a standstill. 

Fortunately the demonstration was over in time for us to catch a bus to visit Daniel and Samirtza and family.  They were very welcoming.  Samirtza, along with Lorena (the grandma who is very active in the branch as well as very musical), made “pastels” for us.  We had a really nice visit with this good family.  They have a lot going on in their lives.  They both have daytime jobs, working 6-7 days a week.  They both go to school at nights also.  Fortunately, both grandmas live very close and help with the two young children.  They will finish school in a year or two and hope to be able to have more time then.  We think that they both have pretty firm testimonies but they really need to find a way to get back to church.  We hope they can find a way to make everything work.  They gave us a ride home which saved us from walking in the dark again.  We really enjoyed our visit with them.

There have been some hot, humid days this week.  A couple of days have probably been as hot and humid and miserable as any we have experienced so far. Or maybe it is because we have been out walking a lot.  But it seems that summer is not letting go yet!  Although the temptation is great to stay in by the air conditioner, we have felt motivated to get out and visit.  How else will everything “work out”?

Hope everything is working out for all of you!  We continue to miss all of you.  You are in our thoughts and prayers!  We love you!

Eu te amo! 

The Songs of the Righteous are Prayers Unto the Lord

Cachoeira Zone

Another crowded bus, but we got seats

A bench full of Marina branch members waiting for a bus after church

Cute sisters in our zone

Elder Campbell made a cake for his last zone meeting

Elders in our zone

Hymn practice with Claudia and family

Luciano practicing "Spirit of God" on his guitar

Luciano's parents enjoying a chimarrao

Missionaries love mail!

Singing hymns with Luciano and family

Sunset from our veranda

Thais, Gabriele and family:  good singers!

Trail to the bus stop in Quinta

Visiting in Vila Verde

Waiting at a bus stop on Sunday beside a churrascaria. Wow that smells good!

We work with these two in the Marina branch:  Elders Costa (Brazil) and Gorham (California)

March 9, 2015

The week flew by again.  Our time is getting short.  (We have about 6 weeks left.)  This week, we decided that we had better make a list of things that we want to accomplish and people whom we feel we need to visit in the time remaining.  It was a long list. We started working on that list this week.  There are so many things we would like to see happen in the lives of people we have met before we go.  We are worried that some of these things may not happen.  That makes us sad.  Here are a few highlights of our week. 

When we visited Artur this week, we decided to pressure him a little more to make a decision about baptism.  He has been attending church regularly, prays beautifully, is reading his scriptures a little, etc.  Elder Shirley has done a little theater with him in the past to get his point across.  This week, Sister Shirley told a story, a kind of “imagine with me” story.  It was a story like Artur’s own, except told as if it had happened to us. (Artur’s wife died 30 years ago and he raised 3 kids alone).   Sister Shirley told the story as if she was deceased and looking down from heaven.  She told of some of her sorrows, her hopes for her family and for her beloved husband and her wishes to be reunited as a family someday.  We each tried to bear strong testimonies to Artur.  We tried to give it our all this week.  We are anxious for Artur to make that “leap of faith”.  We invited him to be baptized this month on the day that Thais is being baptized.  Unfortunately, Artur told us that he just doesn’t feel ready yet.  He went back to old excuses like teeth needing fixed, etc.  We tried to remind him of what is most important.  He also still hopes for a vision.  He has become our friend, someone we really care about.   We felt the urgency to be bold with him this week.  Hopefully, we didn’t push too hard.  We will continue to visit.  But we left his place feeling a little sad this week.

We sought out Cristina, Tarso, and Isabela.  Cristina is an active member of the União branch.  Her husband is a non-member and a really nice guy.  She had requested a blessing after church last Sunday because of a bad headache.  They live in a bairro called Vila Verde.  We have wanted to visit them for some time.  And we felt like we should check up on her after the blessing. It was a good visit.  They have a really cute home.  But she still had a headache and was going to the doctor in the afternoon.  We had the opportunity to check back again later in the week.  She improved during the week and was at church on Sunday. 

In Tischler’s, the supermarket across the street from us, we were waiting in line, when a son of a member came up to greet us.  When we were busy greeting him, someone kept tugging on Sister Shirley’s arm.  We looked and it was Melissa Reinbrecht, the daughter of Roberto and Marcia.  This was the nice, non-member family we visited so much a year ago.  We haven’t seen anything of them for a long time (except for a phone call from them at Christmas).  He has been out of town a lot for school and Marcia has been in nursing school.  They have been super busy.  But the whole family was in the store.  We had a nice visit. The kids have grown a lot.  Marcia is out of nursing school now, working at the hospital and trying to learn English.  She needs to learn that in order to immigrate to Canada, which they plan to do in a year.  It was a good visit.  They want us to come for a last visit sometime soon. 

If there was a theme to our week this week, it would probably be from D & C 25:12: “For my soul delighteth in the song of the heart.  Yea the song of the righteous is a prayer unto me.”  Some of our favorite and most spiritual times this week were spent in the singing of hymns in the homes of members and investigators.  It wasn’t planned to be that way.  But it worked out that way. 

We met with Gabriele and Thais for the last pre-baptism lesson for Thais.  We talked about the Word of Wisdom, chastity, tithing, etc.   We had a fun activity for the tithing discussion.  It was a good lesson.  Thais seems excited and ready to be baptized.  And Gabriele seems anxious for that to happen too.  After the lesson, most of the family came over to sing some hymns. There were Thais, her mom, her grandma, her great grandma, and three of her aunts.   They asked Elder Shirley to play the guitar for accompaniment.  (President Castro gave permission.)  They are good singers (as we have probably already told you).  They know a lot of the hymns too.  They wanted to do the musical number for Thais’ baptism.  They chose “Secret Prayer”.  It was beautiful. They are going to try to get yet one more of Thais’ aunts (Debra) to join them.  Claudia is still having trouble smoking.  She may go to the doctor for help.  She also got some lectures from her daughters.  It looks like she has a lot of family support.  They all said they would come to church on Sunday.  Thais needed to be there one more time before baptism and also for her interview and to fill out some paperwork.  But we couldn’t believe it, on Sunday, Claudia, great grandma and a couple of other family members came.  But not Thais or Gabriele!!!!  We couldn’t believe it!  They had seemed so enthused!  We tried to reach them by phone, but couldn’t.  That meant Thais can’t be baptized on the 14^th!  Family said they thought that Gabriele and Thais were still sleeping!  We were so upset!  Immediately after meetings, we rode the bus with family out to Promorar to visit Gabriele and Thais and to find out what happened.  We think Claudia texted another daughter, Natalia, to go over and wake up Gabriele.  When we arrived, Gabriele told us that Natalia had just been there and they just woke up.  She said that she hadn’t slept well during the night.  It was hard not to show our disappointment though. So the baptism has been postponed one week.  It will now, hopefully, take place on March 21 (if Thais comes next week).  We encouraged Gabriele to come too to help fill out the paperwork.  We have offered to come out early on the bus to accompany them.  It looks like she will take us up on our offer.  We have another little lesson scheduled with them this week. 

We had the last Zone meeting with the missionaries before transfers.  Elder Campbell will be going home.  We are afraid we may lose a few missionaries this time.  This will also be the last transfer we will witness in our mission. 

We almost forgot our appointment this week with José.  We remembered late and hurriedly grabbed a bus.  When we arrived, we could see him through the open door, sitting on his sofa, studying the Book of Mormon.  Good thing we remembered! 

It was a nice visit with Rosangela and the kids.  Julio was gone.  But Rosangela tells us that they are trying to get everything in order to get married before we go home.  (We will be surprised if they get paperwork done that soon!)  Although she has heard all of the lessons for baptism, she would like to hear them again.  We have offered to do that for her and Julian and Emanuele. (They call her “Manu"), but the Elders will probably do it.

Branch council for Marina has been moved to Sunday mornings at 7:30 am.  In the past they have met on Thursday evenings. This is kind of a new idea.   They are trying this new time out to see if more people can attend.  It seems to be too early for some though.  There have been a few complaints.    Last week not many were there, but this week they had a few more.  It may work out after all!   Also, Elder had to speak in Sacrament meeting in the Uniaõ branch.  His topic “Be Testimonies of God” based on the article by Dallin H. Oaks in the March Liahona.  He added a lot of interesting, personal stories and got lots of compliments.   

It was another session of hymn singing on Sunday.  We visited with Luciano and his family at their home in Noemia.  Luciano is the nice young man with the cool, curly hair that gives Elder such a firm handshake that it nearly breaks his hand. Luciano had some good news today that he will be receiving the Melchizedek priesthood soon.  Luciano’s mom also needed a blessing.  Elder was able to help with that.   It wasn’t planned, but after we gave a short message, Luciano pulled out his guitar and wanted Elder to play something.  Once again, we had fun singing some favorite hymns with a good family.  Luciano gave us a ride home afterwards.  Hymns teach a wonderful message.  Everyone loves them!    We think “Secret Prayer” has been the favorite of the week too.  They also all like “I Stand All Amazed” and, of course, “I am a Child of God”.  Luciano is learning “The Spirit of God” on his guitar.  Beautiful music! 

Anyway, we are trying to make the last weeks of our mission the best weeks!  We miss all of you at home!  We pray for you!  We love you!

Eu te amo!

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!