Music to Lift Our Spirits July 28, 2014

Bruno is so Awesome!

This week was full of so many interesting things I don´t even know where to start! I´m just gonna make a list like I always do.

BRUNO was baptised and confirmed this week! I already wrote about how absolutely awesome he is. I am so excited for him!

ADALBERTO is an investigator with cancer. He has a very extensive knowledge of the Bible, because he was bothered by the variation in religions. He says there are so many people that make churches that don´t follow the Bible at all, so before starting his own church he wanted to be sure that it followed the Bible exactly. His sister is an inactive memeber of the church whom we started to visit and that is how we met him. He was very happy when we said we wanted to
talk to him about the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ, and he loves the Book of Mormon. He said people give him garbage abour reading the Book of Mormon, but he just tells them that it´s more direct and correct than the Bible. Just in case anyone is in doubt about whether or not we believe in the Bible, yes,We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. We also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God. 

     Last night we had a lesson with this family and a member of the ward. The member was helping them to understand the Holy Spirit and asked Adalberto what happens when the missionaries leave. He said "There is an emptiness." Samuel then asked why that is, to which Adalberto responded "because the Holy Spirit, which accompanies them also leaves." I wasn´t always sure that Adalberto was understanding everything we´ve been teaching. Sometimes he is well, but sometimes the medicine has a big effect on him and he doesn´t talk much. 

     He is such an amazing man, and a fighter. He never complains, even when you can see that he is in pain. When he prays, he just thanks Heavenly Father for the blessings he has. His whole family looks to him as an example of optimism and faith.

PROTECTION Sister Medrano and I were walking yesterday and at some point I started to feel that something was very wrong. I didn´t know if it was just me, so I kept going a little and we knocked on a door. As we were waiting for someone to answer, the feeling got stronger and stronger. I looked at sister Medrano and the look on her face told me that she was feeling it too. I mouthed "let´s go." and she readily agreed and we got out of there fast. We don´t know why we felt that, and for that we´re glad. One of the roles of the Spirit is to warn us of danger. It was almost time to go home, but we didn´t want to go home early. After saying a prayer to ask what we should do, we knew that the Lord wouldn´t be upset with us for returning home in this moment. When we got to our apartment, we thanked Heavenly Father for protecting us and listened to some uplifting music (my mom´s a miracle worker!) to lift our spirits. I know that when we are obedient to the Lord´s commandments, He blesses us with His Spirit to guide us in all things. I am so greatful for this in my life. 

The Santos Mission is one year old!
Can you find Karynne?

ILOVE YOU!

Love,

Sister Arthur

Life Is Crazy, but I Wouldn't Want It Any Other Way.

HELLO!!!!!!!!!!

     Want to know something a little bit concerning? I´m going to tell you, so if you don´t want to know, close your eyes. I have been starting to speak Portuguese in a BOston accent. WHy is this concerning? One: I have been speaking POrtuguese for nine months with a slightly-less-gringo-than-all-the-other-gringos accent. Two: I don´t even speak English with a Boston accent. I don´t know what´s up with that, but I´ll get over it. It´s probably a phase that every missionary passes through, you know, the use-a-strange-accent-that´s-not-yours-while-speaking-a-foreign-language phase.

     I got chosen as a part of the choir that´s going to sing for the visit of the apostle! We´re going to sing this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq-KhxsUxNo ! It´s so beautiful. I asked SIster Cabral if I could play the trumpet, but I guess they weren´t planning on the orchestra too.... what a shame. It would be so nice!

Sweet ex-investigators. Dalva is like a grandmother
and is still going to give us lunch and sweets and
stuff and we are making cookies for her today. She
came to church Sunday and she really likes it, but she
doesn´t think there´s a difference in the validity of her
Catholic baptism and the baptism that Jesus Christ
commanded us to do in the Bible and Book of Mormon.
Sad, but she´ll get baptised eventually. LOVE HER!
Her husband is kind of like Uncle Doug, but more serious.
He smiles a lot less, but we love him anyways.

     This week we have two baptisms planned...well, one with two people, so I will send you the pictures next week! We had a great family home evening this week with Bruno and our ward mission leader and his family! I LOVE THESE PEOPLE! They´re awesome!

     One of the people getting baptised is a young woman who we´ve been teaching for quite a while and we decided that we would probably have to stop teaching her, because she didn´t seem like she really wanted to be baptised after all. So, this one day we met with her and as she was coming to answer the door, I felt like something about her was different. We asked if she really wanted to be baptised and she said yes, because she wants to change her life, so we set a date and there has been such a big change in her! She is excited and got up on time for church, even though she had to go further, because of the split and she is reading the Book of Mormon and there is just a different light about her. 

Me looking like a crazy person and eating
a sweet made from a cow´s hoof in Vo
Dalva´s house. THey literally make sweets
out of EVERYTHING HERE! Banana peel...
orange peel...cow hoof...I don´t know what
else, but ...potato...I´m pretty sure if it
exists, Brazilians make a sweet out of it.

     This week we went to visit Bruno with a member of the ward who we´ve never gone teaching with before. When he opened the door, she screamed and hugged him. Apparently they were friends in middle school, but lost touch and hadn´t seen each other for 10 years. SURPRISE! This week is Bruno´s birthday, so Debora, Sister Medrano and I are going to stop by with a surprise for him! IT´s gonna be the best ever!

     This week was so full of ups and downs it was crazy, but life is crazy and I wouldn´t want it any other way. I hope everyone is smiling and thinking of all the reasons you have to be grateful!

Have a marvelous week!

Love,

SIster Arthur

I promise it will blow your mind July 14, 2014

Apartment Sisters

     There is, without exception, always something going on in the mission. This week, our ward is dividing. Our area just got reduced to two neighborhoods and we are no longer sharing with elders. It was a pretty cool Sunday. Instead of having Sunday school, the stake leaders called everyone into the chapel to make the announcement. Now we have only two young women who can teach lessons with us, but it´s all good, because all of the members are pretty good about helping us.

     Other awesome announcement: An apostle is coming to visit our mission in August, which is almost here! We have been  asked to read the entire Book of Mormon (in Portuguese) in 41 days in preparation, but today we got an email that said actually they want it done in 30 days, so we have to increase our reading from 16 pages a day to about 21 pages per day. OH MY GOODESS! I´ve already been getting up a half hour early to give me more time to read. Maybe that will have to change too. We´ll see. If the apostle finds a mission of sleep-deprived missionaries, at least he will know we are obedient! I´m praying a lot for the strength to do this, and I know that "the Lord giveth no commandment unto the children of men, save he first shall prepare a way for them, that they may accomplish the thing which He hath commanded!" 1 Nefi 3:7. I use this scripture a lot for motivation. 

      I hope everyone is well! I wanted to send more pictures, but it´s more complicated each time I come. I don´t understand. I just say "don´t worry about it." and keep on writing. Oh ya! I have been reading the Book of Mormon very very fast and even thought I´ve already read it a bunch of times, it still blows my mind every day! SOOOO much awesomeness! If you haven´t read it really fast yet, I recomment it. Not to study in depth, just for the experience. I promise it will blow your mind if you always start and end with a prayer.

I LOVE YOU!

Love, 

Sister Arthur

Conferência da Missão. UM ANO!

Some People Are Born Prepared July 7, 2014

So...This is how we train...I don't know
about those other missionaries...

MY MOM IS TURNING 30 TODAY! Okay, maybe not 30, becuase that would just be strange... I´m 20, but it´s her birthday! SO BE EXTRA NICE TO HER! She is a wonderful woman.

     Our friend Bruno is the coolest ever! He writes movies and sings and lots of other cool stuff! When one of his movies comes out, I will buy it for everyone. He is excited to get baptised soon! He is so smart and reads everything and sometimes we start teaching him something and he´s like "Oh, ya I already read about that." Then we´re like Oh, that´s cool. Will you live it?" And he´s like "I already do." Some people are born prepared.

My last district

     This week our furniture came! Everyone has desks to study at now! So we decided we would put it all together, since we were stuck inside because of the game all day. I was very dilligent in reading the instructions but had to make some moderations, because the pieces were different than in the instructions. I tried to call the office to tell them htat the stuff had arrived, but they didn´t answer, and we just went to work. The next day the elder calleda dn told us he was sending someeon to put it all together, and I was like great, but we alredy did the desks. He was horrified. I have to go! But the desks are fine in case you were wondering!.

Love,

Sister Arthur

Music Makes a Huge Difference!

I don´t know if I start off every letter this way, but I can´t believe it´s been a week already. I feel like everything just decided to happen at once. We were going along, doing our work like always, and things just started to fall into place. We are finding people who have really been prepared and we are having a great time doing it.

     Music makes a huge difference! All my music was in the wrong format and this week someone put it into the right format and we listen to music when we are getting ready in the morning and it´s awesome!

     Transfer went out today! I am staying here with my Medraninha! We are going to work like it´s our calling! Oh my goodness I am so excited and also glad that we don´t have to say goodbye to all these amazing people quite yet...

     

Random sidenote....the strangest things happen in the LANhouse. Today a lady is singing who knows what and maybe she´s also talking to someone, but there´s no telling if it´s someone in the computer....also a few weeks ago, this guy was making a sound I´ve never heard before. It sounded like maybe he had phlegm in his throat, but he had no idea how he should go about clearing it up....I don´t know. I just don´t ask and keep on writing to the people I love!

     There´s this really cool guy named Bruno who we´ve started teaching. He was worried his parents would be mad if they knew he was meeting with us, but decided to talk to them about it. His mom said. Oh, that´s cool. Did you know your cousin is a member of that church too? That pretty much blew his mind and he is very happy now. He asked if we have the name Bruno in the US.

 

ELDER ALVES! I was like "Elder, I know this is
strange, but can I take a picture of your tag?

   My mission is going to have a birthday this month! Also, my country...and no one will be celebrating...except me and the other Americans. The cool thing is that it´s the day of a Brazil game of the world cup, so we have to stay home after lunch. We´re totally gonna do something American and then when Brazil wins the game, they´re going to light off fireworks to celebrate the independence of the United States of America! It´s pretty cool how they are so patriotic for us. 

I hope everyone is having a great week!

HAPPY 4th of JULY!!!

Love,

Sister Arthur