Semana 18

this week was awesome i dont even know where to start. its difficult not having a companion that speaks ingles but i am learning a lot faster i think. its great. this sunday was awesome! we had 5 investigators there and a less active who we have been working with. we had Cezar and Gizmara! they are the perfect little family and they love the gospel. they have some problems with the word of wisdom but really are honestly trying to stop. we met with them a lot this week and they were supposed to have a baptismal interview so we took the elders with us to their house and Cezar wasnt there. so we took Gizmara and her daughter and the elders to a members house and had family night and it was perfect. the members prepared a lesson and we watched a video clip and Gizmara felt the spirit so strong and was crying it was awesome. and then returned to the house of Cezar and he still wasnt home and so we left and as we were leaving the neighborhood we ran into him on the street and he saw us and he just started crying and it was a huge blessing that the elders were with us because they hugged and comforted him in a way that sisters wouldnt have been able to. but he went to but a beer so he didnt have the interview yet but hopefully this week. sunday he met with the bishop and we made appts to meet with them this week with memebers to they are pretty much in good hands. they both were balling during sacrament and loved sunday school and cezar promised to stop drinking. never again. and we brought hard candy to gizmara so she can stop smoking. it was just a wonderful church day. all the talks and lessons were perfect for them! also yesterday we stopped by a the house of Nildo and we were making goals with him to help him obey the commandments and usually we teach him on the street but we had a member with us so we could go in his house and he lives with a catholic family but they werent there and we were teaching and he said he would really focus and try hard to live the commandments he said he really wants to change his life and he said he prayed for repentance and he said he cried when he was praying because he felt better and then this wild woman came in and started yelling at me and saying things that i dont know but she wasnt happy that we were inher house because shes catholic and she was mad at nildo because he disrespected her or something but we left and it was kinda awkward but we really made a lot of progress with nildo and hes on date so pray that the lady doesnt change his mind and that he can still want to change and that he can come to church. we had the conference of the mission this week and it was way cool! there were 4 of us there that were in the mtc together and pres cabral is hilarious! he reminds me a lot of my dad so thats good i guess. we got a referral from some elders this week of a lady who ran up tp them and wanted to know more and so we called her to find out when and how to get to her house and she and her mom came and picked us up. it was cool. she is awesome. i hope she reads and feels the spirit. she is single  23 and has a baby so hopefully she can realize that the gospel will bless her adn her family! also i had an avacado smoothie and it was delicious. the avacados here are huge. i am a little stressed because i kind of took over this week because i was already in this area and it is so much different with a different companion. oh another man on the street told me he wanted to marry me and move to the united states so awkward. but the language is coming along a lot and i am loving it! im finally used to most of the strange things they do here ahah and fit in more. pray for our investigators to be baptized this month. we have a goal as a mission for every missionary to baptize so pray that we can accomplish this goal:) i know we can do it! the lord really has prepared people!! i love you all :) have a great week!!:) 

 

Semana 17

miracles! and prayers are answered! we finally had investigators at church! his name is cesar! he has a family of him his wife and his daughter who i think is like 6.. the wife is pregnant and smokes but she knows shes sinning and wants to stop. cesar was at church and it was fast and testimony meeting and after sacrament meeting he was crying and kept saying how he felt this feeling in his heart so strong and he didnt know how to describe it besides good. the wife had to work so she wasnt able to be there but the daughter was and she really liked it too! the ward is really helping make them feel comfortable and they are married! so as soon as they stop smoking and come to church again they can be baptized! they are so excited to learn more and they love the spirit! continue to pray for them!! dennis ( the other man who smokes) his mom told us that he didnt want to learn more and we havent been able to talk to him yet so pray that he really will have a desire and the strength to overcome his weaknesses. nildo another investigator is doing good. he wasnt at church but he has read the bom a lot! he is in enos now and he says he likes it. he is really fun to teach but he talks with a lot of slang so i dont understand a lot. we finally were able to meet with a lady named marjorie and she accepted everything and really wanted to be be baptized and accepted all the commandments until we told her she couldnt smoke and she needed to come to church a couple times but she said she wants to start over and be better so i hope we can get ahold of her again!

oh we had transfers and i have a new companion because sister tornini is going home! my new companion is Sister Ribeiro  ( you pronounce it like this he-bea-doo) shes brazilian and doesnt speak any ingles at all so this week will be hard but i know its what i need and i will learn better. i pray that she is patient with me:) it rained a lot this week and it was pretty cold! haha but people thought it was 100 below they all had big coats and they dont have very many scarves so they had towels tied around their necks and then there was me with t shirt thinking man im glad im not sweating right now. summer is going be warm for me ahah. on sunday we had 7 member present lessons! it was seriously an amazing day!! oh and this week i stood in front of the bus and talked/yelled to evveryone. it was so scary but it was so awesome!! people here know and some celebrate the 4th of july... with hamburgers and fries! haha its funny. i woke up and the sisters we live with were saying Happy day of Independence! haha. pray that we can continue to teach the people we have met and contact them. its been hard to get a hold of people lately. the language is still a barrier but it is getting better.:) i have been studying a lot about prophets lately and how blessed we are to have a living prophet and how important it is to follow the prophet i encourage you all to pray and find a talk by the prophet and read it! it will be great!:) i love you all :) have a wonderful week!!!:) 

Semana 16(:

hello! this week was full of adventures and the spirit testifying that this is the true church! we met more people who accepted dates to be baptized but none were at church. we actually rang one persons door bell 4 times and then went back 20 minutes later and tried a couple more times. his name is dennis and we found him when we were on our way to contact a referral and we walked past his house as we did i just stopped and turned around and said that we need to go back and knock on this door. it was crazy because i wasnt even thinking about it i just did it. we knocked and he answered and was smoking and we told him who we were and what we were doing and he  accepted to be baptized and he said he would quit smoking and he said he believes that joseph smith was a prophet and he said hes already read some of the book of mormon and he would come to church. he didnt come to church and we tried to help himas much as we could. i hope we can get a hold of him soon and get him there next week! also another thing that happened was after we rang his door bell and clapped our hands off at his house we went to another investidgators house and he answered (he was only in swim shorts) and we were so happy and we went and he went and changed his clothes into other shorts and a t shirt and flip flops. he walked with us to the church building and then he wouldnt come into the building because he wasnt dressed the same as everyone else. he left at the gate no matter what we tried to do to get him to come in. it really was upsetting but when we were at his house i had a thought that i should ask him if he wanted to change his clothes before we left but i ignored it thinking that maybe he didnt have other clothes and then later i realized that it was the holy ghost telling me that i should have said something. i learned my lesson. but when we were at the church outside we were trying to tell him it doesnt matter because its his first time and its ok and he shook our hands and when he shook my hand i tried pulling him into the church but he held on to the garbage bin thing they have on the roads. it was funny. he promised he would come next week. we have had a lot of help from the members this week and the ward is always so good at helping and bringing people to church. so when we finally went inside we had a non member there with a member. we have family night with him tonight at the bishops house so well see how things go he seemed to really like church! we taught a lesson in english this week! and sister tornini taught one in spanish! it was awesome! the one in english was way cool! the mom is from Australia and the dad is from here but he speaks very good english because he worked in the us for a while they have two kids whoare 6 and 4. they have australian accents its cute. but the mom had already heard about the book of mormon and joseph smith from a tv show about it. i dont know if the show was very accurate so we explained in detail about the bom.it was really good. he wanted to know how to show more generosity to people and when we gave him a bom he opened it to a random page and it was in the index about giving to the poor. he said he doesn't believe in coincidences so it was awesome! but he wasnt at church either. pray for everyone to be at church next week!! we had a party at the church saturday night and there were so many less actives and non members there it was awesome!! :) we had lunch one day on another part of the island so we rode a boat there and it was awesome! they have cool boats here. when we got there it was at a members restaurant and it was a little sketch but i had fishand i liked it so thats good:) oh and another funny thing happened.. we were on the road talking to a less active member and he was leaving and another man came around the corner so i just started talking to him and asked if he wanted tobe baptized and he said no but i didnt fully understand what he was saying so i looked at my companion and she asked him again and he said he wanted to marry me.so we just said have a good a day and left. i didtn know what happened until we had left.. haha its so funny what happens here all the time. :) we saw lots of little fishys when we were on the boat it was cool. there were hundreds!!! we taught some people in our apt and they said they recieved an answer that this church wasnt for them so we explained more and told them to pray again. pray for them that they will understand their answer. anyways it was a great week! pray that people will come to church please i love you all:) boa semana! 

-sister anderson :) 

Week 15

what a week! we met some elects this week! we meet so many people on the street and so many people say we can visit them and then when we go to their house they arent very interested in changing religion or something they just want to hear the word of god so we prayed about what to do and we decided that we should be more bold and direct in the way we go about our contacts so we go up to people and say we are reps of christ and we are looking for people to baptized into the true church of god. and we pray that the elects will say yes so we dont pass them up and then that way we arent wasting time with people who arent ready right to have missionaries. this was on thurs we decided this.. so anyways that day we tried it and not one person said yes...... i was wondering if it was too bold and scaring people a little but we continued to do and we have people say yes i willbe interested in learnign more. one man was on the street washing his car and i felt like we should talk to him and so we went over and said, we are representatives of jesus christ and we are looking for people to baptized into the true church of god. he replied, what do i need to do!!!!! it was awesome! this was yseterday so we are going to meet with him again today! we put 3 people on date this week so pray for them to recognize their answer! it was rainy a lot this week so i got soaked one day because sister torninis umbrella broke and so i gave her mine because i had a jacket and i still tried using her umbrella but i probably just looked funny because there was wires flying around everywhere and the wind kept blowing underneath it and making it go the wrong  way but it was so funny everytime it would happen. we were laughing so hard! it was a good day even though we were pretty muddy and mostly rained onhaha. i almost got in a crash with a bike too and it was funny as well. we were both going around the same corner at the same time and when i saw himi jumped to one side and he turned to the same side and we both just kept goign the same wayand he was flung over the handle bars and i was just trying to move without falling off the curb and running into the post on the corner. it was really funny. oh and the other day we were waiting at the bus station and some man came up and grabbed the phone that was on the post that we were standing by and started talking instantly. i just thought he was wierd because obviously no one was on the other line and i had no idea what he said.. and then when he left my companion explained to me that he answered the phone and said yep yep they are here. the two princesses are here and then walked away. haha it was funny now that i know what he said.  i had to go to the police department and get a paper so i could have it with me all the time saying i was leagal to be here and something ha´ppened where we had to go into the other part and go upstairs and get our finger prints done so everyone had these little cards on their shirts except me but i dont know police dept word so i just did what they told me and followed the lady and they did all the work and then when we were leaving the lady asked for my card and i didnt have one and she got this look on her face and i was like oh great im going to jail haha but i guess i wwent onto a a part where you needed a security checka nd card and they just slipped me and didnt give me one. they just laughed and let me leave but thats about how safe things are here. haha it was funny. the man gaurding the door just said haha whoops we let one in. :0 i am getting bored of the food we have becasue we have the same thing every day. so i today i started  looking for ohter things to buy i found nutella it was 6 dollars for like two spoonfuls. sad. :( many things are very expensive and they dont have a variety of things like the usa has. but its good:) the language is coming along and i can usually answer when people ask me questions now so thats good:) this week we learned a lot about family home evening! i hope you are all having it:) it is wonderful! i hope you all have a wonderful week and thank the lord for everything you have!:) i love you all! 

SEMANA 14!

this week was great!! we had only one person at church and she is 11 and her mom doesnt want her to be baptized or else she would be. our other investigators are not married so they cant be baptized until they are married.. another investigator who was on date told us that the only reason he accepted our visits was to preach to us and that he was pretty rude. we had a lot of other good lessons and talked with many people. the language is coming along and i am adapting more haha. people still stare at me like i cant see them but thats ok haha so much happened this week i dotn even remember what. i know i had my prayers answered and i know that this church is true and that the book of mornon is the word of god. i always kind of took it for granted and never really explored it like i could have but its great! i invite you all to read alma 5! we worked a lot with less actives this week and we are always finding less actives so if you can all pray for them that would help love you all:)  #notalottosaytoday #openingyourmouthishard 

WEEK 13!!

HELLO EVERYONE!!!!!!  how are you all? this week has been wonderful! we have been meeting with a couple named luciana and admilton and they ask tons of questions and really want to keep meeting with u sbut they wont come to church and they are having family problems and they think its because of god so pray for them to know the church is the right thing and it will strengthen their family. we met with celia and she is awesome she comes to church and wants to be baptized but shes not married and i dont think her man wants to get married s thats hard i had to go to santos last week to go to the police station and get a paper saying i was legal to be here but since we dont have a permanent address they wouldnt give it to me so hopefully when i go back next time theyll give it  to me. this week was a little harder. we met with a man jobert and he was basically yelling the whole time and when we left we asked him to pray and he was shouting and prayed that we would find god and that we would know they truth. not him.. its very difficult to have people stop talking for a minute so we can explain the church. all  they do is try to find reasons why its not true and i just felt like i was on the defense all week.we met with a lot of less actives this week and they were at church so thats great!  we had many other powerful lessons and talked with almost 200 people about the gospel this week. im so exhausted but its the best exhausted ever! the language is coming along! i am understanding more and more and when we talk with people i can usually understand enough to have somewhat of a conversation. haha some members came out with us today and they help incredibly!! its amazing what they bring with them when they come! i invite you all to go with the missionaries in your area and help them:) also when we were at a recent convert house this week his neighbor came over and said he wants to know more about the book of mormon so we have been meeting with him and he seems like he will probably be baptized pray from him his name is nelson.  he has a family so pray for them also. the power of prayer is real!!! on sunday we were having a hard time talking to people and helping them realize the difference in our church and other churches because they all think they have the authority which doesnt make sense becasue they go to a church thats only here in this one place but thats not the point, we were hving a hard time talking to poeple and then we prayed and after we recieved a couple contacts and people answered their doors and we ran into a couple members who wanted us to come visit them other days and visit with non members and the people we talked to were more open and understanding. so pray. pray expecting an answer and he will answer your prayers. moroni 7 48 read the liahona and ensign and scriptures! they are amazing!!!! always strive to be better:) i hope you are all doing great! i love you all!!! pray for the investigators of the missionaries that they will be able to recognize their answer. :) 

Semana 11 & 12

ola! tudu bem!? man what a crazy last couple of weeks ive had! 

- left Cali :(

- flew to Washington from Cali

- flew to Detroit for about 4-5 hrs

- flew for 10 hours straight to Brazil

- we talk with everyone here and we go on buses and stand in the front and talk to the whole bus all at one time! its way cool! people here are way more open and more nice than Californians aha the lord has prepared people here a lot! 

- the weather is great! its raining right now but it rains a little almost everyday! its always overcast since ive been here and it is like 25 degrees Celsius but it ist cold at all! its very very humid! 

- its not a clean place at all and dogs just roam the street and poop where ever they would like and so its important to watch where you walk!  

- we walk all over the place! the church is about a 45 minute walk from our aptmnt 

- we have a fairly nice apt! its on the second floor above a grocery store so we dont have to worry about running out of food! haha. 

- lunch is the main meal so we eat a bigger lunch and then we work the rest of the day. we dont have dinner breaks at all so sometimes i get  hungry but i dont notice until we are home and i see food and im like man im kinda hungry haha. we are very focused on what we do.

- church was good! it was wierd to not understand the things people were saying but to still feel the spirit! it was good!:) 

- there is a lot of english here! the people love americano music so all the songs they listen to i can sing along to haha its funny because they dont know what it says they just like listening to it! sometimes its a bad song but they dont know it they just like the beat haha. all their clothes have english writen on them and they have no idea what it says. haha and a lot of signs have english as well as Portuguese!  

- the food is a pretty similar to normal except the fruit is a lot bigger and tastes a lot better and they really know how to make rice! 

- the houses are all wild colors and they are all inside gates so instead of knocking on a door we stand outside and clap and they cometo the the gate! 

- the work is really moving on here! people here a lot more sincere than in cali, if they say you can come back, theyll let you in and really be interested and want to know more but if they dont want to hear it they just say no, they usually dont make excuses of why we shouldnt come back.

- we have already put 3 people on date since i have been here! its great! :) people want to know the truth!!! 

- president is awesome and hilarious! when all the new missionaries arrived we all prayed and he made us all hold hands and then he started to pray to joseph smith!!!! hahah its was funny we all looked up and around at each other and then president just started laughing!! hahha it really was funny! he is really spiritual though! and he has high expectations of us! by the time we go home we have to know 3 languages. we know our regular language and our mission language and then for me i will have to know spanish also.. so pray ill have the gift of tongues!!!

- my companion is from Uruguay and studied to be a english teacher so she knows English very well and helps me a lot! she only speaks in English a little when i cant figure it out after she has explained in Portuguese and weve played charades though haha. shes 24 and a convert to the church she was baptized when she was 20 and she is amazing!!!!!! 

- its hard and not everyone is as nice as most but its totally worth it!! my testimony is growing simplifying in Portuguese ahah  i know this is the true church Christ established when he was here and i know that it is so important to read the scriptures every day and pray and become mor like Him! i love you all !!!!