Sunday, February 3, 2013

Our Week in Campinas (Jan. 28)

GOOD MORNING AMERICA
Okay, so it´s probably not even morning anymore cause we got on so late................
 
We had to travel practically half way around the world and back to go to my companion´s dentist appointment this morning, and then got a little distracted in the journey..... so we didnt get back to our area till now. yep. sorry about that. But before you get too upset, feel a little of my pain in spending about 3 hours of pday standing on crowded buses, butt to butt with dirty strangers just to go to a dentist appointment. YEP. suuuuuper fun huh?
 
thanks for your emails...........
WOW. Holy MILAGRES this week!
Might not have had as many miracles here this week as I wanted, but you guys sure are having miracles at home!
Yep. Miracles are real.
 
Well.
since we got here super late, and I spent almost all my time reading my emails from you guys............... dont have much time left now!!! SORRY.
 
This week, in a nutshell, was......................... a disaster.
basically everything that we planned our got all excited for fell through....
Play day at the park last pday???  didnt happen
Members that signed up to leave and work with us??? also didnt happen
Taking Kesia and family to the temple??? Didnt happen.... and we didnt even get to see them this weekend cause they were so busy....... ahhhhg.
 
SO, we tried out a lot of new ideas to try to find new people to teach.... Using the area book a lot more to find names of people that other missionaries taught or talked to, using the ward list to find less active members to visit, teaching about the restoration to members to try to help them to HELP US more...... And in the end, we had a little success.... But it was a frustrating week. We found a few people that have pontential, got let in to teach in a few houses, and learned a lot..... hopefully it´ll help us to get somewhere in our work. ha.
As of right now, still feeling like we have NO IDEA what we are doing, and trying to figure out what we are doing wrong, and what we need to change..... i´m pretty much out of ideas right now....
 
Highlight from the week-- we visited a lot of recent converts and less actives this week and THREE of the people we have been working with for a while came back to church this sunday. That would be our first little miracle. Now i just hope we can help them to keep coming strong.
Secondly- We found an AWESOME girl in our area book named Thamires. She is fifteen and lives on our street (which also happens to be the street the chapel is on! wooo!) We taught her the first lesson and it was SO GOOD. she understood everything really well and accepted everything really well. After I told about Joseph Smith and said the first vision, she got goose bumps. YEP. The spirit was there helping out for sure.  We marked a baptismal date and everything, and she was really excited to start preparing to be baptized. Only problem--- she didnt wake up to come to church like she said she would, and some of the people in her family dont like us very much and tried to make her give back the book of mormon we gave her. We were standing at the gate while her aunt was handing her the book of mormon and telling her to give it back to us and "resolve her problem". LUCKILY, this girl is pretty strong so far, and didnt say anything about it to us, and we marked another day to come back and teach her. YEAH. Take that aunt that hates us!!!
THIRDLY, we are gonna have a family night with a bunch of the less actives and recent converts that we´ve been working with at our AWESOME stake president´s house. He is SOO cool, you all have no idea.......... I´m hoping this family night business will become a weekly deal, and I am soooo happy about it. It really will help so much, cause our poor ward is practically dying right now..... I hope that this will give back some life and help everyone to get to know one another, and work together and help eachother more.
 
Well.
Definitely gotta leave now
I love you all so much!!!!
 
Hope you all have the best week!!
and hopefully next week I´ll have some better news for you all!
 
LOVE
sister ward