I´m training!

Many things changed for me this week. I received a call from the President of the mission telling me that I would be transfered to a new area and training a new missionary. Tuesday I went with all the other trainers to a hotel in Porto Alegre. There were about 25 new missionaries who arrived at this hotel. They all looked super excited. The assisstants said that all of them were singing hymns during the trip from the airport to the hotel. After the new missionaries left their things in their rooms in the hotel we all left to eat a nice restaurant with the president. We spent the rest of the day listening to different trainings from the president. Towards the end there was a huge presentation showing which area that every missionary would be going to. My new area is Rio Pardo. It´s a little city called Rio Pardo. It´s part of the zone Santa Cruz. The missionary that I´m training is Elder Oliveira. He´s from Terezina, a city in the northern part of Brazil. His accent is very different from the brazilians that live here in the south. That night the new missionaries and sister trainers sleeped in the hotel while the elder trainers slept in the assisstants´ house close to the mission office. The next day we had more trainings, ate lunch with the president again, and then left to our areas. The bus took about 2 hours to arrive in Rio Pardo. On the trip to this city I looked at the cell phone of the area the assisstants had given me and tried to find if there was someone I could call that could show us where our house is and help us with our baggage. I decided to call a member called Jean. He told me that he didn´t have a car and is only 14 years old, but that he could help us get to our apartment on foot. He met us at the bus station and helped us get to our apartment. By the time we got there I was drenched in sweat because I was wearing a suit and it´s summer here in brazil. The apartment was a pig stye so we spent the rest of the night and the next morning cleaning the apartment. We began working and found tons of people to teach. We´re going to baptize like crazy here. All the people here are very receptive and want to hear our message. They are all very friendly. It feels great to have the opportunity to train a new missionary. It won´t be easy because he´s already wanting to go back home. But I won´t let him. I know that this is the best work in the world.

new beginnings

I received a call from the mission president yesterday telling me that I´m being transfered to a new area where I´ll be training a new missionary! This is going to be awesome! I would like to share about an amazing couple that we started teaching. On christmas day there´s hardly anyone on the streets to teach, but we ran into a group of three people on the road and decided to teach them. We were giving out Liahonas to every one we encountered as a christmas present. So we gave a liahona these three people and found out one of them was a member, and the other was his son, but hadn´t been baptized. We did a pray and taught the first lesson on the road, and marked a day to visit the son and his wife another day. It was a fantastic lesson. We watched meet the mormons with them. We then came back again to teach them the plan of salvation with a member who accompanied us. The husband said that after we gave him the book of mormon he had a dream telling him that he needed to read this book. He then read the part in the book of mormon we had left for him and really liked it. They accepted to be baptized and are preparing to be legally married. They were so happy to hear the message of the plan of salvation. They said that everything we taught made sense and they had never heard a message like that before. They also thanked us a lot for entering into their house to share messages of God. I know that missionary work is a very happy and joyful work. Those who follow god´s will, will find the greatest peace that exists in this world.

As I was thinking about my personal standards and my goals I thought of a phrase that has helped me and may help anyone who reads it.

 "Have patience because you will never learn everything all at once. The spirit will teach you little by little. Follow his counsel with exactness. A man is not expected to know more than he is capable. Have confidence in yourself and faith in your decisions. Faith is what leads us to our greatest accomplishments in life. Have faith, go, and if you mess up, just get back up again. With the continuous desire to try again, you will never fail."

Life is not easy, but as we pass more challenges it gets better, and we´ll find greater joy in serving others. I know that my savior is Jesus Christ. I know that the Book of Mormon is true. I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was established by Jesus Christ and is the only true church on the earth today.