February 17, 2014 - Visit 260 families? Check

February 17, 2014

Nothing too crazy happened, but I went to the favela and the houses were on top of the water, I was a little freaked out that I would fall into the water!  We are trying to get a new house so we can have all the elders in the same house.

I think I’m officially turning into a Thurgood because I’m pretty sure I have allergies.  I have been walking around a certain area a lot lately and every time I walk by my throat swells up and I have a hard time breathing. I will have to talk to Sister Cabral about going to a doctor or if it’s something else more serious.

My ward is very cool!  This is an area that always baptizes a lot or more than others and so we have a lot of young men and women!  Almost every night during the week we have some kind of activity going on.  Monday is free, Tuesday and Thursday we have basically sports night going on, which basically means soccer until midnight hahah. Then Wednesday is English class.  With four Americans in our ward, we are really trying to find people through the English class.  We have 4 different classes: Basic 1 and 2, intermediate and advanced.  We have about 40 people total that are coming each week but we also have class on Saturday mornings.  

Family in Areia Branca

We have been really focusing on this one family, but it seems like it’s been falling through a little bit.  This past week, the stake president asked the missionaries to visit all of the members in the wards to invite them to stake conference.  So we had 27 pages full of members to visit in 5 days.  We had to organize the members by neighborhoods, then by street and then if they were active or less active.  In total with our three companionships, we visited 260 houses in 5 days.  It was a really good experience because we found a lot of families that aren’t completely members. We asked the actives if we could return and share messages with the non members.  We actually had one man and one boy in different families ask that we come and teach them because they wanted to know how our church works.  

I was talking to my mission president this week and he was sharing an experience he had with his family. Before they would all go to bed, they would kneel down at their bed (President and Sister Cabral’s bed) and they would pray as a family, but first they would say a miracle that happened in their day.  It didn’t have to be super crazy - just something simple that was blessing in your life today.  I thought it was super cool and thought you guys could start doing that.  Especially since when you are kneeling in the home and as a family, that is when we are the closest to our Heavenly Father and His presence.