Sevilha, Brazil Week 4

Another great week come and gone! First off, last Monday we played basketball with some members of the ward at the outdoor basketball court at the church. It was a ton of fun although it was super hot! We also played some other games such as a variation of capture the flag. It was awesome and we are gonna do it again today. We all had such a great time we decided to make it a weekly tradition. I really love a lot of the members here and they love spending time with the missionaries.

This week was disappointing with some of the people we are teaching. Remember that big family we´ve been teaching? Well, this week a few of our appointments fell through with them and when we finally were able to teach them only 4 of them were there and they told us that they were no longer interested so that was quite sad, but I am hopeful sometime down the road they will meet with the missionaries again. They are a great family. 

We also came in contact with another family. We met 3 of the kids on the street and they invited us to return that night to talk with them and their parents. They are Leandro and Aidé and their 4 kids. We had a great first lesson about the Restoration and a great second lesson with Leandro and his son, Leví, about the Book of Mormon. We are excited for them!

We´ve also been teaching Fabio, his wife Vera, and their 9 year-old daughter Fabiola. Fabio and Vera have been reading the Book of Mormon but they work at the big market here on Sunday mornings so weren´t able to attend church this week. That´s actually a big problem we have here is that there is this HUGE street market here on Sunday mornings that a lot of people work at so they can´t come to church. Although we taught Fabio about keeping the Sabbath Day holy and he has expressed his desire to follow it.

We taught Mateus, age 13, again but it turns out his main residence is in another part of our mission and he only visits our area sometimes so we had to pass him off to other Elders. But he is great and is really excited about getting baptized and talks about serving a mission a lot!

Friday we had a cool experience. We had been going to our appointments all day and each one of them was falling through (our appointments fell through a lot this week). But anyways we had just went to an appointment that fell through and we were pretty discouraged and had been walking a ton and it was about 5:30 and we were super hungry. Just as we were talking about how hungry we were and how we didn´t have any money with us to buy anything, a couple came up to us and asked us if we were hungry and wanted something to eat. We said that would be awesome and thanked them very much. They went in their house and went and got some chairs for us to sit on right outside their house and then he went and bought us some food and soda and brought it to us. We talked with them for a while and thanked them very much. It was great, and it was much needed at that time in our day. It was quite a testimony of how the Lord takes care of us out here. It might not sound like a big deal but to us at that time, it meant a lot!

I also went on another division this week. I spent a day with Elder Cetraro in his area. He is one of the missionaries that lives in our house and he is awesome! He is from Logan, Utah and he helped me out a lot with the language and having more confidence in my ability to communicate. I had a great day and learned a lot from him and he was really encouraging and motivated me to continue to work hard at the language!

My Portuguese has really been coming along this week. I created a really good language study plan and I´ve had a great week of studying the language. I made specific goals for studying the grammar, vocab, and verb conjugations. I also have a goal to finish reading O Livro de Mórmon in portuguese by the new year and I made specific goals for each week to be able to accomplish this. I have had a great week with the language and I thank all of you who have been praying for me. I have felt those prayers a lot this week! Along with my language study I have been studying about challenges and how they are for our benefit. I also have been studying in the scriptures about patience and hope. It´s been a great week!

I hope all is going well for all of you! Thank you for the love and support. I am really doing great and loving it here!

Until next week.

Love,

Elder Helvey

 We got together with some young men in the ward and played some basketball 

on the outdoor court at the chapel. It was a lot of fun!

Elder Christiansen and I matched our days one day