Elder Helvey: Aldeota, Brazil Week 3

Hey! Well it has been such a crazy busy week here but also an awesome one! We had two Zone Conferences, half the mission on Wednesday in Benfica (a part of Fortaleza), and the other half of the mission on Thursday in Bom Jardim (another part of Fortaleza). It was awesome! Conferences mean a lot of work for us but it´s good. It was great to listen to President and Sister Souza as they talked about how to develop our character, how to help one another, and to focus on the needs of the people we are teaching. The Assistants also gave a great training about teaching more simply and teach lessons efficiently so we have more time to teach more lessons. It was a great conference! I also had the opportunity to speak to everyone at the conference to talk about some things about the Mission Office like filling out baptismal records, ordering materials, etc. It was great to be with such a large group of missionaries all at once and the Spirit was very strong.

Elder Allen and I were only able to attend a little bit of conference on Thursday (we were only there for lunch and the part where we had to speak). We had to go to the Polícia Federal with an Elder to renew his visa. We arrived there around 7AM and didn´t leave until about 11:30AM. That night we had two Elders come and sleep at our house because they had to be here early the next morning to come to the Polícia Federal with us. It was fun because it was Elder Pedrosa from Río (who was in my old district, and I served with him in his area for one day like my second week here) and his companion, Elder Carvalho who is a new missionary from Portugal who is really cool as well. It was fun to have them and all 6 of us just hung out that night and ate some food and just talked until 10:30. It was a fun, chill night and great to just sit and relax for a little bit. Also that was on Thanksgiving so I suggested we all went around the circle and said things we were thankful for, which was fun as well.

The next day we had to return to the Polícia Federal to get Elder Carvalho and one other missionary registered with the Police. It made for a long two days at the Polícia Federal but I am going to get used to that because I have to do it 4 more times in the next couple weeks here, and then do it all again with the next group of missionaries. Which, by the way, the grand total for new missionaries that are arriving in our mission on December 17th is now up to 36!! Wow, it´s going to be crazy but going to be awesome! We still have many, many missionaries that are in the United States waiting for their visa so we could get even more than that. It´s fun, whenever a missionary assigned to our mission gets their visa we get an email, we got 4 this week, and whenever these emails come in we all celebrate here in the office. The back room in the office is packed full with stuff for the new missionaries. I had a ton of baptismal records to enter into the Church system so that took me about 2 days. It takes a long time to do them but it´s necessary.

Also, yesterday Bruno, the person we have been teaching, got baptized!! It was awesome. We got to his house around 8:30AM and taught him how to tie his tie and then went to church. His Dad came to church and his baptism so that was awesome too. He was so excited and it was a great baptismal service. I really love the ward here and I am really excited for Bruno. He´s great!

There were a ton of other things that happened this week and it was a very, very busy week but also a great one. I hope you all had a great week and a great Thanksgiving! Thank you all for the love and support. Have a great week!

Until next week.

Love,

Elder Helvey