Monday, March 17, 2014

Aldeota, Brazil Week 18

Hey everyone! Well today we had transfers, which is always a busy day. But first, this past week was really great. Elder Muniz and I were able to have some great experiences visiting and teaching people. We visited Vinícius who was baptized last week by the Sisters in our ward. We teach him in the house of a family in our ward, Irmão Ismael e Irmã Jane.  Irmão Ismael e Irmã Jane are two of the best member missionaries I know. They share the gospel with everyone and love having the missionaries in their house to teach their friends. They are also great teachers! We had a great time visiting them and taught about the importance of daily scripture study. We shared 1 Nephi 19:23 where Nephi says "and we did liken all scriptures unto us, that it might be for our profit and learning." Vinícius has been reading the Book of Mormon a lot and loves it. I too have really been studying the Book of Mormon a lot more lately and it has been great to continue to learn from the stories in the Book of Mormon and to apply them to my life. We had another lesson with one of our new investigators, Nelson, also in the house of Irmão Ismael and Irmã Jane. He works a lot and doesn´t have much time but he loved our message and seems very excited to learn more. We are going to work with him and teach about the importance of coming to church.

Friday night we had a ward missionary activity - we invited every member to invite a friend. We had a great turn out and it ended up being a great activity with a lot of popcorn and soda! Saturday we had the baptism of Ruben, an investigator that one of the Sister companionships in Aldeota have been teaching, so that was great! Bruno continues to come every week and participates a lot in the Principles of the Gospel class. Next week he has been chosen to give a talk in Ward Conference which I am really looking forward to. The ward here is really growing fast! I love this ward more and more every week. Sunday Sacrament Meeting was so crowded that people had to sit on the benches on the stand, it was great! It was also the last week that Lucas, the Bishop´s son, will be here because he is going to start school in Curitiba. He goes out with the missionaries and teaches with us. We all really like him and will miss him a lot.

Well today we had transfer meeting. It is always a fun time here in the office because all the missionaries that are going home stay with us their last night in our apartment and I take them all to the airport. I have some good friends in this group, including my trainer, Elder Christiansen. It was fun to have them here and I will miss them a lot, but tomorrow 9 more missionaries will arrive here so I am excited for that! Today at the transfer meeting some changes in the Mission Staff were announced. My companion, Elder Muniz, will begin to train the new Financial Secretary, Elder Peressute from Curitiba, so they will be companions. And I received a new companion... ELDER VALLO!! He has been part of the Mission Staff for three months already so I already know him well. He is from Argentina and I am excited to have him as a companion. Also the new assistant was announced today and guess who.... ELDER ALLEN!!! I was so excited. Elder Allen was the Executive Secretary before me and was my companion for one transfer. I am super excited to have him be assistant because that means I will see him a lot more. It was a great transfer meeting and I am excited for these next six weeks!

That´s pretty much all from me this week. I hope all is going well with everyone back home and thank you all for the prayers and love! I love you all.

Until next week.

Love,
Elder Helvey

At the grocery store last Monday I ran into a former NBA basketball player 
who is playing professional basketball her in Fortaleza. 
His name is DeVon Hardin and he is from Oakland, California and he played college basketball at 
Cal Berkeley (I didn´t mention I was a Stanford kinda guy haha). 
He was very interested in why I am here because there aren´t many Americans here. 
I explained everything about me being here and being a missionary and all 
and gave him a pass along card and the address of the church and invited him to come to church. 
He is trying to learn Portuguese and I told him that I could help him out. 
It was a cool experience!

ZONA ALDEOTA

Me with Irmão Ismael and Irmã Jane (I love them!)

Me and a scorpion!

Atila, a member from my first area here came to the airport to say goodbye to Elder Christiansen. 
It was great to see him. He told us the good news --- he put his mission papers in this past week 
and expects to get his mission call in two weeks! I am super excited for him!!

Me with the four American missionaries that I dropped off at the airport today!

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