Monday, July 28, 2014

Beiro Rio, Brazil Week 9

Wow, what an amazing week! This week was full of awesome moments including the one I just had seeing the pictures of my beautiful baby niece for the first time!! She is so cute! Congratulations to Michael and Annie. Gwen is lucky to have you both as parents! I can´t wait to meet her when I come home next year. But until then, I´ll keep up the good work here!

Elder Bini and I had a great week. We continued visiting many of our investigators that are progressing very well. This week our focus was especially on Elizangela, Vitor Hugo, and Ryan, to prepare them for their baptisms, yesterday. Yesterday was a very, very, special day and one of the best of my mission. The family that I have come to know and love these past 2 months was completed and now are all baptized. It was a great day! One night this week when we were visiting them, Elizangela told us that they were all planning, in one year,  to go to the Temple in Recife to be sealed as an eternal family! That is part of our purpose as missionaries, to help families go to the temple. I had an interview with Presidente Bonini this week and that´s something we talked a lot about. He is awesome and truly inspired. We need to work to prepare Fortaleza for the Temple that is being built here. Everything we do should be with that end in mind: preparing people for the Temple. I am excited to continue to visit and work with this amazing family as they now work on this next goal in their lives. It´s weeks like these that make all the hard times on the mission WAY worth it.

We continued to visit and teach many others as we are trying to help all to come unto Christ. I love the work that I have been called to do. It truly is the work of our Heavenly Father and His son, our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Thank you for all the love and support! Continue to write because I love to hear from everyone and how everything is going with each one of you. I hope everyone has a great week.
Until next week.

Love,
Elder Helvey

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Family Home Evening!
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Elder Bini and I with Junior, Elizangela, Vitor Hugo, and Ryan just before the baptism.
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Picture of me when I first saw the pictures of my beautiful little niece, Gwen.

Monday, July 21, 2014

Beira Rio, Brazil Week 8

This week was great! We had an awesome Family Home Evening last Monday at the home of some members in our ward. The family we are teaching (Junior, Elizangela, Vitor Hugo, and Rian) all came and so did Bruno, another person we are teaching. It was a great night focused on families and how the Gospel helps us take care of our families. It´s always so awesome to see members and the people we are teaching interact and help them understand how important the Gospel is and how it can help them. We also had our first Zone Meeting of this transfer and it was great. There are now 26 missionaries in our zone and I am way excited because we have some awesome missionaries! We had another successful English Class Saturday morning. We have a lot of people coming each week (20-30 people). It is a lot of fun to interact with them and help them learn English. We make it fun too by playing games and stuff.

This week was especially great because we had a lot of our investigators visit church yesterday! The family we have been teaching for awhile of course came to church, Junior, Elizangela, Vitor Hugo, and Rian. Junior is already a member but we are way excited because Elizangela and her two boys are all preparing to be baptized this week! They are super excited and it´s been so awesome to see them coming to church and loving it so much. Elizangela is reading the Book of Mormon a ton and really enjoying it. It should be a great week with them!

Carmozita (48 years-old) and her daughter, Edivania (20 years-old) came to church yesterday, too, with two children. Carmozita is a woman I contacted on the road one day about 3 weeks ago and we have been teaching them almost every day this week. They are really excited about the church and it was great to have them there.

We have also been teaching another family for a while, and 3 of them came to church, and a 14 year-old boy, Vitor, also came to church yesterday and really liked it. It was so awesome to have so many people visiting the church. They all seemed to really like it and I am excited to visit each one of them this week.
Overall the work is going great and I am loving having Elder Bini as a companion. He is really great and teaches really well. It will be a great transfer!

That´s all for this week. I hope everyone is doing good and loving life, because life really is so good!

Until next week.

Love,
Elder Helvey

Happy Birthday Elder Bini!

It was great to see my best friends in the office this morning. I decided to get a picture with my good buddies Elder Allen and Elder Muniz. This is Elder Allen´s last transfer, which is sad, but he promised me that we would do a companion exchange for one day this transfer so I am looking forward to that!


Nossa capela!  (translation - Our Chapel!)

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Beiro Rio Week 7

Hello! Well this is week number 7 for me here in Beira Rio (Vila Velha, Fortaleza). This past week everyone sure was talking about the number 7, as Brazil lost to Germany, 7-1. It was interesting because during the games of Brazil there is usually a ton of noise on the streets and fireworks, but we didn´t hear ANYTHING during the game this past week against Germany, so we knew it wasn´t good. But now the World Cup is over and I am excited to get back in the normal routine again. School started back up today for everyone and it seems like all is back to normal here in Brazil, at least in my area.

This week was great! We had an awesome Family Home Evening at a member´s house with some of our investigator´s and less actives we are teaching. And tonight we have another Family Home Evening planned, and we will be bringing two of the families we are teaching.

Junior, Elizangela, and their two kids all came to church yesterday and we are really loving being able to visit them and teach them. Elizangela is sooo excited about the Gospel and told us whenever Sunday ends she just wants the next Sunday to get here. It has been awesome visiting them and seeing how the Gospel of Jesus Christ is helping them. They are a great family! We also have been visiting and teaching Bruno. We visited him with Bishop this past week and had a great lesson about faith, repentance, and baptism. He has a desire to change and follow his Savior, and it´s been awesome to see. We also started teaching a man named Paulo who we met in the Super Market. One of the first things he told us when we visited him is that he believes the true church of Jesus Christ needs to have a prophet and 12 apsotles, so that was pretty awesome. We had a great lesson about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and he loved it so I am excited to return to his house this week!

We have some other great people that we are teaching and I am excited to continue to find more people that are ready and excited to learn about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and how it can help them in their lives. Missionary work is pretty dang awesome!

Today was transfers (I know, right? Like what happen to those 6 weeks? Dang, time is FLYING by). But anyway, we called Elder Allen last night and got the news that my companion, Elder Pedrosa would be leaving. It has been a great 6 weeks with him and we had a great time and I feel like I learned so much from him. I received a new companion, Elder Bini from Curitiba, Brazil. He is an awesome missionary and was Elder Larkin´s companion last transfer. I am way excited to have him and and ready to work hard with him and learn many things from him. Our Zone, Zona Litoral, now has 26 missionaries so I am excited to work with all of them and get to know them all better. Should be an awesome transfer!

Anyway, thank you all for the love and support. I hope each one of you are doing great. Thanks for everything! And, a special shout out to my brother Michael, who had his birthday yesterday, and will soon be a father! Congrats man!!

Until next week.

Love,
Elder Helvey


My good friend, Atila, from my first area, came and visited me. He left for his mission this week 
so he wanted to leave and do visits with me one more time so he came all the way here to my area
 and we taught together one last time! It was so awesome spending some time
 with him and I know he will be a great missionary!

ZONA LITORAL!

We have been running in the mornings (and dang has it been killing me haha). But I am getting better. This photo was when I did a companion exchange with Elder Carrasco from Lima, Peru, 
and then Elder Goff and Elder Cachay.


My new companion, Elder Bini!

Monday, July 7, 2014

Beiro Rio Week 6

Hello everyone! How was Fourth of July? We had a little celebration in our apartment but it sure wasn´t the same as being there in the States.

But we had a great week! We taught many lessons and a few of the people we are teaching are really progressing well which makes me so happy. We had a Family Home Evening night with one of the families we are teaching at a member´s home. It was awesome!

Also this week we had Mission Conference with our new Mission President and his wife, President and Sister Bonini. They are AWESOME!! It was such a great morning as they talked to us and introduced themselves. They shared their conversion story with us and how they got to know the church. They were baptized when they already had 4 out of their 5 kids. It was an awesome experience to hear them share of how and why they joined the church. President Bonini spoke to us for awhile and he said so many awesome things. He told us to always start with the end in mind when we start teaching people. He stressed that the end isn´t baptism, it´s the temple. He talked a lot about teaching people more about how the Atonement of Jesus Christ can change and bless their lives. He talked about how we need to always do our work "in the manner of the Lord" and follow his example in all things. It was great! After lunch we had Mission Leadership Council which was awesome! We received training about how to help the people we are teaching accept and keep their commitments. It was such an awesome day and I am so excited to continue to work with and learn from President and Sister Bonini. Of course, I miss President and Sister Souza but I am so happy and feel so blessed that we have President and Sister Bonini.

This week,  of course, the World Cup continued with a Brazil victory here in Fortaleza. Brazil will play Germany tomorrow (my mission country vs. my Dad´s mission country!). It has been fun to be a part of all the fun, even if we haven´t been watching the cup, but I will be honest, I will be glad once it´s done and we get back in our normal routine. But until then, GO BRAZIL!

Anyway, it was a great week! One year ago today I was set apart as a missionary. Dang, where did the time go? Can´t believe it´s already been a year! Have a great week everyone!

Love,
Elder Helvey

Family Home Evening!

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!!!


Elder Goff and I made amerian pancakes to celebrate Fourth of July. 
With some maple syrup, peanut butter, and scrmabled eggs! haha 
We did this all during the Brazil world cup game because we had to stay in our house. 
We had a great time celebrating here in Fortaleza!!