Parque das Nações Week 13

Happy New Year! I hope you all are having a great start to 2015. Things are going super well here and it was an awesome week! We worked LIKE CRAZY this week and it was the best because we found a ton of people to teach including 3 awesome families!! One of them was super special because we did a contact in the street with the dad of the family when he was getting to his house from work and we asked if we could come in and share a message about Jesus Christ. As soon as we entered we felt a strong spirit as we met his wife and two kids. They are an awesome family and after teaching the Restoration of the Gospel it was clear to us that the Lord has been preparing this family. They weren´t able to come to church this week because he was working but we are super excited for next week! We found a lot of other people and I wish I could sit here and tell you all about each one but I just don´t have the time so a lot of the stories will have to wait. Just know that things are going well and we are really seeing miracles happen here in our area.

On New Year’s Eve we had a Zone Meeting where Elder Moroni and I gave a training. We have been having many difficulties in the zone especially when it comes to marking baptismal dates with the people we are teaching. Last week out of the 22 missionaries in our zone we only had 12 dates. We were seeing that many of the missionaries simply were just not inviting people to be baptized, forgetting about their purpose. We had a good training about this and a few other things and last night when all the missionaries reported in we had 45 people with baptismal dates. 12 to 45 in one week! Now we have to improve on many other things but it is a good start to helping this zone get better. We are excited!

Sunday morning we had breakfast with our Ward Mission Leader, Marcelo and a few other church members, including Beninha. We had French Toast which was fun. Then we all went out and passed by people´s houses to help them come to church. Unfortunately, we had many people that confirmed to go to church not come this week but it was still a great Sunday. After lunch, we did visits with Bishop and his wife. We visited Anderson and Naízes and planned for their wedding and Anderson´s baptism. And we visited Benhina, which was awesome and we talked about visiting teaching and preparation for a mission, which she already has a desire to serve. I love Sundays on the mission! Today we went to the Center of the city and marked the wedding date for Anderson and Naízes! It´s gonna be awesome!!

Anyway, it was a great week and I hope you all had a great week too. HAPPY 2015! It is gonna be a suuuuper great year!!

Until next week.

Love,

Elder Helvey

There are a few lakes in our area. This is one of them that is near the Bishop´s house. There are always people fishing in them as you can see behind me. It´s super peaceful and pretty where the lakes are.

NEW YEAR’S EVE in our apartment! We went to bed at 10:30 like normal but we woke up with all the loud music and the fireworks around midnight and made chocolate milkshakes. 2015!!!!!!!

UECE! This is the big university that is in the middle of our area which is kind of annoying because we have to walk around it all the time and no one lives there. But it has a bank and that is where we get our money and we have done some contacts with people there, too.

Sunday morning breakfast! It was a ton of fun to spend some time with Marcelo, Marcílio, and Beninha and eat French Toast for breakfast. They are awesome and it´s awesome what great friends Marcelo and Marcílio have become with Beninha.

I found some Laker fans here in Fortaleza! I spotted that Kobe jersey from a mile away and decided I had to get a picture with him.

Back in Aldeota! Like every Monday morning, I went to Aldeota this morning to get materials for our zone and decided to take a picture in the streets that I used to walk and no so well for 7 months of my mission.