Aldeota, Brazil Week 2

Well,  another week has come and gone. Man time is really flying by, I don´t really like it. This week has been good. I love the ward here in Aldeota. Everyday at noon we eat lunch with members at their homes. It´s always great to get a break from the office and be able to visit with a member family. I really love the members here and am excited for the time I have to be here and get to know them better. Just to give you an idea of what I do on a daily basis here are some of the the things I have done this week in the office: I have sent letters from President Souza to families and stake presidents of missionaries who got a new calling in the mission such as trainer, district leader, zone leader, etc. I sent letters from President Souza to all the recent converts in the mission. I marked a doctors appointment for an Elder. I registered Elders in the Polícia Federal that need to renew their visas and scheduled a day for them to come with me to the Polícia Federal. I call missionaries for various reasons such as missing baptismal records, money for ordering mission bags, etc. Also another thing I do is call taxis for missionaries that have to go to the hospital because they are sick. And sometimes that is in the middle of the night, such as this week, I had to call a taxi at about midnight for two Sister missionaries. The mission has an account with this taxi company so whenever any missionary needs a taxi I need to call for it, which is something that happens a lot. Anyways, sorry the office work isn´t too exciting but that´s what I do every day.

But we were able to teach a little more this week which was awesome! Missionary work is a lot different here in Aldeota when compared to my last area because everyone lives in a tall apartment building and we have to get let in by someone so it´s not as easy as walking around and asking people if we can enter their house and share a message like it was in my last area. We have to work with the member´s a lot and to get them to refer us to people.

Allen and I taught a referral this week who they had taught before but he had never come to church. His name is Bruno and he is awesome! We had a great lesson with him and he accepted to be baptized. He came to church yesterday and loved it. He is super excited about it all and it´s been awesome to be with him and to see of his love for the gospel. I am very excited for him! We passed by his house to walk with him to church and he was there ready in a nice clean white shirt and needed help with tying his tie. He is 21 years-old and really excited about being the first one of his family to join the church. It has been a great experience to be with him and to feel of his excitement.

This week we have two zone conferences to get ready for and I have a HUGE stack of baptismal records I have to enter into the church database. I forgot to say this last week but I accidentally knocked my computer over and we had to get a new hard drive. I felt super stupid because here I was first week in the office and I already broke the computer, but the exact thing had happened before. The computer was on this little wheely thing underneath the desk and super easy to accidentally tip over. But now it is sitting on the desk underneath the monitor in a much safer position. Oh and then the next day I broke my chair. Seriously, I sat down in it and it just collapsed. It was pretty funny but again, I felt pretty ridiculous. So anyways I had entered a lot of the baptismal records into the church database system on my computer but hadn´t entered them into Salt Lake yet because we wait til the end of the week to submit them all, so now I have to redo a TON. Oh well, it´s my own fault. It´s a cool experience to be able to enter each person that is baptized in the mission into the church records. It´s awesome to see what great work the Lord is doing here with the people in Fortaleza, Brasil and I am lucky to be apart of it!

It´s been a great week overall and I hope everything is going well for everyone. Happy Thanksgiving! I am so thankful for this opportunity to be a missionary and all the many blessings the Lord has blessed me with. I hope everyone remembers and gives thanks for all the Lord has blessed them with in their lives on this great holiday. Thank you all for the love and support!

Love,

Elder Helvey

  This is us walking to lunch at a member´s house. We were walking in a single file line because we wanted to be in the shade. Remember how I said it´s not too hot here because of the coastal breeze? 

Yeah, well it´s been hot this week haha.

This is me in the Mission Office at my desk.