Elder Helvey: Parque das Nações, Brazil Week 1

Hey! Here I am in my new area and things are going great! It´s always a little hard to leave an area where you know all the streets and you know and love so many people and then you arrive in a new area where you know nothing and nobody. But it was a great week! I am LOVING having Elder Goff as my companion. It was his birthday this week so that was fun! We had some great times together in my last area and we have had a lot of fun already here in Ala Parque das Nações in Zona Montese. It was great to arrive in an area where we already have some great people that we are teaching. We are teaching a man named Adail and his daughter Cebeli and they are great and progressing well. We are also teaching a mom and daughter, Edna and Ravena and they are progressing well and came to church yesterday. And Ravena even brought a friend with her which was awesome. We are also teaching Priscilla who is planning on getting married and she came to church yesterday too.

We found a less active member this week named Ismael and he was very excited to see us. We taught him in his house and he is super awesome and has been reading the Book of Mormon and has a desire to come back to church. We are planning to teach his wife and help him and his family go to church. It´s gonna be awesome!

A big thing changed in our mission this week. Before each Zone would meet together once a week. So usually we had weekly meetings with about 20-26 missionaries all together. Now every District is going to meet together, which means it´s 4-8 missionaries. It´s going to be a lot better for helping the missionaries specifically and will help the District Leaders help their districts better. As Zone Leaders we will be traveling around the different Districts each week and giving trainings which will be really cool and I am excited to get to know the missionaries in a more personal setting and to help each one of them specifically.

We had the Mission Leadership Council this week in Aldeota. It is always great to meet together with all the other leaders and President and Sister Bonini and to receive instruction from them. Now we are going to be traveling throughout our Zone each week to pass the training to the other missionaries. Elder Goff and I also have a lot of companionship exchanges planned with a lot of missionaries so it should be awesome. Our Zone has a lot of potential and a lot of things we can do to improve so it´s gonna be great!

Some cool things about my new area is that we can see the big soccer stadium here in Fortaleza called Castelão from our apartment and we have a big super market in our area. The only thing is that our area is HUGE so we are doing a lot of walking, but it´s good! It was a great first week in the area and I am excited to be here in this area and zone.

Thank you all for the support and love. Happy Columbus Day and have a great week!

Until next week.

Love,

Elder Helvey