Caucaia Week 11

Hey! This week sure was great. It was a very normal week and to tell you the truth I don´t have much to report. We traveled again this week to Paracuru, Ceará for a District Meeting and had lunch there. It was a good time and I really like traveling to the cities in our zone to visit the missionaries there. We have some truly amazing missionaries in our zone and I feel grateful I for the opportunity I have to serve and learn from each one of them, even the ones that started their missions very recently. There is really so much to learn from each one.

Saturday was really awesome because we had a few really great visits and a 60 year-old lady that we have been teaching for about 2 months was baptized. We call her "Tia" (Aunt in English) and she was very excited to be baptized. One of the members that always helps us out, Matheus, baptized her. It was really cool because he is preparing to serve a mission so it was great to be a part of that experience too.

I am excited for this next week. Tomorrow we have a meeting with all the missionaries in both the missions here in Ceará with Elder Christofferson. It will be awesome! We have to leave Caucaia at 5 in the morning to get there on time but it will be great. I hope you all have a great week.

Until next week.

Love,

Elder Helvey

I gave Matheus a BYU shirt!

Tia was baptized! What an awesome experience!!

A group of "Irmaõs" from our ward. Love these guys!

Caucaia Week 10

This week was great! It was a full week and I am absolutely exhausted. Today is a much needed P-day, that´s for sure. But this week was filled with a ton of awesome things and was one of those weeks where I am super tired but happy too. The week was made even better when a ton of people that we have been visiting came to church yesterday!

Tuesday I spent the day with Elder Lessa in his area and we had a good day. They have been struggling to find good people that are willing to do the things necessary to progress so we ended up just doing a ton of contacts on the street and teaching in the moment. It was good and Elder Lessa is from São Paulo and he is super chill and a good missionary.

Wednesday Elder Evans and I and went to Pecém to visit the Sisters there and help them in their work. I gave the training about the role of the Holy Ghost in conversion. I feel like it really helped them. All the Sisters there have less than 5 months on the mission and are having difficulty getting people to church so we are focusing on helping them a little more.

Thursday we moved from our huge house in one part of Caucaia to a new, nice apartment in another part of Caucaia. We live closer to the church now and the Center of the city and the apartment building is in the area of Elder Evans and I so we are loving it. A lot less walking for us but moving all of our stuff in the house was quite hard because our apartment is on the 4th story. But we had some young men and one return missionary from the ward help us out so it wasn´t too bad.

Saturday we went to Paracuru to do 4 baptismal interviews. It was awesome and they all went well and in Paracuru they baptize people in the ocean so that was a fun experience for them.

Yesterday was awesome because the family we found last week came to church and they loved it! They are preparing to be baptized on May 2nd, and Robson and Tia who have been coming for a while and we have been visiting them for a long time are preparing to be baptized this week. Things are going very well in our area and our zone so I am happy!

Also, some exciting news is that Elder Christofferson from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles will be visiting Fortaleza next week and will have a conference with all the missionaries in both the missions here in Ceará. It will be next Tuesday, April 28th! We are pumped and it will be great!

That´s about it for this week. I hope all is going well with each one of you. Thank you all for the love and prayers. Have a great week!

Until next week.

Love,

Elder Helvey

 

 Us and the Sisters in Pecém, Ceará at the house where they hold church meetings.

The view from our new apartment. You can see Fortaleza from a distance.

Moving!!!

Elder Evans and I at the Bus Station in Paracuru, Ceará.

Whenever we travel to the other cities in our zone this is what we see all the way there. 

It is very beautiful and tropical.

The family that came to church yesterday! Aurelio and Lindaura and their four kids.

Caucaia Week 9

Bom dia! Esta semana foi muito legal e estamos bem animados para o futuro!

Good morning! This week was super good and we are excited for the future!

Things were pretty normal this week. We didn´t travel to the interior and we didn´t do any divisions with other missionaries but it was good to stay in my area with my companion and work hard. We had another meeting with President for all the Zone Leaders and Disitrict Leaders in the mission which was the first time he had ever called for a meeting like that but it was cool and I liked it. 

Saturday we decided to visit a recent convert that hasn´t come to church in awhile and during our visit it was clear that his testimony had been shaken by a few preachers of other churches that live near his house and he told us that he doesn´t think he wants to go to church anymore. We testified of the truthfulness of the things we teach and invited him to do some visits with us. He accepted and it was awesome. The visits that we had planned on doing fell through and se we told him we were going to contact people in the street. The next thing we know he was talking to everyone and inviting everyone to visit the church and marking with people to visit them in their houses so that we can share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with them. I was very surprised but it was awesome and it really got him excited and helped us out a ton. We ended up finding an awesome family with parents that are legally married and have 6 kids. It was an awesome experience!

Yesterday was super cool because Aurilene was confirmed and received the Holy Ghost. She is super excited and super happy. We are now working with part of her family and we hope we can help them out to visit the church and accept the Gospel. We had an old lady that we have been teaching that we call Tia (Aunt), come to church for the second time yesterday and we are teaching her and her nephew, Robson.

Overall, it was a good week and we are working hard and receiving a lot of help from the awesome members here in our ward. It has been raining a lot here but it´s all good. I like the rain more than the burning hot sun everyday. This next week we will be traveling to Pecém and Paracuru!

Thank you all for the love and support! I hope everyone has a great week!!

Until next week.

Love,

Elder Helvey

Pictures taken by a member of the church in Cam's area:

Caucaia Week 8

Hey everyone! What a special week it was!! On Tuesday I spent the day in Icaraí, Ceará with Elder Ribeiro. It was a great day and it was great to spend the day with a fairly new missionary. He is excited and we had some great experiences teaching together and a few funny experiences trying to contact people in the street. It´s always good to keep laughing through it all.

Thursday, Elder Evans and I spent in Aldeota for the Mission Leadership Council. It was very good and makes me more excited about the work here in our zone. We received awesome training from President Bonini and the Assistants about how we can better help each missionary in our zones fulfill their responsibility as a missionary and how we can truly be part of the process through accountability and following up. It was awesome and this week will be sweet because my good friend, Elder Millett, will be spending the day with my here in Caucaia on Wednesday. Should be great!

The week was made even better of course with General Conference on Saturday and Sunday. I had the opportunity to watch all of the sessions in Portuguese with the ward here and it was truly awesome! I am so grateful for modern day prophets and the messages that we heard and the things we can apply in our lives now. I loved President Eyring´s talk about Fasting and Elder Nelson´s talk about The Sabbath Day. And Elder Holland´s talk about the Atonement of Jesus Christ was outstanding!

The week was made even better when yesterday, on Easter Sunday, when Aurilene, the woman we have been teaching for about 3 weeks, was baptized! It was very special for her and for us and for many members of the ward that have visited her with us during these 3 weeks. She is a very special lady and is very excited about everything! She had been a little nervous leading up to the baptism but yesterday she said she felt a heavy feeling of peace and joy throughout the entire day and especially right after she was baptized. It was one of those awesome moments on the mission that we work so hard for and it has been such a blessing to see the change she has made in her life to follow the Savior.

Anyway, it was indeed a very special week here in Caucaia and we are excited for the next few weeks too!

Until next week.

Love,

Elder Helvey

 Preaching the gospel in the Sand Dunes of Icaraí!

Beautiful view of the Atlantic Ocean while we were contacting people in the street.

A HUGE dog that really liked me haha. Seriously, it is HUGE!

Saturday in between the sessions of conference we had to take all the water out of the baptismal font with buckets because the pump isn´t working. It took a while it was super hard work but it was way worth it in the end.

Us four in our house each laying in our hammock! Brazilian style!!!

Elder Evans, Aurilene, and I right before she was baptized!

There are HUGE snails here. I thought it would be cool to eat it since my brother served a mission in France. But for some reason I think the snails in Europe that they eat are different. Just kidding, I didn´t eat it but it is still a cool picture to show how big these things are!