Week 34

Today I´ve been a missionary for 8 months! About a year ago I received my call to serve. Yesterday we had dinner at the house of a really cool member. It took a while for the food to be ready but it was totally worth it. We took a picture with them because it would be potentially the last time we ate at their house due to the approaching transfer next week.

Unfortunately we weren´t able to baptize Brenda and Bruna on Sunday because their dad was a little hesitant. But we got all three of them to attend church and they loved it! We´ll try to help them make the decision this coming week.

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Élder Joseph Andrew

Missão Porto Alegre Norte

Caixa Postal 13008

CEP: 91010-971

Porto Alegre - RS

BRASIL

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Week 33

We had a really rainy week! The best part of it was Sunday, when we had District Conference. The branches Santa Cruz, Campus, Venâncio Aires, Rio Pardo, and Vera Cruz participated. During the conference President Wright spoke and both him and his wife gave a beautiful musical presentation. Brenda and Bruna, our baptisms for next week, were able to attend with their grandma and I know they had a great experience. After the conference a member decided to photo bomb our picture:

The day before President Wright attended our district meetings and afterwards interviewed us. I always enjoy the interviews because I´m able to ask questions and learn how to be a better missionary. He is a powerful leader and it´s a wonderful experience to learn from him. We also received letters that had arrived for us. Thanks for all your support!

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Élder Joseph Andrew

Missão Porto Alegre Norte

Caixa Postal 13008

CEP: 91010-971

Porto Alegre - RS

BRASIL

Read my blog at elderandrewinbrazil.blogspot.com

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

Week 32

Not much to report from this week. We finally located a less-active family and taught them a few lessons. The father (Henrique) is a member for quite a long time, but fell into inactiviy after the death of his wife. He has two daughters ages 9 and 10 that we are helping him teach so they can be baptized here in a few weeks. It was cool when we told him that he could baptize his own daughters after a few weeks of activity. Henrique became emotional when we commited him to work towards that goal. The only problem is that we can only teach them on Saturdays because he works a lot.

Yesterday was a great experience as Fast and Testimony meeting. I had been working on making my fasts more effective and felt very good after completing this one. I bore my testimony in church on the absolute truthfulness of the gospel. There is literally no other way to return to the presence of our loving Heavenly Father. What a glorious plan that has been presented to us and how blessed we are to have the opportunity to follow our Saviour Jesus Christ!

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Élder Joseph Andrew

Missão Porto Alegre Norte

Caixa Postal 13008

CEP: 91010-971

Porto Alegre - RS

BRASIL

Read my blog at elderandrewinbrazil.blogspot.com

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

Week 31

Another week in the field! Work was a little difficult this week due to the Easter Festivities. Because many people traveled and closed up shop for the week, we were hard pressed to find many people in the streets and in their houses to teach them. Despite the difficulties, we were able to get the word out about the Church´s initiative to almost the entire town.

On Thursday we taught a really cool family. They had been brought to church by some members, they enjoyed it, and we had begun to teach them afterwards. The mother had a lot of questions about the church which was refreshing after a long period of investigators who didn´t even pay attention and who simply wanted us to leave so they could get back to watching TV. Her daughters Souellen and Evelyn also listened attentively to our message. We spent some good time explaining in detail how the Church works, about the Book of Mormon, and how she could come to know of its truthfulness. On Saturday we showed up again at their house at a pre-determined time to interview them for baptism but no one was at home. Unfortunately the father is quite a bit of opposition and so it might take longer.

We enjoyed watching General Conference live at the chapel in Santa Cruz with the other members of the district. It was my first one completely in Portuguese (the last had been in English at the MTC) and I was pleased to find that I understood most of what was said. One of my favorite talks was given by Elder Nelson in the concluding session. He spoke of the importance of the Sabbath day. He gave personal experiences of his youth and used the scriptures to teach us how we can make our day of worship "delightful". It truly is a day to focus on strengthening our testimonies, set aside a portion of our time to the Lord as we do with our income, and spend time with our families.

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Élder Joseph Andrew

Missão Porto Alegre Norte

Caixa Postal 13008

CEP: 91010-971

Porto Alegre - RS

BRASIL

Read my blog at elderandrewinbrazil.blogspot.com

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.