How many days until Christmas?

Wow it was sure great to talk to the family yesterday, from their responses it seemed as though they understood my broken English. I bet it will be even less possible to communicate when Christmas comes around. I'm at the same point with a few of the other American missionaries where we still don't feel completely fluent in Portuguese and we never quite trade completely into English so it's just a mixed bowl of confusion in our heads.

House we meet in for Church on Sunday

Anyways the rest of the week was pretty great too. (I think I say that every week) My life is currently super stressful but super rewarding. We've been visiting a lot of Former Investigators lately. This week we went to one house and the Sister of the person we were looking for answered and said he would be home the next day. When we went back his mom tried to say that he had left and we explained a little bit more to her our purpose as missionaries. When we said "We'll be back another day" she asked "Where are you going now" and we explained we'd try someone else and she said "just a second" and went into the house. When she came back she explained that her son actually was home but she didn't want to wake him up. He came to the door and was super excited to see us and asked if we could teach him in the Chapel since his Mom wasn't interested and we went there, had a good lesson and after he brought us to his friends house and we taught his friend too. They said they quit going to church because the missionaries they knew left and that they marked a baptismal date but weren't baptized because the missionaries left. It was pretty sweet to see the big change from walking away from a door because of a lame excuse to meeting these guys that seem to have a lot of interest.

We found out yesterday that are ward has to stay above an attendence of 80 people every sunday for the construction of the new chapel to continue. We're working hard to keep building Zion while the workers get the chapel ready for us to fill. 

Love you Guys,

Elder Della-Piana

Só Milagres

Well the work here in São Bento continues with Miracles.

This week we've started teaching pretty regularly the sister of a Recent Convert in our ward. It has been so sweet that we've gotten to teach her. She explained to us that before she met us she was afraid of "the Mormons." She thought the missionaries went around the street and when someone was going to die we would visit them to bring them to heaven. Then she had a rough experience and was praying for someone to come and help her and the next day we showed up at her door. Wow. It's so cool how the Lord works miracles. 

We had a sweet Family Home Evening last night with her family in the house of a member. The spiritual thought was about bringing our families with us to heaven and you could see it working in her eyes that she wants that. Afterwards the game was that everyone wrote on a peice of paper their name on one side and instructions on the other side for someone else in the room to do something (sing a song, do pushups, imitate an animal, etc.) The trick was that when we read the papers the person that wrote the thing to do had to do that thing. I had written for one of the kids of the family that was visiting to eat all the dessert but then they didn't let me eat it all... (I already knew the game)

Anyways there are great times out here. I am learning a ton. This week I studied in Preach My Gospel about how we will be accountable to the Lord for all we do for good or bad. I sure want to be acountable for having done my part in the work of the Lord.

Love you All!!

~Elder DP

São Bento can't get rid of me

Well transfer news is in and (drumroll please) I'M STAYING IN SÃO BENTO! Elder Soares was ticked that he's headed out. This will be his last transfer and he wanted to finish the mission here. Anyways, I'm stoked. We gained the trust of the members the last transfer and now we're seeing miracles start to unfold here. 

First of all my new companion Elder Palhares showed up. He has already served with basically my entire MTC group which is kind of funny. He's from Minais (don't think I spelled that right) and is even taller than me! I always get the midgets or giants as companions, never in between. He's pretty cool. He's obsessed with titantic and I think he cried when he heard I haven't seen it. (Hope I didn't make any enemies back home divulging that information) Case in point, he's excited to work and so am I so I bet it will be a good transfer. 

We had a sweet baptism this week!! Iraci is the mom of a girl we baptized last transfer. Her story of how she chose to be baptized is kind of cool. At first she was very wishy-washy about baptism and said "I'm very instantanious with my choices, I'll let you guys know when I want to be baptized." Then about 2 weeks ago as we were leaving she heard us mention another person that would be baptized and said "I'll be baptized with them" without us even having to invite her. It's funny because the other person wasn't baptized but she was.

Other cool miracles 

 - we had a ton of investigators at church and the ward was super excited about it, even better because it was families that came

 - the new chapel is being built right now and they are working NONSTOP! It's sweet, I'll shoot off a picture.

Anyways, just miracles here, I love this area 

Love you guys, Stay safe

~Elder Della-Piana

(Photos - Baptism with Elder Palhares and the part of Iraci's family that was able to come to the baptism;

Other foto of the beginning of the construction of our new chapel here, should be done by December or so I've heard)