Last week in ITU!!!

Well transfer news is in and I kept my streak going of getting a new companion per transfer. Companion number 17 will be Elder Dalton in area number 6 which will be Barcelona. Barcelona is a stake in the city Sorocaba which is the city I served in when I first got here to Brazil. 

Activity with President

So this week we had a super fun activity with our Mission President and his family. We had a great month as a zone and earned a day with them of Volleyball, Basketball, Ping Pong, Pizza and other fun stuff. It rained a little bit but we had a great time. It felt so good to play volley for the first time in a while and felt even better to spike on (and get spiked on by) President Farnes.

ZONE ACTIVITY for "great month as a zone"

Miracle

We had a cool miracle this week when during Sunday School we said a prayer asking God to help us find somebody that we could bring to church and teach and then continue teaching afterwards and went out to the street. It's a long story but to get down to the line after being rejected a bunch we invited a man that went in with us to Sacrament Meeting. He seemed to enjoy himself but snuck out before the meeting ended without us noticing and we didn't get his address and we thought we had missed our chance to teach him. Later that day we ended up starting our walk home earlier than we had planned so that we could try a few people in a different neighborhood. Can you guess who we ran into? Yes, our good friend. He showed us to his home and we were able to teach him and his wife and he said he wants to go to church next week as well and make changes in his life. It was cool to see that miracle. 

Crazy Rain Lady

So, I'm sending a picture that unexplained makes no sense and explained doesn't make much more. Also another long story short kind of story. So we were about to leave the apartments where we were working to go to a ward activity and it started to have a pretty good rain out. We asked one of the residents that we knew to give us a cup of water before we headed out and she told us to step in and informed us that she would not let us leave the apartments until it stopped raining. After explaining how we really needed to get going and that the bus stop was close by she still didn't want to let us go. Having forgotten our umbrellas she created the bright solution of which can be explained in the pictures attached I'm not sure if our rain apparel was within the missionary dress code but at least we managed to catch our bus and we weren't all that wet upon arrival at the activity. 

Wow.  Crazy rain lady is quite a fashion designer.

As can be seen in the stories and photos I'm having a great time and plenty of miracles. It was a great pleasure to serve here in Itu and I'll miss a lot of people here but I'm excited for some new adventures!

Until next week!

~Elder Della-Piana

PS The picture with my companion and a couple is the man that we invited to church yesterday and met back up with him. Two of the pictures are from the zone activity and I'll leave the fourth up to the imagination 

Quase Natal!!!

Well, I started writing this email in Portuguese and then I had to go back and delete it because I realized y'all weren't going to understand to well.

Well as always it was a good week to be in the service of the Lord. I spent a lot of time out of my area on exchanges with some Elders in our Zone as well as going to a conference in another city. It was good though, we had some great experiences there.

I think the sweetest visit this week was when we went to visit a member's referral. The member had brought his friend to church this last week and his friend really enjoyed it. We met him Sunday and marked to visit him during the week. We had some complications that afternoon and didn't know which bus to catch to make it to his house and we got lucky and found the right bus to not have to walk and show up super late. When we got there he was already at the end of his street waiting for us. He walked us to his humble home where he had set up two chairs for us to teach him and his daughter. During the lesson he talked about how badly he wanted to change his life and how he recently was able to get rid of some strong addictions very quickly and is feeling a huge change in his life. After talking about the Gospel we marked his and his daughter's baptismal dates. It was cool because when his daughter accepted the date she got super excited and ran out to tell her friends, "I'm gunna get baptized!!" It was a really special experience to see someone who had truly humbled himself and desired to be baptized (D&C 20:37)

We had another fun week bringing everybody to church. We went with a member to go pick up a family and on the way we called to confirm and they said they would come. When we got there and they didn't answer we were not only baffled but also a bit frustrated. Then we called them and found out that they had caught a ride with another investigator that was going to church. Fortunately we were able to give their places to a few other investigators that were going to catch the bus to go to church and we gave them our seats so thei could go catch the meetings and we walked back to the church so that we could invite a few more people to come to church with us. It was a great time. 

Have a great week!
Elder DP

PS one photo is me and my companion suited up to chase down investigators to go to church and the other is a friend of ours at a local Acaí place called O Bocão. 

Dia de Ação de Graças

As always, another great week in Itu. One of the families in our ward invited us over for a Thanksgiving Dinner which was really funny because nobody here celebrates Thanksgiving. It was the first thanksgiving I've been to where rice was a main dish, 'farofa' instead of stuffing, in 80 degree weather without football but it was still awesome. 

 

Family Home Evening

We had a fun family home evening this week with a family of recent-converts in a Member's home. They had already been to other family home evenings before their baptism and there has always been a different game with some sort of trick that you have to catch on to. We played one game where you have to tap a pen on a book three times and say "Sou burro, sou burro, sou burro" and if you don't do it just right everyone that knows the game calls you a burro. Until you can get it right. It took several people a while to catch on but it turned into a great time for everyone. We also got them excited during the message to start searching out their Family History as we told some stories from our own family history. 

Primary Program

So this week was the primary program and it was really cool because there were a lot of non-members there to attend, both broght by members as well as our investigators. As always it was a special performance as it is in the whole world but the coolest part was when one of our investigator's daughters participated. The investigator had said that she would only be able to stay for the first part of church but when her daughter went and practiced with the other children she ended up staying for Sacrament Meeting as well. Her daughter even got to say a few lines :)

I sure love being a missionary, it's a pleasure to serve all the time. When you all get a chance you should go to christmas.mormon.org and watch the Video "He is the Gift" and share it with everyone else. It's a great chance to keep Christ in the picture this Christmas season. 

Tenham uma boa semana!!
Elder DP