Wattap Brasilândia!!

WHAT A CRAZY FIRST WEEK!

So my new companion is Elder Caldas from Fortaleza, Ceará in northeastern Brazil. He comes from a great family and was a professional "HandBall" champion before the mission. I didn't really know what handball was when he said it but it sounds like basketball but throwing the ball at a goal instead of shooting it at a hoop. We're both really excited and we have some high goals for the next 10 weeks.

Irmão Djalmo - helped us a TON this weekend 

- completely willing to give us rides for 

everything that we needed.

Opening an area is always a crazy experience. You may recall the last time I opened an area our bishop had to go pick us up because they burned the bus we were supposed to catch. This time the member from another ward that was supposed to take our bags home took off without us and without our bags. Luckily the area is close and I'd already dropped off my bags before transfers with a member from my last ward but we had to catch a ride with members headed in a different direction to get close enough to the area for our ward mission leader to go pick us up haha, welcome to the mission greenie!

General Authorities fo' dayz!

So this week we had two great conferences with general authorities. The first was Friday when we had a mission conference with our mission and the São Paulo East mission with Elder Aidukaitis of the Area Presidency and Elder L. Whitney Cleyton of the Presidency of the Seventy. They shared an amazing conference and we all learned a ton. As always we talked about Baptism, conversion teaching and all that great stuff. He also said that the sisters need to stop being so hard on themselves and that we elders need to be harder on ourselves and expect more! I came away wanting to do everything possible to lengthen my stride and hasten the work.

Reginalda's baptism!

Two of the first converts of the church in São Paulo
- leaders in the São Paulo north stake for years.

We also had a special stake conference with Bishop Gerald Caussé and our mission president just for our stake. It was kind of crazy because my companion and I barely know the path to our ward building and much less how to get to the Stake Center but luckily everything worked out for us and our investigators to make it there safely. Bishop Caussé talked a bunch about the importance of families and basing our families in the principles of the gospel.

Reginalda!

We had some AMAZING miracles this week and this was one of the best of all. Reginalda is an amazing woman that has gone through some challenges the last few years. When we knocked on her door this week she said that she was pondering and feeling really down. She had already visited the church a little while back and she was touched by the message of the restored gospel. This Sunday she was baptized after the conference with Bishop Caussé. It was amazing to me to see how humbly and anxiously she accepted the invitation to follow the example of Christ and it inspired me to follow more humbly the Lord's plan in my life. She is already becoming a great missionary and is giving us referrals for us to visit her family and talks about bringing them to church as well!

Well it was a great week and we're super excited here. I think that's one of the biggest secrets to missionary work is staying excited to keep focused and working hard.

Have a great week everybody!

Elder DP

OUR AREA