Wild Week of Transfers

Well I have never had such a wild transfer week. 

Elder DP & Elder Johnson

As some that are serving or have served missions know the week of transfers is always a week of high anxiety and anticipation. This time I wasn't worried because I'd already assumed I would leave São Bento since I've been here for so long and so I was just waiting for where I would be sent - I was wrong. The call for transfers came in Monday and I was told I would stay in São Bento and that my new companion would be ELDER JOHNSON - one of my favorite elders in the whole mission and someone that I look up to a ton. Even better because we were already serving in are

Change of plans - not companions

as close by. Then tuesday morning the mission office called me and let me know I would still be in São Bento but instead of Elder Johnson I would have a different companion... Ahhhh, it would have been good.

Anyways, now I'm with Elder Alvarez from Chile. He has even less time speaking portuguese than I do which is interesting because he can't trade into English to clarify and I've had to try to remember Spanish to understand. It's great though he's excited.

So, funny story of th

e week. There was a drunk guy (at 10 am in the morning) that came up to a group of me and 5 other American missionaries at a bus stop and asked if Mormons are a cult or a religion. After explaining that it's a religion he said "I like you guys, even though I just threw down a few 'pingas' (alcoholic drinks) you guys still talk to me." Another missionary - a big, blue-eyed, blonde-haired german-american, started inviting him to go to church on sunday and in the middle of explaining the guy blurted out "Why do they always send the good-looking ones here for us brazilians, you have beautiful eyes." We got a kick out of that one.

Elder DP & Elder Alvarez

Well the work of salvation is great here. We're working a lot to bring back those that have drifted away from the Gospel. It's cool to help people that have already been baptized renew their faith in Christ and become active in following him once more.

Love you guys,

Elder Della-Piana

Brazilian Autumn

Well we are reaching the point here with the weather when it's not too hot during the day and it gets just cold enough at night to be comfortable. Ahhh lovin it.

So today (Monday) is usually P-day but rather than that we are going to email our family and then go teach and work as normal. You might ask why and the reason is that on WEDNESDAY we get to hear from ELDER RUSSELL M. NELSON!!!!! He's going to be here in São Paulo and they're pulling together three different missions to all come hear from him. Since it's going to take away from our time to work they decided to make that day p-day, if he weren't an Apostle I'd be more sore about it. 

Outside of that it was a pretty normal week. I worked outside of my area for most of it working with other missionaries in other areas but it was still good. We had a cool experience in another area where we were going through an old list of members of the church and visiting the ones that aren't going to church and we came to this tiny side allyway and couldn't find the house in this alley and we were asking everyone and almost gave up. Finally we talked to a guy that said he didn't know the person we were looking for but then said 'Wait, you mean Benedito that lives in that house around the corner?' and directed us to the person we were looking for that lived in a house we would have never found. He received us warmly and expressed a strong desire to come back to the church and bring his family with him that aren't members yet. After having been rejected for an entire afternoon it was cool to be reminded that there are people out there that DO want to hear from us and DO want to improve their lives. 

"Our missionaries are going forth to different Nations. The Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.”

What a marvelous work and a wonder,

Elder DP

4 Months in Brazil

You know that feeling when you're not paying attention and all of a sudden you realize you haven't had an American meal in four months... Well, I know there's at least a few that can relate.

Wow does time fly by, it feels like yesterday I descended the plane from Colorado into the hot São Paulo air lost with NO ability to read ANY signs or ask for direction and by some fortune stumbled upon the Brazilian with a sign for the american missionaries. Now four months later all the Brazilian customs are seemingly normal. Having packs of wild dogs roaming the streets, banana trees in the middle of a park, rice and beans every day, telefone wires hanging at chest-height with a dozen kites caught in each one, clapping instead of knocking on doors, all these things are starting to seem normal. The only thing I still havn't lost - and probably never will loose - is the accent.

Well this week is transfers, we should be getting a call this afternoon on who is out and who stays. Having already been in Parque São Bento for 4 months it's quite probable I'll be headed out. I've loved this area. I think just about everyone in the neighborhoods recognizes the tall American that walks these streets on the daily. 

It was a slow week, not may people let us in, we got shut in the house because of a busdriver/police "greve" (I forgot the word in english it's when they stop working to make a point). It also rained the ENTIRE weekend so not many people were in the streets to talk to. I took solace in the words of the late Elder Joseph B. Worthlin of the quorom of the twelve apostles "The next time you're tempted to groan, you might try to laugh instead" - boy was I tempted to groan but I thought of this quote and found myself still smiling even as we were trudging through the rain, being rejected and lied to to be avoided. (funny lie of the week - we talked to a guy twice and he tried to say that the other time it was his twin brother but his story contradicted and it became clear it was him, oh Brazil). That's the nice thing about life though, happiness is a choice, I don't need my situation to dictate my happiness.

Well Life's Good, keep on keeping on! I apologize to anyone that I haven't been able to reply to personally, time's a crunch when our hour of email comes around for the week. I do love letters and have more time to reply to those ;) 

Até Mais,

~Elder Della-Piana

PS I think the word for 'greve' is boycott? nope... it's strike, there was a busdriver strike... wow that took a long time to remember

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)

Final da Transferência

Well, yet another transfer is coming to a close here in good old Brazil.

It was a good transfer here with Elder Soares. A challenge we had at the start of the transfer was that we didn't have the trust of the members in our ward and we gained that confidence back this transfer. Sunday we had the chance to give talks during Sacrament Meeting and I really wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to bless the ward. I prepared and prayed and studied all week for this talk and felt pretty good. I had been asked to go 10 minutes and Elder Soares 15 but he put off his talk until the last minute and so when we got to the stand he said "You know, I'm not going to go very long, is there any way you could go 20 minutes" and so I cranked it out to 20 minutes. It was cool to see how my language has changed in just 3 months to be able to pull that off. Elder Soares also had a great talk and after we had a bunch of people thank us for what we had shared which was very different from how it had been one transfer ago. 

Well it's pretty hilarious that right now as I write I am having a ton of trouble remembering how to speak English, I had to change the word I wanted to use several times because I realized it didn't make sense haha. Oh the blessings of having a native companion.

This week I we've been working with the family of one of our recent converts. She is on FIRE for missionary work and is talking with EVERYONE about how much the Gospel has blessed her life. Tomorrow will be a month since her baptism and we've started teaching her aunt, cousin from the other side of the family and the families of two of her friends all because she has been so excited about sharing the gospel. It is so cool to watch someone truly embrace the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

This week I've been thinking about Easter and Christ's resurrection and how they play into the work of Salvation. For me that's captured in the story of the Sons of Mosiah and their desire to share the gospel - 

"Now they were desirous that salvation should be declared to every creature, for they could not bear that any human soul should perish; yea, even the very thoughts that any soul should endure endless torment did cause them to quake and tremble.

 And thus did the Spirit of the Lord work upon them, for they were the very vilest of sinners. And the Lord saw fit in his infinite mercy to spare them; nevertheless they suffered much anguish of soul because of their iniquities, suffering much and fearing that they should be cast off forever."

I know Christ loves us and wants us to have complete joy in this life and because of this speaks through a living prophet to guide us today

~Elder Della-Piana