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

SEMANA DA DIVISÃO

This week we had a super cool experience where we got to do a week-long exchange with the AP's. They came to our area and we teared it up the whole week and used every ounce of energy we could muster. It was also fun because they are both great guys and friends of ours, you can tell from the picture just about how the week went.

Sunday Morning

So usually when we go out Sunday Morning to bring people to church we split up and one of us goes with a member to pick people up and the other stays at the church with a member to receive people that come. This week having four of us made it much more exciting. During the week we had around 20 people all from the same neighborhood of appartment buildings all promise to come to church with us. Our gameplan was to go there with two members with cars, send a couple people with the members to church and then catch the bus with everybody else. We divided up the list with addresses for the other companionship and we went out. We totally looked like a special operations unit showing up in suits, hopping out of the cars and running from house to house to get everyone, we felt like bosses. 

Unfortunatly we returned from there with only one investigator in our car but when we got there several families that we are teaching had already made it either on their own or brought by members and we were even able to bring an old lady into the church by just inviting her in front of the door. It was so much fun to go about all that with so much energy. 

Sunday Morning Cont. 

We also had an interesting experience when I went with one of the AP's to try to bring an old investigator to church Sunday morning. I knocked the door and rang the doorbell but it looked like she wasn't going to be coming out. Then the Elder with me shouted her name at the top of his loungs. As we waited she came out startled and when she saw it was us her reaction was priceless. She went back to throw some clothes on and came to church with us but told us "Look, everyone that lives there was already mad at me and now it's just worse because you woke them all up;" We brought her to church and during the meeting it talked about exactly what she needed to hear and afterwards she thanked us for getting her which was really great. 

Go the extra mile for the people around you, it's so worth it!!!

Have a great week!

Elder DP

Water in Itu!

Well Elder S. Costa got here tuesday morning and it was a great week. I've been pretty lucky lately as far as companions go, I keep on getting great ones. It's also cool because he already passed through this area earlier in his mission when there were two companionships in the Area so he kind of knows the area already.

So this week there is a young man that is headed out from Itú to go serve in the Chile Concepción Mission. It was cool because there is a Seventy from our Stake that helped reactivate him and he asked the Seventy to come speak at his farewell Sunday. It was cool to hear Elder Antunes talk about how important our study of the scriptures is for our missions and for our lives. He talked about how sometimes we read the scriptures too fast and we miss out on some special messages that when pick up on when we read them slower and really think about the meaning. 

I had a cool experience as well this week as I, along with the rest of the Zone, pray for people more specifically in my prayers at night and wrote down the questions that came to mind for me to ask God. In my prayers at night I asked those questions and then throughout the day I saw how the Lord answered my questions through my studies, conversations with others and meetings that I participated in. It was really cool.

There was also a very cool baptism in our ward this week (and not just because the water was cold). There is a mom and a daughter that we began teaching a few weeks ago that were baptised this weekend. I don't always write about the baptisms but this one was very special because of how strong their testimonies are. Lu (the Mom) told us in the second visit before she had even been to church that when she read the Book of Mormon she read several verses and stopped several times to ask God if it was true. She had the privilege to feel that it was true THREE TIMES as she asked, asked again and asked again. Then this week she told us that as she prayed and thought again recently she had a vision of us two missionaries all dressed in white to help her be baptized and it was yet another confirmation for her that what we had taught was true. Good thing they are both short because we couldn't fill the font all the way up because of the lack of water so they had to be baptized sitting down.

We had another visit this week that when we arrived to visit a family that not all are members (yet) the recent convert was there reading with her Mother who is preparing to be baptized as well. It is such a pleasure when as a missionary we get to be around people that are being truly converted.

Other Miracle this week = WATER!!! We've had water at our house that we payed a truck to bring in and we've been able to take normal showers lately but for the first time in 6 Months water came from the street with enough pressure to fill up our water boxes above our house!! WooHoo!! Living Water!

Have a great week y'all!

Elder DP

Mais 6 Semanas (SIX MORE WEEKS)

Well we got transfer news early this week and unfortunately Elder Berrios is headed out already. This is my 11th transfer and my 11th companion not counting the MTC (Counting the MTC 12th transfer, 16th companion). I must be hard to live with. Elder S. Costa from Natal will be coming in tomorrow and Elder Berrios is going to be training in São Paulo again. I was pretty bummed to find out he was headed out, I really enjoyed serving with him. 

I wish I could share all that I have learned each week with all of you but I guess that's why the mission is only for two years because only when I get home will I be able to share with you all the life changing experiences that are the every day occurrences here in Brazil. 

So we've been praying pretty hard for rain the last little while because of the lack of water and fortunately but unfortunately the Heavens Opened. It was great except for every time we were caught completely unprepared. One time I got lucky and we found a cheap umbrella that I snagged that kept only my head dry but the other night we got out of an apartment looking at a torrential downpour. It must have been quite the scene to see us run from apartment building to apartment building stopping under garages and stairways to try to wait out the rain. By the time we got to a bus stop we were soaking wet and we caught a bus the rest of the way home. 

There are many other amazing stories but it wouldn't do them justice to share by email so I look forward to sharing someday when I'm home of a member who exhibited selfless service in a way that has changed my life, giving a blessing of comfort in a catholic chapel at a funeral, and some amazing people that have come to church lately and are accepting the Gospel. 

Of all the things we can do for the people around us, the greatest thing we can do is give willingly to those we know, whether we are close to them or not. 

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2014/10/are-we-not-all-beggars?lang=eng 

Have an amazing week everybody, and please, "lift up the hands that hang down,"

Elder DP

Itu, Itu, Seco Itu

Yet another interesting week in Itu. My companion messed up his leg and we had to get rides with members to visit most of our lessons but it was at least a great excuse to work more with the members. We had a truck bring water to our house to fill up a huge water box in front of our house because the city is without water in the water systems so at least we can take baths and wash dishes using water that we put in soda bottles haha.

Sunday Switchup

So on saturday we went and visited a good number of families that we are teaching to confirm that they would come to church on Sunday. That night after confirming everything we learned that Sacrament Meeting had been cancelled for the next day due to a Funeral Service for a brother in our ward that had passed away. In stead of bringing all of our investigators to a funeral we had to run around calling them and arranging rides for them to come with us to the neighboring ward. It was funny because this week we had way more investigators at church than we usually have and they all felt very welcome in the other ward. We even had the problem that some want to attend there because they felt so welcome hahaha. One of our investigators that is very solid but waiting to be married to be baptized offered afterwards to bring some other investigators to church on a weekly basis!! She's already a great member missionary without even being a member yet. 

Interviews with President

So since interviews with President Farnes were in our Area we had marked our companionship as the last to be interviewed. President had made a goal for how short it would be but our interview ended up finishing about 2 and a half hours after it was scheduled to end. It was great though. It is a very special thing to have one on one learning opertunities with someone that has so much life experience and wants so badly for us to succeed. One of the things he talked to me about that I learned a lot from was about how everyone has a story and if we want people to listen to us we have to listen to them. 

This week was truly a great experience. I know with all certainty that God answers our Prayers. I look forward to the day when I get to tell you all about the cool experiences we have as missionaries. 

Have a great week everybody!!

Elder DP