Perseverar até o fim!! [Enduring to the end]

Saying good bye to a family of recent converts
that moved to a near-by ward that I served in recently.

Hey y'all!!

Another good week! Lots of great stuff!

Os Barracos [The Shacks]

Thank you all for your prayers on behalf of some of the families that are members of the church that were going to be taken out of their homes this week. After quite a bit of excitement they were given more time to find a place to stay. One family already moved to the last ward I was in so it's good to know that they'll be in good hands with some good missionaries that I know there.

Pancakes

Pancakes

What's a selfie-stick?

Confirmations

The Sunday before this one was stake conference and so nobody that was baptized that week was confirmed and so this week was cool because there were 6 confirmations all on the same day. This ward is growing a LOT! There is so much work to be done here!

We also had a good time going to a member's place this morning with the other Elders to eat pancakes, I'll attatch some pics.

Have a great week y'all,

See you soon!

Elder DP

A Full Week!

Yet another action packed week here in São Paulo! We had interviews with presidente, I got to do a few baptismal interviews again, we had a mission conference with Elder Schmiel (an área seventy) and we had stake conference with our mission president and another area seventy present. It was cool to have so many learning experiences with these great men.

Tereza

Tereza was baptized this week! Before her granddaughter's baptism last week she was saying that she only wanted to be baptized at the end of the year. After the baptism her granddaughter had such a great experience that she decided to be baptized this week with five other people from all the wards in our stake. It was a really cool baptismal service.

Os Barracos

This week we got some bad News for many of the recent converts in our Ward. A small community found out thursday that they will have to evacuate their homes by tomorrow when a bulldozer will come in and level their homes. It's a complicated story but in the end please include them in your prayers because there are more than 30 members of the church living within this community, several being our recent converts. Keep them in your prayers please!

Purification Project

Our mission president gave us a new challenge so that we can be more worthy of the spirit and teach with greater authority. He taught us a lot about the enabeling power of the atonement so that we can make changes from good to better. The challenge is called the "Purification Project" where we are suposed to fast for 24 hours and write down all the things that could drive away the spirit in any manner. After the fast and writing the list we are supposed to promise the Lord that for the next 45 days we will fast from doing those things (not do them). Obviously we won't be perfect but each day we are supposed to Wake up and pray and promise that we will obey and ask for the strength to overcome, and every night review the day and see what we were able to overcome and what we didn't manage to. I'm really excited for the challenge, I've already got a good list to improve on!

Hope you all have a great week,

see you soon!

Elder DP

Brasilândia Miracles weekly

One more week, one less week. It's amazing how entering into my last transfer of the mission is such a whirlwind of emotions. Excitement to see my Family but sadness to be leaving the mission. The good thing is that all the emotions are a better reason to finish Strong!! We're having tons of miracles here and I'm sure they'll keep coming.

New Converts

This week we had the baptism of Amanda which was really cool. When we knocked her door her grandma tried to make excuses for us not to come back and she came to the door and kept taking away all her excuses. After the first lesson we got back and she had already read 14 chapters in the Book of Mormon!! Her baptism was cool because she was super prepared to receive the gospel. She already lived many of the gospel principles, she even already fasts!

Reactivation

We're doing a huge Project to visit all of the recent converts from the last 2 years in this Ward because there are a lot that are less active. We met one Family that received us really well and accepted easily the invitation to go back to church. It seemed as though they were just waiting for the invitation to go back to church. They went to church and one of the members of the Family even went up and bore her testimony.

Pure Love of Christ

I got to see a miracle this week in sacrament. A less-active member walked in a few minutes late after not having gone to church in a few weeks. One of the members behind us yet out what was nearly a yelp and ran the isle to give him a huge hug and welcome him back. It was cool to see that kind of love.

Hope you all enjoy the stories and have a great week!

Elder Della-Piana

We Broke the Transfer Streak!!!!

Transfer call number 16 is in and.... WE STAYED!!

For the first time in Brazil I will be staying with a companion for two transfers. Elder Caldas will be my last companion and I'll finish the mission in Brasilândia. It will be wierd to work as if it were a normal day on transfer day and not have to go to transfer meeting or wait for a new companion. We're excited.

ZONE PICTURE

Resgate

This ward has baptized many people in the last two years but unfortunately many of these recent converts have fallen away from the church. This week we organized the list of recent converts and began the process of visiting each one, which will be a large task to say the least. We're planning a big group exchange with the ward to go out with 6 different companionships to go visit all these people all on the same day this month and so we're excited to go about that.

We already had some cool miracles with reactivation in this area. We baptized three young men whose sister was already baptized and she began to return to church and is preparing to go on a mission! We're excited about all the miracles that the Lord is performing here in our area.

Well yesterday I lost my daily planner and now I realize how lost I am without it because I feel like I don't remember anything that I did this week hahaha. I guess I really am getting old...

The church has a really cool biography for Elder L. Tom Perry who passed away this weekend. I recomend it to anybody that wants to be inspired: Elder Perry's Biography

Have another great week!

Elder Della-Piana

Sao Paulo Temple and Dessert Activity

Sao Paulo Temple with my companion Elder Caldas

Well we're headed into the last week of the transfer but it's pretty much a done deal that I'll stay here with Elder Caldas and break my transfers streak of being transferred every time. It has been a great few weeks, we've been really blessed in this area. The Lord is truly hastening his work.

Temple

Sao Paulo Temple: My comp; companionship that lives
with us; Elder Faimalo (a samoan from Texas)
and Elder Friedrich (a Brazilian from Rio Grande do Sul)

Lunch with President after the temple

So I got to go the the São Paulo temple this week for the first time. It is a really beautiful place. It was cool to be there in a temple that is in the middle of such a huge city and go into a place that is so calm and quiet. It was fun as well because our zone got to go to an all-you-

The Desserts

can-eat Brazilian barbecue after with President because we won the competition last month between the Zones. Needless to say, 14 Elders just about made the place go broke haha. I also drank root beer for the first time in a year and a half because we found a place that sells it close by the temple.

"Do you love your neighbor?"

 

Dessert Activity

Well I think I mentioned last transfer a ward activity we put on in my other ward with a ton of desserts and such. It was so much fun that we decided to throw the same party here in this ward. It was a huge hit. It started off slow because everybody got there late but we played "Do you love your neighbor?" and everybody had a riot and then ate way to many desserts. We had the visitors be the judges and it was cool because they didn't know beforehand but they totally had the style to be judges on a tv show or something. It was a riot.

Isabel

Isabel's baptism

This week Isabel was baptized and it was really cool (as always). Several of her daughters and grand daughters  went to support her. Her story is really special. She prayed a few weeks ago so that God would show her a path for her to follow and the next day she prayed again so that he would send an angel to guide her. Just a little while later we knocked on her door and she let us in very willingly. When we taught her about the Spirit and asked her when she had felt that way in her life she said "I felt it when my children were born, when God was by my side when my Husband went through cancer and I feel it right now, I know that God sent you guys here because I asked him to." It was truly a humbling experience. It was also an answer to our prayers because when we got here to open up the area we set some high goals and we had a special dedicatory prayer to accomplish those goals. In that prayer we asked the Lord to send angels to prepare the hearts of the people to receive us and our message and to give them clear answers to their prayers. There are truly many people in the whole world that are who "are only kept from the truth because they know not where to find it" (D&C 123:12)

Well as always, it was another great week to be a missionary. We played (American) Football today as well with some other companionships that live close to us at a turf field in front of their house which was a good time. It was quite the riot teaching the Brazilians all the rules but we had a goot time. It had been a long time since the last time I had "Turf Burn" but it feels good.

Have a great week!

See you soon!

Elder DP

Happy Mother's Day!!!

The new area from the Bishop's place

What a blessing to be able to talk to the Family yesterday! It's crazy to think that next time I see them it will be in person!

We had an amazing week this week. Really full of miracles!!

Adriana, Ana and Pedro

Adriana, Ana and Pedro

This awesome family was baptized this weekend and is seriously one of the most prepared families I know to meet the gospel. They were the first Family that Elder Caldas taught on his mission. We arrived here in the area and went to a member's home the first night and Pedro was there playing with the other boys. The member said that Pedro had already been to church and so we asked him to take us to teach his family. We got there and his mom had had an amazing spiritual experience the day before and was looking for the path the Lord wanted her to follow and they readily accepted baptism. Later we found out that her mom was a member of the church before she passed away. It's amazing how the Lord prepares people.

Elder DP making pancakes for the zone.

We also had zone conference this week and focused on helping people solve their problems. Sister Farnes made Lion House bread rolls and so that was a huge highlight.

Hope everybody has a great week!!

LîVE!

Elder DP

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