Lindsay, CJ

Good morning all! Wild to think that another week has gone by! Let's just get right into it, shall we? Yesterday we welcomed two new members into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Vanessa and Fernando (aka Fernandinho). Really it was nothing short of a miracle inspired by the Holy Ghost that we (re)found Joselio and his family. For the past month we have been working with just his family and are still finding, teaching, and baptizing. We have a new all-time record for attendance here at the Itapecuru group: 83. That was pretty wild. We were running to neighbors' houses to borrow plastic chairs with beer logos and lounge chairs as we only had a little over 70 available at the Church. It's funny that I have to say "only" 70 chairs. That was pretty miraculous. Joselio and Romão were interviewed by President Lindsey over the phone yesterday and were found worthy to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood! Next Sunday the group will do a sustaining vote and t...

The work just keeps on rolling here in Itapecuru-Mirim, and we're basically just counting the days down until we can send a proposal to Church Headquarters for the city to be considered a branch. When I say "just counting the days down," that doesn't by any means mean we aren't working. We had a full week to work in our area and had some miracles happen as a result. Yesterday we welcomed 5 new members into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after a baptismal service at a neighbor's pool. Everybody that came to sacrament went to watch the baptisms, so it was a pretty incredible service. Raimundo Nonato has started to conduct sacrament meeting in preparation for him to be the Itapecuru Branch President. Two recent converts gave talks about keeping the Sabbath Day holy and the importance of the sacrament, as well as the importance of forgiveness. It is just truly incredible to see the growth of the faith of these members that are so young in the Chur...

Hello again! Due to meetings down here in the MBT, we didn't get into our area until Thursday, but that didn't keep the miracles from happening! Wenderson and Guilherme, two more of Yan's friends,  were baptized. Honestly, this kid's a stud; he now lives 3 miles out of town but now pays for taxis to go to church and is still taking friends to church that end up being baptized! Monday morning we went up to São Luís to make preparations for the leadership council on Tuesday and zone conference on Wednesday. We bought breakfast, organized the lunches (hence the picture of us at McDonald's that somebody from Itapecuru took whichout us knowing while we just happened to be in the same São Luís mall), cleaned the chapel, and prepared trainings. It ended up taking so long (until around midnight) that we just decided to sleep on the Church pews instead of traveling trying to go to another missionaries' house and waking them up. The cuchioned pews are more comfortable tha...

Good week! Quicker one as well! First off: baptisms! Elinete and her daughter Estrela (actually her granddaughter that she is raising) enjoyed the baptism of their relatives Josélio, Marilene, and Vinicius so much and felt the Spirit so strong that they decided they also wanted to be part of the Lord's Restored Church! They were baptized Saturday afternoon after watching the first session of General Conference Saturday afternoon (at least the first session was during the afternoon here). Fátima, Hirlanildo's mother, also decided to be baptized after months of thinking! General Conference was INCREDIBLE! TERESINA IS GETTING A TEMPLE! It will be so incredible for the folks down here to have a House of the Lord so closeby. To many, getting to the temple was a near-impossible dream, and that dream will soon become a reality. Many of the members here also got excited as I had been saying I would come back to visit Brazil once a temple was dedicated in Teresina. Looks like that will ...