Lindsay, CJ

Whoops! Missed a week, but I'm back today with another quick update from here in the Brazil Itapecuru... I mean Brazil Teresina Mission! I currently write this email from the Stake Center in São Luís, Maranhão, a city that is about 2 hours away from Itapecuru. We had our zone conference today and got to help out President and Sister Lindsay with everything. This week was a fun one; we decided that we were just going to work purly with members these past couple of weeks to 1) firm up those who are already members of the Church and 2) find through them. We ended up finding three families and a young man through that, so we are definitely excited. One of these families, that of Nonata and Gabrielley, we found after asking for referrals from Hirlanildo and his mother Fátima. Nonata and her granddaughter Gabrielly became incredibly excited from the first moment we went to their home. Hirlanildo and Fátima had talked about the Church for some time and Nonata became anxious to be a m...

Well hey there all! How are you doing? I'm doing just fine here in Itapecuru-Mirim! Yesterday we had the opportunity to baptize Isaiah... I mean, Isaías. He's fairly young but is incredibly mature. After inviting him to pray about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, and him actually saying the prayer, he had a dream that night where he was at church and God the Father appeared to say, "this is My Church. This is the path I want you to follow." Who am I to argue with that? Long story short, he's incredibly excited to be able to pass the sacrament in next week's meeting after he receives the Aaronic Priesthood and is ordained a deacon. While the proposal for the formation of a branch here is still in the works, we had 51 people at our sacrament meeting yesterday. We're hoping this week it will finally work out! On Tuesday, we got to go to Adega do Boi, a rodízio (all-you-can-eat meatery) in Teresina, to celebrate us meeting our goal of 400 baptisms in th...

Hello all, An exciting week here in Itapecuru-Mirim! First of all, let's talk about baptism! We welcomed a total of 4 new members into the Church yesterday, two of which Élder Felipe and I had taught: Auryo and Dayane. They are both 17 years old and both received incredible witnesses of the Book of Mormon and the truthfulness of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ while we taught them. Dayane was a referral from a member of 3 years named Heloiza. They have been friends for a while, and when we gave Heloiza the challenge to hand out a paper invitation to the General Conference broadcast that we did at the Church earlier this month, Heloiza accepted. Dayane accepted the invitation, later watching the Saturday afternoon session! The next day we asked Heloiza's mom for Dayane's contact information to which we were told, "she lives with her godmother who is very Catholic, and she probably wouldn't allow it." We had basically given up when Dayane came back to church...