The Night the Lights Went Out

Hey all!

   Okey-doke, let me tell you guys a bit about this week!  First, sorry for not sending any pictures last week, the LAN house that we went to has a reputation for somehow deleting all of the pictures on storage devices that are used there, so I tried to avoid the risk!  This week went pretty great, though!

Isa. traveled this weekend to visit her Dad in Brasília, and will travel up there this weekend as well.  So, we've remarked her baptismal date for the 22 of August, and she´s excited for it!  She also started reading the Book of Mormon from the beginning and is loving it.  She especially enjoyed Lehi´s vision of the tree of life and the explanation of that vision given in

Nephi´s vision.  It´s so awesome to see someone who just loves everything about the gospel!

On another day this past week we got home at night and found that our lights weren´t on.  Elder T. and I knew that we had paid the energy bill, so we were a little confused about why that happened.  Anywho, our land lady lent us some candles and we got to do our planning by candlelight!

 Elder Santos at the desk the night the lights went out. 
We´ve since organized our desks a little better to reduce
the fire risk should that happen again lol!  

It reminded me of a talk by President Monso (https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2010/10/the-divine-gift-of-gratitude?lang=eng)
where he talked about a family that had used candlelight for many years, but then managed to get electricity.  During a year especially difficult for them (they were farmers), the heavy rains had destroyed all of their crops, with the exception of just a few turnips.  That thanksgiving they had nothing but a rabbit to eat with their turnips, and the children were so upset by the lack of substance to provide them with "something to be thankful for."  To try to bring things into perspective, the father asked his children to fetch the old oil lamps and candles that they had used in the past and to light them.  They then turned off all of the electric lights in the house, and they could hardly believe how dark it had been all of those years that they had lived by candlelight.  The children, struck by the contrast in lighting, suddenly realized that they had a lot to be thankful for, and even in a tough year they had still been abundantly blessed.  We figured out the problem with our electricity the next day, but I was able to take some pictures first!  I´ll attachthem to this E-mail.

   The work as Financial Secretary´s going pretty well, too!  I´ve gotten hang of almost everything except the houses.  There´s always something that we´ve never seen before going on with the houses: missionaries who just move into a new house without giving us time to get a contract put together or not even lettinng us know, landlords that want a rent increase, the law company needing us to update the data on the houses, etc.  I´m still lost when we start working on the houses, but I´ll get up to speed there eventually!  It is a lot of fun, I´m pretty excited!  

   In two weeks an Area Seventy is going to visit the mission too.  This week is going to be pretty busy for us because we´ve got to buy all of the bus tickets to bring all the missionaries in the mission to Goiânia, and then the next week is going to be the visit from the seventy and that´s going to be crazy as well.  The week after that is transfers, and that too will be crazy!  But crazy´s good!  We enjoy the challenge!

Brazilian BBQ for P-day!  It was my first time trying Picanha,

 it´s the king of the cuts here in Brazil!  It was pretty dang good,

 i´ll be honest.  We made Garlic Bread on the grill too, try it!

 I´ve got to take off now, but here´re some pics for yáll!  Have an awesome week!

Love,

Elder Sweet

Faith Is Like A Seed

Hey guys!  Great news!

   So the girl that I talked about last week, I., is going to get baptized on Saturday!  She´s one of the best investigators I´ve ever had, she understands everything that we teach her and everything that she reads in the scriptures.

Image from Gatewaybelievers.com

We left Alma 32 with her to read after teaching her and inviting her to pray and ask God if what we taught her is true, and we had a surprise when we returned for the next visit.  She´d marked up the whole chapter, underlining some parts, highlighting others, and proceeded to teach us the lesson that we had planned for her.  She understood everything!  She understood what we need to do to obtain an answer from God, why at times people don´t receive answers and what needs to be changed in our hearts so that we can receive an answer.  It was so great!  She´s already made friends with all of the girls in the Young Women´s organization and goes to all of their activities on her own, she´s as golden an investigator as they come!

   This week Elder S. and I are going to focus on preparing her for baptism and finding some more good investigators.  It´s amazing how many people there are that are prepared and ready to receive the message of the fulness of the gospel.  The more I learn about missionary work the more and more I see how little it is that we do, and how much the Lord does in the conversion of people.  He prepares them, guides them to us or us to them, sends the spirit to testify, etc.  We are a very small piece in a grand image that shows how much he loves us!  As we look for these kinds of experiences in our lives, we´ll see how much he blesses us!

image from apiopa.org

Got to go now, but I love you all so much!  Have an awesome week!

Love,

Elder Sweet

Opa!

Opa!  Como está tudo o mundo?

 

My companion Elder S. and I

This week was awesome, let me tell you about it!  So we´ve got three new good investigators, and a couple others that have some potential!  The first is a 16 year old girl named I.  We contacted her while she was walking her dog and invited her to go to church.  The next day (Sunday), she just showed up at church!  That almost never happens!  She made friends with the other young women really fast, and then we taught her the restoration at a members home that afternoon.  She had a lot of questions but we were able to answer them well, and she accepted an invitation to baptism on the 8th of August!  We´re pretty excited for her!  We also found a couple named J. and A.  They´ve got a really young girl who´s about 2 or 3 years old named S.  They´re super cool and came to church yesterday!  They´re both very interested in the gospel and enjoy the lessons too, so those are steps in the right direction!  Every time we leave they´re daughter cries too, it´s kind of cute lol!  She get´s so excited when we come over and wants to hold every pamphlet and book that we pull out and share her toys, snacks, etc. with us during the lessons.  It´s pretty funny!

A park close by

   This week we´ve got a better pool of investigators to work with and we´re getting to know the members better too.  We´ve set a goal to invite a family to be baptized every day.  it´s a very difficult goal to achieve but we´re working towards making it a reality.  Missionary work is so hard, but every now and then you see the hand of the Lord in your work and that makes everything worth it.  When you know that the words that you are saying aren´t your own, when you really know that you are being used in the hands of the Lord, it´s then when the mission becomes worth it and we begin to see the lives of other people being blessed by the good news of the gospel.  I´ve got to take off now, but I love you all so much!  Make it an awesome week and I´ll talk to you all next P-day!

My District

Love,

Elder Sweet

P.S.- Dad, generally just the Assistants travel with President.  

Have a Great Week

Hey everyone!  

This E-mails going to be super quick, but I´ll try to give a quick update on what´s going on here in Goiânia!

Okay, so this was my first week working in the office!  Because it was the week of transfers it was pretty crazy, we started working at 6:00 several days this week just to keep on top of everything 

that´s going on.

This transfer Elder T.  will be training me on how to be the Financial Secretary.  I don´t have a picture with him yet, but I´ll send a photo of the whole staff next week.  We get to work more closely with President Kuceki, so I´m really enjoying that opportunity.  President Kuceki is really funny, he´s almost always cracking jokes or playing pranks on someone, so that keeps life interesting!  

Here I´ve attached a picture of the statue of Christ

that´s outside the Bus station in Rio Verde. (similar to the one in Rio de Janeiro except a lot smaller)

A picture of my new companion Elder Santos! 

Thank you all so much for your support and your prayers, I´m so grateful for all of you!  Have a great week and keep me up to date on what´s going on!  

Love you guys!

Elder Sweet

"A New Commitment"

Dear Sweet Family,

It is with much joy that we from the BRAZIL GOIÂNIA MISSION inform you that your son has served with great valor in defending the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We also want to inform you that he was called as Finance Secretary of the mission; he will now have one more responsibility and a new commitment with the Lord. His daily routine now includes work in the mission office. As Finance Secretary he will care for the missionaries’ allowances, reimbursements, the houses of the mission, and all other finances in general.

He will also have the responsibility to help the people in each area he works in. As a representative of the Lord, he will be responsible to improve the life of each person he teaches. We hope you can support your son in this new responsibility and duty to the Lord.

Transfered!!!

 I hope everything is going awesome back in the good ol´ US of A!  So, as I think I mentioned in my previous E-mail, this week is transfers!  And, as you might have guessed based on the title of this E-mail, I got transferred!  I´ve served one and a half transfers here in Rio Verde Popular, and it is without a doubt the best area in the mission.  I feel so incredibly privileged to have had this incredible opportunity to serve here!

 

My companion Elder Hamilton, President Carlos, and me!

 President Carlos (the branch president), asked me to give a "going away" message to the priesthood on Sunday.  I decided to bear my testimony of the Book of Mormon.  The Book of Mormon contains a promise that if we read it, ponder its message and how merciful God has been to his children, and then ask in prayer if it is true, that we will receive an answer to our sincere petition.  As I read the Book of Mormon, I can feel the spirit testify to me subtly but distinctly of its truthfulness.  I really am growing to love the words contained within its pages, and I feel a little more touched by God´s love with every word that I read.

   I also like to ponder on the history of the Book of Mormon, how it came to be in my hands.  It was translated by the gift and power of God by a young, uneducated farmboy who had been chosen and qualified by God for this work.  He lived testifying of Christ and of this book, and he died doing so as well.  Joseph Smith and others have lived and died testifying of the truthfulness of the message that it contains.  Although many in the world try to attack the book by attacking the prophet, they will one day find that their false accusations are equivalent to the false accusations and twisted words that were used to sentence Christ, the only perfect person who ever lived, to die on the cross.  The followers of the martyred prophet fled across frozen prairie floors and over mountains to find a land where they could exercise the rights promised to them by their nations which were unjustly denied them, and by the hand of God were led west.  God protected them and their testimonies that we might have them today.  Now we are continuing the same legacy that they began, and it is our duty to share our testimonies of the Book of Mormon, and by so doing of Christ, with all the world.

   Finally, I think back to the many times that I have prayed asking God if the Book of Mormon really is his words.  Unlike some, there is no specific event that I can point to and say "there is the origin of my testimony."  My answer came by degrees, so subtly that I never noticed the difference over a short period of time, but now I can say that I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God.  I´ve read it, pondered its message and the mercy of God in bringing that message to us, and most importantly I have sought an answer from God to know of its truthfulness.  And it is true!

   I tried to share these same ideas in my somewhat limited grasp of Portuguese with the men of this branch yesterday, and I felt grateful for the testimony that I´ve been given of the Book of Mormon.  It truly is the word of God, and ANYONE who reads it with an open mind truly seeking to know the truth can know that as well.

   I almost forgot to tell you guys about the transfer!  I got a bit side-tracked there!  I was transferred to the G. ward in G, and I will be the Mission´s Financial Secretary.  It´s definitely going to be a new type of challenge for me, but I´m really excited.  My companion will be Elder S, he´s also going to be a secretary though I´m not sure of what yet.  I´ll tell you guys next week!  

   I´ve got to take off now, but I love you guys and am so grateful for your support and of your prayers!  They mean more to me than I can express. 

Luan and I, one of the branch members here.  He introduced me to Doritos with Nutella, it´s actually really stinking good!  Try it!

Have an awesome week everyone, and I´ll talk to you next P-day!

Elder Sweet 

A Stake?

Hey guys!

   How´s everybody doing?  Sounds like it was quite a week for everyone!  Thanks for sending the video of Landon´s birthday cake, that was awesome!  Congrats on the new car too, Landon!  That 

car´s styling for sure!

    This week Elder H´s knee was a bit better.  We were able to work more than in the weeks before, and I think that this week we´ll be able to work much more.  The progress on his knee is slow, but it is coming. 

   This is also the last week of the transfer!  This coming Sunday are the transfer calls, and I´ll get to know how I´m going to spend the next 6 weeks of my life!  

   Now, a bit about this week!  Elder H. and I are trying to put more emphasis on finding families to teach, and it´s going well!  It´s neat to see how the Lord works with our desires.  Yesterday a couple just showed up at church and attended the sacrament meeting.  Afterwards they talked with Elder H. and asked how they could become members!  This is so stinkin´awesome!  We marked to teach them tonight, so we´ll see how that goes.  We also did some visits with the Elders Quorum yesterday.  One of the adresses that we had was false, but living in that home was a family that had attended the church meetings several times in another city, but lost contact when they moved to Rio Verde and didn´t know that the church existed in the city.  They were very excited, and we´re going to teach them tonight as well.  Pray that everyone´s in their house when we pass by!

   The branch here is great.  This branch is incredibly missionary oriented, more so that any other ward I´ve ever worked in.  This branch is generally regarded as the best in the mission, and is the area that everyone wants to serve in.  The leaders here are incredible and the members just won´t stop giving us references!  I really think that that´s why the branch here is consistently the best in the mission.  The leaders have a vision that centers around missionary work and the members share the gospel with their friends.  We´re on the verge of getting a stake here, too!  On the 19th of the month an area seventy is going to visit the district here and will have a special meeting with our branch as well.  He´s going to be here trying to see if the district is ready to become a stake!  We´re pretty excited! 

Keep me up to date on what´s going on with you all!  Have an awesome week!  Until next P-day!

Love,

Elder Sweet