Week 38 - Gravatá

Hello!

Wow you guys got the box really fast! Were you surprised? Aren’t those chocolates so good? Which one was your favorite? Has Rae used the shirt yet? I’m so excited it got there already!

We watched conference this weekend too!! Idk why the women’s broadcast was held back a week but everything else was normal. I watched it all in Portuguese which was a little difficult but I managed. All the other American missionaries in my zone got to watch it in English because their church had a special room for people who would rather watch in English. I was so jealous, but it worked out! 

I loved President Monson's talk, I loved the Brazilians, I loved Elder Scott's and of course I loved Elder Bednar’s!!! We had two investigators there and when he said his talk was especially for people who aren’t members I got so excited!! It was perfect! I love love love conference. I heard there is a way to download the talks onto your ipod so I’m going to try to do that after I get done emailing. Did you guys like the Portuguese? He was so much easier to understand than the translators. It’s so hard when you see their mouths speaking English but you only hear Portuguese. I loved how he talked about living now so that you can receive the promised blessings in the future. It made me think a lot about my patriarchal blessing and what I need to do to receive the blessings it talks about.. I also like when he said that each one of us-no matter age, married, single, has something to learn and room to grow until we leave this earth. Ahh I loved all of them!

One of our investigators who was there- Fernando, we met him knocking on doors but we couldn’t go in because it was just him in there but we invited him to church and he came!! And then he came to conference yesterday too and afterwards we talked to him and he was asking us what he needs to do to go to the temple, what he needs to do to go on a mission, and he has been reading and marking the gospel principles book!!!! He is awesome!! We answered a lot of his questions and we are meeting with him again on Wednesday.

Also we started teaching 2 awesome families this week! One is friends with the bishop. This family doesn't know how to read-that always makes it a little bit difficult because they can’t read the Book of Mormon. But they are so humble and just want to do what’s right. They have 3 really cute little kids. The dad brought the kids to church last week and they loved it! The other family was a reference. We went there and we had a great first lesson. They said they’ve always been curious to enter into our church because it is so pretty but didn’t know if they were allowed to haha. But the mom said that they’ve never been to big into religion but she thinks it’s just because she hasn’t found the right one yet. We shared our testimonies with them and there was a really good feeling there. The dad said that he felt a lot better the instant we got there and that their doors are always open for us. We have really been praying for families to teach and to find the people that are prepared to receive the gospel and Heavenly Father sure does answer prayers.

I don’t have much time to write about our other investigators but everyone is doing great. Thank you so much for the emails and the pictures. I’m still laughing at what Carter said, "this ain’t gonnna happen." hahahha He is so cute!

Love you guys! Thanks for everything!!

Sister Bedke

PS How is Livee doing? And also can you believe that tomorrow I have exactly 9 months left?! What the freak?