Week 43~Maria Rosa

Well here I am again! I´m in my new area Maria Rosa A in Taboão da Serra and wow it´s pretty great. The ward here is HUGE and actually I feel like I´m in the United States here, it´s really weird, but the ward helps a lot. We had an investigator come to church this Sunday and loved it because the ward was so friendly! Next month our stake is going to change and we will no longer be apart of the Ferreira Stake, but we will be apart of the Taboão stake, which makes more sense, but will probably cause a lot of drama. We´ll see.

This week was a week of miracles. We went to visit a family who they have been teaching and the last time they asked them to pray about the date 3 of april for their baptism. We went there Saturday and they tried to cut us. Well I wasn´t having that. So we just had a lesson of inspired questions and in the end they accepted the date 24 of april to be baptized. It was pretty incredible to see the spirit touch the heart of Fátima and her family. Please pray for her so that she can be baptized on this date with her whole family!

We also went to visit a woman who was a contact in the area book and we went there and it turns out she used to frequent the church for 12 years! But she was never baptized because she didn´t want to get married, but now she seperated from her ´´husband´´ and she and her daughter came to church this Sunday and loved it! We are going to mark them for baptism this week! Hoorah!

We also went to visit an investigator this week who hasn´t come to church yet, but she went to a Relief Society activity and loved it. We went there and her husband was there (the sisters were afraid to teach him because he is kind of atheist). But I talked to him and he is basically the coolest. He is a computer programmer and is a film buff so we made friends easily. Then I just kind of started teaching him and he said he never chose a church to frequent because he just wants to feel that it´s true. Well, my friend, have we got a message for you. We are going back there this week. I´m excited.

This week we also went to the temple to try out a new thing the Mission President might start. 4 of us Sisters went to do contacts in front of the temple to bring people to the church house and the Elders took it from there to do a tour. It actually worked out pretty well! We got about 15-20 people to go there! I think it´ll be something we´ll start doing with the new mission president in July.

That´s about it for this week! I forgot my camera so I don´t have any pictures. But just know my companion is cute and I ate a lot of churrasco for my birthday! Hahah! Love you all and thank you for your daily prayers!

Love,

Sister Lockhart

Week 42~Transfers & Birthdays

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, I live in Brazil, but not in a tree. 

I give it an A for effort.

So this week was really good! Andreia is really excited about her baptism and this week she handed over her coffee and cigarettes! When I asked her to give them to me I thought she wouldn´t, because in my experience nobody ever has, but I need to learn to trust my investigators and the gospel of Jesus Christ, because the atonement changes us! 

Also we had a very good lesson with Wagner this week. He told us he needs to read the whole Book of Mormon before being baptized. We gave the analogy of the cake and that you don´t need to eat the whole cake to know it´s good and he liked that analogy, but still insisted. I then shared my experience of the Book of Mormon and almoooost cried when he grabbed my arm and said ´´I know it´s true.´´ We read the first few baptismal questions with him and he passed, but he is still insisting that he needs to read the whole book first. Oh Vagner...

I also found out yesterday I´ve been called to train in Maria Rosa! Kinda sad I´ll be leaving behind everything here, but excited at the same time. It´s Ferreira zone and Ferreira is richer than Perdizes, can you believe it? Buuuut, it´ll all work out.

Also our English class is so awesome! We did an english scavenger hunt and everybody loved it! I´m really grateful for the time I spent here in Perdizes, as hard as it was. We´ve done a lot of good here.

Oh yeah, I almost spent my birthday in the hospital today. I woke up Saturday morningthrowing up and spent the whole day trying not to die and finally went to the hospital and it turns out I have a little infection in my stomach and my left side is a little enlarged for some reason. But everything´s okay mom! That´s why they invented drugs.

Thank you all for your love and support! Until next week!

Love,

Sister Lockhart

Week 41~You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile...

Hey everyone! This week was kind of a doozey, but great!

So we have been visiting Andreia, an ex-investigator who went to rehabilitation because of drinking, and we taught her the Restoration this week. The other sisters already taught her the lesson so she remembered about Joseph Smith and basically everything. At the end I was thinking of what to say next when Andreia said ´´I think Jesus is going to return soon.´´ That was a little surprising. So I asked her how she was going to prepare for his return. And she said stop smoking, go to church, and be baptized! What?! So we told her we wanted to help her by making a goal of April 2 as the day of her and her daughter´s baptism. She accepted and told Beatrice to put it on the calendar! That was just one miracle for this week.

So around comes Sunday and we had Stake Conference this week which is basically the worst for a mission to try and bring investigators. But we were able to have a member take Andreia and Beatrice to the stake center and we had to take a bus there. So we get there and it turns out Andreia and Beatrice decided to leave to go buy a cellphone and get something to eat. So you can imagine here I am freaking out because we lost our investigators and we called them many times and each time they said they were coming but never arrived. In the end, we went back to the stake center and I was really sad because I didn´t even know where they were. But after the meeting, we found them sitting in the big chapel (because we were in a small room). So after everything was said and done, everything worked out. What. A. Blessing.

Also yesterday we took the wrong bus back to our area and ended up in another mission. Let´s just say, that we finally made it back and wow I don´t ever want to take another bus again. 

I just want to say how thankful I am for the gospel. Our mission is studying Doctrine and Covenants until April and I read a scripture this week that said ´´the thing that will be of the most worth to you will be to delcare repentance unto this people.´´ which made me think of the importance of our calling as a missionary. This time is one of a kind!

Thanks for all the support, until next week!

Love,

Sister Lockhart

Week 40~Another Multizona & 9 Months...What?

I'm going to keep it short this week, but here´s a summary of what happened this week:

This week we had a Multi-zone conference which was really good. Apparently we received a new mission counselor and he gave an excellent talk on faith and he talked about some faith promoting stories he had on his mission. One thing I thought of when he gave his talk was when Alma in the Book of Mormon says that they made miracles happen. They didn´t wait around for miracles to happen. That part I already knew, but what I learned is that us missionaries make miracles happen when we promise specific blessings. Ding! Lightbulb. I need to be better at that, because I can promise the general blessings, but it requires faith to promise a specific blessing, and faith precedes the miracle.

In other news, we had to cut Carol this week, because she won´t wake up to come to church. So that was sad. Also, our chosen family that we had lots of miracles with decided to cut us too, which kind of broke my heart. And Vagner won´t accept a baptism date because he thinks he needs to pay for his sins first. No, Vagner. Jesus Christ already did that. You just need to repent. But he´s a stubborn one. But he still comes to church every Sunday without our help so that´s something. Also, Andreia came to church this week, that one investigator we found who happily let us into her house. So that was good, but she has some serious mental problems, so I don´t think we will be able to progress with her. We did find a house full of people that accept us, but no one is married. It´s always the humble people that accept us. I really feel like Alma admist the Zoramites here. It´s equal.

So that is about it for this week. Oh yeah I´m nine months old now? What? Everything passes so fast now! I finally feel like I´m just geting started! Haha. Here some pictures. Love you all! 

Love,

Sister Lockhart

Week 39~Tchau Piolho

My Maxine...We met over skype in the MTC for TRC!!

Oi gente, another week gone, another week to go. This week was pretty good, except that I found out that I have lice. I´ve come to find that it isn´t fun to have lice. So if you ever want to know what it´s like to have lice, imagine bugs crawling on your head, because that´s exactly what it is.

This week we went through our list of contacts in our Area Book and decided to contact everyone who lives on one of the roads in our area. So the first person we went to visit was out on the street and she saw us and told us ´´Enter! Enter! Please!´´ Turns out the other Sisters used to teach her, but she had a terrible drinking problem and was out on the street a lot and after was intermitted into like one of those Rehabilitation places so they lost contact with her. Now she doesn´t drink and has almost quit smoking and she loves the missionaries. She told us ´Yeah, I remember we went to church a few times with the Sisters, maybe we can do that again!´´ and we were like ´´Yeah!!!´´ So that was a miracle for this week.l

Update on Vagner: Vagner Vagner loves the church, but is waiting fo his answer about the Book of Mormon. He told us this week when we taught him that he thought we weren´t going to come because we were annoyed with him or something so he was praying that we would come and when he finished his prayer we showed up at the door. He came to church this Sunday and wanted to stay for a baptism in the other ward, but his wife showed up at the church and said that he had to leave. His wife always told us that she was okay with him choosing his own path, but I guess not. We´ll see this week.

As for Carol, we always mark her for baptism, but it always drops because she won´t stop smoking or drinking. This week we had a spiritual lesson with her about baptism and we tried to remark her, but this time she said that she wants to be certain that she won´t break any commandments such as drinking and smoking and going to church after baptism bcause it´s something serious. Hoorah! She gets it! She told us to give her a month. Normally I guess we would be sad, but Carol was a mess when we found her and she has progressed a lot and is turning her life around. So I feel really good about our work with her.

As for other things, we´re going to be getting a new bishop soon in the ward because the current bishop is moving to Tennessee. Also our English class is going great and we might start teaching in a school now because a ecent convet in our ward is a big shot here and is helping us out a lot with missionary work. And that´s about it for this week! 

Love,

Sister Lockhat

​My Bahian...got her visa to serve in Fort Lauderdale, FL!