Monday, August 29, 2016

Short and sweet

Oi família e amigos. 

Well, transfers came and went. And nothing changed. 

This week the Stake President´s daughter turned 8 and got baptized. We invited Maristela to come with us and she came!!! She knew a lot of the members and she liked it! Miracles!!! Sadly, she didn´t come to church again. She is still struggling to get to church because of some complicated stuff. Please keep her in your prayers. She wants to be baptized but she needs to go to church! 
Well, we had a churrasco (Brazilian BBQ) on Thursday with the Irma´s in our ward because it was Chapecó´s birthday, so no one had to work. It was super good. I love churrascos!!! 


We had our last district meeting with ten members of the district. Now it will just be us four sisters and two elders. That was kind of sad. 

I made grandma and grandpa wilkins' warm tomato pasta this week for lunch and it was super delicious! 

Well, I think that is all the news here. 

Love you all! 
Would love to hear from you! 
Let me know if I can do anything for you guys.
Sister Wilkins



Pics from the churrasco
Selfies
District pic

And my quote wall:

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

It rained, it poured, and it rained some more

Oi família e amigos! 

Well this week I started off by making brownies and they were super delicious, although they turned out a little more cakey than I would have liked. 

Well, it rained and it poured and then it rained some more this week. And so it is difficult. And it got all cold here again, but we are still working hard and hoping that we´ll find people. 

Maristela....what can I say? Teaching her is like riding a roller coaster. She gets going really good up the hill and we are holding our breath that everything will work out, and then suddenly everything drops fast. She texts us saying that she doesn´t want us to visit her that day or that she won´t be going to the activity, etc. But she stopped drinking coffee and we figured out why she hasn´t been coming to church, so I am really hoping that it gets better!

Everyone here that we are teaching is beginning to reject what we are teaching. We teach about the Priesthood and they say that their pastor or the Pope has the priesthood, even though we explain that the priesthood was lost and only restored through Joseph Smith. They don´t want to accept it. that´s rough...we have two investigators in that situation right now, 

We found a lady named Debora this week tracting. She was super awesome! We taught her the Restoration and she understood it all and then at the end said that she believed it was true. We asked her to pray and she said she would and we left the lesson super happy and excited. The day we were supposed to go back she sent us a text saying that she had received her answer, she knew it was true, but she was going to continue with her church and her religion and to use the time we would have been teaching her to find someone who needed to find the right path. That was a bummer.

Well, we did finally get into a referral´s house. Elizabete is the girlfriend of a member here in the ward. She has learned a lot from the member and understands really well and wants to learn more. And she came to church!!! That was a miracle. 

Well, that´s about it for this week.
I am grateful for the Priesthood. I have been studying about authority and the Priesthood power and I know that the Priesthood power was restored to the earth so that we could be blessed. Heavenly Father wants to bless us, but we have to ask, we have to reach out to Him. I am grateful for the worthy Priesthood holders in my life and for their willingness to bless others with this authority. 

Love you all! 
Have a wonderful week! 
Sister Wilkins



Sunday Selfie

Brownies :) 


The sky was totally white when I got up this morning. I couldn´t even see the street below our window. This was a few hours after, but it was still really white and really cold!

Monday, August 15, 2016

MIRACLES!!!

Oi família e amigos!! 
Tudo Bem?! 

Well, this week was crazy. 
We started off with an integration night with the ward on Thursday---pie in the face. There was a trivia question about the scriptures, history, etc, or a complete the music that we had made up. Two people went head to head to answer. Whoever answered right got to throw a beaten egg white and sugar "pie" in the other´s face. It was pretty hilarious. And really messy. But super fun. 
      




Friday during district meeting I received a letter from Sister Ogle and almost cried for joy. A member in the Elder´s ward had been visiting the Fazenda and Sister Ogle sent a little letter with him. That seriously was a little miracle for me :)

Friday, we had a lesson with Maristela. It was super good. We taught about Baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost. The Spirit was so strong! We invited her to be baptized on August 27. SHE ACCEPTED!!!! We were so happy and she was super excited!!! Well, Saturday night rolled around and we passed by her house to tell her information about who would be picking her up for church. SHE READ THE BOOK OF MORMON!!! She hadn´t ever read any part of it on her own until this point!!! And she was still SUPER excited about church. Well I prayed all night long and all Sunday morning that she would make it to church, because something always happens so that she can't go. Well, we were leaving to catch the bus and hadn´t heard anything from her yet, which meant that things were still good. And at 8:15 (15 minutes before they had arranged to meet to carpool to church) we got a text from Maristela. That she wasn´t going to be able to come to church because her son had been sick and hadn´t slept, that she had given up on being baptized because every time she tried something bad happened, and that she didn´t want us to visit her any more. My heart broke. I was almost in tears. I wanted to run to her house and tell her that she could do it, that it was going to be hard, but she could do it, but we got on the bus and went to church. Well, we had marked to visit with her at 7 o'clock sunday. And so we went, and we took Irmã Marcia and Ana with us. And they helped us help Maristela understand that there will always be opposition against that which is good, and that she couldn´t give up! She´s back on track for baptism and we are stoked!!! 

I know that Heavenly Father hears and answers prayers. I prayed like crazy for Maristela. And not everything I prayed for happened how I hoped it would, but Heavenly Father answered my prayers in His own time. I know that He is our loving Father and that He is always taking care of us! 

I love you all and hope you are well! 
Have a wonderful week! 
Sister Wilkins

Lunch I made this week


Before lunch yesterday



selfie this morning because of lots of rain.....

Monday, August 8, 2016

Just Another Week in the field bearing testimony

Oi familia e amigos! 

This week we were able to find Maristela again! 
She said that no one said anything to her and she still wants to come to church and get baptized! We read a little of the Book of Mormon with her and it was really good, but we weren´t able to go back there, she cancelled. Not totally sure why. 

Other than that nearly everything fell through this week. No one came to church again, and Maristela was the only investigator we got a lesson with, and a couple of new investigators. 
We were able to rescue two copies of the Book of Mormon this week, so that was awesome! Really it was a blessing, because we weren't able to get them back for a while and the people were really understanding as to why we needed them back. 

We were knocking doors and a man answered and began to tell us how wrong we are and how we are being deceived. That was super sad. The man told us that he ripped up and burned a Book of Mormon and that it was all phony. It was super sad. But I was able to stand and bear testimony that I knew that the Book of Mormon was true, independent of if he knew it or not. I knew it and I knew that God had answered my prayer, just as He will answer the prayer of any of his children who will ask with a "sincere heart and with real intent having faith" that they will receive an answer, and they will receive! That is a promise from a prophet of God. If you don´t know if the Book of Mormon is true, go home, read it, specifically read Moroni 10:3-5 and get on your knees and ask God. He will answer you and you will know! 

I am so grateful for the Book of mormon and for the answers to many of life´s questions that are found in that sacred book. Never deny the power of the Book of Mormon. 

Sorry it´s short this week, really not much is happening. 
Although, we did find out that we have 12+ investigators who have all accepted the baptismal invitation. The problem is having lessons with them and getting them to church so that we can mark baptismal dates. Please pray for them! (Pray that they will keep their commitments!  Prayers work!)
A Pretty Morning


Love you all! 
Have a great week! 

Sister Wilkins

Friday, August 5, 2016

Just another week

Oi família e amigos! 

Well this week started off pretty exciting. I was going to get in the shower one night when I saw some huge insect crawling in the other Sisters´ room. It was a cockroach, literally 3 or 4 inches long. It was disgusting. We spent the next 40+ minutes, jumping from chair to chair with brooms in hand, trying to kill it. Turns out that the thing was pretty good at hide and seek. But we killed it. Some of it´s kids are still lurking around the house though. So that´s fun! haha
cool fountain in the middle of the city

Well, we had zone training this week and that was cool. There are four Americans in the zone. That´s pretty weird for me. Elder Naylor is in my zone, so I got to sit and talk to him for a while. And then there´s Elder Peterson and Elder Norman. We learned about teaching with the Spirit and being the instruments of the Spirit. That was pretty cool.
The sisters at zone training
Me and sister E Costa


Well, we have an investigator who flat out told us in my first visit with her that she doesn´t want to be baptized. But she reads the Book of Mormon and she likes that it explains things that she doesn´t understand from the Bible. I don´t understand!! It was pretty weird. We are trying to discover how we can help her. 

Also, we found a 16 year old girl this week, thinking that we were going to find another person we were looking for. She let us in for a message and she is super awesome! She wants to know all about the plan of salvation, but she didn´t know that´s what she needed! We started talking about God because she didn´t understand why bad things could happen to people and why God would let that happen. We got to talk with her about choices and consequences and responsibility. It was pretty cool. She seems really interested and we are really excited about it all. 

Well this week, we went looking for a lot of new people to teach, and we found about 10, and it was pretty incredible to me that several of them talked about how they had been praying or fasting that day that God would send them a light. We got to be that light. I know that Heavenly Father answers our prayers and I am so grateful for the opportunity that I get to answer the prayers of those searching for the truth. It really is a life-changing experience.

View from our little balcony

hope you are all doing well! 
Love you all! 
Would love to hear from you all! 

Sister Wilkins