Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Happy Conferencing!

Oi família e amigos! 

Selfie Sunday!

This week was good! 

We had Zone conference with President on Wednesday! It was awesome! He talked about finding one new investigator every day, without fail. And then he let us ask any question we wanted about D&C 88. It was awesome. I learned a lot about the Plan of Salvation. Learned that God sets a limit to how much Satan can tempt us because God knows how much we can handle. He never gives us more than that. It was a very insightful day.
Zone Conference!

Got a package from my wonderful parents! :) With goldfish! Que saudades de comida americana.
Package!!!


Well, this week we started teaching a FAMILY! They are a referral from a member. Rosangela, the mom, and Pedro, 14, have been coming to church and we finally got a lesson with their family. Cesar is the dad, and they have two more kids, Aime, and Acam, who was born a couple of months ago. And Aime came to church this week! Pedro is already super good friends with some members. When we got to his house he asked us to explain the Book of Mormon to him and leave him couple of verses so he didn´t have to read the whole Book of Mormon yet! He is super awesome!!! Super excited about this family! 

Our investigator, Elena

This week I had a cool study about the Refiner´s fire that I thought I´d share with you:

Refiners purify gold and cast out that which is not pure. Fire is a symbol of purification or sanctification in the scriptures.
A refiner places the unpurified gold in a receptacle that can withstand extreme temperatures. The gold is placed in an extremely hot fire so that the impure substances may burn out and be separated from the pure gold-which is worth much more in it´s pure state. 
God is the refiner, and we are the unpurified gold in His hands. He places us in a fire with extreme temperatures, He gives us difficult trials so that He can remove the impurities, weaknesses, and sins. He lets us melt in the blazing heat to purify us, and then he molds us into what he wants us to become. And then we become more perfect, our "gold" is worth more. He puts us into the fire because He knows it will increase our worth; not because it will harm us-it can only hurt us if we jump out of His receptacle, out of His hands, and into the fire. In His hands he will take care of us. He will not let us fall, but rather he will increase our worth as He refines and molds us into the son or daughter He wants us to become. 
And if we submit to the will of the Refiner, then one day may He say, "For behold I have refined thee, I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction" (1 Nephi 20:10). 
God has chosen us as His gold. Will we choose to accept His (refining) fire?

Hope that makes sense! 
Have a wonderful day! 
HAVE A WONDERFUL GENERAL CONFERENCE! :)
Love you all! 
Sister Wilkins



Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Milagres são reais!!





Oi familia e amigos! 

This one will have to be quick because I am nearly out of time. 

WE HAD 6 INVESTIGATORS AT CHURCH YESTERDAY!!! Elizabete was there, Dineia and her son and her less-active husband! And a referral and his mom!! And one other investigator who comes to our ward but doesn´t live in out area. It was a miracle!! 

At least half of our lessons fell through this week, but yesterday somehow these people all showed up to church! 

I have a strong testimony that God sees our hard work and that we may not be rewarded with seeing results with the people we find, but that he will put others in our path that are prepared to receive the gospel.

We invited Elizabete to be baptized, she accepted! But she doesn´t want to set a date yet.

Well, gave a training this week in District Meeting about the Spirit and it´s role in Conversion. And it went really well. Learned about how we should teach by the Spirit and what happens when we don´t. 

The stake put on a family history day on Saturday and it was super awesome! Pedro, our referral who was at church set up a familysearch account and said he´s going to do his family history!!! 

At the family history fair:

Well, about none of out investigators who are progressing are married...so that´s going to be fun this week. Lots of lessons about marriage :) 

Well, sorry this is short. 
Love you all! Hope you are all doing well! 
Have a great week!
Love,
Sister Wilkins

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Still the clumsy Sister Wilkins you know and love...

Oi querida família e amigos! 

Well, here in Brazil it went from winter to summer practically overnight. Now I am sweating all over again. It is HOT! But it´s cool...will be returning with an awesome tan.

Well this week was Brazilian independence day, so like any other holiday here, we had churrasco! It was legit. 
We also had a super awesome family night with some members. I went to do an object lesson with cups and knifes and accidentally broke a glass cup....still the clumsy Sister Wilkins you all know and love ;) 

Well, we had an Exposição of the Book of Mormon with 12 missionaries on a square across the street from a huge Catholic church. It was awesome. We had almost 100 contacts in just a few hours and new people to visit!!! 

We also had zone training this week,, and Sister Galvão and I gave a training on the 5 myths or truths in our mission...that we learned about a couple months back. 1-We can find one new investigator every day. 2-We can invite people to be baptized the first lesson. Every time. 3-Talk with EVERYONE. 4- We can have 1 investigator at church every week. 5- Obedience brings blessings. Exact obedience brings miracles. We talked about experiences with these 5 things, how people have been doing with it and how it has been working. It was really good!
And we got mail! Got letters from friends from the mission! So fun to hear from people! 

So, one of our investigators I´ve told you about is Elizabete. We had a lesson with her about how to recognize the answers that Heavenly Father sends us and how to receive these answers. We gave her a Book of Mormon of her own and she was so excited! And she came to church! Please pray that she will recognize the answer! She is so ready and understands so well! It is the only thing she is missing right now. 

In other news, I cut my hair. Not sure how good of an idea that one was, but hopefully it doesn´t look too bad. 

Well, love you all!
Have a wonderful week! 
Sister Wilkins


Book of Mormon Exposition...I think that´s how you say it:



Selfie


Haircut (hard to see but she framed my face a little too much...)

Monday, September 5, 2016

Lessons Learned

Oi familia e amigos! 

Well, this week wasn´t too interesting. We received a referral of a less-active that the Elders contacted on the street. His name is Cassio, he´s been less-active for 7 years and his family (wife and 3 step kids) are not members!! And they are going through some health difficulties. They are super awesome. We haven´t met the wife yet, but we are going to go back this week. He wants us to teach them and he wants to come back to church! Super excited about that! Please pray for Cassio and his family! 

Well, we found out that our house is over 2 miles from the church....haha. We walk A LOT here. 

I tried hibiscus tea this week....couldn´t stop thinking about hibiscus bisque and then got a little trunky for a few minutes laughing at studio c and my family in my head. haha

Well, I wanted to tell you all about a couple things that I have learned this week. 
I have been going through some rough things this transfer on the mission and there have been a lot of tears and a lot of prayers. And a lot of scripture study. 

Last week at the end of email time I was trying to open the missionary page when the computer sent me to the church homepage, and there was an article by Elder Bednar about Accepting the Lord´s will and timing. I became interested and opened it, because it sounded like something that I needed to hear with everything that was going on. 
He talks about the experiencing of a newly-wed couple who found out that the 23 year old husband had cancer 3 weeks after the wedding. He talks about the experience, the prayers, the faith, and the Priesthood blessings. And then Elder Bednar enters the story. He asked the couple if they had the faith for John not to be healed. 
Well, that got me thinking because it talked a lot about this faith to not be healed, which seems like a strange thing. Well, this is strong faith. It is the faith to know that God knows what is best for us and to accept His will. We can still pray for what we want to happen, but prayer is not to alter the will of the Father, but to align our will with His and learn the humility to accept His will. We have to have the faith that the things we want to happen will be with the Lord´s will and if they aren´t accept what is. I learned this: Faith is knowing that something can happen. Humility and strong faith is accepting what will happen.

Well, hope that that helps some of you out there! 
Love you! 
Have a great week! 
Sister Wilkins

I had to jump out a window to rescue my conditioner that fell out the bathrrom window into a little area next to our apartment.
Our new district

Lovely bug bites are coming back