Christmas in Brazil

Ola!!! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!!! 

Well, this week was miracle after miracle.

We needed to teach Michael every day starting last Saturday so that he could be ready to get baptized the next Saturday. he was there every single day. We were worried his boss might not let him come, but he was there every day. He was a little late sometimes, but he came. We had a lesson with him about the Word of Wisdom a little early this week and he was like "tea and coffe?! Why not?!" We explained that it was a commandment and that was all it took. He said he would refuse it at work in the mornings and he wouldn´t drink it again. It was absolutely incredible. We had the interview with him on Christmas Eve and he passed!!! He was baptized on Saturday. He came to the baptism late and something seemed to be wrong. We found out that his friends had been telling him the same day that he shouldn´t get baptized, that he had only known us for three weeks and that he was just doing it because we speak English. But he came and he was baptized and he just looked so happy. It was incredible. They had to try 9 times to baptize him because he has a fear of water, but he got it and it was amazing!!! The moment he went completely under was just a moment of complete joy. It was so special. And he looked so happy after. I cannot even begin to explain the amount of joy that you feel when someone you love and have worked with gets baptized and they know that what they are doing is right. It is amazing!

Well, transfer calls came this week too. And I am headed to Balneário Camburiu!!!! I am so excited! AND...I am going to TRAIN!!! AHHHH. I cannot even explain to you how nervous and excited I am!!! I don´t find out who my companion is until tomorrow, but I get to go to Florianópolis to pic her up and then we get to go to our new area together! It should be a fun adventure!!! 

Christmas in Brazil...I know you are all wanting to know about the Christmas traditions here. So, the 24th people stay up until midnight to open their presents and watch fireworks. That is about it. And they have a big dinner that night, but other than that, no ugly sweaters, most people don´t decorate their houses. Most of the world here doesn´t even wear red or green to celebrate. It really is sad. But we made it fun. We joked around, opened presents, I made pancakes, and I got to talk to my family so that was super great! 

Well, Vera is having a really hard time. But she´s loving the gospel still. We talked about the atonement with her and it was such an amazing lesson. And it was perfectly timed. she really needed it. 

Antonio showed up at the church yesterday afternoon while we were waiting for a different lesson and started asking about tithing, so we got to teach him about that. And he understood really well! It was cool!!

Claudia came to church, but other than that we didn´t get to see her this week, but she´s still on track. 

Mari is spending a little while at the beach. She doesn´t have a desire to come to church and she doesn´t know why. But she still wants our messages. I really don´t get it. It´s rough. 

Well, I have spent a lot of time packing the past couple days to move for this transfer, but really there isn´t a whole lot going on. I will be sure to write you a bunch next week so you can hear all about my new area and experience training! 

Happy new year to all of you!!! 

Don´t forget to set some good New year´s resolutions. Maybe you could try to read the Book of Mormon in a new language...that´s my goal is to finish it in Portuguese!! 

Well, love you all!!! 

Sister Wilkins

And So This is Christmas...

Oi família e amigos!!!!!! Tudo bem! 

This week was super fun and super fast as well. We did so much. 

Well, the weather is changing again. It is cold and rainy, so that´s kind of bizarre, but it´s a blessing too because it makes it feel a little more like Christmas. 

Well, let´s see...

There is an extremely high chance we have a baptism this week!!!! With Michael, the African. This guy is seriously perfect and has been so prepared to hear the gospel it is crazy. He has already brought up almost every single commandment with us and asked how we feel about it, and he is already living all those principles!!! We had a couple lessons with him this week. We told him he couldn´t get baptized in a river because of safety issues, and he was like ok cool, no problem. He is so AWESOME!!! And he had a ton of questions about the spirit world when we were teaching him about it the other day. He started asking about the parable of Lazarus and the Rich man and didn´t understand that it was a parable. Let me tell ya, the Spirit was definitely in that lesson, because we didn´t totally understand what he was confused about but we answered all his questions pretty quickly. We have three days left to teach him before the interview, so we´re praying that things will go well and that his boss will keep letting him off work in time to meet with us every night. We still have like 2-3 weeks worth of material to teach him (well, that´s what it would be if we were teaching a normal investigator). 

Antonio is still progressing. It is kind of amazing actually. We always go into the lessons wondering if he will understand and if he will have the ability to get baptized, but I think that this week proved how golden he is because his wallet used to be completely full of lottery tickets and some members were in the lesson with us and told him that it was a sin and he had to stop to be baptized. He quit the next day. All the lottery tickets were gone, except for two and he said he was going to go home and burn them!! And he understands everything really well!!! He is awesome! 

Claudia we had a family night with this week, and it was super fun! I think she´s still doing good, but she wasn´t at church yesterday and we aren´t sure why. 

Mari is still a struggle. This week we tried to call her several times like three different days and we weren´t getting a hold of her. So we showed up at her house on Saturday, saw the car outside, said a quick prayer, and went in and talked with her for a minute. She is still not really wanting to come to church, but we set up another lesson with her this week. 

Vera is back to  a standstill. She still hasn´t prayed about the Book of Mormon, but I know that she will get baptized soon. She is super awesome, and that is what she wants. She just needs alittle more time. 

So this week, we were standing around waiting for the bus, which was 30 minutes late. We heard horns honking like crazy and then all the kids ran out on the street. And santa appeared in a car tossing out candy. He threw some to us, so that was fun. 

We had a Christmas conference in São Jose this week, which is right by Floripa. We had to get up at 3:30 in the morning to get up, so that was rough. But it was so much fun! It was with 3 different zones. I got to see Sister Crump and Sister Favero again and that was super fun and Elder hull, an elder from my first district in the Brazil MTC was there too. Super fun. there were like 20 americans there out of probably 70 or 80 people, which was kind of crazy. We had a white elephant gift exchange. I took a pig that when you squeeze it oinks and a rubix cube. It was hilarious. A Sister opened it and she loved it and it was fought over and the whole room started laughing when she opened it. It was great. I was really really close to getting a metal surfboard that has the island on it with names of all the beaches. It was so stinking cool! but it got stolen from me. And I ended up with a dinosaur egg that you put in water for 48 hours and it grows into a dinosaur. haha. oh well. 

They had 2 x box kinects set up at the conference, along with Chess, Checkers, Uno, and Ping Pong. I played ping pong, so you can imagine how that went down. A bunch of crazy elders and me and one other sister playing around the world ping pong. I have never played ping pong before in my life. But, maybe it will surprise you to know that I actually got some of the best Elders out when we were playing. It was hilarious! 

Well, that´s about it for my week. 

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and that you spend some time with your family and take some time to remember our Savior and why he was born. And then watch that video #ASaviorIsBorn again because it is just so good! I love it! I love you all! 

Merry Christmas from sunny Brazil :) 

Love, 

Sister Wilkins

5 Month Celebration!

Antonio and Vagner

Vagner, the best ward mission leader.
He's now in our bishopric

Party Bus! heading home after the conference 

Sister Crump (at Conference Natal)

Sister Favero

Sister George and Elder Reis (our district leader)

Once there was a missionary, tall tall tall. In the sun she melted.....

Oi familia e amigos!!! 

I cannot even believe we are halfway through December!!! 

Out here the only thing making it feel like Christmas is the decorations. It is so Stinking hot!!!! I think we hit 100 degrees farenheit yesterday and then add like 80% humidity on top of that. WE are literally melting in our sweat. It is so gross. 

Well this week has been interesting. It is so ridiculously hot. 

Anyways, Vera went to church yesterday!!!! MIRACLES!!!! And while we were sitting in sacrament she leaned over and said I took one step closer to baptism and I was just like WHAT?! 

We had a lesson with her this week where she was telling us how much pressure people were putting on her to get baptized and that right now she doesn´t want it. She wants to know for sure that she is on the right path and she is making the right decision before she gets baptized so that she can remain firm. But she´s A STEP CLOSER!!! Not sure exactly what that means, but MIRACLES!!! 

Claudia decided that Saturday was too soon for her to get baptized. She chose a date in January. We weren´t going to ask her again for a long while and she asked if someone was getting baptized in January, we said yes on the 23. And she said just go ahead and mark that for me too. Sister George and I just looked at each other and were like WHAT IS HAPPENING?!! So that´s super awesome! 

Mari decided recently that she doesn´t want to come to church. We don´t know what happened, and she hasn´t said yet, but we are starting to think that maybe she got offended somehow by someone there. But not sure. Trying to work with her, but she has become very difficult. 

Antonio will be baptized the 23 of January!! He´s understanding what we have been teaching so far and he really likes the church. He is kind of hard for me and Sister George to understand sometimes though. 

The biggest miracle of all this week is Michael. He´s the African investigator who only speaks English. We had two lessons with him this week. He really liked the restoration and we started the Plan of Salvation. We showed him the church and we have asked him to get baptized the day after Christmas. The only hold up is that he wants to get baptized in a river. THIS GUY IS GOLDEN!!! He doesn´t smoke, drink, has already talked to us about the word of wisdom, the law of chastity, and fasting. He just wants to get baptized in a river like Jesus did, but we don´t have permission in this mission to do that. Sadly, this guy lives in the other ward. We finally found where his house is and it is right on the border of our area and the sisters. Literally like a two second walk and you´d be in our area. So he went to church there yesterday with his "sister" and there was a brother in the ward that literally translated EVERYTHING for them!!! And they LOVED IT!!!! He is seriously the miracle we have been praying and fasting for. 

First day of major heat.  We were dying!

New friend, an investigator's kitten named Max

My dinner of peaches and awful grapes (there must be a story in there, but she didn't tell us....)

SO HOT!

SUNBURN!

Well, that about sums up this week. We had a little girl call Sis. George Elsa and me Ana and that was hilarious. I got super duper sunburned saturday...I´ll send the pic it was awful. And we had a drunk guy walk into our church during district meeting wanting to repent and asking for money. And we walked a distance that usually takes  40-60 minutes to cover in 20 minutes flat. So ya, things here are great! Learning, Loving, Working, and Sweating!! 

Hope you guys are having a good time out there! 

Love you all! 

Sister Wilkins

Here´s my awful sunburn. The picture really doesn´t show how bad it was. Everyone in church was commenting about it. But it´s all good now.

It's Beginning to Look alot Like Christmas!

Oi familia e amigos! 

Well, last week we had an adventure on p-day and got to go to a dress shop a member owns and try on  some Indian dresses, so that was super fun! 

We had trainamento da zona (zone training) this week and it was super good. We bought a ridiculous amount of food for it, but it was soooo delicious. And it was really fun! All the trainings we got were on Chapter 13 of Preach My Gospel, about how we can work with our leaders. It was really good! I love training meetings! 

our table of food at zone training

Well, this week we were on the bus and got a call from one of our members. We couldn´t hear anything she was saying, so we called her back when we got off the bus. She said that her husband had a guy at work who wanted to meet with us. He´s from Africa and only speaks English!!!!! WE FREAKED OUT!!! WE WERE SO EXCITED!!!! So for two days we called and tried to figure out how and where we were going to meet him. When we finally sat down and looked at the map. I found his address...outside of our area....in the area of the other sisters. We were almost in tears we were so upset about this. He sounds like the perfect investigator. Well the other sisters don´t speak English so we weren´t sure what to do. We called President. he said we are going to have to go on splits to teach him. So...there´s that. All four of us are pretty upset about it. Sister George will probably teach him because she doesn´t know her way around our area yet. But all four of us get to go there tonight, so super excited. We met him saturday night and he was asking about our nametags and how and when he could get one and he already wants to preach the gospel to everyone and we haven´t even taught him a lesson!!!! This guy is soooo awesome!!! His name is Michael and he is from Ghana, Africa. 

Well, Mari and Vera weren´t at church again. 

Mari doesn´t want to come to church. She says she needs more time to get to know the church still, and we are giving it to her, she just doesn´t totally realize the importance of the relief society and elders quorum and why we have to be split for classes. Vera promised us she would be at church, and she wasn´t, so not sure what´s going on there. I cannot begin to explain to you how frustrating it is to see people and know what they need to do and they just won´t listen to you!! All they need to do is go to church right now, they´re doing everything else! So stinking frustrating, but we all have agency, and that´s important too. 

We invited Claudia to be baptized next Saturday. We asked her to pray about it. And she is going to give us an answer on Wednesday. hopefully she´ll be willing to put everything in place in her life and get baptized. 

We also have an investigator, who has quite the interesting story. His name is Antonio. Sister Crump and I contacted him on the street way back when during our first transfer. This guy has been to church 6 times already!!! So we finally got it set up to teach him yesterday. He started talking about baptism and how he doesn´t want to get baptized yet, he wants to get to know the church better, but maybe one day he will. He started talking about how good and happy and at peace he feels at church and we were just like what in the world. So we started teaching him about prophets, and it took him a while to understand, but he got it. And then bishop came in and Antonio started talking about gambling and bishop told him we don´t support it and he said he´d stop. And then bishop started asking if he had a baptismal date, and he didn´t but now he does!!! January 26!!! Crazy stuff!!! Gonna work really hard with him now and see what happens. 

Well, if you haven´t seen the #ASaviorIsBorn video you should definitely watch it. I have watched it so many times already but that video brings the Spirit into the room super strong and I love that video so much! Jesus really was born for us, for each and everyone of us!! 

Well, that´s about it for the week. 

Hope you are all well! 

Love ya! 

Sister Wilkins

I found Santa's chair, but he hasn't shown up yet.

Thanksgiving

Well oi minha família e amigos!!

This week was rough. A lot of things fell through. We had a grand total of 6 lessons with investigators, which really is not much. But we have two new investigators and one might become a family of investigators, so that´s pretty cool!! 

Our Christmas decorations

Our mini Christmas Tree

Last P-day Sister George and I went out shopping and we bought Christmas decorations and we are SOOO Excited for Christmas!!! 

We had Thanksgiving dinner for lunch. We attempted to make American foods. But the first attempt we failed miserably. Crepes wouldn´t form and we burned cheese bread. But the second attempt was great and the food

Burnt Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Dinner 2015

Success!

tasted great and we were missing our American turkey. But we had mashed potatoes, thin pancakes with nutella and bananas, jello, cheese bread, and ham. 

We almost got robbed....well our umbrellas did. Some guy came up and asked to borrow our umbrellas and tried to pry our fingers off them, but we got rid of him, so that was interesting to say the least. 

And then we had an investigator who refused to pray in pants this week and told us that Jesus gets sad when we pray in pants, so that was interesting too. She made us pray since she was wearing pants and went on a rant for probably a good ten minutes of why we can´t pray in pants. People here are definitely interesting haha. 

We got # pass along cards and we are so excited!!! I don´t know if you guys have seen the video yet, but if not you should look it up right now. christmas.mormon.org. #ASaviorWasBorn. I am so excited about this!!! Share the video with everyone!!! That´s my goal and I would love it if you would all join me! 

I had to give a talk in Sacrament meeting yesterday, that was pretty scary. Bishop called Saturday night and said he needed one of us to give a talk and I was the one to answer the phone, so that meant it was me. I was asked to speak on Families and how our families can be eternal for 10 minutes. I was nervous and stuttered but people told me it was good and I didn´t look nervous, so that was good. That was the first talk I have given in Portuguese, so that was super fun. 

Vera still hasn´t come to church and almost went to a different church this past week, except that we went and visited her when she was going to go. 

Mari told us that she doesn´t really have an interest in coming to church and hasn´t been there the past two weeks. Something is wrong with what´s happening with her and we aren´t sure what. 

Claudia is still Claudia and thinks that it won´t be long before she´s baptized. 

Well, that´s my week. 

Hope things are going well for you! 

Love you!

Sister Wilkins

Week of Miracles

Olá! 

Well, this week was super long but it was absolutely incredible!!! Sister George and I get along super duper well and she is just super great! Love her so much! She is from Layton.

Me and Sister George

Our first day as comps, Tuesday was absolutely crazy. We had two lunches because we couldn´t get a hold of the Irmã in the ward the night before and she called us after we had eaten and asked where we were. That sure was an adventure! 

Wednesday we had 5 LESSONS!!! Just in that day. That NEVER happens!!! It was crazy!!! We were so tired at the end of the day, but really that has been every day this week. We are doing so much work and the amount of concentration we are both putting into lessons and even just conversations is more than we have ever had to do before, because we used to just rely on our companion who was fluent in Portuguese and now we don´t have that, but I am super glad because it is stretching us and we are learning a lot. 

Honestly, we are receiving a ton of Heavenly help. From the first moment we went to that lunch we knew we were receiving help. The Portuguese we are speaking is better than we were able to speak last week and we have been able to explain everything we needed to so far. We have been able to teach evey lesson well and none of this is because of us. It is all thanks to our Heavenly Father. He is so mindful of us and our needs and I know that I wouldn´t be able to do any of this without Him. 

I am also amazed at how much I am feeling the Spirit. The way I have felt the Spirit on my mission is totally different than the way I felt it before. It has been very difficult for me to recognize it and I was having a hard time with this. But I have felt the Spirit so strongly in my life this week. I have felt him there in our lessons and I know that He is helping me and guiding our work. I am getting better at recognizing him, his promptings, and then following them. I am so grateful for the Spirit. Without him, our work as missionaries cannot go forward, we will not get anywhere without him. 

This Friday was pretty cool. We had district meeting. Elder Reis and Elder Gomes made a treasure hunt for us to find breakfast. They had clues and they had told us that we needed to rely on the Spirit and that we might find a teaching opportunity. Well, our church is in the middle of a bunch of houses. Our last clue said we had to knock on a door. So I tried knocking on the church door, yup, that did nothing for us. We had to cross the street and we knew that was the door we needed to knock on, but we were all struggling to get up the courage to go knock on this door and ask some random person if she had our breakfast. Finally we knocked, no one answered. I knocked louder and a sweet little old lady came to the door. We left a pass-along card with her and then she asked if there was something else we wanted from her. Sister Ribeiro asked if two young men happened to leave something with her for us. She laughed, invited us in and gave us the food. We laughed with her for a few minutes because the whole time she had been watching us out the window. The Elders recorded the video too. It was pretty funny. But really I learned quite a bit from that experience. We have to have the courage to talk to people because we never know who is going to be prepared for something we have or prepared to help us find others or prepared to serve in the church! But it all starts with our courage. 

With President and Sister Silva after a long day or working

Friday night we had a dinner with President that one of the Irmãos in the ward prepared. Member couples invited nonmember couples and President talked about how families are important and read from The Family: A Proclamation to the World. It was super awesome. We have some new potential investigators. And the mayor of Tubarão was there. So that was pretty cool! 

This Sunday, we didn´t have any of our investigators at church! Half the ward was gone too! It was so weird and pretty sad!

Well, as for investigators. 

Mari didn´t even make an effort to stop drinking coffee. She doesn´t have a desire to yet, so we are going to be praying for that desire to manifest itself. We started teaching her the commandments and we taught her about Keeping the Sabbath Day holy. It went really well! But then she wasn´t at church. Luis, her husband was, but he said she had some really bad head pain so she stayed home. 

Vera is becoming very depressed because of her situation with the divorce. She nearly talked our ears off for an hour. I flat out told her that she wouldn´t be as depressed if she would come to church and try to make some friends. She hasn´t been to church in a month now. And we even called her Saturday night and she wasn´t there Sunday. I am getting to a point where I really don´t know how I can help her any more and it is devastating. All I want is for her to come to church, but we don´t have a car, we can´t pick her up and drive her, so it´s hard because all we can do is invite her and ask the members to give her a ride. 

Well, Christmas decorations are up!!! IN THE WHOLE CITY!!! IT IS GORGEOUS!!! We were walking down the main road, hardly any cars or people were out and then the Christmas lights just suddenly turned on. It was gorgeous!!! I am SOOOO Excited for Christmas!!!! But it is getting extremely hot here. It was at 31 degrees Celcius yesterday which is pretty cool for the week and that doesn´t factor in the ridiculous amount of humidity we experience. So, it doesn´t completely click in my head that it´s getting really close to Christmas. 

But, with all the sun we walk in, I am more tan than I have ever been. It is super great! Blessings of the mission! haha. 

Well, I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving and that sometime this week you can take 10-15 minutes and just offer a heartfelt prayer of gratitude to your Father in Heaven because He has given us everything. Don´t ask for anything, just express your gratitude to Him. 

I am super grateful for all of you and for the marvelous opportunity I have to serve a mission! I wouldn´t trade it for anything. 

Love you all! 

Sister Wilkins

Transfers :(

Oi familia e amigos!!! Tudo bem?!

Well, this week we had a bit of success. Mari prayed about the Book of Mormon!!!!!! It was seriously a miracle!!! She told us that she hadn´t received a response yet. Sister Diniz started talking about the different types of responses and how we can recognize them. Mari paused for a second and then said, you know I don´t think I need a big response. From the first lesson with the Book of Mormon, I believed it was true. MIRACLE OF THE WEEK!!!!! I cannot even begin to explain how excited about this I was!!! Thank you for your prayers for my investigators, I know that they are being answered! The next lesson we had with her was about the word of Wisdom, because she asked about coffee, so really hoping that she will be able to get the goal we set with her to leave coffee for one week and substitute something else for it. 

Vera, is still Vera. She didn´t read. She wasn´t at church. I am starting to get really worried about her. I am not really sure what else we can do for her. 

Claudia was supposed to get baptized this week, we talked to her on the phone. She prayed aobut if she should be baptized, she felt the spirit and has a great desire to get baptized, but she chose the natural man. She chose her boyfriend over baptism. AGHHH it is so frustrating to have situations like this where the investigator knows what they should do, but still chooses the wrong path. Sometimes as a missionary you really wish you could just take away free agency for two seconds. 

Well transfer calls came Wednesday. Sister Diniz was transfered home, she finished her full-time mission and I am sure going to miss her. Sister Crump was transferred to Floripa. She left this morning. And I am staying in Oficinas!!!! I GET TO SPEND CHRISTMAS HERE AND I AM SO EXCITED I LOVE THIS WARD :D

My new comp is Sister George. I haven´t met her yet. She and Sister Crump are changing spots. I am really worried about how our Portuguese will be, but I know that the Spirit will touch the hearts of those who are prepared and we will do what we can for the others. 

Our ward mission leader is great. He and his wife had a big barbecue for Sister Diniz because she was leaving and it became for Sister Crump too when we found out she was leaving too. 

I get to see President this week. A brother in our ward organized a dinner for members to invite nonmembers and invited president to come and present a lesson of some sort. I am excited to see what he has to say! 

Last night, after Sister crump and I dropped Sister Diniz off at the bus station and then went and taught a lesson to Luan at Jorge and Fran´s. I understood almost everything they said! I shouldn´t have been able to, but I did. The gift of tongues is real. That hour and a half with them made me feel more comfortable with my portuguese and made me think that I can do this transfer; it will be difficult, but I can do it. 

Well, in other news I have probably 30 new bug bites. The bugs here are ridiculous. And I saw a lizard that was like 3 feet long. But it crept under a house before I got a picture. Other than that, things in Tubarão are good. 

IT is ridiculously hot sometimes, but I am adjusting slowly and life is good. 

Love you all! 

Have a wonderful week! 

Sister Wilkins