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

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

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...)

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

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:

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!

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.....