Mission Conference with Elder Cruz

Dear Family,

This week was a great week. We had a mission conference on Thursday which a member of the Seventy named Elder Cruz. The conference was great he was a very inspirational speaker. He emphasized the importance of baptizing men into the church. Our mission is one of the highest baptizing missions in Brazil but has one of the lowest percantages of men being baptized. He emphasized he importance of finding families to teach that are led by fathers. So we are going to have to make some changes here in Vila Galvão to try and find/baptize more men. This week we baptized a kid named Guilherme (14). It was obvious that he had been prepared by the Lord to receive the Gospel. We met him at the church one day when he came to seminary with his girlfriend. We taught him the first lesson and gave him a Book of Mormon and the next time that we taught him (3 or 4 days later), he was already in Jacob!! I was really impressed. He said he had prayed about the book and had felt a strong feeling of joy. He said he felt ´´lighter´´ whenever he was reading the book. He was a great investigator and was baptized yesterday.

Have you heard any rumors about the mission dividing?- Yes. From what I have heard, in July they will be creating the missions Santos, and São Paulo West. And, from what I have heard, the São Paulo West mission won´t be effecting the East mission at all. However the Santos mission will be talking chunk of our mission. Mostly it will be taking the more rural part of the mission. However I think the majority of the Santos mission will come from the São Paulo South mission. So since transfers are coming up here soon, there is actually a small chance that I will get sent to the part of the mission what will be turned into Santos. I think the chance is slim but it is still a possibility.

That´s all I´ve got for this week! Hope you are all great and thank you for your emails, prayers, and support!

Love,

Elder Caleb Anderson

Gaining Momentum

Dear Family,

This week was great. I don´t have much time to email this week so this is going to have to be short. This week was a great week. We have been working hard and yesterday we were able to baptize Lucas and Gabryel. They are both young men who were prepared by the Lord and have true testimonies of the church. I am really impressed by both of them and am excited for their progress in the future. Today our whole zone went bowling and it was super fun. It sure has been a while since I´ve been bowling and it was super fun. Sorry for how short this email was but we´ve got to run to Gopouva for our zone meeting!

 

Tchau!

Com amor,

Elder Caleb Anderson

Week 3/4 Update

Dear Family,

I hope everyone is doing well at home. Thank you for your emails, letters, and support. This week went well. Recently we have been working with the youth in are ward and trying to get references from them. S o far it seems to be working well. The youth in our ward really have the missionary Spirit and want to share the gospel. They are always inviting their friends to church, seminary, and other activities. It makes being a missionary in this ward easy. We are going to try to give the adults in the ward this same Spirit. The key to missionary work here in Vila Galvão is working through the members. When we work through the members we find better investigators who have a much higher chance of staying firm after baptism.

Lately we have been teaching a girl named Jessica who is the girlfriend of a young man in our ward named Gabriel. On Saturday night we had planned a family night at the Patriarch´s house where we were also planning to do the Jessica´s baptismal interview. So we met up with the zone leader and district leader at around 5:30 and started heading to the patriarch´s house. The only problem was that at about 5:35 it started POURING down rain. The four of us started running through the streets in a huge thunderstorm and got completely soaked. It was a pretty funny sight though by the time we finally showed up at the patriarch´s house because all 4 of us looked like we had just gone swimming. But our district leader did the Jessica´s interview and she passed. Afterwards Elder Heiner and I made cookies which were a huge hit. They don´t really have cookies down here. Yesterday Jessica was baptized and it was a really great baptism. She was a great investigator. She learned really fast and had great questions all along the way.

That´s about all I´ve got to report for this week!

Love,

Elder Caleb Anderson

Reporting Live From VILA GALVÃO

Thank you all for your support and encouragement. Yes, I am still in Vila Galvão. Looks like I will be staying here for at least 7.5 months. However I am really excited for this transfer. Elder Heiner and I have some really great goals for this transfer and a lot of it has to do with reactivation. This week was a great week. The highlight of the week was a baptism yesterday. We baptized a lady named Karla. She was a reference that we received from the Elders in the São Paulo North mission. She had been going to church by herself with her 2 year old son for a month in the São Paulo North mission before those Elders passed her address to us. We went there and taught her and she accepted everything extremely fast. She was a golden investigator. She gave up coffee the day that we taught her the Word of Wisdom. She is somehow related to the patriarch in the other stake so the patriarch came to our ward yesterday and bore his testimony in Sacrament meeting and spoke in the baptismal service. She Spirit was very strong during the baptism and many were in tears. It was definitely one of the most Spiritual baptismal services that I´ve attended.

Another funny experience that happened this week was that we went to the mission office on transfer day to try and pick up a gas tank for our house. We have a stove in our house but to use the stove you need a gas tank which we don´t have. However the secretaries told us that there was an extra one at the mission office and that we could go by and pick it up. So we went took the bus to the subway and the subway to a stop close to the mission office and afterwards made the walk to the mission office. Well we got to the office, picked up the gas tank which turned out to be a lot heavier than we expected. We made the walk to the subway station again and by the time we got there we were sweating and very tired. We started trying to enter the subway station and the guy that was working there freaked out! I think he thought that we were American terrorists or something, trying to enter the subway station with a big tank of gas hahahaha. Anyways they told us that there was no way they would let us into the station with a tank of gas and that we could forget about it. So we had to make the long walk back to the office with the heavy gas tank and drop it off again and come back home empty handed. The hard lesson learned was that you can´t enter a subway station with a gas tank. We both felt pretty dumb about not thinking of that before hand hahaha but you live and learn right?

That´s all I´ve got for this week. Hope you are all doing great!

-Elder Caleb Anderson