Elder Antunes

Dear Family,

Thank you for your emails, prayers, and support.  We are working extremely hard and trying to do what the Savior would do if he were here.  I am learning a lot about patience and charity.  Slowly I can feel that I am obtaining more Christlike attributes.  We had a mission conference this week with an area 70 named Elder Antunes.  It was really awesome.  He taught about the importance of our studies in the morning.  He is a recently called are 70 who before had taught seminary and institute his whole life.  Man that guy knows the scriptures well!  Anyways he analized Lehi´s dream and said that the tree of life in the dream is really just a symbol for Jesus Christ.  When Nephi said to the angel that he desired to see the things that his father saw, he was really referring to his desire to see and know our Savior.  Elder Antunes said that through continually studying the scripture ´´holding the iron rod´´ one day we too can know our savior.  He explained how when we study our scriptures we automatically learn more about the Savior and therefore know him better.  He also explained that as we study the scriptures we start to see the Savior every day in the world around us.  It was an awesome talk that he gave that really taught me about the importance of scripture study.  Yesterday we had the opportunity to baptize a girl named Estefane.  She was very excited about baptism and I am excited and optomistic about her future in the church.  That´s all I´ve got for this week!

 

Love you all and hope you have a great week!

-Elder Caleb Anderson       

Dear Family,

Thank you once again for all of your emails, letters, and support.  Things are going well here.  We are working really hard and are teaching a lot of people.  The Lord is putting a lot of new people in front of us to teach and each one has a different problem that we have to help them through.  It is really interesting how on the mission you meet all different types of people and you learn how to deal with each one.  I am learning how to see/meet people without immediately judging them.  I realized that often times we make small unconcious judgements on people without even really knowing them.  For example we might judge someone by the way they look, the t-shirt they are wearing, the cigarette they have in their hand, the way their hair is, or any number of other things.  But really each one of these people is a child of God and we never know if one of them would accept the gospel or not.  Sure some of them have things thy need to change in their lives but who doesn´t haha?  Anyways that is what has really struck me lately and what I have really been learning.  

 

Love you guys.  I will be getting a package off to you guys soon!

-Elder Caleb Anderson

Miracles

Dear Family,

Thank you all for your prayers and emails.  This week was good.  We are working extremely hard and are teaching a lot of good people.  We are just trying to get them to take that next step of baptism!  We truly were blessed with a miracle on Thursday.  A couple of months ago when I was with Elder Ciriaco we found a man on the street named Artemil.  He is a member of the church that has been inactive for about 30 years, ever since he moved to São Paulo from Uruguay.  Anyways when we found him on the street we asked him if we could set up a time to pass by his house and meet his wife and kids.  We kept passing by but we never got to meet his wife or his  kids.  Finally this week we decided to pass by again and we got to meet his 25 year old son Rouglas.  He is the golden investigator!  He reads everything we have given him, he doesn´t drink, smoke, or even drink coffee!  (which almost everyone in Brazil drinks coffee).  Anyways him, his Mom, and Artemil went to church and Sunday and were very happy.  Especially Artemil.  It was an awesome experience and we are looking forward to working with them more in the future.  Other than that we had a pretty normal week.  We went to McDonald´s last P-day. It always feels like I am walking into the U.S. when I go to McDonald´s here haha.  Also we are going to go go-karting today!!  That´s all I´ve got for this week.

 

Love you all and thanks again,

Elder Caleb Anderson

It´s already June!

Dear Family,

Thank you for the email, letters, packages, and prayers. This week we worked extremely hard. It is really amazing to see the Spirit of the Lord working in the lives of the people here. Recently I have been thinking more and more about how the Lord prepares his elects for us. And I wanted to share this scripture from Jacob 5.

71 And the Lord of the vineyard said unto them: Go to, and^alabor in the vineyard, with your might. For behold, this is the^blast time that I shall ^cnourish my vineyard; for the end is nigh at hand, and the season speedily cometh; and if ye labor with your might with me ye shall have joy in the fruit which I shall lay up unto myself against the time which will soon come.

72 And it came to pass that the servants did go and labor with their mights; and the Lord of the vineyard labored also with them; and they did obey the commandments of the Lord of the vineyard in all things.

This scripture really hit me hard when I read it. I can´t tell you how many times we have gone to work and found someone extremely prepared to hear our message. We are not in this work alone! The Lord of the Vineyard goes before us and prepares the way for us. The Lord of the Vineyard prepares the hearts of his elects, so that when we come along we just have to do the easy part. We never know who the Lord of the Vineyard has prepared so we always have to be looking for them. As missionaries and as members too. Sometimes we don´t share the gospel with someone because we don´t think they will accept it. But who knows maybe the Lord is doing a work in this person´s life that we can´t see! And maye the Lord is trusting us (his servants) to come behind him and finish up the work. I know that the Savior Jesus Christ works in the lives of his people, and we walk past these people every day without realizing it. If we pray for inspiration to know who these people are that the Lord has prepared, he will lead them to us in one way or another.

The work here in Vila Industrial is moving forward slowly but surely! Elder Bracken is doing great, he is learning quickly!

Hope you are all well, that´s all I´ve got for this week!

Hope you are all well!

Love,

Elder Caleb Anderson

Update

Dear Family,

 

Thank you all for your emails, letters, and support. This week was great. It is awesome to be with Elder Bracken who is straight out of the CTM with a lot of energy and desire to work. He is picking up on the language quickly and we are seeing miracles every day! This week was great because we are working extremely hard every day and it feels really good at the end of every day to go to sleep knowing you spent all of your heart, might, and mind in the service of the Lord that day. We don´t have a whole lot to report from this week but here is one cool experience that happened this week that I wrote in my email to President Ferrin.

 

We had a pretty cool experience this week. We were walking down the street and passed two women talking on the side of the road. We passed by them but then felt that we should go back and talk to them. We turned around and made a contact with them. We marked an appointment with one of them and when we went back to teach her the lesson went extremely well! We left her the commitment to pray and ask God if the things we said were true. We went back the next day and asked her how the prayer went. She said that she prayed and then opened up the Bible to a passage that talked about God sending a man into the world to preach the gospel. God told this man not to bring any food because God would provide for him. God sent this man to preach the Gospel and to give a book to people. People the people were to eat this book and the book would be sweet like honey. When she said that we pulled out the Book of Mormon and explained it to her. It was a really cool experience for us!

That´s all we´ve got for this week!

 

Eu amo vocês!!

-Elder Anderson

Elder Joshua Bracken!!

Dear Family,

Thanks so much for your letters, emails, and support. This week was awesome! This week I received my ´´greenie´´ Elder Bracken. He is from El Paso, Texas!! What are the chances that I would receive a Texan? Anyways he is 19 and from El Paso. Before the mission he went to college at BYU Idaho. He cae straight to the CTM here in São Paulo and stayed there for only 6 weeks before arriving in the field on Tuesday. He is really excited to work and I am really excited to train. This week we worked super hard. This week past week before Elder Bracken got here Elder Ciríaco and I had the baptism of Nivea and Tony. Nivea is a woman who we found who´s mom has been a member of the Church for years but she never wanted to join. However we found her and began teaching her and she accepted everything easily. She quit drinking coffee and on Sunday was baptized. Also Tony was baptized on Monday. He was recently married to his wife Juliana who is a member of the church. Anyways the sister missionaries found him in another area and referred him to us. He was an excellent investigator and before he was even baptized he was asking when he could go into the temple to be sealed to his wife!! They were both confirmed yesterday and Tony will receive the Priesthood this week. This week was awesome! I just rememberred that I forgot to write about a funny story that happened a few weeks ago. A few weeks ago I was on a division with another missionary named Elder Soares de Souza in my area. Anyways we were walking on the street and we passed a small church. We looked into the church and saw the pastor of the church kneeling on the floor banging on a chair!! I have no clue what the purpose of that was but he looked up all of a sudden and saw us and started yelling and pointing at us!! At this point the whole congregation turned around and started looking at us. We quickened our pace but the pastor jumped up off the floor and started running towards the door pointing at us. We started walking even faster. The paster threw the door open and ran outside yelling at us ´´Get back here!!´´. We took off and never looked back!! It was kind of strange when it happened but now it´s just a super funny story that I think of often.

Love you all!

-Elder Caleb Anderson

Dia das Mães is arriving!!!

Dear Family,

Thank you all for your emails and support. This week is really rushed too so this email will be short. But I am super excited for Mother´s day to do skype!! This week was a good week. We´ve got some really great investigators who are progressing well. This week should be really good. We are still working with Junior and he is progressing well. Hopefully this week he will be completely prepared for baptism. I am really loving the ward here. The people here are really great and they help a lot. This morning I went to go get my haircut for the first time here in Brazil. It was pretty cool because you can get a really great haircut for cheap. However I need to brush up on my portuguese haircutting vocabulary because I didn´t understand a word the guy said!! Anyways I just kept saying ´´yes, yes, yes´´, however that wasn´t the best move because now I look like a Porcupine!!!! It is kind of funny actually but mostly just embarrassing. Especially because right now we are going to a zone p-day activity and we don´t have time to pass by the house. Anyways I think I´ll try and get a picture and send it to you guys. Its a pretty funny story that I think I will remember for a long time. That´s about all I have time for this week!

 

I love you all and am looking forward to Sunday!

-Elder Caleb Anderson