Cate Mission Weekly Letters

Olá pessoal!! Miracle of the week is that our friend Eddy accepted an invitation to be baptized! He is an Uber driver and he told us that he always has his Book of Mormon on the bench next to him. He will either be getting baptized this week or next, and we are so excited for him! Our friend Luiz is also smoking less which is really good. He has been struggling a lot to quit, but he still has a desire to be baptized as well. We also started teaching some really awesome people this week in both of our areas! I am loving the mix of online and in person proselytizing!  We had a zone conference this week and Sister Hinton and I had to give a training to the rest of the missionaries in our zone. For part of it, we played the minute to win it game where you have to put an oreo on your forehead and then eat it. Watching President Saucedo participate alongside all of the other Elders and Sisters was probably one of the funniest things. The point we were making was that sometimes you h...

Bom dia queridos!! As mentioned in the title, we ate a lot of cake this week. Not by choice, but more or less by force. Now that we are able to eat in members' homes, everyone here is being so generous in allowing us to come over to eat with their families! Sister Hinton and I absolutely love that we get to go and meet so many new people! But we have discovered that all the irmãs here think we aren't eating enough, so we hear the phrase "Come mais Sister!!" a ton. So of course that means we eat more food. And just when we are full, they pull out a cake and give that to us too. And Brazilians don't mess around with their cake. When you finish your first slice, within 2.5 seconds there is another slice on your plate. After eating lunch and cake at an irmã's house on Saturday, we then went to have a lesson with a recent convert, Sônia. She was so sweet, and after the lesson, she also pulled out a cake for us to eat. So I think between me and Sister Hinton on Satu...

Olá bom dia!!! Como vocês estão??? We had some BIG CHANGES this week in our mission! Our mission entered phase 3, which means we are able to street contact, knock doors, eat in member's homes, and all Sunday meetings are going to start happening as well! I honestly didn't think I would ever be able to talk to people in the street on my mission, but here we are! Here are my first tracting stories as I am currently teaching myself how to do it: 1. We were in a park talking with a lady and this homeless man ran up to us yelling "Sisteres! Sisters!" Usually not a good start to a conversation. But then he asked us for a Book of Mormon, so we handed one over to him. Turns out he used to go to church in Campinas, but things happened in his life and he is now living in Louveira. He looked us in the eyes and told us that he was so thankful he saw us in the park and that we had a Book of Mormon to give him, because the happiest he ever was in his life was when he was reading th...

Olá bom dia queridos, tudo bem? I am officially all settled into my new area! I am in a smaller city called Louveira about 30 minutes south of Campinas. I am here with Sister Hinton and we are living it up. I honestly never thought I would have an American companion again on my mission, but here we are! It has been pretty funny to see all of the people who drive past us turn around 180 degrees to try and get a better look at the two Americans walking down the street. But I was a little more concerned when we saw a clown walking around up and down our street so I think people here should be a little more concerned about that. Sister Hinton is still working on learning the language, so I have been doing most of the talking in our lessons and contacting. I have been surprised, I think my Portuguese is a lot better than I have given myself credit for! The gift of tongues is so real! We had a couple awesome lessons this week with some of our friends! We have our friend Lu...

Boa tarde!!! Well, transfer news came in this morning and after 3 transfers running the social media here in the mission, I am getting transferred to a new area! I am so sad to be leaving the social media work as I have seen so many miracles and gained a stronger testimony of the plan that God has for each one of us. But at the same time I am so excited to see what these last three months have in store for me!! This week, we were headed to the mission office in an uber. We were talking with him and explaining how we are missionaries for the church. He asked us where we were from and when I said the US, not even kidding this man did a full 180° turn around (while still driving) and said "you're from where?!?" I then confirmed that yes, I am from the United States, to which he said, "are you married?" And no, I am not. The follow up question was, "then, will you marry me?" So that is the story of how I received my first marriage proposal. The miracle thi...

Olá boa tarde galeira, tudo bem? This week was so amazing! We have really been struggling to find new people to teach in our area this transfer, but this week we found three new friends who are already progressing! One of our friends, Júnior, we found through sending an email. Missionaries in Brazil generally get lots of media referrals from sites like Come Unto Christ. But a lot of times these people get contacted once with a text message and then nothing else after that. Well, this week we were going through our Area Book contacting these people again and Júnior's phone number didn't work, but we noticed he had also included his email address. We decided to send him an email with our phone number, and he responded!! It was so cool, I have never had that happen. We got his phone number and started teaching him. He told us he was having a really rough week when he saw our email, and he doesn't think it was a coincidence we got in contact with him. God really is in the detai...

Happy Monday everyone! This week we had a Mission Tour and Elder Koch from the Area Presidency of Brazil came to our mission! He and his wife gave a few trainings throughout the two days that are really going to help me improve my teaching.   One thing that really stood out to me was he talked about how repentance is more than just a change in our behavior, it is a change we make when we choose to have faith in Jesus Christ and his Atonement, recognizing that because of Him, we can change our character!! Our message as missionaries is a message of happiness, and we feel that happiness when we choose to accept Christ in our lives!  I also love mission tours/zone conferences because that means I get to see all of my friends from around the mission! We had a couple awesome lessons with our friend Anderson. He is seriously so close to baptism, the only thing holding him back is that he wants to come to church in person but is currently in Rio de Janeiro buying a car. We are p...