15 de Novembro and Chicken Hearts!

Hello everybody!

Well, this week flew by again... we have been so busy. The first week with a new companion is always pretty crazy, because you have to get to know people, and introductions and whatnot.

So my companion, Elder Gonçalves, is from São Paulo, a city called Pirascaba... about midway from São Paulo and Santos. He is 20, and I am his second companion. He likes soccer a lot, and his team is São Paulo (boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo). But he is a load of fun! It´ll be a good transfer, even though it´ll only be 5 weeks.

So our day to day is pretty simple. I usually get up and go right to the shower... or else I don´t actually wake up (VERY cold shower in the morning). Afterwards, I usually eat cereal, or bread with nutella, and then study. Study study study. I normally study the Book of Mormon and Preach my Gospel pretty intensely. If we have stuff to do early in the morning, we normally head out after companion study at 10:30. Then we have lunch with members... which normally lasts until 1:30 and then we hit the ground running. Until about 4, it is very hard to get a lot done. It is culture here to eat and then sleep for a while, so you can imagine how excited some people are to talk with us. At night is when we have more success. Everyone sits in front of their house and they just chill there, and talk to whoever passes by. We get a bunch of contacts that way, on top of the friends that happen to be with our investigators when we go by. But what we normally do is just teach and talk to people on the street. Our district meetings we do mostly practices  and see what we can improve on certain aspects of our work.

So this week we did a lot! On Tuesday, we had our meeting like normal, and then we headed out and visited Eliardo, someone totally prepared! He has worked with a lot of returned missionaries and he has read the Book of Mormon for about a month already. It is just hard to find him in his house, but he is super awesome! 

Wednesday, we got the last details for the marriage of an older lady who has already been going to church for about 30 years. We talked with her and her husband a little bit about the importance of baptism, and then we got all the bureaucratic stuff out of the way. At night we had our meeting with our ward mission leader and he got to know Elder Gonçalves, and then we had a super good dinner. 

Thursday was a holiday, and there was a barbecue at the church, so we had lunch there. I got my chicken heart on (in the pictures) which are super good. Afterwards, we contacted some contacts we had made in the street, and then at night we talked with Eliomar and Julianna again. At night, we got the stuff to do the wedding the next day.

Friday we headed to the center to mark a date for the wedding, and then we headed back home. We got back at about 4, and we headed out to Ala 3 (abbreviation for another area in the mission) to talk to Eliardo again. We also went to Irmã Bia´s house and there was a young man there that wasn´t a member, so we invited him to get to know church with the members there.

Saturday, we ran all over the place trying to talk to everybody, getting them to go to church, At night, we went to contact a street contact, but they weren´t home... but it turns out their cousins were, and they had a lot of questions about the church, so we spent about a half hour answering questions and telling them about the church.

Sunday, we had the normal church routine. We tried to bring like five or six people to church, but none of them were home/awake. I can´t really remember much of what happened at church in all reality. Afterwards, we talked with a member who just finished his time in the military, and has sent out his mission call. We marked a day to go do visits with him, and with Miller (who is going to São Paulo Sul December 13th).

So that was my week in a nutshell!

Love you all!

Elder Cornwell

Which Apostle is missing? I will give you a hint: "A Supreme Court Justice was _______ __. _____!"

I usually take off the aorta and such.

"I think your problem is right here: You have a hole in your heart."

Yum!

Depressa! Depressa!

So today I am WAY cramped for time... so I´ll have to crank this one out real quick.

So the highlights this week were being able to talk to some people who had a lot of questions about life and churches, whose answers they found in the Gospel. One is Saboya, and we sat just answering his questions the whole time... about every question related back to the message of the restoration, which was AWESOME. Another was Izaque... a friend of Verlanya and Gabriella, but he doesn´t have a church that he goes to because he has ideas much different than others... such as that Prophets and Apostles SHOULD exist, but in the early church were taken out for the sake of gaining money. Needless to say, we were way excited to answer his questions.

Also during the week, we were able to pass by a few times with Liomar and Julianna. Julianna had a lot of questions about church... her first kind of made me giggle inside. She asked ´´It was different... like everybody got up and said the same thing... I mean, how is The Book of Mormon true???´´. At that point, I realized even though she had been to church MANY times in the past, she knew nothing about the church. We started talking about the Book of Mormon and ended up talking about our eternal progression. When we talked about sealing, she immediately said ´´I want that!!!´´. We stopped by the next day as well, and there was something much different in them. It felt like they had changed from being a less-active and non member to being a member family. There was just a different spirit about them. Julianna had studied a lot in the intro of the Book of Mormon and Liomar had as well. They wanted to understand EVERYTHING, and so we spent a good time answering questions. It is a neat experience, because I related a lot to Liomar. He talked about being in the church since he was little, and his difficulty in getting answers to his prayers. I had a lot of personal experiences that helped give a perspective from the other side of his situation.

Sunday, I gave a talk, which I LOVE doing now. I was asked to speak on Mission Preparation. There was a sister in the front with her son getting ready to go on a mission, and the whole time she nodded her head and was saying ´´Exactly!´´ and ´´Son, pay attention to this!´´. But I related our preparation to our intellectual side. The spiritual preparation is obvious. I explained the necessity to begin daily study, prayer and frequent fasting. In Alma, Alma, Amon and the sons of Mosiah all attribute their success to these things. I focused on preparing ourselves to be instruments in the Lord´s hand. I stated that the Spirit can´t teach something that we personally don´t know. I also emphasized the importance of preparing to preach the gospel in ALL situations. Isn´t, after all, giving a lesson or a message preaching the gospel? I felt the need to emphasize Preach My Gospel to the ward, and that it contained everything necessary to be an effective messenger of the Gospel. If I had my notebook with me, I would give all the references I had, but maybe next week. As I finished (it was the last talk) the Bishop thanked me in the front, and many members expressed their gratitude as well. I have started to not only seek to teach investigators with the Spirit, using what they need... but in all times I work with members... I try to leave something that will leave a good spirit with them that will help their needs. To us, everyone is just dandy, but the Lord knows his sheep, so I decided to do as Elder Bednar said and ´´Get out of the way, and let the Spirit do his job.´´

Today, we had transfers and I got a new companion. His name is Elder Gonçalves from the Interior of São Paulo. Also, Elder Leal and Rodrigues are going to train this transfer... they grow up so fast! Also... advise Elder Clements that there is a member here from my ward going to São Paulo Sul. He is heading out December 13th.

Well, that is my letter this week... sorry if it is lacking any content. Love you all!

Elder Cornwell

I´m running out of good titles for these emails...

Well hello everybody!

This week went by really fast. There was a holiday at the end of the week, so everybody was out of the house Thursday Friday AND Saturday. The holidays are always like that here... I fooled myself thinking there would be a ton of people home! haha.

So, this week, we started a new thing in the mission where we are supposed to visit one family in our area every day to strengthen the ward and to get references. So we started by going to families who knew lots of people, and we had them indicate families needing visits, so we could get the most effective work in. We have about 35-40 households we can visit now, so we should be set on that the next week.

Also during our lunches, we started leaving a special message with a copy of the Book of Mormon so the member could give it to someone to prepare them to receive the lessons. I thought a lot about what Mom had said about the lack of sincerity that some references had. So I tried to help the members understand the importance of preparing someone to receive the message. I wanted to instill a practice of preparing people to be taught, rather than hoping that they would be prepared to receive the message. The message I left was in Alma 26. I talked about what the blessings of missionary work was.

 1 And now, these are the words of Ammon to his brethren, which say thus: My brothers and my brethren, behold I say unto you, how great reason have we to rejoice; for could we have supposed when we started from the land of Zarahemla that God would have granted unto us such great blessings?

 2 And now, I ask, what great blessings has he bestowed upon us? Can ye tell?

 3 Behold, I answer for you; for our brethren, the Lamanites, were in darkness, yea, even in the darkest abyss, but behold, how many of them are brought to behold the marvelous light of God! And this is the blessing which hath been bestowed upon us, that we have been made instruments in the hands of God to bring about this great work.

 4 Behold, thousands of them do rejoice, and have been brought into the fold of God.

 5 Behold, the field was ripe, and blessed are ye, for ye did thrust in the sickle, and did reap with your might, yea, all the day long did ye labor; and behold the number of your sheaves! And they shall be gathered into the garners, that they are not wasted.

The blessings that they received was their ability to be instruments in the hands of God. If we do nothing but talk about a person to the Elders, we will receive no blessing. That is why it is important that we help people with an invite to church, a Book of Mormon, or inviting someone to a family night. If we work, we will be blessed, and the blessings will come in the form of more and more people that the Lord trusts us to share our message.

At the end of the week, we had a good visit with a less active and his wife. She had gone to church a lot when they were dating, buy when she was told she couldn´t stay with him in his ward, she didn´t want to be baptized. I took the cue and asked the obvious question that she wanted to go to church and be close to him. She responded yes, and I told her that they can be together if they go to church again. We talked about the temple a little bit, and then answered some questions. The next morning, they were at church at 8:30 and they participated the whole time. They were really happy to receive our visit, and they were pretty self motivated to go back to church. Our plan is to strengthen their testimonies again so that they can be able to go through the temple together and be sealed as a family for eternity.

So, that was our week! There wasn´t a whole lot that went on, but we were plenty busy.

Love you all!

Elder Cornwell

Você vai afogá-la!

Hello Everybody!

So this week flew by again, so this will probably be a quick one.

The hilights were few, but on Wednesday night, we did a millionaire-esque game for an integration activity. It went pretty well and there were a ton of people there at the activity.

Thursday, our day was super busy. I traded a pair of shorts for an original Fortaleza jersey at lunch, and afterwards, we passed by Gabriella and Verlanya with a member to help them get ready for Baptismal Interview. Afterwards we did a ton of contacts, but there wasn´t really anyone interested.

Friday, I did a division with Elder Nichols (from Federal Way) and we went to Sevilha and worked over there a little bit. Afterwards, we went to see the new Chapel in Genibaú which was super big and super awesome.

Saturday, we contacted a reference, whose sister had already been baptised and married. She seemed interested, but her mom interrupted a LOT. It was almost impossible to listen to the spirit, because she talked about the lineage of the papacy, as well as saying that we are the church, and we are saints, but also sinners. I hear a lot of stuff like that during the day haha.

Sunday was church, and that was normal, but we didn´t have water at the church. Turns out the spout thin was clogged, so the Stake President helped us out, and about 3 in the afternoon we went and cleaned a little and then filled up the font. Then we had the baptism! There was about 25 youth there for a choir thing, so they all stayed for the Baptism, so it made for an awesome service.

What are you going to make the Elders? Navajo Tacos and Brownies? haha In Montese, we got a lot of ice cream and brownies for dessert, and I always talked about how you would give the elders a HUGE brownie haha

And that was my week! I´m short on time, so this will be a quick one!

Tchau!

Allison's note: There was a problem with his ATM card. He had a transaction where money was debited from his account even though the bank canceled  transaction. Here is his comment:

There was an error on ALL international cards at the Bank of Brasil. Since the operation cancelled itself partway through, it didn´t give the option to print a receipt. The mission had the exact same problem, but with the cards for the allowance every 15 days. I think I mighgt have to call and resolve the problem, but this was a thing that happened in all of Brazil with missionaries, its just that they didn´t have more money that they could take out.  

Yikes! We were able to resolve it on our end though our bank...Kyle doesn't know it yet.