I took the challenge and climbed up and over the massive wall

How was your week?

It was really productive. We visited many less-active members this week to try and get people excited about church. Bishop is putting together a bunch of activities, which will help the members get more involved and invite their neighbors. 

Did you have any baptisms this week?  

No, but we have 2 for next Saturday.

So does your new mission president have different rules about sports, p-days, etc?

Yes, we can play sports! And we can listen to calm music! It was just hymns with president Ribeiro. Other than that it´s all the same thing. 

Hello Family!

We had another great week this week. We followed up a lot with the two families that are going to be baptized and married on the 3rd. The mom of one of the families, Angelica, called this week and said that she was backing out of the wedding, then just sat their quietly. Then she started laughing! Geez I think she almost gave me a heart attack. Everything is good to go and going as planned. We taught a family in Itaára that was incredible.

      God lead us straight to their house. We were walking, literally lost, in the middle of nowhere. There are huge trees all over the city and it was cloudy, so I had no way of finding my directions and Ileft my GPS in Utah. We saw a random street with a semi-high wall protecting it. I asked my comp if he thought the street looked good and he said yeah, but didn´t think I´d be able to scale the wall. YEAH RIGHT. So obviously I took the challenge and climbed up and over the massive wall. He followed. Turns out that it´s a gated community with HUGE houses. We knocked a door and the family let us right in. They lost their daughter in the boat fire, and have been looking for guidance. We taught them, Veronica and Joao Luis, the Plan of Salvation.  she believed it all and just hadn´t found a church that preaches about life after death. They let us know that they wouldn´t be able to come to church yesterday, but we marked to go there again tomorrow.

We marked with their neighbors as well, who live in the biggest house that I´ve ever seen in Brasil. We weren´t able to teach them last week, but they told us that they´d love us to come by this week. So we´ll be working there in Itaára all day tomorrow.

We´ve got two baptisms marked for this Saturday. Alan and William. They´re the brothers of those girls that we baptized a few weeks ago. Sons of the couple that will be married on the 3rd. They just needed to mix a little more with the other young men and they´re good to go now. They´re going to play soccer with us after we get off of the computers today. Not a lot of new stuff to say today.

One of the pictures I attached is what our investigator put on facebook in regards to the marriage and baptism... our ward mission leader showed us yesterday! So cool! He´s and awesome guy, Anderson, and overcome so many difficulties in his life. We´ve seen just an amazing change in their family. They´re so much happier now with the gospel in their lives.

The other pic is at a family night with the family we reactivated, Maicon´s family. They’re awesome. They came to church yesterday, and brought two of their inactive neighbors with them! It´s incredible how the gospel influences people to do good and changes people´s hearts.

Maicon's Family Reactivated

Sorry for the shortness of this email. Next week will be a gooder one. It´s cooled off a ton here, and been FREEZING cold in the mornings. good thing our shower burnt this morning, right? not. But I´ll fix it today.    

I love you all. Have a great week!

Elder Shepherd