Mais uma semana de servindo O Senhor!

This week was good, but the weeks are always so fast!

I dont have any cool stories to share with you guys this week, but I do have a stonger testimony of the love of my Savior Jesus Christ. Ive felt His love for all of us this week as He has guided to His chosen people. We arent teaching as many people right now, but we are teaching people that are SO READY for this Gospel!

Also, today, I am offically not being trained anymore! My 12 weeks are up and I am a regular missionary now! Whoop! That means we can start leaving at 10:30 instead of 12:30! That means we can teach more people and have more time! Finally!

Also, this week we will be switching houses for sure! And we are being reallllyyy spoiled. I love our President so much. He is awesome. He and Sister came here to see our house right now and the houses we are going to be moving into. Elder Pires and I thought we had found a good house for a cheap price. Then we talked to Pres. He was a Sealer in the Temple for a long time so he wants he says that he wants our houses to be places we can recieve revelation, he thinks about the temple. ill take some pictures from our new apartment this week when we move in. its incredible. possibly the best house in the mission. :D thank you president!

Anyway, this is my email telling you that everything is good here in Brasil. We are about to go to Aguas Belas to some people who want us to teach them, but its about an hour away so we are going to use our pday to go there :)

Love you all so much. Stay firm in the faith and if there is anything I can do you just tell me!

- Elder Moore

10-18-11

Be nice to the missionaries. I heard something this week that is absolutley true about when missionaries are over for dinner or lunch or any meal. You can make the missionary encredibly happy by doing 4 things.
1. Feed them
2. Ask for them to share a message
3. Give them references
4. Tell them to go work!

Its so true and i wish the people did that here. I got asked a question yesterday that made me...mad. The question was at lunch yesterday at a members house and she asked, why dont missionaries stay in the members houses and make appointments with members throughout the day? She got kind of upset with us because we are the only companionship who hasnt done this. I wanted to say BECAUSE ALL THE OTHER MISSIONARIES YOUVE MEET ARE FUBECAS AND NEVER WORKED! But i didnt and poiletly explaned that we are called to teach people about the Gospel and to help people prepare for baptism. She still didnt really understand but she understood a little bit more. That is my angry story for the week! So talk to the missionaries and be nice to them :) ask them about home and just be their friends, but most importantly, GIVE REFERENCES! Also, make it known that you are willing to go on splits! Lessons with members are so much better than without members.

Thats my advice for the week! I love you! Have a wonderful week!

- Elder Moore

10/10/11

House Shopping!

We are about to go to a place and see if we can switch houses because our house sucks right now and we want to live in our area! Wish us luck!

This week has been waayy good, but SO FAST! I dont believe how fast time flys by every single week. Starting today, I have one more week being trained! Woo hoo! Im almost not a filhão! But things have changed. Elder Webb was transfered this past p-day and we have a new ZL now. So ive been living with 3 Brazilians for the past week! Woo! The Lord has blessed me so much and I can finally tell you that Im fluent. My comp told me that I was fluent when i hit my 4 month mark, so that was pretty sweet. Everyone is freaked out when they find out that Ive only been out for 4 months! I have 3 favorite questions I like to ask when we are meeting new people.

1) How long do you think ive been speaking português? =  Ive gotten from 1 year to ´wait...your not Brazilian?´ I absolutley love this question because I can get honest feedback and get to make friends at the same time!
2) How old do you think I am? = Ive gotten from 15 to 25 :) This question is pretty fun too.
3) This question is a bit different that the other ones. This question is during the first lesson after we tell the story of the first vision. The question is - What do you think about this story? To you, is this story easy or hard to believe? I love this question because every single answer is different and we get to know what the person thinks! Its always a fun time for me during the lesson.

So, this next monday is transfers, but i wont know anything until Sunday night. So if you dont get an email next monday, then im on a bus or metro or something going to Recife to go to a new area with a new comp!

This past Saturday we had 2 more baptisms. Eva (42) e Camila (11). They are both such wonderful examples to me and are suuuchhh cool people! Camila chose me to baptise her and Eva chose Elder Pires! So we both got to baptise! Woo! In the pic both of our shirts are soaked because we only brought one shirt each... that was silly... it was cold that night and we were freezing!

We had 2 investegators in church this week so well work for way more this week, but we will lose a day or so because we have to go to Recife this wednesday because i think a member of the area presidency is going to talk to us! Woo!

Well, thats about it for this week! Oh yeah, we have a lady in the ward who has a salon type thing and she cuts our hare :). I actually just got a harecut this morning!

Love you all so much!

- Elder Moore

4 Months!!

Woo hoo! This past Saturday was my 4 month mark. I know its not a lot, but i cant believe that it has already been 4 months!!! Where did the time go!? Well, this week wasnt very preductive for my area at all! I only worked in my area for 2 days this past week!!! Tuesday i was in Boa Vista with one of my ZLs and then Wednesday we worked in our area (Barão de Nazaré) then Thursday was in Arcoverde. Then Friday again was my area. Then Saturday and Sunday were conference! Woo hoo! I love General Conference soo much! But, i would like to listen in English so that i can hear the voices of the prophet and apostolos. That is one thing that i missed about conference. But other than that Conference was amazing as usual.

This week we were blessed with marking baptisms for 2 very special people. Eva and Camila.

First the story of Camila. - She came to church last sunday and we talked to her and marked a day to go visit her. When we got to her house we already knew what the outcome would be. This girl is sooo great! She has 11 years and is so smart! Her Book of Mormon is marked up and every time we read a scripture with her she gets sooo happy and runs to go get her red pencil. She truely was prepared for this Gospel and will be baptised (hopefully with her mom) this Saturday. Her mom knows that this Gospel is true and is a very special women too, but is having problems with stopping smoking. She has smoked all her life, but she has cut down drasticly this past week. Im so proud of her!

Now for the story of Eva. Eva is a verrrryyyy special woman who missionaries have been teaching for a while! We marked her baptism about a month ago, but she said she needed more time to prepare and pray about it. That is such a wonderful answer. That means that your investegator knows and recognizes the importance of baptism and knows how big of a step it is!!! Anyway, we talked to her about a week ago and she said she would be baptised when she finished reading the Book of Mormon....yup. We thought for sure that it was gonna be forever until she would be baptised. BUT this past Wednesday we stopped by her house and taught her. It was a simple lesson because we stopped there randomly, and it dont even remember what it was about honestly. Just a random scripture that Elder Pires picked because it was his turn! So he read the Scripture and talked a little about it and then it was my turn to talk. (When we she told us the couple weeks before that she wouldnt be baptised I was really sad and she could tell that I was sad and we talked about it.) Right when i was about to open my mouth she said... `WAIT.. i have some news for YOU. (Pointing at me)... I am going to be baptised not this saturday, but the saturday after that. Okay?` I was shocked. Compeletely and utterly shocked. I feel bad now, but all I said was, ´Are you serious?´ Hahaha. She talked to us about it and said she had recieved revelation for her that morning at about 4 oclock in the morning. She said is was a very personal experience and she didnt want to share it, but she knew that she needed to be baptised. The funny thing? She is on Chapter 10 of the Book or Mormon. She said she wanted to read the whole thing before being baptised and then changed her mind on chapter 10. How great of a blessing is that?! She has such a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon now and she said she cant believe that anyone would ever say that this Book is not true.

Well, those are some stories about my week! I love you all so much and I know the Lord loves us all so much too because we all have SO MANY BLESSINGS IN THIS LIFE!!!

Have a great week everyone. Remember to thank our Heavenly Faher for all that you have because everything you have came from Him.

- Elder Moore

26 Sept. 2011

Another week gone? Whhhatttt?

This week was waayyyy fast.

Nothing very interesting this week, but my comp and i have been sick all week, so thats not too fun. especially because we both didnt want to stay home and we just worked verry slow all week. We got 7 new investegatores this week and a couple of them are sooo amazing, but it is the biggest challenge here to get people to church. everyone here travels on the weekends. or works. or sleeps. or just doesnt want to go to church! thats prettty frustrating. We have 5 people at church this week, but one thing that i was most happy about was that 2 whole families of less active members were there. that is our job as missionaries too is to help reactivate the less active people! TWO WHOLE FAMILIES :). That was pretty exciting.

Other than that? Not much happened this week honestly! We will work hard again this week to get people to GC because I know that it will be incredibly powerful! Im very excited for General Conference!!! Also, Im so excited for David!!!

Well, thats it for this week.. sorry for the short email but there isnt anything to say other than i love and miss you all so much!

- Elder Moore

9/18/11

!!!! My trip was good, and really bad. It was really long and we left about mid day last pday so we didn´t get pday! It takes more or less 5 hours to get to Recife and it´s a long journey but it´s fun with 10 missionaries!!! We didn´t have a meeting, but we did have interviews....One interview with President and then an interview by someone a little higher up. Elder Cláudio R. M. Costa!!!!! He is such an amazing man! I love him. He has such a powerful spirit and I´m so lucky to have met him! Woohoo! The bad part was the mosquitos. They are different here in Brasil and they do not like me. Not even a little bit.  

Unfortunately, if we are blessed with a lot of new investigators one week, we don´t get to focus on them and not look as much the next week. We have a goal for the mission of 10 new investagators a week. This week we only got 6, so we gotta work extra hard this next week to get 14 so we can keep up with the goal.

I do want to write to you today about missionary work. It is not just missionaries who need to do missionary work! We are all blessed with this gospel and we all need to bless the lives of others with the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. It really hit me hard while ive been on my mission that this church is the same exact church that Crist organized when he lived on this earth. WOAH! The same church? Yep. The one and same. We don´t do anything in this church that Crist didn´t do when he was here.

Food storage is not a big thing here. Not many people have gardens per se, but everyone has fruit growing somewhere close to their house.  We don´t meet in a chapel, it´s just a house, but Next time I go to Recife I´ll take a picture of the Chapel all the missionaries meet in for transfers. It´s incredible. Almost temple size. Bigger than some temples i assume. Yes. I do have trouble speaking English. All the time. I only speak português unless it´s a Brazillian who wants to practice English, and when I speak english it´s not real english. It´s half portuguese and half english. I always mix up words and I feel like and Idiot when i speak english so I´ve pretty much just switched over to portuguese full time. Most american missionaries don´t do this because they want to speak english, but it´s actually harder for me to speak english full time now, so i speak in portuguese with the americans and they almost always just talk in english. But that´s fine.

 
We will get to watch general conference! I´m so excited for it!!!!

 

Have a wonderful week family!!!

- Elder Moore

Sept. 4th, 2011

This week....this week was way too fast. This past tuesday we had zone conference in caruaru so we were gone the whole day because we are so far away from everything. We took the six o clock bus to there and were gone the whole day. It was sooo good though. The next day my comp and I went to arcoverde. this is the farthest out area in our zone and we went on divisions with them because my comp is DL. They needed some help because they are opening that area and not getting much done. But good news. EVERYONE IN OUR ZONE HAD PEOPLE AT CHURCH! Woo! We had 5, so that was better than our 0 last week. To answer your question about pesquisadores, we get more and more every day. this week we got 7 so that is a decent amount. A cool story about my português this week.

I was on divisions in an area way far away (arcoverde) and we were at our lunch appointment and the guy was talking to us and asking us how we liked our missions. then he was talking about how 2 years is such a short time really. i asked him to say how much time he thought everyone had and he was right for everyone except me! he said he thought i had about a year and a half in the mission :) that made me pretty happy. 

Every other day was the same old same old, bringing salvation to souls. :) It goes by soooo incredibly fast. 3 months already! Woo hoo!

Yes, everyone in my apt gets along sooo well. We are all best friends and im so lucky to have these people as my first companions!

Thanks for all the prayers and everthing!!!