This is from the conference we had with all of the missionaries in the capital

Dear family,

When I get home and see our living room I´ll probably feel like i´m in the wrong house! It looks great though. That´s great that Melayna spent the weekend with you guys.

Yes, I had several favorite talks too. The other conference sessions on the mission I had watched in English, but this April conference we didn´t go to the stake center- it was just in our ward´s chapel so it wasn´t worth setting up a separate room with English. Plus it was just me and the 3 other Brazilian elders that live with me. This was also the first time I was able to watch the priesthood session on the mission because it usually doesn´t work out with our schedule. I love how lots of the speakers talked on the theme of temples and/or the work of salvation. I am always uplifted by the stories of apostles that receive promptings from the spirit, follow them, and end up answering someone´s prayer. I want to be able to listen to the spirit better and be an instrument in the Lord´s hands. The Prophet´s message was short and clear. I am grateful that twice a year we are able to have these conferences that teach us and help us feel what we can improve on.

Mom, I was thinking about you on April Fool's day and wondering what prank you would come up with this year! That was a pretty good one, haha. We also had a little fun here and switched 2 of the elders´ things around when they left the house.

Yes, I was able to sign up for BYU classes. I also started to sign up for Alta Housing but I´m not sure if my request went through yet.

This week I stayed in the area. One of the highlights of this week was teaching an 80 year-old woman that I think I had mentioned before. It´s cool to have the experience of teaching someone in a nice apt building with a view of the whole city and the beach. She has 2 maids in her house. She is a member´s mom but she lives alone. Her daughter has a neat story of how she was baptized. She was living in Barçelona, Spain for work and met the sisters. They started teaching her family and after a month, the mission president who was Shayne Bowen at the time (he gave the closing prayer in the last session of conference) invited her to be baptized. She was baptized and later moved back to Brazil. Her mom was living in Brazil and never had contact with the church. Throughout the years, she had always talked to her mom about the church but her mom never had a whole lot of interest. They are a very prominent family of lawyers in Natal. So we spent a couple of hours with her mom on thursday afternoon! I loved hearing some of her stories about how she studied in Rio de Janeiro, Portugal, France, Canada, and Maine. She helped a lot with women´s rights in Brazil in the 1960s. She is so nice and humble. She reminds me of Grandma Lowe because of her hair and blue eyes. She´s also very intelligent and healthy. I´ll take a picture with her some time. But we were able to teach her the message of the restauration and she commented after that she felt the spirit. We will keep working with her and plan on teaching the Plan of Salvation next. Her husband died 4 years ago. After the lesson she called her driver and had him pick us up and take us to our next appointment in another neighborhood. She treats us so well and the driver said that he really admires her and that she treats all of her employees really well.

Today we will spend the rest of the time preparing for our mission council tomorrow.
Have a great week! Love you all,

Elder Church

Rio Branco: Week 15

This has been up in the apartment since christmas!

Way to go Corinne! Representing the family by finding the golden egg! This reminded me now of the family videos we have of Easter. But it´s true- I think that in the all time standings our family has the least amount of golden egg-findings.

I´ve been thinking about Grant and the new opportunities he´ll have in his study abroad program and at BYU. I talked with a sister who did study abroad in Europe and she highly recommends it!
Wow, I can´t believe that Scott and Heather have 5 girls now!

Grandma Lowe is such a great example to me too. I´m anxious to be able to see her when I get back.

The first few days of the week were busy with the 2 mission conferences that we had. The first one was with all of the missionaries in the captial. We gave training about the lesson of the restoration and how to teach it more powerfully. On Wednesday we traveled to Caicó with Pres. and Sister Soares to have the conference with the interior. We stayed the rest of the week in Caicó. The trip back was an adventure. We bought the bus passage a few days in advance. Normally the busride is about 5 hours from Caicó to Natal, but because of the traffic after the easter holiday, it took about 6hs. On top of that, the bus company decided to load the bus, even after all of the seats were sold. So the bus was packed full with lots of people standing. Fortunately, we had seats because we had bought our tickets beforehand. Then, after a couple of hours on the road, a man sitting near us started to have seizures. He was travelling alone and people started to panic. He had 3 seizures during the ride and at one point randomly let out a few screams. But then, one of the passengers who was a doctor went up near him and stood by him for the rest of the ride and he ended up being OK.

But it was a great week in Caicó! We were able to help out some of the sisters. Caicó was my first area on the mission. On Saturday night I was happy to be able to see a family that loves all of the missionaries. It´s the same family that we saw when they went to visit Natal. But Rogerio made one of his famous huge cakes and he gave everyone Easter chocolate.

Hope you all have a great general conference this week!

Elder Church

Rio Branco: Week 14

Hey mom!

Sorry I haven´t written today yet. We have been busy preparing things today for the mission conference that will be this week. Tomorrow will be the conference for all of the missionaries in the capital, and Thursday will be the conference for the interior.

Thanks for all of the news. That's great that you went to the new Provo temple dedication! I saw the video.

This week went well. Elder W. Silva and I spent a few days in Mossoró. I was in the neighborhood called Belo Horizonte. Mossoró is the hottest city on the mission! In all of the other cities, the water comes out of the fossit and showerhead cold, but in mossoró it comes out hot. I think it´s because the city´s water source is naturally heated. But it´s weird because there are some days that even in the morning it naturally comes out steaming hot.

Luckily, most of the sickness has passed now and I´m hoping I´ll make it through the rest of the mission without getting it.

Have a great week!

Elder Church

Rio Branco: Week 13

Dear family,

Today I wasn´t able to write an update because my computer was being fixed. But they brought it back so now I have a little bit of time to write. I was blessed to have another good week of hard work. On tuesday we picked up the new missionaries at the airport and had dinner at the Presidents house. This time we wanted to do an exciting training for them when they came in so we took out some time from our training and took groups of them out to the street to show them how to do contacts. It was pretty fun! Everything went smoothly with transfers this week. After all of that, I went back to my area. Unfortunately, my companion Elder Cassiano had gotten dengue. This virus hits pretty hard and usually requires a week of rest. There were days when he had difficulties getting out of bed or out of a chair. After a couple of days straight of him staying at home because at Sister Soares´ order, we went down the stairs really quick just to run an errand on the corner of the street. It was hard for him to get up and down the stairs. I felt bad for him this week because he had no choice but to stay resting. But luckily, the other missionaries in the zone were willing to serve. On the days that I was in the area I was able to divide with one of them to work in the area.
It´s been great to be Elder Cassiano´s companion. He joined the church when he was 18 in São Paulo. He´s the only member in his family and came on the mission with only a few years of being a member. He´s very humble and dedicated. The Lord definitely blessed us during the week despite the obstacles. Now he´s doing better. He was able to work just fine with me on Saturday and Sunday.

Let me introduce you to the family in the picture: this is Judson and his mom, Josilma. Judson was baptized by the elders before us. He has progressed really quickly and in his few months of member has been called to be the bishop´s 1st assistant. He always arrives at 7:30 to the church to prepare the sacrament. His mom supported him, and even went to church a couple of times, but never felt like she was ready to be baptized. At first, we started teaching her, but then we just let a few weeks pass by without making any formal visits. We just talked to her every once in a while when we went to see Judson. Anyway, one night we did a movie night at the church and played Meet the Mormons. We took her to the movie and she loved it. She commented afterwards that she liked the part about the missionary and his mom. She felt that she needed to be the type of mom in the movie that went to church and supported her son. She felt that she needed to be baptized! So we marked a date and she was baptized on the following week. It was really a testimony that people need to feel the spirit in order to make a decision. We were really glad to see Judson have his first baptism- his mom!

Have a great week! Love you all!

Rio Branco: Week 12

Good Afternoon!

I´ve been hearing a little about the elections. Is it really going to be between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton? Wow that´s great to hear that Bingham Basketball did so well. I´m excited to be able to got to the new Provo temple when I get back.

We had a good mission council last Wednesday where we talked about following up with investigators and the importance of sisters/sister leaders and their contributions to the mission. We spent the rest of the week in the city Parnamirim in an area that I was in over a year ago. It was a great division! Our testimonies of the miracles of divisions grew.

I heard great news yesterday that Deybron and Nábila (do you remember this family? the ones that let me use their computer to do skype last mother´s day) were sealed in the Recife temple last week. I was also surprised to hear that he is the Elders Quorum President in the ward!

Today we had a meeting with the President about transfers and tomorrow we go to the airport to receive 13 new missionaries. President took us and the secretaries out to lunch today at Waynes, a nice american burger place here! Our mission will start to grow a little now after we lost large groups of missionaries. This group that is going away only has 5 missionaries. A few areas will be opening again.

We had some problems on the mission this week with sickness. A couple of leaders weren´t able to attend the council because of this dengue/chikungunya/zika virus. More than 10 missionaries have gotten, or currently have this fever which usually lasts for several days. I´m sure millions have been affected throughout the country because we´ve seen lots of cases in our areas. A couple of weeks ago, about half of my investigators had gotten sick or had family members who were sick! But lucky for me I´ve been healthy and able to work just fine!

Have a great week!!!

Elder Church

Rio Branco: Week 11

This is Jonatan. He is a surfer and likes playing beach soccer. His baptism was on sunday!

Hi family. My birthday was pretty normal this week. We had a ward activity that night. Sounds like a great birthday dinner. Wasn´t that Grant´s dream dinner as a kid? Mashed potatoes and gravy? We´ll, I´ll be excited too if he goes to BYU this fall.

Yes, we had a van this week. During the week we had made plans with one van driver, but he ended up not working out at the last minute (Sunday morning) so we frantically looked through the streets to find someone who could help us out. Luckily we found a school van driver who was able to save the morning. We were able to fill it up with investigators and recent converts which made us happy. This week I am with a new companion- Elder Cassiano from Riberão Preto, São Paulo. We had a good first week of work. This week, Elder W. Silva and I will be going to another area after our mission council which will be on Wednesday.

Congratulations, Grandma and Grandpa Fillmore! Are you and dad already making plans to visit them? You were never able to visit G&G Church, so I think now you have to make plans.

Hey that´s exciting to hear about our planned family vacation. I guess we´ll have to take advantage of these times when everyone is home together!
I was able to do my ecclesiastical endorsement with the President. I guess I´ll be able to register now.

Have a great week! Happy leap-day.

Elder Church

Rio Branco: Week 10

Lunch at a member´s mother´s house. This lady is 80 years old. She is a former law professor, who studied in france who has a few children who are successful people, one of which is a great member in our ward who does lots of favors for us. Anyway, it was a fancy lunch in a nice appt building. She has 2 maids that take care of the house. We also found out that she isn´t a member but she is very receptive. Her daughter wants us to teach her. 

This is a blackberry plant that we found here. I had never seen one here. But it´s a different type of blackberry

This is Maria das Neves. She is a recent convert that has been progressing really quickly. I am impressed with her dedication. She walks for about 45 minutes every sunday and various times during the week to go to the church. We were happy when she called us on saturday telling us that she had gone visiting teaching for the first time and made 4 visits that day with her companion. She´s funny because she has a small house with lots of cats. She lives with her 2 kids who are 16 and 19 years old, both of which were baptized in the month that she was. She loves it when we visit her and she often calls us throughout the day. She has been changing a lot since her baptism and has even been losing weight. She seems much happier now than she was before and she has made good habits of working and studying. She is really a proof that the gospel can change people´s lives!

Yep I´ll be an adult this week, not a teenager anymore! Thanks for thinking of me. Actually, my debit card expired last October, but it´s ok because personal money hasn´t been something I've needed or used much. I can´t remember if the bank sent another debit card, but anyway, i´ll be ok without one until I get home. And no, that was all news to me. Great to hear that Isaac will go on a mission! And I´m really happy for Marcus. Looks like I´ll be able to see him before he leaves then. Yes, Grant wrote me a birthday email. Good to hear that he will be a cougar.

This week on Tuesday, we were getting back from lunch which was in a really nice apartment building. I´ll send a picture. As we were walking on the street after lunch, a man that was in a hurry stopped us on the corner and said in english "market?" "supermarket?" It took me a second to figure out what was going on because it was a strange-sounding English. I realized that he didn´t speak any portuguese and I asked him in english where he was from. "England," he said. He was looking for a grocery store and I told him that we would accompany him to a nearby one. He asked me how long I had been here and I said 1 year and 8 months. I then asked him and he said 2 hours! He said that he was on a cruise ship with his wife that had gone from England down to Cape Horn- the southernmost part of south america (when he said cape horn I thought it was in Africa and he laughed). The ship had stopped for a few hours and he said that in a half hour the ship was leaving back to England. That was why he was in a hurry. So I talked with him for about 5 minutes. I think that was the first time on my mission that I met someone who only spoke English. I rarely see tourists or immigrants or anything so it was cool for me. I said that I wanted to visit England and he told me "if you visit the UK, don´t just go to London because London is just rubbish. You should go to the northern rural parts." His name is Phil and he´s from Birmingham but lives in Liverpool.

We worked hard this week and the bishop approved transportation for investigators/recent converts on Sundays because our area is a little far away from the church. During the week Elder Sales and I talked to several van drivers to see if they would be able to help us and if they could do it for our price limit. By next week we should already have a 15-passenger van helping us on Sunday mornings. This will be nice because we usually have to ask a lot of some members that have cars. It´s only about a half-an-hour walk, but the neighborhood is on a big hill, so it´s hard for some people to make the trip on foot.

We found a good street to work on this week! We found some good new people that went to church. I`ll send a couple of pictures from the week!

Love you,
Elder Church