Divisions

So our stake is having a contest between all the wards called 'Corrida Natalina' which would translate to roughly 'Little Christmas Run!'. We gain points from references, divisions with members, baptisms, activities and lessons taught. Each week we calculate our points and pass them to the Stake President. We so far have lost the first two weeks, but the final prize is a Christmas party for the ward that gained the most points over the six week contest!

So we decided to get to work and asked a lot of the Sisters in our ward to go on divisions with us. The sweetest Sister, Sister Sonsin, who is nearly 65 I think, signed up for four days this past week. This past week was extremely hot and she survived the first two days. The third day she has to take a lot of 'little stops' in the street, and the fourth day she had 'another commitment' and couldn´t go. Sweetheart she is. It was really great to be with the members while teaching. They have a completely different perspective on the work, and often are able to demonstrate to the investigators that members are 'normal people' and had their own process of joining the church and can share their conversion stories. We went on an incredible division with another Sister, Sister Ceres. She is a 22 year old single mom that left the church for 3 years but came back. She has an awesome testimony and got so excited with the missionary work that she signed up to go on divisions with us again this Saturday and visit the same people we taught! She was so helpful too because she listened to things that my companion and I heard, but were not necessarily paying attention. For example we taught a reference we received from the Elders. The parents weren´t at home and the 17 year old daughter allowed us to teach her, but was pretty disinterested. Ceres helped break the ice and was very attentive to the suttle (I don´t know how to spell this word anymore) details in the girls behavior. It was awesome, and Ceres taught me more about how to pay attention to body language in a lesson, etc.

We are still helping the same two families to prepare for baptism. However, the parents of both families are not legally married. We will probably have to set their goal date a little further back, but we are so excited to be helping them! We are continuing to teach Moaci. I hope I wrote about him earlier. But he´s an 18 year old, prepaing to be baptized November 8th. We´re teaching his brother too, but his brother´s not so sure about baptism right now.

Claudio is going strong! He´s super excited for his 'new family' in the ward and all the attention he´s getting from the members!

NEWS FLASH!! So I decided what I would like for Christmas (and don´t start to think it´s too early). I don´t want presents, money, nothing that you have to buy. What I would like from EVERYBODY is:

A Letter. A letter with a picture of you/your family. I would like everyone to write me telling me about what you did this year, important things that happened. I would also like in the letter your favorite scripture from the Bible or the Book of Mormon, and why is it your favorite scripture/what significance does it have to you? Also important spiritual experiences or spiritual things you learned this year that you would like to share with me!

My address in the mission is:
Sister Jenelle R. Tittelfitz
Caixa Postal 26504
São Paulo, SP Brasil
04311-970

OBRIGADÂO!!

Sister Tittelfitz

COMMENT ON PHOTO: Jacá Fruit.
This was an interesting experience. It´s a fruit that has a slimy film covering a nut. You suck the slime off the nut and pronto! It has an acidy sweet taste. To be honest, I didn´t really enjoy it!

Baptism, rain, and day-light losing!!

So this was a pretty crazy weekend, but let´s hit up the positive points first of all. The Elders have been encouraging us for weeks to invite all of our investigators to be baptized in the first lesson we gave them. Personally, I had lost all trust in inviting people to be baptized the first lesson, as it generally confuses the person and the generally say 'no' as they have never been to the church before and have known the missionaries for all of 30 minutes. In my other area, my companion and I were inviting many people and never had a chance to go back and teach them, and often people ignored and avoided us. So here in my new area, Sister Souza and I had been waiting until the 5th or 6th time we had met with people to invite them to be baptized. It seemed to be working great, as we were 100%. My District Leader didn´t take our way of doing things as an answer, as direction came from the President to invite people the first lesson. I was nervous and a little frustrated with the Elders for making it an issue of conversation every time we called to pass numbers. I finally kneeled down last week and prayed that I would be able to follow the counsel that was given me, and trust that the Spirit would help me. On Wednesday we went to visit two part-member families (each family has a 15 year old son that is already baptized and that is attending another ward that is closer to their house, but they live in our area). We had already taught both families the first lesson on Monday, and we were returning to do a follow-up. We watched the Restoration video with the families. The first family I felt the Spirit so strongly that I was nearly in tears. I shared with them a scripture from Matthew 7:7-13 that talks about prayer. I felt in that moment 'Invite THEM!' and I made a baptismal goal with them for November. They all excepted, except the husband because he wasn´t there.

The next family was a little more difficult. They have a two year old daughter who loves to scream and spit! Yes, spit. During the video and the whole conversation after the video she was completely disruptive. I wanted to invite the family to be baptized but I just wasn´t feeling the Spirit. Then I looked into the eyes of the mom of the family. She has a look of urgency and timidness. I knew right then I had to ask. I invited everyone, and everyone immediately got nervous and pretended they didn´t understand what I said because of my accent, except their 8 and 10 year old sons who yelled 'Yeah, I want to go to church!!' Haha, children are so precious! The mom accepted the goal, and the husband after a few minutes of conversation. Now, we just have to get the two families to church and encourage the sons to attend our ward!

Saturday was Claudios Baptism. We had promised him that we would make him a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. However, Friday night we didn´t have time to buy a cake, and we can´t make a cake at home because our oven doesn´t have a door! Claudio wanted the Elders to come to his baptism, but they don´t know how to get to our chapel. So we had to pick up the Elders at the bus stop Saturday morning. We had promised Claudio we would pick him up at 9 sharp, and the Elders arrived at the bus stop LATE, at 8:55. We still had to buy cake! So as we ran down the hill a heavy rain started to poor!! We had to stop and hide under a something (I forgot the word in English) but it covers the opening of stores. It was 9:15 and still raining. I forced everyone out and we ran down to the grocery store, bought two cakes and ran to Claudios and arrived at 9:40 (Baptism at 10 folks). He was visibly upset (by visibly I mean stiff face, cold attitude) and said the rain had ruined everything and he nearly changed his mind. Sister Souza pulled a fast one and called a member to come and pick up Claudio and the Elders, and we would take a bus. However, the member came in a different car that only fits 3. We told the Elders to go with him and the member to come back and pick up Claudio, and we would have to take the bus (since we can´t ride in the car with only males). I was praying for a miracle, and we received one. Not even three minutes later, a member and her husband who years ago were neighbors of Claudio and his mother, passed by to see if Claudio´s mother was going to go to the baptism (she is Catholic and completely against the church). She of course said no, but it was perfect because they were able to take all three of us to the chapel. We arrived at 10 on the dot. There were members there and everything was ready to go. Except one detail, which we didn´t tell Claudio until the minute he stepped into the water. The water was frigid cold!! Some group of hooligans had broke into the chapel the week before, stole DVD´s, the television and broke the whole heating and lighting system in the chapel. Luckily the lights were up and working in the side of the chapel where the baptism font is, but the water could not be heated. It was honestly hilarious because the Bishop when he got into the water could hardly breath and was trying to encourage Claudio to get in. He splashed water on Claudio and I seriously thought Claudio would punch the Bishop in the face, but I think the Spirit was working really strongly in this situation, and he was baptized without problems!

So Sunday morning rolled around, and apparently I slepted on top of my watch (which is my alarm clock) and my watch broke. When I woke up it was 7:45 and we had to meet a member at 8:15 to pick up another investigator. I woke up my companion and we skipped all forms of hygenic preparation and left immediately. When we got to the members house her car wasn´t in the garage- uh oh. Her Dad, non-member, came to the door and looked suprised. 'She left an hour ago for church' he avised us. 'It´s only 8:30, we´re not THAT late!'. No, no, he advised us, Sunday was the summer hour, and it was 9:30!! CREDO, I couldn´t believe it, we ran to the pay phone called our investigators, but they couldn´t go anyways because they were all sick. So we then ran to the bus stop. I wasn´t paying attention to the names of the buses and we got on the wrong bus. So ten minutes later we realized we were in never-land and had to run back to get to the chapel. We arrived after sacrament meeting and everyone asked us what had happened. It was the day of all days, but we survived!

So to sum it all up, I have learned a lot of things this week:
Follow the Spirit, He will never lead you astray
Buy chocolate cake the night before, not the day of
Pay attention to the names of buses before you get on
Buy a new watch!!

Have a wonderful week everyone!!
Sister Tittelfitz

Oct 14 Short message

JENELLE DID SEND AN EMAIL TO ME THIS WEEK. THIS IS A EXERPT FROM IT (well, actually, this is pretty much everything she said except for a personal note!):

So short on time. We spent a long day in the park and I have to re-type everything now because of problems with the computer---ahhh! I will send a general message for everyone next week!

P.S. What´s with the crisis in the U.S.? I have no idea what´s going on except what I see in Newpaper stands here! Should I return to the same U.S. at the end of my mission? Everything is well here with the work. We will have a baptism this Saturday of Claudio. He is really excited that we´re going to make him Chocolate cake (he´s 35 years old). I love my companion and we have a blast together! (See photos)

Oct 7 General Conference

So wasn´t Conference great? I really had to pay a lot of attention this Conference as I had to watch and listen to everything in Portuguese. It was pretty difficult as I just couldn´t take the notes on the talks like I can in English. But I really felt the spirit and there were some amazing talks that talked a lot about helping our neighbors, our families and our friends to help find the path of Jesus Christ, and to help them with all our their needs. I liked Joseph B. Wirthlin´s talk when he said that we have challenges and difficulties in our lives to make us more loving and sympathetic people and so that we can help others in their lives. I loved the talk by Elder Goldberg about the path of the Gospel. He said the path is not only for some elect people of God. The path is for everybody, and it is not the path that is difficult to follow in our lives. It is our lives that is difficult. And if we choose any other path that than of the Savior´s we will fall into temptation and fall away from our Savior and the love he has for us.

Claudio came to the Sunday afternoon session of Conference. We called a member and asked him to pick him up. Claudio arrived at the chapel pretty timid, and had a hard time paying attention for two hours, but said that he really liked Conference said it was really special, and is even more excited for his baptism on the 18th!

Paloma ducked out of her baptism again, and we are continuing to work with her and help her make friendships with the members so that she´ll have more of a network and she´ll feel more prepared to be baptized.

This past week we also had Zone Conference with President Richardson. He is an amazing mission president, and is really working hard with us to set reasonable goals in the mission and to reach them!! One thing really interesting that he shared with us, a teaching from President Boyd K. Packer that he shared with all the new mission presidents during a training, is that all living bodies have control over their souls. It is the souls that don´t have bodies that want to try to destroy us. It is when we give up on our own souls, when we let temptation and the power of those who want to destroy us enter, that we become weak and struggle and sin. Therefore we must always nourish our souls with good, with the things of God.

I don´t have my notes here with me, so this is drawing from what I remember. If you´re interested in more information, do a search on the site of Church and let me know what you find!

Have a wonderful week everyone,
Sister Tittelfitz

Sept 30 Testemunhos

Hello from very chilly Diadema!
This week has kept us incredibly busy with returning to our new investigators and finding new ones! We have an amazing group of people to teach that the former Sisters in our Area left for us. We have the incredible Paloma, a 15 year old girl, that has a date marked for baptism. We are working with her specifically to gain a personal testimony of the Restored Church. She loves anything to do with Jesus Christ, but has not yet gained a personal testimony of the Scriptures. We have also marked a baptismal date with another man that the former Sisters were teaching, and we´re teaching many families that are very soon approaching the time when we will mark a baptismal date, they just need to attend Church and keep a few more commitments that we always leave with people- like read the Book of Mormon and pray in respect to it´s truthness and if Joseph Smith is a prophet of God, and if the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is true. We know that the Book of Mormon is the corner stone of our religion. The Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ and evidence that Joseph Smith was called to be the prophet to restore the Gospel of Jesus Christ in these last days! Without a testimony of the Book of Mormon, we are missing the key part of our religion!My companion is amazing and is teaching me a lot. She was baptized in the church almost six years ago, but became inactive for four years only two months after her baptism. When the missionaries found her four years later she had a lot of doubts about if Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, and if this is really the true church. The missionaries invited her to pray in respect to these things and wait for an answer. She said she prayed for weeks and still felt like she wasn´t feeling anything.
Then one day the missionaries came to visit her again. She asked a lot of questions about Joseph Smith and the missionaries answered them, and again invited her to pray after they left that day. She said she prayed and when she attended church that Sunday she received her answer- that yes, Joseph Smith is a profet of God and that this gospel was restored in these latter days. She found out later that the missionaries had been fasting for her too, and she said that it meant so much to her that two strangers were so absolutely concerned with her and helping her gain a personal testimony.

That is truly why we missionaries are here- to help. We cannot force a conversion upon anybody. But we know that it takes faith, with the real intention to gain an answer, to have a "conversion process". We cannot just ask our Heavenly Father for something, without truly wanting an answer, and without truly being willing to act on the answer that we receive, i.e. the answer that the Church is true, therefore the teachings are true, therefore I must be baptized in the church! Exercise your faith! Whatever question or doubt you have study it out in your mind and then ask Heavenly Father, in the name of His Son Jesus Christ if it is true, and He will answer your prayers! Also, share your testimony with those you love! It will help strengthen their faith!
Have a wonderful week,
Sister Tittelfitz