Carioba

So, wow, okay...downside to opening an area is you know nothing and usually the other missionaries do not leave you anything...(I´m an exception, I usually leave at least one person to be baptised) but, life is good. This ward is absolutely wonderful, but more on that later.

So, it´s hot here. Yeah, I know, crazy Brasil...one area is absolutely freezing and the next area is hot!!! But what can you do? Americana is a huge city. We have to take the bus everywhere, and so my finances are not as amazing as I would like. I am still with a cold and am not feeling amazing, but I´m going to take it in stride.

S.Barbosa is a convert of 5 years and if from Natal. She is the only member of her family who´s a member of the church and her family doesn´t really support her. For example, she is without shoes...her only pair are breaking and we are trying to find a pair of shoes, but her stake has to approve it and agree to pay for the shoes. It´s quite sad. She is also engaged (and will not stop talking about him...my gosh!!!) to a missionary who is serving in Terezina.

So, on Saturday, I got permission to go back to Cordeiro for Zilda´s baptism (because I´m in the same zone as before, S.Cleise couldn´t come) and we were at a house of a member. I asked her which bus I should take to get to the Rodoviaria. She asked why, I explained that I was going back for a baptism in Cordeiro, and a min later this woman´s husband called and said that he was somewhere far far away biking and could she come get him at 4:00? She replied, yeah, but first I have to drop the sisters off in Cordeiro, so I´ll be a little late. UM,UM,UM??? She said, Get in the car, and she took us. AWESOME!!!

The baptism was absolutely lovely. We had a bus leaving at 5:15, and since every Mormon event starts late, we literally had to book it the moment after Zilda came out of the water. I was so proud of her, and she and I both cried a little. This is also the second baptism that I have given to one of my zl´s...Elder Motto. He was the missionary who baptized Ana, and now he can count this baptism as his as well, because the zl´s are going to take care of Cordeiro now...what do you do?

After that, we went to the stake center in Americana for the stake´s fiesta...which had more than 700 people and many many many investigators, which rocked. There was so much food, I think I gained 4 or 5 pounds. The next day, on Sunday the members informed us that they give food to the missionaries every Sunday...and they gave us three bags of food. Wow, Í´m not complaining.

But, we have really have been walking in circles these past few days, and I do not like it. Yesterday, after DM, I decided to go back to the house and look at the area book and try to figure out what God wanted of us. We prayed to know where to work and nothing.

I remembered a quote that President Lee said when he was talking to President Eyring. He said, ``Hal, if you want to get your revelation, do your homework...`` And that was exactly what Pres.Eyring did. So, I took his advice. Was there anything, any piece of paper, anything? It didn´t look like it. Finally, I saw this piece of paper that the other sisters had written the name of a family less active. It said that they had a nine year old daughter and that she wanted to be baptised, but that they didn´t know the number of the house. Well, let´s start digging. I looked through some old papers and found that a woman had gone to church who lived in that street, number 53. Well, maybe she would know. When we found the house, it turned out to be this family. They want to come back to church and their daughter wants to be baptized, and could we baptize her? Um, yes!!!

As well when we were teaching on that street we did a contact and taught a family that accepted to be baptized. Now, we just have to help them get married, but truly it was a day of miracles and we are going to keep having them if we do our part and stay focused.

Love you all,

S.Stapley

Carioba

My New Area



Ch..ch...ch..changes

So we baptized John and Larissa...yeah!!! Had a bit of drama to get the pool filled (because it´s a house, we have to use a swimming pool) and because of some problems we ended up loading buckets of water to fill it up! It was a nice baptism, filled with a ton of people. We then continued working with Zilda and the whole branch is in love with these 2 new members. It´s awesome!!! Filling the font (swimming pool)

Had the best p-day of my life!!! We watched Work and the Glory 1,2 and 3 with a group of missionaries. We ate and ate and ate.

It was announced on Sunday that Zilda is going to get baptised. The whole branch started to cry. It was soooo funny to watch the members' faces. Like a fish, mouth opened and eyes like...DUDE. Felt good. She's been attending for 6 years!!

So, Monday morning get a phone call that we would close Cordeiro (we knew that) and that no one would open it. Yeah, the branch president was not happy with us. It´s "all our fault". Hmmm, yeah. So, we spent the day cleaning the house and saying goodbye to everyone. We called the zone leaders and they came and interviewed Zilda for baptism. She was amazing...6 years of elders and it took two sisters for her to decide to get baptised. Oh, how I love that woman. She´ll get baptised on Saturday. It was hard to say goodbye to Elisa, Cairo, Vitoria...Irmá Maria started crying, that was hard. Laila thanked us for giving her strength and taking her to the temple. Jaque and Jaina gave us huge hugs and Ana cried as well. I hate it when people cry, it makes me want to cry as well.

Then Monday night we had a family night with Garcia, his family and John and Larissa. It was great. They are growing so much, Larissa especially. We are leaving them in good hands and I don´t feel sad. We did the work that the Lord asked us to do. We baptised and did our best. We worked hard and gave our all. Miracles happened and now the branch needs to grow a little. We lost 20 missionaries and only got 8, so every stake had to close an area. I hope that this will help the branch be more appreciative of missionaries and help more. But, Sister Cleise and I are without guilt. We´re happy, we did our part and the Lord blessed us.

There is a down side to closing an area...you have four suitcases for 2 sisters. We walked to the Rodoviaria (again, no help of the members). The bus would leave at 7:05, so we left at 6 am and got to the bus station at 6:45. (Oh, I´m going to give my smaller suitcase to S.Cleise, she needs it more than I, and I´m not going to be bringing a lot of stuff home...my clothes are dying.) We got to the Rodoviaria in Campinas, and it was amazing to see old friends. We laughed, silly people. Several of my friends are done after this transfer. This is the transfer that I could have gone home...but S.Poast and I are going to be okay, working an extra six weeks...42 days isn´t that much more. I'm glad to have email, facebook and skype to stay in touch with dear friends.

So, where am I now? I opened Carioba with S.Barbosa. This is her second or third transfer. Carioba is in the city Americana. It is a huge area and should be fun. While reading the area book last night (she has a killer cold that she gave to me, urg!!!) and saw that some of my old leaders worked here, E.Dunn and E.Rhodes and that they baptised a ton!!! So, WOOOOOOOOOT!!! I am going to work hard and hard and then even harder.Here we are with the ward's YW.

Anyway, I love you guys. Sending you photos...from my morpher (S.Cleise says it looks like a morpher from Power Rangers). This is god´s work and mom don´t worry, you´ll get your creative inspiration in the right moment...you always do.

S.Stapley

Cordeiropolis

So glad that things are going well with you at home. My life is crazy as ever. It will be nice to have Eric baptize Callen...wish I could be there, seriously. Wow, the family is all growing up. Brynn you look so grown up!

We only had 35 people at church last Sunday because it was the town festival and all the children had to go walk in a parade, and so not one came. We met our new zone. We´re in a zone of 20 missionaries. I was excited, Elder Pedrozo is in the zone, he's one of my best zone leaders EVER!!!!!!!! Oh, and one of the new sisters worked in Nova Veneza after me. That's exciting. She caught me up on the latest of our friends. Edwardo is now the second councilor in the young men's, and THEY BAPTIZED CAMILLA!!! I taught her before I was transferred and then this new sister and S.Monaco were able to finish and baptize her. Wow, I was thrilled. Fatima is the new Relief Society Pres, YES!!!!!!!!! We had an awesome district meeting, E.Tomaz is awesome. It was about being spiritually prepared, about how we need to help others understand the importance of prayer. It was wonderful.

We went walking to a new part of town. We walked 5 miles on a dirt road to meet these people. One was a reference, her son died a year ago and now she´s suffering severe depression. We taught her the plan of Salvation, gave her a book of Mormon and testified that she would see her son again. We then worked and worked and worked, these people live in farms, so soon I will be the Olympic Champion of walking. We worked hard, it rocked.

We are continuing with the visit of less actives in all the wards in the stake. Last week was interesting. We were in Nova Italia and talked to someone who was shouting blasphemy. Problems of pride, money and order...he says he wants a meeting with Thomas S. Monson to change how the church works here in Brasil....good luck.

We got stuck in a rain and wind storm last night, have a tiny cold now. Think that´s it.

S.Stapley

Cordeiropolis

So, I'm still here in Corderio with Sister Cleise. Transfers came and went. So, my camera should be here on Saturday. Life is good, we´re working hard. Our eternal investigators are still complicated, but what can you do. It´s getting cold here and I finally bought a cheap jacket. My feet are cracking and bloody, but at least I´ve not gotten blisters!! My feet are "apparently" really tough- according to all those with feet problems. My shoes are falling apart, so if you guys could send me some duct tape I can try and mend them from the inside. My comp is suffering with knee problems (she played Soccer, MEGAN- BE CAREFUL) and we´re hoping that physical exercise will help. Have I mentioned that it´s cold? I don´t know how Í´m going to handle Rexburg, Brasil has changed me.

Braganca got opened up again, YEAH. Nova Veneza was closed for Sisters (don´t really understand why.) My old zl is now the assistant.

We´ve been helping out Laila and we´re planning on taking her to the temple. She´s going through a rough time. We decided to make her and the boys a cake. We had to travel to Limera, another city, for most of the day and then came back and went to her house. She didn´t believe that we were really coming. When she saw that we had bought everything to make a cake (cake mix, milk, butter, eggs) as well as nescaf and condensed milk to make the fudge layer, she almost cried. I´m pretty sure this was one of the nicest things we could have done for her and the boys. It felt nice.

Eliza has also become something of the marriage councilor. She´s writing a book about marriage. She says that because of her sickness, she and her husfriend, have learned to appreciate the little stuff. She watched "Proof of Fire", or some evangelical film about marriage and we taught them about talking and communication.

Church is going well. Because the temple is closed for cleaning, we had a few of the temple workers visit us. One of the couples is American and the dear sweet older sister has been here 6 months and does not understand anything. It was quite weird speaking in English. We´ve been teaching the Gospel Principles class for the last few weeks. I taught about baptism. I was thinking of my baptism, of how thankful I am for everything, of the example that I have had my entire life.

I think that´s it for right now. Happy for the boys coming home and the boys leaving. They will all be wonderful. Our two newbies in the zone are from Washington, one from Spokane and one from Wenatchee. Why we can´t have elders from Seattle, I´ll never know. Anyway, I love you all and pray for you guys. Hope that all is well, and thank you all for living the gospel. Take care-

S.Stapley

P.S. Not to be trunky or anything...my first dinner when I get home: salmon, twice baked potatoes, peas, triple chocolate cookies. Yum!

Cordeiropolis

So mom and dad, I love you guys so so so much! We´ve spent the last week being marriage and family counselors and let´s just say that I will be following your example and not the example of so many others. We have these two people who were recently baptised, but they still aren't married. They´ve been together for 10 years and have 3 kids. We spent 2 hours working with them last night. Trying to help them progress in the gospel. It didn't go so well (an understatement!) Gosh, when you don´t keep the commandments, it really doesn´t work for you.

As well, we´ve been working with another woman. Her children are members. She has a testimony but she also has a `husfriend`` aka a man she´s living with. She´s married to someone else and is waiting for divorce. But, she also has stomach cancer and a 95% chance of this cancer killing her...so, we´ve been helping them out with cooking and cleaning. I made dinner for them the other night. It was good. Her husfriend is a very strong Catholic, but he´s not smoking or drinking any more. That's progress.

The hot dog activity went well, we had a ton of people there. Life is life, we are trying to work with people who are inactive. Transfers are in a week so I´ll get my package from the mission home then. Thanks for the camera! Mom and Dad, thank you for giving me faith and hope in marriage. Love you all-

S.Stapley

Cordeiropolis

So baptism...yeah! Now just add in a ton of complications. What type of complications you ask? We´ll let me tell you...

First off, the girls' aunt wanted to change the baptism date to this Saturday. She told the girls that their grandmother wouldn´t be able to go, and then the grandma said that yes in fact, she could, and so the girls wanted to get baptised on Saturday...and so, we went ahead with it. But on Thursday, when the elders came to do the interview, one of the other aunts came and the girls started crying, and then everyone said, "no, no, of course you can get baptised on Saturday." The other aunt didn´t come to the baptism because she wanted it changed, she is refusing to come to church, and she says she is going to beat us up...staying very very far away from her.

Then on Saturday, the only men with the priesthood that came to the baptism were Garcia and one of the branch presidency who would baptise Jana. We began to get worried because we can´t baptise without two witnesses, and thankfully at 7:55, the other member of the branch presidency walked in, watched the girls get baptised and left. Eyeroll. As we were leaving at the end of the night, Garcia said..."wow, Sisters, you don´t have any other investigators, you need to be working harder." Are you kidding me?!! We taught 9 intro lessons and not one accepted baptism. We have literally been talking to almost every person who lives in this small town. Urg. The leadership is not helping the branch, not taking care of the members, why do they think that God will bless with new members who will only fall away?

So, we´re not really excited, because we know that probably God isn´t going to bless us in our contacts. The only people who have been baptised here who are still firm are some of the family of Maria Jesus. But just keep working. Work, work and work some more.

We had a good district meeting, it was about how the book of Mormon answers every question and problem in our lives. I got to be the investigator twice. Once was with Elder Manyring (my dl and friend from Itatiba) and his son, Elder Maclain (from Eastern Washington) and it was quite funny. We then had to practice with Elder Edwardo, my zone leader. We then all talked about the atonement and baptism...inside joke, because E.Edwardo was teaching the Plan of Salvation, about our purpose in this life...and the investigator had a ton of problems, and instead of going into a lesson about the atonement and how Christ knows all of us, he went into baptism...afterward we were all like, "Baptism or the Atonement?" I won, atonement works every time!

So, think that´s it. Love you all-

S.Stapley

Cordeiropolis

We´ll baptise this week. We´ve been working with Jaque and Jaina and they´re ready for baptism, which is wonderful. Still, we´ve been going through a rather tough time with this branch. When we had lunch at the 1st councilor´s house we asked how we could help this branch, to which he replied with tired shoulders, "I don´t know....this branch truly has given up hope." The only person who is helping us is Irma Maria Jesus and all of our investigators are her relatives. Two of her daughters are eternal investigators and one cannot get baptised because her husband doesn´t want to marry her (when asked if he loved her, this man said no, but that he is staying with her because of the kids) and she said roughly the same thing. It´s hard because she is feeling miserable but is not willing to change.

The other daughter is one of those investigators who are difficult. She knows the church is true, because if it wasn´t, she wouldn´t be attending church for 5 years, but she says she hasn´t received a response, that the Holy Ghost hasn´t told her yet. Well...when she said this we gave her the most amazing lesson of faith I have ever given in my life, and the spirit was strong and we promised her that if she read the Book of Mormon sincerely, and then prayed and asked God, she would receive a response....well, she said she read but didn´t feel anything. She is very hard hearted, she wants a sign from God or something, but what she doesn´t seem to want is to be baptised. She goes to church, sings in the choir, and she does what she wants, when she wants. I have learned so much about patience and about humility from her. Truly, we need to follow the will of God. He will not give us the response we want, but rather, he will give us the response that we need.

Then last night after we taught Jaque and Jaina, their mom asked to talk to us. She told us that she is having suicidal thoughts...which led to another lesson about love and about how God knows us. He knows what we are feeling, He trusts this woman because he gave her four wonderful children, she is amazing and a warrior. Out of everyone in the world, God chose her to take care of, to love, four of his choice spirit children. We then hugged her and talked some more, I hope that we can help her.

We have not been having the best of luck with finding people, before us, the branch was closed for missionaries...so we´re trying to find anyone. In this town (I think) of 19 thousand, most everyone has a church. We gave 3 first lessons, where we teach about Joseph Smith and no one wanted to know more. It was quite disheartening. We can´t really plan, because we have nothing to plan for...other than the baptisms of this week and helping the part member families.

With everything that has been going on, with a branch that´s breaking, and everything else, truly I have come to see the Lord´s hand in everything. I think that before we came to this life, we had an interview with our Heavenly Father and our Savior Jesus Christ. They showed us everything that we would go through, sins, heartbreaks, we saw every single tear that we would shed in this life. And then at the end, our Heavenly Father said, "Do you accept this life?" And I hope that I said fearlessly, Absolutely! I will go. I knew that this life wouldn´t be easy, but it was the only way I could have happiness forever with my family.

I honestly do not know why we were called to this branch. No idea. The members don´t seem to be able to believe that they can grow. Some take care of themselves and if someone else goes inactive, it is only because they are weak. I love how President Hinckley taught that we need to care for those who are new or who are weak in this faith, because the gospel is not easy, but like I´ve said before, it is worth it. The hymn of come come ye saints...Gird up your loins, fresh courage take, our God will never us forsake...and the immortal words of Bruce R. McConkie...And while I strive through grief and pain, his words be heard, Ye shall obtain. I believe in Christ, so come what may.

Truly, come what may. Come what may. Give your all, and God will take care of the rest. Everything will be alright in the end, if it´s not alright, well then, it´s not the end. And to end on a totally irreverent thought, always look on the bright side of life.

S.Stapley