Moore on a Mission in Florianopolis, Brazil: It's beginning to look like Christmas

So we are going to start to doing the Families are Eternal this week at family visits, which should be good. I have really realized that members are the essential part to missionary work. Families should be missionaries and just like us be sharing the gospel. When their friends and family are ready to hear the gospel then that is where we can come in and help in the teaching, but the friends are the ones that they trust and have a relationship with.

We talked with Maria and Antonio e Fatima and how they are doing. Progress is slow, and we keep having progress, so we continue with teaching them. Antonio really wants to be baptized, and she will follow him so we are trying to help her grow her testimony, but Antonio went into the hospital and is waiting there while he is getting examined for his heart, and the surgeon that is supposed to do the surgery gets back from a meeting in Boston. So he has been stuck there and we have visited him a couple of times. Hopefully everything can get taken care of with his health. Gloria and Claition - she is less active he is a non member. We have been teaching them and this week was a breakthrough for us. He finally talked about having a desire to get baptized. Before I thought he was just listening because she enjoys having the missionaries over, but this week was good, We asked them to watch a couple things one, “Grateful In Every Situation” a talk that is bomb and “He is the Gift”. We are going to stop by this week to see how it went. Edmar and Rosalene we are trying to help with getting them to church, but patience is truly a virtue. We also found a few new people this week that have some good potential so we will go back and see what happens!

Tomorrow we go to Floripa for Conferencia de Natal (Christmas Conference) should be fun.

Christmas season is here, but they don’t seem to get into the Christmas spirit as much as we do back home. They have some cool decorations, but I just don’t see the excitement in the stores or with the people. Maybe because it is sooo hot that is why it doesn't look or feel like Christmas Season.

One thing that we have really been trying to focus on this week is a message we heard from the Area President Costas, “If we can just forget ourselves a little bit then we can truly start to see how many souls we can truly save”. Also I have been reading in Alma 32:28 to the end, it is great! It talks about the word being like a seed and the importance of us strengthening our testimonies! This week I have learned a lot about testimonies and the need to be CONSTANTLY STRENGTHEN OURS DAILY! I also learned about organization, that God is a God of Order, everything is important to be organized. In order for us to become like him we need to learn how to be organized and make sure everything is where it is supposed to be. If we are organized then our time will be spent productively.

Things that I have learned so far are that people are a lot more welcoming here in Brazil, there is a lot of greenness because it rains all the time. Foods are really good here, one of my favorites right now is a thing called tapioca it is really good and coconut with pineapple ice cream.

I love you guys more then you can imagine and am sooo grateful for your guys examples to me I have a ton to learn still and I am grateful to be here on the mission. I LOVE YOU GUYS SOOOO MUCH, FAMILIES ARE ETERNAL AND HEAVENLY FATHER IS ALWAYS THERE FOR US!

Love you all,
Elder JT Moore