Big change on the Horizon

Well last week was awesome. We had 7 investigators at church on Sunday and a lot of less actives came as well which was awesome because it was branch conference, and it was great! The messages that were delivered were great and super spiritual.

We have started teaching Carlos’ sisters, Carlos is a recent convert who is getting ready to go on a mission. They are super awesome, they said they have read the Book of Mormon, but haven't prayed yet. But they came to church and then after church we went and visited them at their house and played a game called stop. You have to write certain things in a certain amount of time. Then we taught them another lesson and they went to the baptism of Milani an 8 yr old member in the ward so that was great for them to see! The work here in Joacaba is going great, we are super busy, I LOVE IT!

Okay so here is the big news for the week, on Wednesday we got a call from the APs in Floripa and.... Elder Cardenas and I are going to train! Two americans waiting in the states (serving in Detroit) for their Visas are coming mid transfers. We will be traveling to Floripa tonight at 11pm and get to there at 630 am. CRAZY! We will come back to Joaçaba Tuesday night or Wednesday. Yeah so i am kinda nervous to train but going to give my best! I will have to be more humble and more intune with the spirit than ever! I am excited for this new challenge, I have always been with companions that have been out here for a long time, this will be a new experience for me. I am super excited but nervous at the same time.

Okay so I watch the wrestling video of Justin’s team, I had too hahaha! Justin is a goob man (sorry no translation to other languages)! I loved it. Justin sure likes to dance out there, super funny also the singing, II don't know that song, I guess I am already out of date.

Okay so I looked at the bracket the bracket that you sent and the east was crazy! Actually Irmao Gustavo said he watched a little bit this week!!!!! Crazy! He watched a game of Xavier and Zags.

Please read Mosiah 2-5, where King Benjamin is talking to the people, and that is like their General Conference. This upcoming weekend we can have many spiritual experiences if we prepared too! Only 2 times a year we get to listen to the prophet and the apostles.

Please add this to the Blog,

This is Elder J.T. Moore here in Joaçaba, Brazil! I hope you are all Happy and Healthy, and just want to wish you guys an upcoming Happy Easter! To remember this special day and invite you to watch this video Because He Lives To remember the importance of Jesus Christ in our lives and know that he truly is our Savior and Redeemer, to remember how much Love he truly has for each and every single one of us. Also if you liked this video I would like to invite you to share it with the people you love. I am grateful for Jesus Christ. I know that he loves me and knows me and what I go through each day, He truly is our perfect example and as we strive to live our life as he did we will truly find a greater happiness and peace in our lives and in our families. I love and miss you all very much, but am extremely grateful for the opportunity I have to help other come unto Christ!

Love you all,
Elder J.T. Moore

FHE with Pedro and Rosi and other members of the ward

Fitting in the Elevator at the Zone Meeting

E. Cardenas and I at an Easter Display

FHE with a Land family here on divisions with E. Patterson and Lopes

Our Pet that we found

Joaçaba is awesome!

Joaçaba is awesome! This honestly was the most successful week of the mission so far! This transfer is going to fly by with how much work we have to do! Elder Cardenas and I are getting along great, we honestly teach really well together. This week was the week to get use to how each other teaches, because we had only been together for 3 or 4 days before. We are pumped and doing great! Joaçaba is an amazing area! I hope I stay here for a while! The work is SUPER BUSY! With only one set of missionaries here it is busy. We have the baptism of João this week! If all goes well! He is a 17 year old man and he is awesome, great knowledge and testimony. We also have a lot people that are progressing which is great! We taught a lot of lessons this week, some days we had 8 to 10 lessons. We had some of the greatest lessons, with the spirit being strong and guiding us in the way the discussion went.

So the interesting thing that happened this week was to my left index finger was puffed up. So we went to the urgent care, and then on Thursday we went to a foot specialist and she took a piece of the nail out. They gave me an antibiotic and it is all better now and the swelling is gone and the pain is gone too!

Our investigators, Edson and Venusa, took us to the Elder Quorum and RS President home (Husband and Wife) this week to celebrate her and her secretaries birthday and her husband. They are an awesome family, help out in everything, always giving us rides. On our way there we got pulled over by police, because they were doing a blitz, all good, first time to be pulled over. Anyways, we had a great time at their house and we shared a quick message about prophets and how great it is to have conference. Edson understands the gospel and is trying to hurry up things so he and Venusa can get married.

Read and Studied Alma 18, great lesson on the power of prayer and being righteous and the power of God. It was a great read and some awesome lessons learned about Ammon and Amulek. What Ammon does to serve King Lamoni. Doing the little things for each other and serving each other makes the biggest difference. One of my favorite stories in the Book of Mormon.

We also had a great visit with Carlos this week, he is a recent convert of 9 months, but he is getting ready to go on a mission. We helped him get online and start filling out the forms online, it was super cool to see his excitement. We took him with us to visit some other members and investigators that afternoon.

This week the Lord answered one of my prayers through Elder Cardenas. I am really learning the importance of have a good companionship and that how that translate into success, and having the spirit with us when we teach. The spirit is something we have to daily strive to have with us!

The Atonement is the ultimate act of LOVE! Have a great week I am sooo grateful for you guys as my family. Read the article in Liahona about talking to kids about difficult subjects that is really good and also Moroni 7:45- to the end of chapter. Charity is the pure love of Christ, prayer that you can have charity in your heart! Study those verses they are amazing!

Love you all,
Elder Moore

Elder Cardenas and I at the farm

Elder Cardenas (Old Man - 27) birthday Pizza

Elder Cardenas Birthday Pizza

Its about to become super crazy busy!!!

Transfer Week,

Well I am staying here in Joaçaba this next transfer with Elder Cardenas! So there were four of us in our apartment, and honestly we got along very well. We all worked well together and both companionships worked super hard and were super busy teaching! But since there were 22 missionaries that finished their missions and only 9 that arrived, they had to reduce to only 2 elders in some areas. So in our apartment Elder Lima finished his mission, I am now companions with his companion Elder Cardenas. My companion, E. Zamorano is now our zone leader in Videira! Elder Cardenas is a little older, he joined the church at 23 and a few years later he is here on a mission, he has been out here one more transfer than me, and he is from Argentina. I am super excited to serve with him, he likes to work really hard also so yeah I have been very blessed these past two transfers with my companions, and I get to see Zamorano at zone meetings and stuff so its all good! We were busy before these transfers and now with only 1 companionship of missionaries we are going to have to plan to the max and be smart! We are going to have lots of work! I love it! Nothing better than teaching all the time!!!

Saturday Elder Lima departed for Floripa to head home, he had to depart Saturday because Sunday there was these huge protests all over Brazil against the Brazilian president. We were only allowed to go to church and then we had to stay in the apartment the rest of the day.

Things are going great here in Joaçaba, one of our investigators, Vanderliea, got baptized! She is awesome, and it was a great baptism. We had a lot of investigators at church again, so hopefully this transfer they will all continue to progress. We had another visit with Talita, she wants to be baptized, the only problem is her stepdad won’t let her be baptized, because he belongs to another church. He is not active in the church, but he won’t let his stepdaughter be baptized. We are hoping we can work with the family. What is interesting is this week I went on divisions with Elder Cardenas a lot, and we visited some really cool families. Now I am going to get to teach all of these really cool families.

Justin, hey man I hope you are enjoying spring break, because out here on the mission there isn’t any of that, hahaha. One thing I have learned on the mission is that to make a successful companionship or family, you have to be willing to do the little things and sacrifice for the betterment of all. You have to do it daily, if it is only 1 or 2 times a week it won’t be as productive as it could be. There are a lot of little things you don’t need to wait for the mission to learn, simple things like cleaning up your room, dishes, doing little things for people, always trying to smile and be friendly, be more patient, love people more, focus on the positives in everyone no matter how different they may be, remember we are all God’s children. There are so many things that I have learned here on the mission that I should’ve learned and practiced prior to the mission.

Scripture study for the week was D&C 130:19, it talks about the importance of learning and progressing in this life because it will help us in the next.

Love you all,

Elder Moore

Family Home Evening with members and investigators

We love to eat Ice Cream!!

District meeting in Campos Novos

Vanderliea baptism

Vanderliea baptism

Filling the baptismal font

Youth in the branch at the baptism

Saying bye to Elder Lima (he is headed home)

Missionaries on the RUN

So this branch is awesome, we had 120 people last week at church, that includes the 10 investigators that were there. So the youth of the branch here in Joaçaba went to FSY (EFY) last week and they loved it. What is amazing is all of the ym and yw work to get the money to go, one yw even sold her cell phone to go. I was like wow! Here I was going every year because I wanted to go, and they can only go every 4 years and she sold her cellphone in order to go.

This week went by super fast! This is the last week going into transfers, and I am going to miss this group in our apartment. We are a great group, we all goof around, but we get along really well, and both companionships work super hard. The amount of lessons and investigators we have is awesome. Elder Lima is on his last week of his mission this week so we we will be sure to mess with him and have a good time! My companion, Elder Zamorano, is a stud and we are working great together!

So this week we did a lot of running, I mean literally running from one place to another. I think we found ourselves running like four different times for a good couple miles. I realize how far out of shape I am. Once we had to run to an appointment, because we were supposed to meet a member at the church to go with him to a lesson, but then 5 minutes after we were supposed to meet him he called and said he had to stay late for work. So off we sprinted to the appointment. Another time we were finishing up a awesome lesson with this family, and it was already past 9 pm and they started breaking out plates. We said we had to go, but they insisted we have some cake. After we ate we sprinted home so we wouldn't be late, since we have to be home by 9:30 pm. The other two times were also because of appointments, and not being able to finish with one lesson soon enough to be able to be at the other lesson.

Here is a quick recap of some of the things we taught this week. We had an awesome lesson with Lauren, we talked about not putting ourselves in situations where we are close to edge. To make decisions early on and to stay away from things and places that Satan wants us to go. Dad I used your story/analogy about the “The truck driver” and how the one that stayed furthest away from the edge is the one that was hired. It was a good lesson. We had another super lesson with Alexandre and Dante, with members also, we asked them what they wanted to know. We ended up explaining about the plan of salvation, about prophets, about the Book of Mormon. It was one of the best lessons I have been at, they even said that it was super clear, and answered a lot of the questions that they had. We asked them to be baptized and they excepted. The spirit was there super strong.

So the other night the zone leaders came into town, and we went to the ice cream place, then as we were going home we stopped by this pizza place and bought the biggest pizza they had. It was 1 meter long, it had 72 slices. We ended up eating it for two days and finally had to throw some of it away cuz we were tired of pizza.

So this week I have been studying the scriptures a lot better. President taught us different ways to study the scriptures. One thing he taught us when studying was the 3 readings; 1.Read over quick for quick understanding 2. look for doctrines and principles 3. Look for additional viewpoints and more in depth on the words and truly understanding the meanings. Honestly the spirit is REAL, if we push and strive to have it with us and read the scriptures daily we will have a different day, a better day.

Funny story

Before I start let me give you a little background. So Elder Lima in our apartment, great guy, but he doesn't like to spend money. We always give him a hard time about it, and what is funny is usually when he spends money, like more money than he wanted to spend,we leave the place and it always pours rain. We always say its because its crying because he is sad he spent so much money. So the other day we were sitting at the bus stop waiting, not a cloud in the sky. As we are there talking, Elder Lima says that since it is his last week in the mission he will buy ice cream for all of us. We were like ya right, we know how you are, haha, it would start pouring if you were serious. Then he was like for real I will pay, and as soon as he said those words, three birds, like big pigeons, fall dead from the sky on to the street right in front of us. We all started dying laughing, it was so hilarious.

Love you all, Remember JESTO!

Elder Moore

Our meter long pizza, pure awesomeness

Cool looking flower

Eating at a members house

Jesus Loves You!

These animals behind a members house

Me and Elder Zamorano at the Frei Bruno statue

Get our ice cream on, that is why we are PHAT!

We are blessed if we keep the commandments

Okay so I know I have said this before, but I will say it again this area is awesome! We have been doing a lot of work here. Elder Zamorano went to Videra with Elder Cadenas on Tuesday for divisions, and then went to Campos Novos after our district meeting with Elder Lima. So while he has been gone, I have been here switching with people in Joaçaba! Did I mention there are a ton of hills here in Joaçaba. I honestly show up exhausted at night but it is Worth it! Well, the branch here is awesome we had at least 120 people there on Sunday! It was awesome we had 7 investigators there at church. There was Edson and Vanusa, and Jose and Luci with their daughter Franceli and their grandchildren Natalie and Victor. Next week we are pretty sure we are going to have at least 10 people there, with Alexandre and Dante (reference of a member) and Loren who didn't go but usually does, and also Bernadete and her daughter Sheila, her husband and her son and Rafella. Yeah I am really enjoying Joaçaba! People here are great, the members help out a lot, I hope I stay here for some time.

We taught an awesome Family Home evening lesson with some members and investigators. The lesson was about family and how to show love by doing the small things for each other. It was a good night, with a lesson and games.

We spent a lot of time this week visiting less actives and working with them and getting them to remember their testimonies and what it felt like and hopefully some of them will return to church, it was really productive. One member we went to visit we had to climb 354 stairs to get to her house, it was a good climb and well worth it.

We studied Mosiah 2 :22-24, this is awesome because it shows us what the Lord will do for us when we keep the commandments. I am really enjoying being out here and getting to read, study, and grow in the gospel. One big thing that I have learned about our church compared to others is that the Gospel focus on the things that are important not the things that are interesting. Focus on Doctrine and Principles and how we can apply them in our lives to become more Christlike.

One thing I would like you all to do is to read and study Preach my Gospel, the General Authorities want every family to have one. The reasons why they want each family to be reading and studying is so that they can do member missionary work, they can work with the missionaries, and during the lesson you can help them too because you know the plan.

TCHAU, As FAMÍLIAS PODEM SER ETERNAS

ELDER MOORE

Bus ride to Zone Conf

The 354 steps to climb to members house

Almost to the top

We made it up all 354 steps

Birthday party at members house

Walking home from church and we found a soccer ball