Doing the Little Things

This week I was just thinking how much I love you and how much Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love you. Remember that! Also, I want each of you to reflect on each of your lives and see if you are doing with the small things; daily personal prayer, scripture study, and doing the small things. When things get hard and difficult we just need to remember two things pray and scripture study.The Elders in our apartment were talking the other day and Elder Cardenas said that he has learned a ton here on the mission and honestly the mission was the best thing for him. That is the truth the mission is the best thing for us young men at our age. Read Alma 32:41-43 it is a great scripture. Just remember be patient, diligent, and have faith and it will happen. Also read 1 Nephi 3:7 and Alma 37:6-7. I never realized how much our investigators love when we just hide a note or pass by and say hi. Same thing within a family say I love you more, do something without being asked. Do something special for one another. The small things are what God uses so I think that we should be doing the small things too.

This week I did a lot of praying and scripture study, and one thing I learned about a question someone asked Elder Zamorano was what is the distance from the earth to heaven and his answer was it is the distance between your knee and the floor. Praying is very real. It is amazing how prayer works. We can talk to our Heavenly Father who literally created everything and he can talk back to us through feelings, promptings, and the scriptures. We need to dedicate time during the week to prayer and just talk to Heavenly Father and open up, I know he listens and answers us. We need to be diligent in prayer.

So this week we found this super awesome family. Hobson, Marizete and Joao we are super excited to teach them. We shared the plan of salvation with them and they had a little baby that died and talked about temples too it was a good lesson. We also taught this young man Igor who was super cool! We had a FHE tonight with Edson and David (the lil boy of Vanusa is going). We have been teaching some other really awesome families and the work is going good. I am so thankful for those that we have been able to share the gospel with. We are learning so much from each other.

Remember to say I love you and do the little things for each other.

Love you all,
Elder JT Moore

The FHE on Sunday with Peres family about Families can be Eternal

The lesson we had with Carlos and Loren when everything fell through

The city of Catanduvas

Walking the streets of Campos Novos

A giant chimarrão cup

The half bear half dog we found on divisions with Elder Pelaez

Birthday Week

Birthday week this week, so my companion Elder Choate has his birthday today Monday and Elder Norman had his on Sunday. So we all went out to eat and I bought the rodizio for me and Choate and all the drinks. No mom we do are not ever hungry here! ahahaha #FATTTBOYZZZZZ

So it was a roller coaster week as usual here on the mission. Eliza’s mom said she can’t get baptized on the Sunday of mother’s day, so that got her really sad and down, but we keep working with her and try to get some ward members to meet the mom and become friends. It really stinks because she was all excited and now she is all down about everything, but we are going to keep working. The uncle and aunt and cousin of Helton (Daniel, Judite, and Juliana have been taking the lessons and want to be baptized. We had a great lesson with them last week and we talked about the Plan of Salvation and it was super good! Then we finished off with temples and wow I never knew just how strong the spirit is when we talk about temples and eternal marriage, it was awesome! The members here are awesome! We had FHEs everyday last week except Thursday. I Love Joaçaba!

Also this week we had a meeting/bday party at our branch missionary leader’s house and then a FHE with Thias, Andre, and Ernesto tonight and also another bday party hahah! Going to be eating a lot of food!

One thing I really studied about this week is that we need to remember to always have an eternal perspective. It helps everything. I think about these 2 years as a missionary and really they are very small amount of time compared to the perspective in eternity, if we just center our lives on the rock of our Savior. I know this church is true and feasting on the word of Christ brings us better understanding of our eternal potential!

Here are some videos I want you to watch;
The Eternal Perspective of the Gospel
The Power of the Word
Safety for the Sould
Highlight: “Where Justice, Love, and Mercy Meet”
Highlight: Returning to Faith
Highlight: The Music of the Gospel

So Justin I want you to make a recording and tell me all about PROM!

I LOVE YOU GUYS! AND GOD AND JESUS DO TOO! :)

Elder JT Moore

HELP OUT IN THE MISSIONARY WORK AT HOME!

FHE with members

Another FHE with members and investigators

The Brazilian drink Guarana, now in Black

Stuck in the Elevator

FHE Games

FHE Games

FHE Games

E. Choate and Norman Birthday Lunch

Three cheese pasta and garlic bread I made for lunch

Birthday Ice Cream

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother’s Day Mom!!! It was so goood to see and talk to you all yesterday. It it was muito legal (very cool) to see and speak to all of you. I love you all so much. That was the fastest hour of my whole mission. I was looking forward to it for a long time, then it was there and over so fast. It was good to see Grandma and Grandpa, and that you are all doing good. I can’t believe I am half way over with my Skype calls home, only have one more Christmas and Mother’s Day calls left. It makes me muito happy!

Well another week of ups and downs, but I do honestly love it here in Joaçaba, I could stay my whole mission here. The people here are great, especially the members in the branch. Joaçaba is super safe it was actually rated the 2nd best city to live in Brazil for quality of life. No one messes with us, not even the dunks and the crazy people on the street, in fact when we walk by them, they are like oh hey Mormons say a prayer for me, it’s pretty funny! So this week we had some more awesome FHEs, and had investigators at some of them. Elisa went to one and really liked it and came back and told her sister how great it was. At one of the FHEs I taught the lesson that you shared with me dad, about priorities in our lives, using the golf ball, pebbles, and sand as the object lesson, except I had to use other available objects, so I used little oranges, pasta, and rice. If we put the most important priorities like family and God (little oranges) first in our lives (the tub), then the other priorities like work and school (pasta), and the other small things (rice) then our lives are full. However if we have our priorities mixed up, and we put rice and pasta in first, then we won’t have enough space for all of the oranges (the important things) in life. It was a awesome lesson!

We had an awesome lesson with Elisa, and taught her about the restoration, and why it was needed, we talked about Prophets and apostles, and also the temple. The spirit was really strong, so we asked her if she knew the things we were teaching her were true, she said yes, so then we felt the impression that we should ask her to be baptized, we did and then there was a long pause. We just sat there and waited for the spirit to work, and then she was like yes I want to be baptized! It is awesome to feel the spirit and watch as they feel is testify to them.

One thing I realized this week is that when we truly focus ourselves on the Lord he will bless us. Even though we had an up and down week, with appointments falling through, I realized that when we focus on the positive things that happened, then the rest of the stuff doesn't affect us much at all.

Oh we ate burritos the other day, that we made. It was the first time I ate burritos in Brazil haha. They were super good! We also went to this one supermarket that has this bakery in the back. It is super legit, you get to make your pizza the way you want it, it reminded me of Subway, except for pizza. We also had some great dinners with the members, so feed us so good here it is unbelieveable.

I love and miss you all, remember JESTO!

Families podem ser eternas!

Love,
Elder JT Moore

Happy Mother's Day!! I love you mama!!

Eating at Bob's (like McDonalds)

Make your own pizza, subway style

We made Rootbeer, No Bueno!

Burritos in Brazil!

Irma Daiany makes waffles for us when we go eat lunch there because she knows we love them

Joel and Olga the ward mission leader and his wife they have a son on a mission and spoil us with steak and bunch of food!

 The FHE we did about priorities

My book bag that we bought at the missionary store

How can it be getting cold in May?

So this week was another good week. I love Joaçaba! and the members are great here! Some of them that we have been working with are Helton, Conceiçao and Laviana, they are awesome and are helping a ton, they have 3 families we are working with them. We had 5 investigators at church on Sunday, so it was awesome, like you said we were on the down of the roller coaster and now we are on the way up! We had some great lessons where the spirit was super strong.

Elder Choate and I are getting along well and having fun, he is getting a lot better with his Portuguese. So yeah I thought on Friday about you guys at fathers and son. I cant wait, only one more and then the crews back together! One of the members here Guilherme told me about the NFL draft, he told me about the first round picks, and I didn't even know most of the names. Oh well I will have plenty of time to study sports when I get back.

One thing I have really realized out here in the mission is that Satan tries to use all his tools available to discourage us. He knows my weak point and tries to put doubt and fears about myself and what I am doing. I have learned to strengthen this by looking at how far I have progressed and how far I have come in such a short time. I know it is because the Lord is helping and watching out for me. Whenever Satan tries to discourage me, I start writing down the many areas where I have progressed, and I realize that I have been very blessed and have grown so much from where I started, or I write down those that I can truly see that we have helped and done "some good in the world today" it makes it sooo worth it. :)

The other day we were over at the branch President Tiago's house, and he was sharing his Bible with me, it was super awesome for a Portuguese Bible, it has footnotes and everything, so now I want to get one like his. He also had some really great pages of scriptures with references that I copied to use.

It is so weird to be in May and it is starting to get cold instead of hot. We are actually starting to use sweaters in the morning and the evening. It is still raining two or three times a week, but the weather is nice to be out working during the day.

Here is a good talk I found by Elder Perkins called “Go Forth in Faith” have Justin and all of the youth read it, it is a great talk for us young people.

Tell Yayo and Grandpa I love them very much and I am praying that they heal and get better quickly.

I cant wait to talk to you guys on Sunday for Mother’s Day. I am more excited then a child losing all of his teeth at once and waiting for the tooth fairy to come, more excited then a child on Christmas Eve, just can’t put into words how excited I am. I love and miss you all, keep doing the little things because from those the great things come to pass, remember JESTO!

Families podem ser eternas!

Love,
Elder JT Moore

Wearing my sweater vest in May, this is weird!

The Kinder Egg for my bro Justin

and the toy inside.

Awesome meal the members made for us

Sunday was super windy and rainy cray cray

Sharing the Book of Mormon

Missionary Selfies

District Meeting

President Tiago reference page

My planner Elder Choate made me, he is funny!

We got IPADS our sick new Ipads haha jk it is our DVD player