Moore on a Mission in Florianopolis, Brazil: Great Fun, Spiritual Week!

Happy 4th of July everyone! I can’t believe this is the third 4th of July that I haven’t been in the USA. Today started off with a phone call from another apartment with 3 American missionaries (one a Texas hick) and an Argentinean singing "The Star Spangled Banner", it was hilarious. The mission is awesome, what a great week we had this week. I can’t believe this is like my second to the last Pday, time sure has flown by.

We started off visiting some less actives, that I found out were great members here, and at one time really worked hard in building the ward here, spent hours upon hours visiting and working and strengthening the members. We are just trying to help them come back to church and help them remember why the came to church before.

At church we were taught about the 40 day fast or personal sanctification, where you start by picking a few things in your life that you either want do better at or stop doing or just things that will help you become more Christ like. So you do a prayer at the beginning about the things you have picked and ask Heavenly Father for help. Then you focus on doing those things and each day you pray and check your progress to see how you are doing. Anyways I decided to start my 40 day fast now so that I will continue to do the things and finish up my 40 day fast after I return home. It has helped a lot and I am sure it will help me with the transition once I am home.

I really saw the importance of keeping the Word of Wisdom this week, things that I thought were no big at home I have realized are an issue and I have seen members have problems and issues with. Also this past week I saw with absolute clarity the importance of keeping the commandments so that we can be happy!

We did a lot of work and taught a lot of lessons, it was a very productive week. We helped get Kaiane, Ayane, and Amanda ready for baptism. Honestly seeing Kaiane, Ayane and Amanda get baptized was awesome they were soo happy. Also almost all of them shared their testimonies on Sunday and it was great to see them up there. Seeing that we are all children of God and that Jesus Christ really does love us a ton! It is awesome to see how the gospel is being shared, E. Cardenas and E Franca taught and baptized the moms of the girls that got baptized. We taught their daughters, and now we are teaching their sister and her nephew and they brought their friend and her son to church.

So awhile back I planned a trip for all of us that came out at the same time, (Elder Keller, Blanchard, Bergquist and I along with E. Stahn) to go and get our visas updated. It was awesome, we had a great time. We laughed a lot and it was a fun time for sure I can’t believe we are all ending! Craziness! But we all enjoyed it for sure! We realized that we are going to be some awkward RMs (returned missionaries). For example I said Moses 3:19 and not Mosiah 3:19 because I translated it wrong and all 5 of us started laughing really hard, and then we realized we were laughing at a scripture joke and started laughing even more... #Weirdos #AwkwardRMs for sure. It was such a funny moment though.

It was a good week! A lot of emotions, but it was great! I want to be constantly growing in my testimony!

So some really awesome spiritual moments this week was when President talked about D&C 58:16 during our training in Zone Conference and we also watched Missionary Work and the Atonement, it was a lot of de ja vu moment! It reminded me of the beginning of my mission. We also had a great zone conference with “Rocky” about breaking Myths, it was awesome and super funny!

There are a lot of funny moments on the mission and a lot of them happened this week, I am glad I have these audio journals so I can go back and remember all of these great times.

I Love you guys a TON HAVE A HAPPY 4th of July. Have a great week,
Tchau!

Elder JT Moore