Elder Benjamin S. Smith

Kaick is the son of a woman who was baptized a few weeks ago. When we first met him, he had no desire to be baptized, but we noticed that he is a good kid and he always stayed within hearing distance of the lessons. Over time, the desire grew within him, until the day of his baptism he was super excited!! We found Ricardo when visiting a couple that we had been teaching. We invited him to participate in the lesson and he said that he couldn't but that we could visit him afterwards. When we visited him, we taught the about the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and he immediately decided to be baptized.  Luciana e Junior is a family that I had started teaching with Elder Pinho a couple of months ago. At the time, they were not able to be baptized, and we ended up losing contact with them. Then Junior found us on the street and invited us to visit their house. We brought them to church and afterwards we invited them to be baptized. Luciana said that she'd be baptized only ...

These last couple of weeks we had the baptisms of Cássio and Ana Cláudia! Ana Cláudia has been being taught for a long time but had a small thing keeping her from being baptized. Then one Sunday she sent us a message basically saying "I want to follow God and NOTHING will stop me from being baptized this week." Cássio is an awesome guy. He is a jin jitsu fighter that had been going to church just a few years ago but had stopped going. Then he decided that this is what he wants in his life. He came back to church and when we asked him if he'd like to be baptized he told us "this is what I was planning when I came back".  We also had a transfer and so Elder Lees is my new companion. He's super excited to be here and it's going to be a blast working together!! 

Some of the missionaries were having trouble so we did a bunch of exchanges this week to figure out how we can help. Lots of people were staying in the habits of the pandemic. They were staying inside calling people and not visiting anyone in person. They weren't moving forward. There are also a few new Americans that were feeling discouraged and stressed. The problem is that when you arrive in Brasil, you are being acted upon. You aren't acting. You can't talk, you don't know what's going on, so you basically just follow your companion around. This can start a negative cycle because you start to blame your circumstances for everything. Blaming your circumstances for failures or weaknesses makes people miserable. So, they end up miserable and discouraged and if something doesn't change soon they don't stay in Brasil for very long. The key is simply to start acting and start taking responsibility for your progress, the results in your area, even the cleanline...

Conceição and Val --> their son's friend stopped missionaries on the road and asked for a visit. They couldn't visit the house of the friend, so they visited the house of Conceição and Val. They were having a tough time because their son was killed a couple of years ago and they still hadn't found peace. After almost two months of missionary visits, they are anxiously awaiting getting married, baptized, and going to the Rio temple after it gets dedicated in May!! Ana --> the daughter in law of Conceição. The missionaries met her while teaching Conceição. She felt like she made a few decisions in the past that distanced her from God and now she wants to get back on the right path. Yesterday she told us that her strongest desire is to be baptized. Dayane, Kaique, e Yasmin --> An awesome family in a tough financial situation. In Brasil, you can get a "family scholarship" which gives a little money to help buy food for children. She was able to get the schola...

I was transferred to Madureira with Elder Pinho and it's been an absolute blast here. There's a side if a mountain with a million houses and we work there all day every day. So basically we are walking up and down the mountain (they have stairs) visiting people all day and it's the best. Elder Pinho is also the perfect companion. My English has been getting worst... And I am having trouble talking to the new Americans in English these days. This week we had 3 or 4 people stop us on the street and ask us to visit their homes. These people are in complicated situations. And the gospel of Jesus Christ is simple. But it helps. It's hard to understand how something so simple can help in such complicated situations but it really works miracles in the lives of everyone. Elder Smith

We got transferred over to a new area but with the same 4 missionaries together this week. It was kinda cool. Itaguaí is a ward with a lot of youth that are preparing to serve a mission and lot of part-member families which makes it a really great ward for missionary work. It also covers a huge area, including a few beach towns where "groups" existed before the pandemic started. It has been an exciting first week already meeting everyone here. It was especially cool to meet Karan, someone who was baptized just a couple weeks ago. He gave up everything to move to Brasil 3 months ago, not knowing any Portuguese, because he couldn't be Christain in his home country. After just a couple of weeks, one of the missionaries sent him a message on Facebook. It's a fun game talking to him because neither of us know how to speak in Portuguese 😆