Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from Brazil!

Feliz Ano Novo Para Todos!!! I hope all was good and all the celebrations were awesome for each one of you! I love you all and wish you a happy new year that will bring you greater happiness, joy and peace!

New Year's Eve Dinner with the Eudes de Mara Familia

For part of New Year’s Eve we stayed in our ward mission leader’s house and had dinner and they made cookies for us because they thought that was my tradition at home in the US. I think they may have mistakenly thought Christmas traditions. Anyway we had a great time! Then we went to Maria Diogo’s house and had some more dessert! It was super awesome. Then at midnight, the fireworks went off and it was super crazy! We were home by then and it was definitely an cool view from our balcony on the third floor!

New Year's Eve at the home of Maria Diogo

It was a great week since it started by talking with my family on Christmas which started the week off great! I am so very grateful for them. They are awesome! Our week was still focused on finding new people to teach. We have 3 options; knock doors, use the area book, and references from people. We did a bit of each. We got some references and one of them turned out very well! We started teaching a guy named Ailton and all is going well. He has some hesitations about the Book of Mormon but he has been reading and has prayed and received a strong confirmation so that was awesome! All is going well with him and we will visit him again tomorrow. We also found 3 families. We found the family of Ana and Marcos which the missionaries were teaching at one time but then stopped so we are picking up from where they left off. The family is great! We will teach them again today, tonight actually! Also we found Antonio and his family. As we were talking with him about repentance he said he agreed and that he sees how we all need to do constant spiritual cleansing. That hit me hard and touched me a lot to see a man that has just started studying the gospel see how the gospel works and can change us all on a daily basis. It is something that was super true and heart touching that we all need to do. He is ready to follow the Spirit and make changes. We only taught him since he was the only one home but we will return to teach him and the rest of his family tomorrow. We have a lot of appointments for tomorrow! haha. The last family that we found is pretty incredible and cool. This family has known the missionaries for a while and one year the missionaries passed in their house for Christmas but for some reason they never went to church or received the lessons. So we taught them the first lesson and they were super receptive! They really love the gospel and especially loved "The Family Proclamation for the World" that we taught and shared with them. They said that they knew that this was true and important because for a long time they had felt that a lot was happening in the world today wasn’t right and was trying to destroy families. They already knew what we were trying to teach them was truth. They were so in tune with the spirit and were understanding everything so well! It was a great lesson. It is a pretty incredible experience to have the Spirit guide you to people who are searching for answers and then you come with those exact things they are searching for. I have faith that everything will go really well with them! The husband said in the prayer to end the lesson, "Thank you Lord for these young men and the things they have been teaching us. Thank you for it and for bringing them to us so they can bless me and my wife as well as my kids." It was one of the most super spiritual and awesome feelings I have felt. I know I say awesome way too much but I can’t explain all these great experiences without saying awesome since those experiences are just so SOOOOO awesome! The feelings that come with them are so great that words can’t do it complete justice. It also seems the better my Portuguese gets the worse my English gets! haha

Going to some interviews for the sisters - with Sis. Gonzalez & Araujo

Out knocking doors and found this beautiful wooden gate/door. I know how much mom loves beautiful wood doors! 

Working the outer parts of our area!

A random side note - I actually got to use my soccer skills the other day. We have been trying to catch this rat we have in our house without too much success. The other day as I was sitting studying he ran right past my foot and just as a reflex action I gave him a good kick. He hit the wall and is no longer with us! haha

A lot of Graffiti in our area - some of it is pretty good. 

This is titled "Friendship"

 I hope everything is going well for everyone! I love you all. Quick spiritual thought, I have been thinking a lot about families this week. Like the father(Jefferson) in our lesson said, the world is trying to destroy families. But we all know that does not have to happen. We can keep our families safe and love and cherish them through living the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our families are one of our greatest gifts from our Heavenly Father and such an important part of the Lord’s plan. They are one of the few things that we have in this life that can be eternal if we live worthy of it. Our families can be forever! I challenge you all to read “The Proclamation to the World” again this week and think how you can love and honor your family just a little better this year. We can all do some daily spiritual cleansing and repent and become better people and families. Love you all and appreciate you soo much. Have a great week!

Elder Davis