"Ask, and It Shall Be Given You"

With Elder Cifuentes, Soares and Jackson

Hope everyone had a great week. We had a pretty great week and this Sunday we had a new investigator at church so that was a good start to the next week. Her name is Maria and we are excited to start teaching her. Unfortunately her mom recently passed away. The Lord is amazing in how he times things to bless his children when they are in need. We seem to meet people right at the time they are ready and needing the gospel. I honestly don't know how the Lord does it but he puts us and them in each other's paths at just the right time. Like seriously, it's so amazing, He is perfect. He knows all. Truly does. As I said this was the first time Maria had come to church and it just so happened that the gospel principles class was about eternal families and how that is possible through the Lord's plan. And the talks in Sacrament meeting were about how we can accept Gods will in our lives and much more. It all touched Maria's heart and gave her comfort as well as hope. She loved it and happily accepted us to continue visiting her. We also restarted teaching one of our previous investigators, Elaine who we had stopped seeing because when we were teaching her before she was interested but would not take the step further to do the things she needed to do to find out for herself the truthfulness of the gospel. She would not read or pray and really was not ready to make a commitment to change so we stopped teaching her. But last week she came to find us. She had had a dream where Oliviera (my old comp) and I were standing at her door telling her that we were leaving and did not think we would be able to come back again. She started crying in the dream and said she felt the spirit of Jesus Christ leaving her house as we left. She couldn't sleep the rest of the night after the dream so the next day she came to find us. We are working hard to help her gain her own testimony of the gospel and prepare for baptism.We are also teaching a guy named Donizete who compares himself to Tomé (Thomas). He really feels he has to see something before he can believe it. He feels that there are so many bad things happening in the world and even in churches that it makes him doubt. We definitely have some hills to climb with him but he has accepted to pray with faith about what we are teaching and if he should go to church. So that is a start. We have found some other new people to teach too and are excited about getting started with them.

After zone meeting

Overall, everything is great, Elder Cifuentes, my new comp. is awesome. This is his first transfer as a ZL and he is stellar already. He is a little quiet/reserved which is super weird for me because usually I am the quiet one! But I am now noticing that I am the one talking too much! hahahaha. But he is really great. I am learning a lot with him and we are working hard. He is trying to teach me Spanish as well so that will be cool.

A short spiritual thought. As I have witnessed the Lord working in my own life, as well as the people we are teaching this past week, it has really confirmed to me that our Heavenly Father is mindful of us all. He hears our prayers and knows our needs. Praying is such a simple thing but it is so so so important. Our relationship with Heavenly Father changes everything in our lives. It changes how we see life, how we accept His will, how we act and what blessings we receive. This week we all need to prepare for General Conference, we need to pray to have your questions answered through His prophet and the apostles. He has always answered my questions. Always. I know He knows and loves each of us and will guide and direct us in our lives if we but ask and listen.

"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." Matt. 7:7-8

Hope you all have a great week!
Elder Davis

I didn't take any pictures this past week but I have one that Elder Cifuentes took and another one after zone meeting from one of the other missionaries. I will take some this week.

Choose the Harder Right over the Easier Wrong

With Maria Eduarda and her parents Ana & Gabriel before Maria's baptism

Hope everyone is doing great. Transfers are today. I am sad that Elder Oliveira is leaving. I have learned a lot from him. But I am excited to have Elder Cifuentes as a new companion. He is from Argentina. Looking forward to working with him.

Maria strong in Body and especially in Spirit

With Bishop and Maria before the Baptism

With Maria, the newest member of the Limiera ward and her family

Well the highlight of the week was we baptized Maria Eduarda! Woohoo! I am so excited for her! We have been teaching the entire family for awhile now and I am hoping her parents Ana and Gabriel will soon be married so they can also be baptized. They are wonderful people. Maria is young but she is strong in spirit and did not want to wait until her parents were baptized so we went ahead with her baptism. On Sunday when she came to church you could see the difference in her countenance, she had a bright spirit about her. She had a dress on and was looking her best to come and worship the Savior. She has such a desire to change for the better and be the best she can be for the Lord. It makes me so happy to see people change their lives in even the smallest of ways. They want to be the best they can in the presence of the Lord as well as show Him respect as they enter His church. We are going to continue to do our best to help her parents get ready for baptism. I love that family. I am so grateful for the opportunity to meet wonderful people and have these experiences that we can have almost every day in the mission. The Lord is so loving and merciful in giving us these glorious experiences in our life. It changes us immensely as we try to help others change and come unto Him. I am grateful for the opportunity and privilege to serve in His name and have these experiences.

With Elder Oliviera sporting matching ties. 

Spiritual thought today is simple but important. In life we often will have to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong as Pres. Monson said a couple Conferences ago and when that happens, that is when true growth happens and we become more fully converted. It is through consistently making those "harder rights" that we express our love for our Savior and truly obtain a change of heart by seeking His will not ours.

Have a great week! I appreciate all the love and support.
Elder Davis

Read the Book of Mormon, then reread it again and again and again, it will bless your life!

Go Forward in Faith

The Elders of Zona Rio Claro

Hey Everyone-
Hope all is well there in the Carolinas. My heart goes out to all the victims of the hurricanes in Texas and now in Florida. Sounds like a lot of devastation. What a huge reminder to us to be prepared not just physically but spiritually. Hope everyone is doing okay.

The kind and infamous Regina

A picture from Regina - she likes to see us enjoying her food!

It has been a great week. So much stuff to do this past week and it felt like the week was a day. It literally flew by. We have been working with our ward to build our teaching pool. Some of the great things that happened were this past Tuesday we had a FHE with a different member than usual. We have one member who invites us every week to bring our investigators to her home for FHE which is awesome but this week we also went to a different member's home. Her name is Regina. She invited her whole extended family especially those that aren't members and so that was super cool! We were able to make some good contacts there. We also had lunch at her house during the week. Dad, you had asked whether we ever cook, well the answer is almost never. Which is lucky for us! haha We are fed lunch and dinner most days by members. I have to give a shout out to our members they are the best! I am always amazed and grateful for the love and generosity of the members. The people of Brasil are so awesome. As missionaries we are blessed greatly by the wonderful ward members here not only in taking care of us but with their desire to help us share the gospel. We found another new family through another member named Paulo. Our testimonies of faith and working with the members was strengthened through our experiences with him. When we started the visits, he told us he really didn't have anyone to visit. So we asked him to think of a few people he knew that would allow us just to visit them and who he could introduce us to. He first took us to his neighbors and as we talked with them they started talking about some other people and then the list just kept getting longer and longer as we went to each house. At first he was a little bit timid to share with his friends but by the end he had caught the missionary spirit and was doing almost all the talking and bore his testimony at each home. He shared with everyone how he was baptized and had progressed to the point where he is now. He also shared the great joy he felt when he baptized one of the recent converts in Limeira and how the happiness he felt was so great when he helped someone else come unto Christ. We have marked 2 dates for baptism with 2 of his friends, Rosa and Luiz. How great is that? It was marvelous to see him sharing his testimony and see how the Lord blessed him as he went out in faith not knowing where to go in the beginning. By the end we could hardly get him to stop for that night. Haha. It was great! It can be the same for each one of us. Everyone needs to go out with the missionaries and share your own experiences with your friends. We don't know who will accept and we certainly should not judge and cannot guess who will be ready and seeking the truth. The Lord prepares a way for each one of us individually to take part in inviting others to come unto Him and receive the blessings of the gospel. So go out there in faith. Miracles will happen.

Lunch at Madalena with Paulo

Dinner at the House of Mara and Adilson

This week we will have the baptism of Maria Eduarda! The daughter of Ana and Gabriel. She will be baptized this Saturday! Her parents want to be baptized too but have a few things we need to help them work on, so hopefully soon. We are also working with Ronie and Elaine and doing our best to get them ready for baptism by Sunday but it may need to be the next week. It will all work out! Transfers are next week too, time has passed so fast. I appreciate all the prayers and support! Have a great week!

Elder Davis

Brothers in the Work

"I Will Go and Do"

With Elders Oliviera, Soares, Jackson and our great Ward Mission Leader Carlos

It has been a great week. Hope everyone else has had a great week too. So we ending up going to Rio Claro and going to Araras for the district meetings. We are seeing a good change in the people and the missionaries and how they are working. Right now we are trying to focus more on the personal growth of the missionaries in our zone than focusing on changing their work. I think if you focus on teaching style or how they work, things will go up and start to improve, but to continually have improvement and stay where we should be we each have to be consistently experiencing personal progression and change. If a missionary is constantly growing spiritually and developing a deeper understanding of Christ themselves they will in turn have a desire to improve their work and their service. They will be blessed with the spirit in improving their work and their teaching if they are constantly seeking that growth and truth themselves. We are trying to make sure everyone knows and remembers their true purpose for being here and for doing the work. It is also important that everyone knows that they are needed and it takes all of us to build Zion. As we all know Zion is not a physical place it is the people and the spirit that dwells in a place. It refers to the people who are "pure in heart". We are working to make our zone Rio Claro Sião. It is going well! Our zone has 12 baptisms already in this transfer! And we are always working to become better. Of course it is not about the numbers but rather the people who those numbers represent. It is about those people that are gaining an understanding and testimony of their Savior and making a covenant with Him.

With Elder Soares

With Elder Jackson

This week I also did divisions with Elder Soares and Elder Oliveira stayed with E. Jackson. It was good! We did a baptism interview for Rio Claro 2 because their LD, Elder Little, had to go to Piracicaba. The interview could only be on that day because of the schedule of Wesley(the investigator) so we went and did it! I love interviews! I love hearing the conversion stories of those we interview. Interviews are one of the things that I miss most about being a district leader. Elder Oliviera and I are working great together but I do miss being a LD. But I am grateful for the opportunity I have to work with him and appreciate all I am able to learn from him. We have lost a few people from our teaching pool and others are having some significant challenges but we are moving forward. We are teaching a mother and a brother of a missionary who is serving in Northern Brasil. We have had some great lessons with them but have had difficulty getting her to church. Then all of the sudden on Sunday morning she called us up and said, "I am going, lets go!" I was like WHAT ???. Alright then. That's awesome! Made my week!

Yep that pan is empty! We can demolish a whole cake pretty easily!

This past week I was thinking about how sometimes when we ask for help or an answer we are really looking to have Heavenly Father do it or take it away. But Heavenly Father wants us to learn for ourselves so instead he gives us challenges and opportunities. Sometimes he asks of us things that we think are pretty big, things we may feel we do not have the knowledge to do or can do. When we turn to Him for help He does not do the task for us or take the task away, He gives us the tools to do the work. There are so many examples of that in the scriptures. Like Moses with helping the Children of Israel through the wilderness, Noah building the Ark and getting all the animals on board, like Alma the Younger and the Sons of Mosiah being sent to teach the gospel to the Lamanites who hated them at that time, and Nephi who was constantly given tasks to stretch him. Nephi was the man! He went clear back to Jerusalem through the wilderness to get the brass plates after just leaving there, made a new bow when his broke so his family had food and kept the faith when his family was complaining, built a boat to take his family to the promised land without having any knowledge of how to do that, so many things were asked of him that he had no idea how he was going to accomplish them. But he went ahead and trusted in the Lord to help him know what he should do. Didn't start complaining about how he did not know how to do it or someone else might be better to do it. He just went and did it with the Lord's help. I love those passages. I am thankful for the scriptures and all that they teach us. I love my Savior and am so thankful for Him and His gospel.
Have a great week.
Elder Davis

Know From Where Your Strength Comes

Dinner with Leticia at Bishop's House

Hey Everyone-
Wow another week has gone by! Hope everyone is doing great. The week was good but challenging. But that is life right? There are constant ups and downs which make us stretch. It is going to be a short email this week. We are meeting up with a member today so we have little time. Teaching has been going good, it is the constant thing in a mission that you are always trying to build your teaching pool. We are teaching some really good people right now. Been traveling a lot in the zone to do divisions and also interviews. I love the opportunities I have in baptismal interviews to hear and see the changes that are taking place as people make the decision to follow Christ. Some of the greatest spiritual experiences I have had have been in those interviews. I feel blessed to have come to know so many great people here in Brazil, people I have taught and people I serve with. I consider those some of the priceless blessings of my mission.

Grabbing Dinner with Elder Jackson and Sisters Ribiero, Azevedo and Janiero after Interviews

Just a quick spiritual thought. As a missionary I love reading the scripture in 3 Nephi 5:13 where Mormon says:

"Behold, I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I have been called of him to declare his word among his people, that they might have everlasting life."

It is a simple but powerful statement in which he testifies of Christ, his own divinity and purpose. I think it is pretty empowering when we know who we are and whose we are and what our mission is. If we can all remember those 3 things on a day to day basis when we encounter decisions or situations we are more calm and at peace and able to handle what comes our way. I hope we all can remember where our strength comes from and the real reason we are here.

Tenha uma boa semana ! (Have a great week.)

Elder Davis

Streets of Limeira

Elder Campos Visit

With Sister and Elder Campos at Missionwide Meeting

Oi todos-
Hope everyone has had a good week. My week was great. We had Elder Campos of the Seventy doing a tour of our mission . He used to be the mission president of the Belem mission here in Brasil. I got to speak with him and his wife a little after our meetings. It was pretty awesome.

Entire Mission with Elder & Sister Campos

This week we also set 6 baptism dates and had 8 people at sacrament meeting so that was super awesome! It is all going really well here in Limeira! We're working hard and we're seeing the Lord's hand in our work. The Lord is blessing us so much here and I am so thankful to Him for that. One guy we are teaching is a youth named Samuel. The lesson we had with him this week was really spiritual and I felt the spirit of the Savior so much with us in that lesson. We actually were supposed to have a lesson with his mom and her two daughters but he was there instead of them for a reason, Heavenly Father places people where we need to be sometimes. When the mom and the daughters weren't home, he let us to come in and we talked to him. He regularly does not stay and listen to the lessons. Instead he goes to his room and stays there until we leave. But this time we talked to him a bit and then he started to speak English with me so we sat and used the opportunity to get to know him by speaking in English with him. Elder Oliveira also knows English very well, almost fluently. So we're talking and Samuel opened up and started to cry as he shared with us some challenges he has. So I asked him, Do you believe in God? Do you believe in Jesus Christ? And their power to overcome any obstacle? He said yes and was very emotional. We then had a good discussion about faith, repentance and the miracles that Christ performed and can perform for us. Following that we gave a blessing to him. We then talked about baptism being a door, that change sometimes does not happen all at once but comes little by little and he must do all he can to show his faith in his actions. It went well and we all felt the spirit that night as we left. So on Sunday we look up and there he is. He never goes to church with his family but this Sunday he was there in the chapel. 9:00 a.m. His family was very impressed that he wanted to go to church. It was a very spiritual and super awesome experience. Miracles are real!

With Elder Costa

Valdir is a another man we're teaching. He is really ready for baptism. We took him to a baptism in another ward so he could see one and we almost had to hold him down so he didn't get in the font. He was ready to be baptized then and there. haha Seriously he wanted to enter. He's going to be baptized this week. He told us at church this week, "Thank you for bringing me here.Thank you very much, I was in need of this all my life. Every week I'm here 9 a.m." Was super cool to see how excited and grateful he was for the gospel. Another guy we are teaching Ronivilson came to church for the first time this week and said to us " I really like it so next week can I visit again? Or is it something you can only do once?" I was like, what!?! Sure you can! We want you to come every week!

It has been a great week and I loved every minute. Our ward is cool and works with us so much. They are really good to us. There's a sister named Mara. We fight (not really fight but you know what I mean) with the sister missionaries over who gets to go to lunch at her house more. She always bakes bread for us. She also always has a family home evening night at her house, without fail, every Monday that we can bring the people we are teaching to. I love her so much. She says that she is our mother in Limeira! haha

Lastly I want to share something I thought a lot about this week. We sang the hymn "Where Can I Turn for Peace?" at one of our meetings and as I listened to the words I thought of the people we were teaching and myself too. It can bring every one peace to know the Savior is there for all of us and made the ultimate sacrifice for all of us. It is so important that we remember when we are in our Gethsemane where we should turn.

Where can I turn for peace?

Where is my solace

When other sources cease to make me whole?

When with a wounded heart, anger, or malice,

I draw myself apart,

Searching my soul?

Where, when my aching grows

Where, when I languish,

Where, in my need to know, where can I run?

Where is the quiet hand to calm my anguish?

Who, who can understand?

He, only One.

He answers privately,

Reaches my reaching

In my Gethsemane, 

Savior and Friend.

Gentle the peace he finds for my beseeching.

Constant he is and kind,

Love without end.

Have a great week!

Elder Davis

Trust and Believe in Him

With Marco (the Ward Mission Leader) and his family

Oi-

It's been a great week! Hope everyone is doing well. It's transfer week and I am leaving Sao Joao da Boa Vista. I love the ward here and am going to miss everyone. I have only been here two transfers but I am excited for the change too. It has been super to work with Elder Kleinkauff and all the missionaries in my district so it will be hard to leave them but change is good too. I am going to Rio Claro zone as a LZ working in Limeira. My new companion is Elder Oliviera. We have 2 districts and 22 missionaries in our zone. Excited to get to work. I have a lot of visits to make today so I am going to try to make this short.

With Sister Nascimiento and Sister Jesus at their investigator's baptism

In Poços de Caldas with Christensen and Ricarte

Lot of good things happening. Ademir is doing well and making great progress. His baptism date is August 19. I won't be here for it but I am so glad he is on the path he is and making the changes he needed in his life. He has made some huge changes, really miraculous changes and he recognizes the help he has gotten as he has tried to change. He knows it is evidence that God does love him and will help him. Tuesday and Wednesday I was with my LZs RIcarte and Christensen in Poco da Caldas for divisions. That was a great couple days, I love those guys and learn a lot from them. Sister DiMartini came up to SJBV for her last week in the mission. She goes home this week and so does Sister Mendez. Both awesome missionaries - they will be missed.

Sao Joao da Boa Vista Zone minus the Elders & Sisters of Mococa

The awesome cheese market in Poços de Caldas

P-Day hike to Aguas de Prata

I wanted to share something that I heard when I recently listened to a Conference talk by Elder Eyring entitled "Walk With Me". In that talk he is talking to priesthood holders in the church and he says "if you feel a little overwhelmed, take that as a good sign. It indicates that you can sense the magnitude of the trust God has placed in you. It means that you have some small understanding of what the priesthood really is." He goes on to talk about the priesthood and how we should strive to understand it and use it to strengthen ourselves and others. Sometimes we do not recognize it but Christ is always there with us. We need to believe and trust in Him and His power which is the priesthood.

Wherever we are in the path of life we need to choose to believe and trust in Him.

"My dear brethren of the priesthood, in many ways, we are like the two disciples who walked the road to Emmaus on that first Easter Sunday. It was Resurrection morning, but they were not yet sure there was a resurrection or what resurrection even meant. They had “trusted that [Jesus of Nazareth] should have redeemed Israel,” but they were “slow of heart to believe” everything the scriptures taught about resurrection. As they walked along and tried to reason it out together, “Jesus himself drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were holden that they should not know him. I testify that when we walk the path of priesthood service, the Savior

Jesus Christ goes with us, for it is His path, His way. His light goes before us, and His angels are round about us. ”

Let's not be "slow of heart to believe" but trust in Him. Our Savior is right there with us. Have a good week.

Elder Davis