"O Lord, I have trusted in thee, and I will trust in thee forever. I will not put my trust in the arm of flesh ... Yea, I know that God will give liberally to him that asketh, ... therefore I will lift up my voice to thee ... my rock and mine everlasting God. Amen." (2 Nephi 4: 34-35)

Friday, November 6, 2015

June 29, 2015

Hey everybody!!!

My first week here in Sao Mateus has been awesome! My new companion Elder Da Silva is great too, also super old... haha he is 25, which is a grandpa out here! He has a great work ethic though and is super humble. By the end of my first day with him I felt really impressed with the Christ-like attributes that he has. All of the love that he has just seems so natural. I strive to be Christ-like, but it seems like I always have to catch myself and correct my actions. For him it was just a stream of goodness. I think will have a great opportunity this transfer to learn from his example. And just a little bit of background info on Elder Da Silva: he is from Rio Janeiro, has six months on the mission, and almost went pro playing soccer. But. because of a knee injury he couldn´t. He is the second youngest of five kids in his family. And, he has a brother who served a mission.

During this first week here in Sao Mateus I had the chance to get to know a ton of people. Which is awesome but also kind of annoying because trying to remember Brazilian names is still super hard for me. So I usually end up asking people what their name is about 10 times before I remember it, but they are usually nice about it. While getting to know the members here in Sao Mateus i was really impressed with the youth here. They are incredible! For such a small group to have 12 youth that are actively engaged in seminary and other activities is incredible. And the best thing is that these youth help us get in to their families and start teaching them! This week we started teaching two brothers, Daniel and Gabriel, and their family. When we sat down to teach the whole family the mom fired about a hundred questions at us. Luckily we were able to answer them all and I could tell that the spirit touched her and her husband. They told us they would go to church this coming week with their sons, which I am sure will start to bring about a big change in their lives.

Other than the youth here in Sao Mateus I am enjoying helping out more with the organization of church. Because the membership is so small the missionaries end up organizing a lot of activities. Every week we have seminary, a movie night and an English class, so there are always plenty of things to stay busy with.

I am loving it here in Sao Mateus and I can tell that we are going to help out with the great work here. I am super excited with this transfer! I hope everyone has another great week!

Love,

Elder Rice