21 March 2011 - email

I am still in São Lourenço! I'm still with Elder Lima! We didn't get transferred and new missionaries didn't get transferred here.

I really thought that we'd get more missionaries here (the area is really going great!) Right now we're helping two couples get married and several youths to be baptized.

I found out more about Josanilda this week! She told us that when she was still in spiritualism she went to visit her sister in São Paulo for the first time and the night before she dreamed that she was in the São Paulo airport and no one was there to take her to her sister's house. She began to get nervous and worried about where she should go, or what she should do. Suddenly two  tall men dressed completely in white walked up to her and one asked if she would like to go to her sister's house. She said, "Yes, but I don't know the way." The man told her not to worry, that they would guide her. When she got to her sister's house she woke up. And she said that when she got to São Paulo (she had never seen anything there before) her sister was there and as they walked to her sister's house, she recognized all of the streets. She felt a peace that told her that God would take care of her. Then her sister invited her to visit the church on Sunday. She went and the lesson was about eternal families. This was something that no other church teaches and that she had secretly desired for years and years. From this moment she began to separate from spiritualism, but it took her a year to visit the church again. She decided that she would go to church again and she had a dream again. This time her aunt who was very sick died and she had to tell her aunt that it was her time, but that she (Josanilda) had work to do in this life. She felt strongly that she had to go visit the church of her sister again. She went there and met us (two men dressed in white shirts that reminded her of the dream in São Paulo) and she heard again the same lesson about eternal families that she had heard last year. She decided instantly that she would be baptized, she just waited until she felt that she was prepared. I am so happy to have been a part of that process. Now her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend are getting ready!

You know how everyone at home says that cold weather causes colds? Well here it's HOT weather! I don't know what to do with all of the superstitions I've heard by now. I guess I should just hole up in my house and curl up into the fetal position. All this time I just thought sickness was caused by bacteria!

Elder Page.