Stuff!

Dearest Família,



We were greatly blessed this week.
Firstly, we´ve been teaching a member´s next door neighbor. As we´ve been teaching her, she has received a spiritual witness of the truth of the Book of Mormon, and Saturday she was baptized. We now are teaching her younger brother and we are helping her mom to quit smoking.
We finally came in contact with a less active sister. She had lost contact with the church shortly after she had gotten married to a nonmember, and had moved. She´s back in Uberaba now and she wants her husband and two sons to get baptized! We invited them to the baptism this weekend and they came! I think that one of the hardest areas of our work is finding men and families to teach and now we´re finding both.
Something that I have gained a testimony of this week is; that people usually won´t change unless you invite them to. The member, who is the neighbor of our baptism, has been a member for about a year, and has had a nose piercing this whole time. I asked her why she had it, and she said that she liked it. I read her 2 Nephi 13 and then she went to the back room. We continued teaching her neighbor and about a half hour later she came back without the piercing. She said that it had taken her awhile to pull it out and that she had to use a clippers to cut it.
We were walking to an appointment, but couldn´t find the house, so we decided to visit a less active family that lived nearby. The family consists of the mom and her two small children. Apparently, she´s been saying for years that she wants to come back to church, but no one has seen her promises come to fulfillment. The members had lost faith in her, but this Sunday as we were going to get our investigators, we were met with the beautiful site of this less active sister and her two children walking up the hill to church.
Yesterday morning I completed our zones challenge to read the Book of Mormon in five weeks, which is really hard when you only have one hour of personal study time. This book is true!!! If you haven´t read it, read it!
Today is the start of a new transfer and I´m really hoping that I stay in the Vallim de Melo ward.
Life is great. The gospel is true.
Love,
Elder David Short

My mission address is:

Elder David Short

Rua 18 No. 110 Sala 1105 a 91107

Ed. Business Center Setor Oeste

Goiânia - GO 74120-080

Feliz Pascoa!!!

Dear Family,
It is a great joy to celebrate this time of year that we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
I have to been led to reflect on his sacrifice for us, that makes us at-one with God.
I especially like the scripture in Alma 7:11-14.
This last week was incrivel. We worked our ties off teaching people and when Sunday came around there were those who broke our hearts, by deciding to play in the river, rather than go to church. I imagine that river to be like the river of sin in Lehi’s dream. When we got to church, we saw that only two of our investigators had come, but then we were thrilled to discover that many members had brought their friends. We had seven investigators in total at church. I love our members here. We’ve starting to have so much success, because of the help of the diligent members in the ward and stake.
Last P-day we decided to enjoy our lunch, so we made pizzas.
Our slightly interesting experience we had this week, was that we were given money to buy our almo on Friday, but Friday was
Sexta do Paix, which meant that everything was closed. After food hunting we found a mini-mart that was open, so we bought cold cereal and milk. We felt American eating cereal for lunch.
The tradition in Brazil is, instead of giving jelly beans and chocolate bunnies, they give each other chocolate eggs. Last year I wasn’t very good at economizing my finances, but this year I felt like splurging a little, but that’s when I found out that the egg I wanted was 30 reais ($17). I will forgo the chocolate egg once again. One of our recent converts did give us a box of chocolate.
We a funny experience the past week. We were asking a member for referrals, when she responded: “I don’t have anyone. I asked all my friends if they want to get baptized, and they all said no.” We explained that she was skipping a couple steps that lead to baptism, but we liked her enthusiasm.
Time is running out.
I loves yous.
Elder David Short

PS Write me a letter peoples. You know who you are.

My mission address is:

Elder David Short

Rua 18 No. 110 Sala 1105 a 91107

Ed. Business Center Setor Oeste

Goiânia - GO 74120-080

We Came, We Saw, We Listened to a Prophet´s Voice

This last conference was amazing!
The first thing that popped out to me was when President Monson said that in this conference we could receive answers to our questions. As I listened to the talks, I found my questions answered.
We were greatly blessed as Americans, because the stake president let us use his office to watch the conference in English. So during conference the seven of us Americans in our zone watched conference in an air conditioned room. Conference was paradise.
We were fortunate to have investigators at conference, because the stake center is 45 minutes away for those who have to walk, and they all walk.
We had ward family home evening this week and I made brownies. I think that I should stop making things for the activities, because now all the sisters in the ward want us to come over for us to teach them how to cook American desserts.
We held a zone blitz in our area this week. All the other Elders came to work in Vallim de Melo for a day. Everyone was assigned to a neighbored and we tracted the frosting out of our area. A lot of the elect were found including: Less active families, a man whose been reading the book of Mormon (without anyone telling him to) and many others. We´re worried that the church won´t be able to pay the water bill.
Joking set aside, we shall be greatly blessed.
Loves you all.
Love
Elder David Short

Dois Milagres!

Dear Family,
We have been immensely blessed this week. Last Sunday we were blessed with a large number of investigators at sacrament, but as the new week began, we had no one to be baptized. I believe that it was on Tuesday that we visited a less active family with a member. The family had a young daughter that hadn´t been baptized, so the member (also being the primary president) asked if we could teach her so that she could get baptized. The parents allowed us to teach her and she was baptized Saturday.
Our second miracle happened on Friday. There was another young person in the ward who had been baptized, in another city, but he hadn´t been confirmed and there wasn´t a baptismal record. He was also baptized Saturday, and they both were confirmed Sunday.
We started the week with nothing, but the Lord blessed us for our diligent efforts and the miracles came.
That´s all I have time for today. I try to write a little quicker next week.
Love,
Elder David Short

PS I also included a picture of what happened after we got caught in the rain.

My mission address is:

Elder David Short

Rua 18 No. 110 Sala 1105 a 91107

Ed. Business Center Setor Oeste

Goiânia - GO 74120-080

Workin Hard

Dearest Family,
To start off...
This Tuesday we were given a new program from the mission called "Encontrar os Eleitos" or find the elect. This program is given to the members, for them to pray and make lists of people with whom we can share the gospel. Its a really awesome program and I'm looking forward to seeing to the blessings that come from it.
We met with little success while tracting on Tuesday, so we were walking by a cookie(not the typical American kind) factory and the owner gave us a free sack of the defective ones, which made up for the day.
Wednesday, I had teamups with Elder Wood; he's from Oregon, but not the part that likes the Ducks. The day was awesome, and would have been incredible, but Elder Wood had a score of blisters on his feet and wasn't very capable of walking very well, but we had success anyway.
We got a referral this week from a less-active member whose wife wants to learn about the church. They're really great, but they're not married yet and they'll have to wait another two months to tie the knot.
Nothing too too exciting happened this week, but we were thrilled to have a bunch of investigators at church and we were able to teach a bunch of lessons with members this week.
We're hauling to have some more baptisms before the end of the month.
Loves you alls,
Elder David Short

Batismo!

Well this week had some awesomeness, as we had a baptism. We taught and prepared our investigator in record timing being that she told us that she wanted to get baptized last Sunday and we taught her everything before Saturday.
The baptism itself was pretty awesome. We finally remembered to bring some inspirational music to listen to during the clothing change. Once again I made chocolate cake for dessert, and everyone loved it.
Tuesday, we found out that we would be having a special stake fireside with our mission president. We were responsible for inviting everyone in the ward to come, so we did a little extra walking to get everyone notified as fast as possible. Last night we had the fireside and the main topic was how to help obtain a temple in Brasilia. We had four speakers during the fireside. Our first speaker was President Rezende, the first counselor in our mission presidency (I didn’t know that we had a mission presidency until yesterday). President Rezende talked about church attendence, prayer and fasting as sacred responsibilities, and that if fail in these responsibilities we need to repent just like any other transgression. I thought back to the brother of Jared and how he was chastened for those very same transgressions.
Sister Prieto was the second speaker and she spoke on the blessings that we receive from the temple.
In President Prieto’s talk, he showed a clip from Hercules when Hercules goes to the temple of Zeus to find his identity. He quickly learns that he is a son of God and that he needs to become a true hero to return to live with his father. He is then instructed to seek out a trainer of heroes. President explained that we are like Hercules and that we need to be trained as well; that’s why we have bishops, stake presidents, teachers and missionaries.
After President’s talk, all the missionaries in Uberaba sang We Are All Enlisted.
The last talk was by the Stake President, and he spoke about tithing. I was really excited after the meeting when one of our recent converts came up to us and asked where the tithing slips were.
This past week was full of blessing and this week will be even better.
“Thus on to eternal perfection”
Love,
Elder David Short

Gratidão!

Dear Família,
First I would like to explain that last p-day I went on a cooking frenzy. I first made pancakes for breakfast, fish for lunch, chicken and noodles for our lunch the next day, snickerdoodles for the ward family home evening and stove top kettle corn. Maybe I was just bored, but the temptation to cook overcame me.
We had the ward family home evening on Wednesday. We watched part of the Testaments, and then Elder Lindsey and I were in charge of the games. We taught the kids duck duck goose, but they had trouble pronouncing goose, so instead they´d just whack the persons head harder. No one was seriously injured. Everyone loved my snickerdoodles and the bishop´s wife now wants me to get married with a Brazilian so that we can combine our cultural flavors. I told her that I couldn´t think about that right now.
Our district meeting this week paid homage to Elder Dias who would soon be leaving us. We held a wailing in his honor.
The topic discussed in out district meeting was that of gratitude in our work. We talked a lot about the dangers of pride and how we have to remember the hand of the Lord in all our success.
After our district meeting, Elder Lindsey decided to try something new in our missionary work. We decided that after every lesson (successful or not) we would say a short prayer of gratitude, for the opportunity to teach that household. After we started to apply more gratitude in our work, the blessings started flooding in around us.
I don´t have the time to explain all the miracles that we´ve seen this week, but to share just a few:
We found a family from Paraguay that had previously talked with missionaries, but hadn´t had the opportunity to visit the church before.
A man stopped us in the store and asked us where we´re from. We taught his family and he and his wife came to church Sunday.
Tracting we found a couple that was attending church in São Paulo and hadn´t gotten baptized, because they need to get married.
The greatest miracle that we saw came on Sunday. A member stopped us and said that her sister in law wants to get baptized. We asked her if this was true and she said it was. Her friend, that was standing next to her, then said that she wanted to get baptized too. We marked the date for this coming Saturday.
The Lord blesses those that thank him!
Love,
Elder David Short