Welcoming New Missionaries

January 13, 2015

Today we welcomed 17 new missionaries.  This is my favorite day!  We love going to the airport,  and greeting them outside of Baggage claim!  New Missionaries are the Best.  They bring a strong spirit into the mission and we love it here.  This has been our largest group of New Missionaries to date!  The Cuiabá Mission is growing! 

We pick them up and take them to a Chapel near the Mission Office.  We feed them lunch and go thru an orientation.  Missionaries are introduced to their 1st companion and sent off to the first Area.  Some have an all night bus ride.  Others stay in Cuiaba or Varzea Grande.
70% of our Mission is outside the city here.  Our missionaries get to know the Bus Depot very well.   Our Mission Boundaries are large and we are one of the largest Missions in the Church!  We Love our Mission here and we love our missionaries!  This is a great place to serve the Lord!    Welcome New Missionaries!

Departing Missionarys

January 12, 2015

Transfer week begins with our Departing Missionaries!  We will miss this group.  After spending 2 years and/or 18 months with Elders and Sisters, you witness miracles happen in their lives.  You see them "change" as they take on the mantle of a missionary.  When their mission comes to the end there are always tears as we bid them good-bye!  We love them all and miss them!  For President and I, this is our 23rd Transfer week.  Every time we do not part without tears!

We have a dinner in the Mission Home, a Fireside with our last words of council and each missionaries writes their testimony down on paper which I keep in a book.  This book is something I treasure from our Mission here.  We Love our Missionaries 

God be with you till we meet again!  

Christmas in Cuiabá

December 2014

Christmas in Cuiabá is very Hot!  The weather is generally always 100+ degress.  Lights and Decorations are found in the Stores and Malls.  We do not see Outside Lights on homes.  Christmas trees in homes are usually just a small size tree that sits on a table or in the corner of the room.  It is celebrated very simple here.  It's a very simple way of life.
In the center of Cuiabá there is a Park or Plaza.  Here the city had a large Nativity set up and lights on the trees. It was the only place in the city that you could see the decorations.  Santa was there and the little children also tell Santa what they are hoping for. We went there on Christmas eve to enjoy the people and decorations of the Christmas.  Across the street there is a large Catholic Church where people had gathered for midnight Mass.  Christianity is strong here. 

Fruits of her labor

Elder Neves
In the first transfer, Elder Neves, a new missionaries was sent to São. Mateus. One day at a member's home, Sister Angela began to talk about her mission, specifically about a large family that she helped teach and they were baptized in the city of Guarujá. As the family of Elder Neves is from there, he wrote his sister asking the name of the missionary. She could not remember, but I had some photos. Seeing the pictures, Elder Neves recognized his grandparents, uncles, aunts,  and parents. He served in Sãå Mateus only for one transfer, but it was enough to show the Lord loves us and cares for us. The sister, who taught the family of Elder Neves family now has been blessed by the fruits of her labor. 

Elder J. Santos - is one of our Brazilian missionaries.  He hasn't been here long but was having some health problems with his eyes.   The glasses would cost him $500.  The mission funds do not pay for glasses so we encouraged him to try and get some help from his Home Ward and family from home.  We agreed to help him if he could come up with part of the funds for the cost.  He has been praying what to do and how to find the money for new glasses.  After several weeks or so he shared with us this experience.  "Not know what to do or how I could come up with the money, one day I was going thru my wallet and found an old CC that I had forgotten about.   I didn't even remember having it.   I took the card to the bank to see if there was any money in the acct.  When I checked discovered there was $500 in this acct!!!!!    I was able to afford to get my glasses"  There are many blessings that come to us as we have Faith.  Prayer is real!   When you ask with sincere faith, miracles happen in ways we least expect.

Obediance brings forth blessings, Exact Obediance brings Miracles 

Elder Russell M. Nelson

The following is a letter written to President.  We love it when letters come in like this, read on...
"During this week we had been focusing on helping people go to church. We had visited 24 people and all of them had said they would go to church. I was very excited about the possibility of having a bunch of investigators come. Right now the rainy season is starting. Sunday morning I woke up to hear rain falling very hard outside. This makes it very hard for people to walk, ride bikes and motorcycles to church. I knew that if it continued to rain, not one investigator would come. But then some words that President Reber had told us came into mind. "You can have a miracle any day you want, you just need to plan for it and do your part." So I got out of bed and went to a secluded spot and said a prayer. I told Heavenly Father that we had a lot of investigators that needed to come to church and that I wanted to pray for a miracle that the rain would stop by 7:30 AM and that people would come to church. I told Heavenly Father that I would act as best I could to do my part to make this miracle happen. 7:30 arrived and it was still raining. I got my rain coat, my umbrella and told my companion to get his two umbrellas and that we would go and give two umbrellas to two of investigators and walk with them to church. It would take 30 mins. to walk to our area and then 30 minutes walking back to church. So off we went in the rain. As we were walking, 7:45 the rain stopped, 7:55 the clouds were already breaking up. We began calling all of our investigators to wake them up and remind them about church. We picked up our two investigators (we did not need the umbrellas after all) and headed to the meeting. Imagine our surprise when we arrived there to see four more our our investigators there. Then three more arrived. Then a less-active member and her non-member husband who we have been teaching arrived on their bikes. And at last one of two recent converts that we have in our area. It was a really neat thing. The meeting started and the clouds gathered again and it rained again. The meeting ended, the rain stopped again and everyone was able to go home without any problem. It was a cool thing to see. By praying and asking specifically for a miracle and then acting the best we could, there was nothing that could stop Heavenly Father from letting the miracle happen. Until we were prepared to walk the whole way in the rain, but the Lord truly blessed us with a very tender mercy. We were able to mark three baptism dates yesterday just because of these people coming to church. I love Elder V. Alves. He was totally game to walk in the rain for an hour to go pick up these two investigators of ours. We are really enjoying being companions."

Oliveira family

December 17, 2014

Pres. Oliveira is a Counselor in the Mission Presidency.  He helps us a lot in the South of the Mission.  Pres. and Sis. Oliveira have become dear friends of ours too.  We love this family! 

Sister Oliveira helped me put this paper tree together displaying all the pictures of our Missionaries in the South! 

Our Christmas Zone Conferences
December 16, 18, 2015 

This is the only time of the year that we come together having 2 Zone Conferences.  We meet with the 4 Zones in the North of our Mission,

then we come together having the Conference with the 4 Zones in the South.

We celebrated in the Morning with President challenging all our Missionaries to be Consecrated Missionaries

We Consecrated a vial of Oil - Each Missionary went home with a personal vial of our Consecrated Oil

We then celebrated the 3 Gift's of Christmas.  It has become our tradition these past 3 years.

The 1st Gift is a gift the Missionaries give to the Savior - Each Missionary was challenged to give a Baptism, a true Convert.

The 2nd Gift was a gift that the Missionaries give to the Mission President - Each Missionary was asked to memorize a favorite Scripture - they all recited to President and Sister Reber 

The 3rd Gift was a gift to the Missionaries from President and Sister Reber -  This year we played the story of the Nativity

As a gift to all the Missionaries we gave them each a MissionTemple Recommend Holder, and Pop up Clothes Hamper 

After lunch we asked each Zone to share a Talent with us.  They shared music, skits and even a little Magic.  We have a talented group of Missionaries!

We closed the Conference talking about the Living Water

More Zone Conference Pictures