Monday, May 4, 2015

Feb 2015



Feb 3- Transferencia
Hey there my wonderful family!! I am just getting on to inform you that I got transferred!! I was kind of expecting it and it happened, I will be going back to be a zone leader in a zone here in the Capitol called Pirituba!!! I am really excited, I will be the companion of Elder Lopes, a missionary from Cape Verde. So there you go, i won´t be getting on on Saturday anymore, just on Mondays, for the rest of my mission!! Love you!!

Elder Carney

Open our Mouths!!


Feb 9- Pirituba!!
Mais uma semana boa!! Things are going well, this last week was crazy! On tuesday we had transfers and I got here to my new area, Pirituba! It is in the Capital and is only like an hour from my old areas near the office by subway and train. I am serving with Elder Lopes, who is from Cape Verde. He is an awesome missionary, pretty quite but a really solid missionary. In Cape Verde they speak Portuguese and Criol natively so he has been teaching me some criol. We are working really hard and we really want to help our zone fulfill it´s potential and baptize a lot. We have some really really great missionaries here serving with us and I know most of them very well already. Our zone is all elders and there are 7 sets. One of the areas is Brasilândia, which is this giant favela here in São Paulo. Last week we started working hard, we are basically starting over and finding all new investigators. We have been praying a lot to be able to find the people that are ready to receive us right now, we found some good families. We also had Leadership Counsel which went really well, we were able to be taught and to counsel together as a mission to see what we need to do in our respective zones to progress more. We are really striving to be more effective and multiply our efforts as missionaries through working with members and through effective planning. We are teaching this less active family, Carlos and Gilmara. They are a young couple who have been less active a couple years but are really great. Their daughter and son are helping them come back to church and we are preparing their son Carlos to be baptized! They are really great, we were able to share a message with them adn share a video from the Church´s website, it is that mormon message from President Uchtdorf about Your Potential, Your Priveledges, and we had a good discussion about what was their potential as a family and if they were doing the things right now to live up to that potential. The Spirit taught them really well and on Sunday they came to church for the first time in a really long time!!!!! We are excited, we really love this family. We also are teaching some people who live in really difficult situations and truly want to overcome the challenges that face them. I am really liking this area and it has been going well thus far. We planned really well with members and our investigators to help people cometo church and unfortunately several people who we planned on didn´t come, so any prayers to help us bring people to church and to baptize would be greatly appreciated!! I am really enjoying this area and this week we will be doing exchanges with some great elders in Brasilândia and also Elder Albuquerque who is in an area called Freguesia do Ó! So there you go! Just loving the work as always, it is so wonderful to be a missionary!!
Have a great week and open your mouths!!
 
Elder Carney


Feb 17- Pico de Jaragua!!
Well it was an interesting and very good week! We worked hard as always this last week, we are really striving to consecrate ourselves and to help the missionaries in our zone to become consecrated as well. We decided to fast as a zone and presidente joined us as well. We ended up fasting on the hotest day of the week and it was actually really hard but it helped us to become more united in our purpose and also more united with the Lord. We were excited as Carlos Henrique got baptized this last week!!!!!!!!! We were super psyched, his dad was given permission to baptize him as well and so it was a family affair, his mom gave the spiritual thought about baptism, and his sister gave the prayer!! It was so wonderful to see this little family happy and to see Carlos excited about getting baptized. It was a great experience and the parents are excited to work and serve, his mom was telling the Primary President in one of our lessons how she wants a calling becuase she had never had one before and she doesn´t want to go to church just to be a bench warmer!! We just love this family and it was a result of a lot of prayer and action on their part. ]
This weekend also started Carnival! Last year I was in Itapetininga and there wasn´t a lot of action or things going on but this time it is different since I am here in the Capitol; Haha on friday we were teaching a woman named Silmara, she actually studies theology adn is a missionary for her church, well it was a really good lesson and the spirit was present when we heard a bunch of noise getting closer. Haha it was a block party for Carnival and it passed right in front of her house, I was and still am so amazed that human beings are capable of producing so much noise!!! Haha for like 5 minutes we had to just sit and wait and laugh a little bit because we couldn´t hear anything!!! But we waited it out and then we had a good lesson. Other than that there hasn´t been much of a difference, a lot of the stores are closed and people are traveling, but that´s it. Oh, that is also why I am emailing you all today, yesterday every place that had computers was closed and today as well, but President told us we could use a members home today so this wonderful family that helps us out a ton is letting us send email from here. So yeah, sorry about that!!
On Monday we were able to climb what is called the Pico de Jaraguá, which is this mountain that is the highest point in São Paulo. It is a part of our zone so we asked permission to climb it as a zone adn it was awesome!! You start out on this jungle trail and then when you get up to the top you can see all of the city which just goes on forever!! Haha yesterday it was actually pretty rainy and cloudy so up top we couldn´t see anything! My companion and I shared a spiritual thought and at the end we opened it up for some other missionaries to bear their testimonies and at the end the clouds opened up and we were able to see everything, it was beautiful. Also, there were monkeys, lemurs, and these ant-eater type things. It was pretty fun. I am grateful we were able to do it.]
Last week we also met this family that is really great, Sinésio and Naldeia. Naldeia is a less active member whose sister referred us to her. Sinésio is going through some serious health problems right now and really has a lot of desire to follow Christ. We visited them last week adn Sinésio accepted to be baptized! Now they just need to get married, we are really praying and working with them to have that happen, it is a little dificult because sometimes Sinésio gets pretty sick but we have faith that they will be able to as quickly as possible. 
We also are teaching this young woman named Natalia that has a baptismal date for this weekend, she almost got baptized this last Sunday but didn´t because most of her family traveled including her parents so we changed the date to this weekend. 
We are just loving it here and working hard, I love this area and I love the mission!]
Have a great week and please remember to open your mouths!

Elder Carney



Here is a lemur that liked my knee!! Or possibly the food that was on my knee!! But I finally met King Julian!!

I have more pictures but I won´t send them, sometimes in the computer places here there are viruses that destroy your memory card, haha so I won´t be sending a lot of pictures for a while! 






Feb 23- Bencaos
Yet another great work filled week in Pirituba! As always I am loving it here and we are working our tails off! Also... CONGRATS BRADLEY ON GETTING YOUR MISSION CALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
Haha That is just so crazy! I can´t believe that you will be going to Chile!!! I could have sworn that you were going to come to Brasil, but that´s ok, at least it is the same continent. And actually I am pretty sure that there is a young man in a branch that I served in here that is also going to that mission! So that´s pretty fun! 
This week I was able to go to another area to do splits with a set of missionaries, I went to Freguesia do Ó, which is the area next to ours. I worked with an elder called Elder Taveira, who is from Recife. It was great working with them in their area, it is always a little interesting going into a different area becuase I didn´t know anyone and I didn´t know the area, but that is ok! We worked really hard and marked a few baptismal dates together. One of them was this young man named Guilherme, he has a lot of faith, he is only 15, but he has a strong desire to be baptized and to follow Christ. I found out yesterday that he went to church and loved it! Also while I was there I drank this shake made out of açaí, guaraná, and peanut!! Haha it was wonderful. 
Here in our area we are working a lot with the members, we are teaching the son of a recent convert. Renato is his name and we are now teaching his son as well! Both are loving the Book of Mormon and we are working really hard to help them to get baptized, unfortunately they couldn´t come to church yesterday but will this next week. 
Gabriel and Vitor are really progressing well, they both came to church yesterday and really enjoyed it. There are a lot of young men in our ward so they helped out a lot and really involved them in teh classes. Two weeks ago we also had found a young man named Wilian, who had moved here recently from a different part of São Paulo. He moved here to restart his life and to really get on a good path, we he had said he would go to church and ended up not going, so that bummed us out and this last week we weren´t able to get into contact with him, until the end of the week when we stopped by. He was home and apologized as he had traveled that weekend but was really wanting to go to church and get baptised still!! Haha he is really excited for his baptism and yesterday he woke up super early and was ready waiting for us so that way we could walk to church with him. He is 22 and really enjoyed the class that was given in Elder´s Quorum as well. We feel very blessed, we had a lot of investigators at church and we asked the bishopric to announce the baptism of several of them during Sacrament meeting and they really enjoyed that. We are just really praying hard and working hard to help these people come unto Christ. It is inspiring to see them make changes in their lives to do this. 
This week the assistentes might be coming to our zone to help us out, so that will be exciting, I should be seeing and working with Elder Marchant which will be good! 
Other than that, it wasn´t a really different week! We are just working hard!! 
Have a fantastic week everyone, and remember to open your mouths and invite!
Elder Carney 


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