Happy New Year!

Dear Family!!! 

It was absolutely wonderful, fantastic, and amazing to talk to you on Christmas Day!!! I am unbelievably excited to see you all soon in person!!! But, until then, I have 51 days until I will be home and am trying to do everything that I need to here. 

Just to re-cap a bit, I was transferred to a new area about a week moved to and a half ago. My companion is now Sister Galarza. She is from Argentina and has a very cool story.She was baptized and then one year after that she decided to serve a mission, so she has more time as a missionary, then as a normal member of the church. She has a strong testimony and loves sharing her story with other people, so that is good! We are a bit different, so we´ve had some great opportunities to learn, grow, and be better people. Sure still have a long way to go though. 

Not a lot has happened since I talked to you guys on Thursday. Our main investigator that we had with a baptismal date moved to a different city to get surgery so she is not in our area as a  and can´t accept visits from the missionaries for a little while. :P 

We did find a new family though!! We got a referral the other day so we went to contact it! It was a whole family!!!!!!!! :D :D :D :DWe will be going back on Saturday and I am extremely excited to teach them!!!! 

Sorry this email is so short, but not a lot has happened since I talked to you all! 

Sister Beth Spencer

Camera Card Miracle!

Dear Family!!! 

Well this week has been a bit different, but we´ve seen some miracles as well! I´ll give you a quick update since I don´t have a ton of time. 

We found this new investigator named Bianca. I think that she is 19 years old. We taught the first lesson to her and she said that she wanted to read the Book of Mormon and pray. If she gets an answer that the Book of Mormon is true, she will be baptized on the 3rd of January!!!! 

We made friends with a bus driver and so at night he will give us rides because we are servants of the Lord! It is wonderful and really helps us out!!! I am super excited about this!!!!! :) 

I thought my camera card broke this week and that I lost all of my photos. Boy oh boy was I praying like crazy. I found someone who I trust to fix my camera. I should be able to recover most of the pictures that I had! BLESSING FROM THE LORD!!!! 

Our investigator Priscilla has a baptismal date for January 3rd! She needs to get married first, so we might have to push it back a little bit. :P 

Something funny that happened this week. There was one day where we were trying to do a bunch of contacts. We saw a huge group of people so I decided that I would be brave and go up and talk to them. I had good intentions, but it sure didn´t turn out so well. I said that we were missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and described where it was using the bus terminal as a reference and asked if they had heard of the church before. There was a moment of silence and then one of them said that I was speaking German. Another said that I was asking for directions to the bus terminal, and then another said that I was asking how to get to the church. Oh boy. I know that I have a ton of room to improve on my Portuguese, but turns out that they were also drunk. My companion and I got a good laugh out of it, and the people did to. Gotta love learning a new language!

8 more weeks to finish out strong!!!

I love you all TONS TONS TONSSSS!!!!! Thank you so much for all of the love and support that you give me. I am ever so grateful for it! 

I know that this church is true. That Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer. That He died for us and lived a perfect example so that we can be with our families forever, repent of our sins and be forgiven, and have a hope for a better world. I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ blesses families, individuals, and the whole word. I am ever so grateful for Jesus Christ and this time that we have to celebrate his birth. 

http://www.mormon.org/christmas?cid=HPFR112814529

All my love! 

Sister Beth Spencer

Moved P-day for the Holidays

Dear Family!

Well it is was sure sad not to have p-day on Monday. It is always nice to have a break in the week to hear from you all. Needless to say, I am VERY grateful for p-day today!! 

This past week we have definitely seen some miracles. This past Sunday we actually had a baptism!! It was for a 10 year old girl named Ana Julia. Her parents were recently baptized and she attends church with them. Ana Julia didn´t want to get baptized earlier because she does not feel like she had received an answer that she should be baptized. She´s quite the diligent little girl though. She reads her scriptures every day and prays. Sister A. Silva and I decided that we would go over there and teach her about the promptings of the Holy Ghost and how she can recognize her answer. Annnndddd then she was baptized on Sunday and it was wonderful!!! 

This past week it has been so easy to see how the Lord answers prayers for the little things. We had two experiences this past week that I thought were pretty cool. The first was that we were headed over to a member´s house. The connection on the phone was awful, we couldn´t hear what she was saying, and she couldn´t hear us, and then the phone call died. We couldn´t really wait any longer because we had commitments later on in the day so we decided to get on the bus and call her like crazy. We got on the bus with the other set of sisters in our ward. One sister was calling over and over trying to get a connection, and the rest of us were just praying that it would all work out. Well, the phone call finally went through after 20 minutes and it was the perfect timing. The very next stop was the one that we needed to get off. I know that that phone call going through was an answer to all of the prayers that we were saying. 

Another experience that we had with prayer was right after district meeting. We were talking to our leaders about dessert and how we really wanted a dessert. One of the people pulled out his planner and asked what we wanted. I said sorvete and my companion said Mousse de limão. He wrote those two things down and said that he would pray for us. I didn´t really think too much of it till we got to our lunch appointment for the day. Guess what we had for dessert.... sorvete, with the flavor of mouse de limão. Specific prayers sure do work!!

This week has been a bit hard with the fact knwoing that I had the chance to come home in a week and I decided to stay, but I things are still going good. My companion and I get along really well so that is good!

I know that this church is true and that our Savior lives. I know that this is His church and that everyone can pray and receive an answer through the Holy Ghost. I am so grateful for this Christmas season and that I can remember that only through my Savior and Redeemer can I be with my family forever, overcome the difficulties in life, and have hope for a better world.

I love you all tons and am so grateful for you! 

I´m in JUNDIAÌ!

Dear Family!! 

Well, we had transfers this week and I am now in Jundiaí.My ward is called Novo Horisante. It is about an hour away from Campinas. My companion is Sister A. Silva. She is from Brasil and is absolutely wonderful!! I love being her companion. We are currently white-washing an area and it is definitely a bit of a challenge. The missionaries that were in this area previously did not keep the area book updated (area book is where missionaries are supposed to put all the information about investigators, members, areas to go, maps, etc). So, this week has been a bit difficult trying to find people to work with. We´ve taught a bunch of first lessons to people, but we are habing trouble finding people with real intent. Either the people don´t want to read, aren´t willing to pray, or they just don´t care. Blahhhh! Super frustrating! 

As for Thanksgiving. Well that was a bit of an interesting day. Since I from America, me and another Sister (Sister Acevedo... also American) had to go to this school and teach everyone about American traditions for Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving, don´t get me wrong, but it is hard to talk about Thanksgiving for 45 minutes in English with people who are learning English. The school had a bunch of questions for us to answer, thank goodness... but at the same time, there were a lot of questions that I did not know. For example, one of the questions was: Why does the president pardon the turkey. It was my turn to answer the question, I said that I didn´t know, but assumed it was because the president had the authority to do so and he wanted to let one turkey live..... yeah. sure was interesting. But that was it. Ate normal Brasilian food for Thanksgiving... and no, I am not tired of it... yet. :) 

Cool part about the week: President gave permission to Sister A. Silva and I to go to the baptism of Allan.... It was really special because we both had the chance to teach him! We left our house at 4 in the afternoon and just barely made it on time for the baptism at 8 o´clock... gotta love efficient transportation!

Well sorry this letter is a bit shorter today... not a ton of things have happened this week... we are mostly working on trying to find new people to work with and get to know are area more. I love you all TONSSSSSS!!!! 

I am praying for you! 

MUCH LOVE, 

Sister Spencer

Last Week's Post . . . Pre-Thanksgiving!

Dear Family!! 

Wow, what a week! It has just flown by and it has been an AWESOME week. So many things have happened so I´ll just tell you some of the highlights. 

ALLAN WILL BE BAPTIZED THIS SATURDAY!!!!! Yeah, it´s happenning and I am SUPER excited for him. He has really put forth a lot of effort to get to this point and I know that he will continue to grow and to learn. His son, Natan will baptize him. Without a doubt it will be a VERY special moment. 

Evans is still preparing for batism on the 6 of December. He is reading and praying daily. Even with the language barrier, he is just diong great! He understands what we say, thinks about it, and then comes back with real constructive questions. It really shows that he has real intent and a sincere heart. It is so great!! 

One thing that Sister Mitchell and I have been trying to do is to follow all of the good thoughts that we have. With this, we saw one miracle in particular this week. We were going to contact a less active member of the ward that lived in an apartment complex. When we got there, a woman came to the gate and we asked if she could go knock on this member´s door and see if we could visit. She did, and came back and said that he was sleeping and immediately turned around and started to walk away. We had this thought that we needed to talk to her, so we called her back and started up a conversation. Because we followed this small thought, we found out that she was a member of the church, baptized 6 years ago, but hadn´t gone for 4 years. We got her information and will be going to visit her. She isn´t quite to the point of wanting to go to church yet, but we did invite her to an English class that we have and she seemed SUPER interested in it. This was definitely a miracle and a blessing. Always follow the small thoughts! 

Well, this week Sister Mitchell and I got burned from mango milk. Who would have thought, right?? So you know how if you put lemon juice on your skin and then walk in the sun it burns your skin so you get a blister?? Well it´s the same thing with mango milk. This week for one of our dinner hours Sister Mitchell and I decided that we wanted to collect mangos to eat later on in the week. So, we found a lovely park with mango trees and began the process of collecting a mountain of mangos to eat later. Brilliant, right? Yeah, I still think so. Well, with all of those mangos fresh plucked from the tree, some of the juice from the stems got on our skin and when we walked in the sun, well.... we got burned and then found out later that night. Regardless though, I still am VERY excited to eat the mangos. 

One of our recent converts, Almir, is really an example to me of a member missionary. He was baptized about a month ago, but he is just on fire!! He talks with everyone about the gospel and defends the church right and left! This past week he gave us a referral for the person who cuts his hair! Wow, when i return from my mission, I sure hope that I can continue to talk to everyone about the gospel in small ways like this! 

Well with all of this great work and all of the things that I have learned in this area, I found out yesterday that I will be transferred. I´m a bit sad about leaving.... but I know that my new area will be good for me! 

I love you all tons!!!