Hey,

I can’t believe the day finally came. Transfers happened this Saturday and Sunday. I will be staying in Maio and Elder Christensen will serve his last transfer in Mosteiros (my 2nd area of the mission). I can’t really describe how much I love Elder Christensen. He has become one of my best friends. I have spent 9 months of my mission with him, through the struggles and the tears and success and the heartbreaks and the stress and everything. I have passed some of the most memorable moments of my life with this Elder and I love him. I’m so grateful the Lord gave me the chance to serve with him. I have learned so much and grown so much. I will never forget the things that we experienced. I will never forget him.

However, I will be receiving a super awesome new companion named Elder Acord. I have met him and talked to him a decent amount of times at Zone Leader Councils and at Zone Conference and he is a super cool Elder. I can already tell we are going to get along super well and I really think we will have a lot of success. I’m so excited to see what happens. I just came on the boat yesterday with Elder Christensen and the 2 sisters to come get our companions. We will be heading on a plane (10 minutes flight) to take us to Maio tomorrow. Should be awesome!!

It was kind of a short week because we were in Praia last week for zone conference and came back to the area in the middle of the week. We have been teaching this woman named Elizia. We have been teaching her for quite some time now. She has promised us that she would come to church, but never came. She even told us that the Sundays before she would get all ready for church and just sit in her house. She didn’t know why she couldn’t leave, but she just didn’t. We taught her these week we our recent convert Pedro. When we invited her to come to church, Pedro offered to pass by her house on Sunday to pick her up. This Sunday, after so much work and so many unfulfilled invited, Pedro brought Elizia to church. It was a beautiful sight.

Since we don’t have internet in our church at the moment, we weren’t able to watch General Conference this last week, however, this week we downloaded all of the session of GC onto a pin drive in Portuguese and this Saturday and Sunday we watched all 4 sessions. These members only have 2-4 months as members and they hungered to hear the words of living Prophet. They understood the magnitude of hearing the words of a prophet, which are truly the same words of God. At each session we had around 25 people. At church this Sunday, we finally broke the record and reached 28 people in the sacrament meeting. It was a wonderful sight. I will send a picture.

 I can’t even describe the love that I have gained for General Conference. The mission has helped me to realize the absolute importance the words of these prophets, apostles and seventies have to offer. These men are called of God. Called to reveal the true and pure doctrines of Jesus Christ and bear a sacred witness of His Holy name. These words uttered by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit are words of Christ that contain in them the guide to eternal life. There is absolutely no other thing more important that we can do with our time than study, ponder, and apply the words of these inspired men. What a great privilege it is to have revelation through holy messengers to lead us in these latter days – “We thank thee O God for a Prophet´´

I’m so excited to stay in Maio for my 5th transfer, should be a blast!

 Love,

Elder Rice

HEY!!!

This is the last week before transfers!!! This transfer has just flown by. I have been with Elder Christensen for a total of 5 transfers (7 and a half months) and lived with him for 9 months. I’m not so sure if we are going to be staying for a 6th transfer. I love him with all my heart and he is an incredible companion!

This week has flown by. This week we got a new group leader. Our old group leader has been in Praia and hasn’t really helped at all. But , just yesterday the stake president arrived to ordain 2 more Melchizedek priesthood elders to the office of an Elder (Kakaka, and Ta). And he also came to call Ta to be the new group leader!!!! Ta is so qualified. He has an incredible testimony, he loves the work, he always is teaching with us, he is inspiring, the members love him, he is loving, it’s going to be perfect. Ta is so excited to magnify his office and help with the growth of the Kingdom of God. Im so happy for him, he is going to a great job, and the work should really just continue to grow and progress.

 We had another 27 people in sacrament meeting, it should have been a lot more, but a few people just didn’t show up. The Stake President says it shouldn’t be long before the branch is made. We are just waiting for all the papers to process. Right now we are currently at around 15 active members, 7 Melchizedek priesthood holders, and 4 women baptisms. The Work is not easy but it is still pressing along.

We are now in Praia, we are here for Zone Conference. We took a 4 hour boat ride to get here, it was horrible haha. Me and Elder Christensen are going to give a training about the Book of Mormon in front of 3 zones, it should be awesome!!! SUPER excited!!!

Love,

Elder Rice

Nhos sta diret!?!?

It’s been such an incredible week! I love serving here in Maio! I love our recent converts, they are like our best friends. I can’t describe how awesome these people are. They have left everything behind, their old habits, addictions, friends, and family, to serve the Lord. They are so incredible.

We had a super awesome Family Home Evening at the church this week. We talked about the importance of choosing good friends that have the same standards that we have. The problem here in Maio is that EVERYONE talks. Everyone is always talking bad and criticizing the church and trying to take our members off of the path. It’s so important to choose friends that will be good influences and help us to better than who we are. If they don’t help us to be better, they are going to make us lower our standards and become worse, be very careful. Afterward we played Charades and everyone loved it. People walking on the street were looking into the building and were super interested so we invited them in to play with us and eat some cookies. It was a spectacular moment.

 One of our recent converts, Kakaka is on fire. We taught him and his friend Gilson the restoration and at the end asked them if they had anyone that they wanted to have the same happiness they have from the Restored Gospel. Kakaka said, yeah, I know someone, I invited him to church. Kakaka invited his friend Elton to the family night and he came and loved it. Elton has been prepared by the Lord. He has a hunger for the word of God and wants to change his life. Elton came to a few classes during the week, we taught him and now he is preparing to be baptized. Member references are so critical in missionary work. Talking to our non-member friends and family about the gospel is so essential. It doesn’t have to be anything un natural. Just testify of the happiness that has blessed your family from the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There is no greater blessing in this life than eternal family happiness. Show your friends the happiness that you have and let them know they can have the same thing if they sit down with 2 messengers of God (Elders or Sisters) and hear the Plan of Happiness. 90% of our baptisms here happened solely by the fact of references and member present lessons. We have 15 members here and this works. Search to testify in small and simple ways to your friends, do not fear and open your mouth and the Spirit will take the message to their hearts. I know this true.

We made a street contact the other day and planned to teach a woman named Elsa. As we passed by at the marked hour, Elsa was not there, but we did find her friend Lena. Lena has great interest in the Gospel. She is a single mother, raising 5 kids. She has financial problems and lives in a house (room) the size of a normal sized bathroom. She told us that since the day that we started talking to her, she has started to pray with more sincerity and faith. And since that day, the Lord has not stopped to bless her family. She said that all the stress and weight that was on her just disappeared and she feels great. She really wants to keep learning so her and her family can be blessed. A very humble and sweet lady.

We have been working a lot with Dona Ducha's daughter Elizandra. Elizandra has had a rough past and has been living in sin, completely miserable and sad. Even until now she hasn’t left her sins behind and is suffering because of it. Whenever we talk to her she always seems to be angry. However, yesterday, we had a some members present a lesson with her (not on purpose), we had Ta, her mom, Ducha and also Nino just happened to walk in. They all testified of their process of repentance, how they abandoned all their sins and were born again. I think this really touched her. Elizandra accepted to repent of her sins and be baptized. It was fantastic.

This Saturday we did a service project. Our recent convert Ta, went to the ''City hall'' and asked if there was any service we could do and he got the approval for us to clean small piece of earth. Basically we just sawed down trees, picked up dead plants and weeds, cleaned up the garbage and straightened the place up. It was a great opportunity to create union between the members. The feeling of serving others is something so extraordinary, I love it so much. I just want to help all the people I possibly can, that’s what Christ would do.

At church we had 27 people!! Once again we left all the responsibilities to the members, I just played piano. We are teaching them how to teach classes so that they can start doing that on their own. We still haven’t become a branch, but realistically it should happen any day now, we have been waiting for 3-4 weeks now. Super exciting.

There is nothing better than being a missionary. To study and expound the Words of Christ, proclaiming faith and repentance to this people. I love testifying with the Spirit and watching people transform their lives from miserable to incredible happy. I love the work, i have learned so much and i will not forget it.

Love,

Elder Rice

E MODI!?!?!? Modi que nhos sta?

A crazy awesome week! Dona Ducha got light in her house this last week and she has been dying to have a family night at her house! So this Monday we did it at her house. That had to have been the largest, most people, craziest, most intense family night I have ever been to. There had to have been 40 people there. The house is pretty small so there were people standing outside, looking through the windows, sitting on the floor, it was crazy. There was so much noise, at times it was difficult to get everyone to pay attention and give the spiritual thought. But that wasn’t even the craziest part. They made A FEAST!!! There was so much food. Usually we just buy like a packet of cookies and a juice packet. Ducha and like 5 ladies made like 4 pizzas, pastels, popcorn, crackers, soda and that was just the appetizer. The main meal was rice and tuna steaks!! I don’t know where the money came from but it was super intense. A bunch of people helped out. Dona Ducha was so happy, I can’t even describe her joy, it was awesome.

This week we had the baptism of Fatinha and Ducha. They are both such incredible women. They each have transformed and grown so much. They both have made some incredible changes. Fatinha, not wanting anything to do with the church and Dona Ducha who was suffering. Now they are both happier than ever. The Lord truly blessed these two women immensely. Ducha and Fatinha have a fear of the sea, so we managed to find a swimming pool of a residency that belongs to a Brazilian woman. We just had to pay 20 bucks, and it went super smooth. It’s definitely more intense baptizing in the ocean with all of the giant waves crashing on top of you. Super awesome baptism.

We have been teaching a ton of recent converts this week. Our job here is to strengthen the recent converts so that when we leave, they can lead and take over the branch alone. This week we had 12 lessons with our recent converts!!!! They are all doing super great. There are a few that are being tempted a lot by their friends. We are trying to strengthen them and keep them coming to all the classes at the church. The Elders and the Sisters teach classes at the church, EVERY SINGLE DAY! We do not shut the doors to the church. There are so many temptations, of drugs and alcohol here in Maio, we create a safe zone at the church where everyone can be edified.

We had 26 people at church this week!! This Sunday it was super cool because we basically did nothing during the sacrament meeting. For the first time ever, we had our recent convert, Anastacio direct the meeting, He did a fantastic job. Pedro and Ta blessed the sacrament, Maruca passed the sacrament. Vani and Nino gave talks, and Fatinha and Dona Duch bore their testimonies. It was super cool to see all the responsibilities being done by the members. I believe the papers for the branch have already been sent it, now it’s just a matter of waiting. Great week!

Love,

Elder Rice