Bom dia! The reason this is coming out on Thursday is because we have transfers tomorrow and they are giving us a chance to clean up and pack during the day before instead of just the night before. My P-day will be spent packing because I’m being transferred!!

Tchau tchau Arcoverde, I’m headed to the coast! The areas near Recife are so much smaller but have way more people. I’m going to a neighborhood area called Candelária and my companion will be Sister Zurita. I’ve never met her and spent about 30 minutes last night scouring mission photos trying to figure out who she is. I’ve never left the interior before and I’ve heard that Recife people are less receptive but I’m excited for the change.

“He doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world; for he loveth the world, even that he layeth down his own life that he may draw all men unto him. Wherefore, he commandeth none that they shall not partake of his salvation.” (2 Nephi 26:24)

Just some bullet point recaps of the last little week and a half to catch us all up.

– Spent the last P-day in Pesqueira with Sisters Brewer and Mugerian, it was a blast

– Had an epic zone conference in Caruaru about how we should be teaching the Restoration better, it was truly inspiring 

– Were commanded to go home early every night of Carnaval but the city literally was a ghost town cause everyone went to Recife to party, so we went home for 3 days and then stopped

– We found and invited so many people to be baptized this week and now I’ll be leaving just before I get to see them grow, tis triste

– I bought a sad cake because our family night fell through on my last day, twas delicious the cake and triste the moment

Mas è isso, next time y’all hear from me I’ll be sending beautiful coast pictures and using lots more bug spray!

That’s all folks, Tchau tchau for now!

Com amor, 

Sister Alyssa Grace

Arcoverde, Brasil (for the last time)

Heeeeyyyy, this week was pretty good. Yesterday we had another baptism, Maria Alice. She’s been coming to church for about a month and a half now and we’ve been teaching her for a long time. The only reason why her baptism took a while was that she wanted to wait until her friend became a priest so he could baptize her. It was so cute a so special!

Things here are getting a little weird though. Carnival starts at the end of this week but people here just can’t wait so the decorations, celebrations, and drinking without end started last week! We’ve had to go home early a few days because it just isn’t safe anymore to be out in the streets past dark. We had one experience this week that really showed me how grateful I am for spiritual promptings and protection.

We were sitting on a bench in a park just reporting on our last lesson. It was about 6 pm and the sun had just gone down. We usually avoid that specific area after sundown but it wasn’t too late and we thought we’d be fine. While sitting there a lady selling tapioca passed us, chatted for a minute, and then left. We also saw and waved to a neighbor across the park who gave us water one time. Overall, we weren’t feeling anything wrong or dangerous.

Suddenly we see this man walking straight for us. He was obviously drunk and clearly wanted to talk to us. Now most of you would probably say, “Don’t talk to drunk guys” but me and Sister Fuller have spoken to quite a few drunk men here because, in our area, they are some of the only people who listen to us. We also don’t see them as very dangerous cause most of the time they just start crying to us and it’s hard to be intimated by short, sobbing Brazilian men.

But this guy was different, he was drunk and he was aggressive. He sat down next to me and kept touching my arm. I told him very clearly he couldn’t do that and he started laughing and telling us to read him a scripture. I didn’t even get my book open when he started demanding we give him one of our books. Sister Fuller quickly gets up and says it’s time to go and the guy doesn’t get up but keeps shouting after us all the time we walk away. Sister Fuller said she had never felt a more powerful prompting from the Spirit in her life than when the guy sat down on our bench and she immediately knew that we needed to leave.

The next day we ran into both the tapioca lady and the neighbor we said hi to. Both were pretty much reprimanding us saying that we could’ve very easily been robbed or worse by that guy and we should never stay in that area again after dark. The water guy even said he went to get his pistol to come after him if he would’ve tried anything. 

Thankfully, nobody was hurt and nothing was stolen but I learned a powerful lesson. The spirit guides and protects but we have to listen and follow those promptings. I personally didn’t recognize anything when the man sat down but how grateful I am that Sister Fuller did. Since then, I’ve been working on increasing my spiritual capacity to recognize the spirit. I want to be able to teach and live according to the promptings I receive. 

Helaman 5:30 – “And it came to pass when they heard this voice, and beheld that it was not a voice of thunder, neither was it a voice of a great tumultuous noise, but behold, it was a still voice of perfect mildness, as if it had been a whisper, and it did pierce even to the very soul.” 

That’s all folks, Tchau tchau for now!

Com amor, 

Sister Alyssa Grace

Arcoverde, Brasil 

MILAGRES!!! Before we get into the literal miracle that happened yesterday, let me set the scene.

Starting on Monday, we basically spent every hour of every day thinking of ways we could find new people. We have gone door to door, called a billion different people, visited old friends being taught, begged and pleaded for member references, and advertised for our English class to the point that we are now known as the “Professoras de Inglês” instead of the two germans with strange bibles. Despite our best efforts however, we were getting nowhere. We hardly had any lessons and had some real disappointments with the few people that we are teaching. 

Then on Saturday, it was my turn to plan out our day. I was floundering for ideas and decided we would stop by the house of one young women who we had been teaching for several months but she was never here on Sunday so she wasn’t really progressing. We had decided to stop teaching her just the week before, but with no plans and nothing to lose, we went to her house. Miraculously she was there and told us that she would be coming to church the next day. After about an hour of very chaotic phone calls with our district leader, ward mission leader, a counselor in the stake presidency, and my mission president, we got permission to perform her baptism the next morning before sacrament meeting. 

It was the most chaotic and most spiritually gratifying baptism I’ve ever been to. We had about 2 hours maybe to plan everything the day before and you could feel it was a little bit of a mess. But Letícia loved it and was feeling the spirit so strong!

I’m sure every missionary has read or has had sent to them the Elder Uchtdorf talk “Fourth Floor, Last Door” Me and my companion joked all week that we hit the last floor and knocked on the last door the second week into the transfer. When you are working as a missionary it is so easy to be motivated to keep working because you are already working. It’s when you’re stuck with nothing that you want to quit because you feel like your work and purpose have already quit on you. In our low, God saw our needs and put a miracle right in our path. 

We still don’t have too many people to teach or very many plans for this week, but we have faith now that God is there, He’s aware, and our effort is reaping blessings here on earth and will later in heaven.

1 Nephi 13:37 – “And blessed are they who shall seek to bring forth my Zion at that day, for they shall have the gift and the power of the Holy Ghost; and if they endure unto the end they shall be lifted up at the last day, and shall be saved in the everlasting kingdom of the Lamb; and whoso shall publish peace, yea, tidings of great joy, how beautiful upon the mountains shall they be.”

That’s all folks, Tchau tchau for now!

Com amor, 

Sister Alyssa Grace

Arcoverde, Brasil 

Hey guys! Just a short little update this week. We dropped our entire teaching pool, except for our one friend marked for baptism, so now we are just looking for people to teach. Missionary days are already long, and when you don’t have any lessons it becomes even longer. Please pray that we can find new people this week!  

Other than that, we’re all well here. Having adventures, some good some bad, and all in all, seeing miracles and feeling God’s love. Thanks for all the support from home, it means a lot.

That’s all folks, Tchau tchau for now!

Com amor, 

Sister Alyssa Grace

Arcoverde, Brasil 

^{Big rainstorm in Arcoverde}

Sejam bem-vindos ao mais um email da Sister Grace. This week was full of adventures from inviting more than half a dozen people to be baptized, to fjording a rain/sewer water river in the middle of the street, to running from some crazy old men, and finally to laughing and crying so hard every day. It’s been exhausting but so worth it. 

The struggle of the week was (once again) other people’s free agency. We did hours of finding every single day just to find new people to teach. We prayed so hard and tried so many different tactics, and at the end of the week, we only had 1 person come to church. It was rough and disappointing and for a minute we got bitter. Why after so much work would we be rewarded with only 1 person? 

But then we remembered that God has just as much power over other people’s choices as we do, which is none. He is even more frustrated and disappointed with every missed opportunity and poor decision that his children here on earth make. But he doesn’t give up on them nor should we. 

Side note: Why are Brazilian washing machines so strange? I got up from writing this ultra-spiritual email to go get some juice and just about slipped and died in a puddle of water. Washing machines here just have a hose that you put in the sink to drain the water. But uh oh! Our sink was clogged so the water just went all over the floor. We are good now, it just looks like we’ll have to be watching our machine more closely when we want to do laundry.

Also, a quote of the week comes from the one and only Sister Fuller: “These bananas are greener than the sun!”

I’m also attaching a beautiful video I was shown this week that really reflects my frustrations as a missionary. The part when he screams “Why won’t you come to church?” really resonates with my soul. 

Reach Out With Love

Sorry, that was a bit of a mess but P-days are like that. Anyway, I wanted to ask for prayers for our people here in Arcoverde. Prayer is powerful and more prayers are more powerful! Here are the names of our little group here.

– Cícera + Bezerra

– Loriley

– Letícia 

– Ana + Ayko

– Maria Alice

– Renatan

That’s all folks, Tchau tchau for now!

Com amor, 

Sister Alyssa Grace

Arcoverde, Brasil 

E aí pessoal, espero que vocês estejam bem. This week was pretty good, had transfers and you’ll never guess who my companion is. It’s Sister Fuller!! The OG companheira is back baby! We are chilling in Arcoverde 1 and are already having so much fun and success here. We are both just so ready to be the best missionaries we can possibly be. I loved my trainers but after a while, you feel stuck or trapped in a little box and you just want to break out and be your own missionary. 

Other exciting news, tomorrow is my 6 months mark! It has been so fun reuniting with Sister Fuller and seeing just how much we have progressed in this short span of time. We went from having to script every lesson and butchering every syllable of every word to being able to communicate and help others feel the Spirit through scriptures and testimony.

We’ve definitely changed in other ways too, I’ve got some strange Brazilian habits that I didn’t even notice until Sister Fuller pointed them out. I unplug things directly from the wall instead of just turning them off, I take 2 showers a day, learned how to sleep without a blanket and with two fans running which sound like fighter jets taking off all night long, and have let some common Portuguese phrases and speech patterns enter my English vocabulary. It’s been quite the journey so far and I hope this year I can just focus on being and becoming the missionary I promised God and myself that I would be.

I wanted to share a quick thought and pro tip to anyone wanting to help in missionary work.

 3 Nephi 18:31-32

“But if he repent not he shall not be numbered among my people, that he may not destroy my people, for behold I know my sheep, and they are numbered. 

NEVERTHELESS, ye shall not cast him out of your synagogues, or your places of worship, for unto such shall ye continue to minister; for ye know not but what they will return and repent, and come unto me with full purpose of heart, and I shall heal them; and ye shall be the means of bringing salvation unto them.“

Sometimes we like to think that church is for the perfect and that when we see people there that we know aren’t perfect we like to judge. But Christ is the only one who is perfect. You, your family, your neighbors, and your friends are all flawed and Christ never once said that you couldn’t come and worship him. We are commanded to invite all to come unto Him and leave the judgments to the All-powerful being who knows all. 

We are commanded to minister and serve despite our differences and backgrounds. This year, I hope we are more patient, more understanding, and more dedicated to the work of ministering and the gathering of Israel. Like the scripture says we can “be the means of bringing salvation” to people we love, people who have passed on, and people we never expected if we just act in faith on the promptings we receive.

That’s all folks, Tchau tchau for now!

Com amor, 

Sister Alyssa Grace

Arcoverde, Brasil