Week #73 - Goodbye to Palmas - Last transfer

 Monday, June 14, 2021

The sunset is beautiful! So is the Book of Mormon!

What a week! And this was actually my last week in Palmas, and I am so sad to leave Palmas!! But I'm am back in Brasilia and my companions aren't actually here in the mission yet... they will get here on Friday, they are both Americans. Sister Melanson and Sister Campbell! We'll be in a trio for a week and then another Sister will get here, and we'll split the area and I'll be with Sister Melanson! It's gonna be super fun and challenging, but I'm excited to work hard! 

But let me update y'all from the last couple of awesome moments in Palmas!

Most of these moments include our best pal Rafaella. On Monday we had a picnic with Rafaella, and afterwards a lesson with one of her friends thats a member as well!

It was super fun!

On Tuesday, me and Sister Hernandez, the other sisters and Rafaella all went to Zumba and wowza... the Zumba intructor is from Spain and she was super energetic and crazy! I sweated so much that I was drenched, but hey! Nothing new for me in Palmas haha!

On Wednesday, me and Sister Hernandez had a 3 hour long meeting to prepare going home.... I was not excited, but I actually learned a lot! 

But the rest of the week went pretty good! A super cute lady in our ward who is in her 60s invited us over to her home so we could get to know her neighbor and share a message with her. This member shared her conversion story of how she had a dream of a church and had never felt the spirit more in her life than in this dream, and then 9 years later missionaries found her on the street, and she went to church and it was the same church that she had dreamed of! She's been a member for 25 years now! But her friend, Maria is wanting to learn more! 

Saturday night and Sunday morning we said goodbye to members, friends, and Rafaella... it was so hard to say goodbye, especially because I don't know if I'll be able to see these people again for a while... but I have grown so much the last 3 months in Palmas, and I am excited for my last 3 and a half weeks here in Brasilia! The name of my new area is Gama Centro! Pray for those in Gama Centro! 

Love you all!

♡Sister Guilott♡

Week #72 - Sharing the gospel in Palmas

 Monday, June 7, 2021

What a week! It's getting even hotter and hotter here in Palmas! But this week was an awesome week, we saw some pretty awesome miracles!!

We had an activity this week with our primary president, and she invited a bunch of people, and we ended up getting like 6 referrals of people who wanted to learn more and it was awesome! We talked to this one lady, Neurivan, and she is super awesome! Only bummer is that she doesn't live in our area... but someone is getting a sick referral! But this one guy in a different ward brought his friends, and they live in our area! We have them a tour of the church building and they LOVED IT!! It was super awesome! 

We asked everyone in our ward council for some referrals, and the president of the young women gave us a referral of a young girl named Ana, she is 13 years old and she is ELECT! We shared a scripture in the Book of Mormon with her and she loved it! We also sent her a video of a member sharing their testimony and this was what she said: "wow! I know that is church is just incredible from this video!" Whaaaaat??? She is super fun. We are going to teach her some more this next week!

Our bestie pal Rafaella came to church with us this weekend and she just loved it. The hard part with Rafaella is that she loves what we believe, but is so firm in her own beliefs. But, she came to church. And at church we had our fast and testimony meeting and guess who shared their testimony to the ward.... RAFAELLA! Her first time at our church and she shared her testimony. It was awesome!!

This next week marks less than one month until I go home and I'm not ready to believe it yet hahaha! I love being a missionary and I'm excited for this last week of the transfer!! 

♡Sister Guilott♡

Week #71 - Zone Conference with Presidente & Sister Priday!

Palmas Zone Conference 5/28/2021

 Monday, May 31, 2021

Helloooo! Here's your weekly update from Sister Guilott! I love Brazil, but the heat is getting worse and worse here everyday... and it's even worse when you don't have air conditioning, but hey that's the sacrifice you can make for the Lords work! 

This last week was a super fun week! We had lots of exciting things happen this week.

Sisters in Palmas - together in our small apartment!

The other sisters here in Palmas are still living with us, and they had a baptism on Wednesday, and they invited us! But we could only go if we had an investigator there. And the baptism started in like 2 hours, so we asked everyone and they all gave excuses of why they couldn't go. So we asked Jeldes (our friend who is progressing a lot) and he told us that he was in charge of something with his church the same time as the baptism, but that he could ask one of his buddies to do it for him. We waited for a while, and he finally texted us back saying that he would love to go to the baptism. And WOWZA, it was such a cool experience! He looooved it! The members in this ward were so kind to him, and man you can just see his love for our church growing. Now that we are starting to have more things in person with church, it is helping our friends so much to have the desire to learn more!!

This week we also had Zone Conference! Presidente and Sister Priday came down and the assistants! Since we are the Sister training leaders, we got to go to a fancy restaurant with them and the zone leaders on Thursday, the restaurant was by the beach, so we felt some wind and it was a blessed moment to not be drenched in sweat for once. But it was so fun to see all of them!

Palmas Leadership Lunch with Priday's

Then Friday, we had our Zone Conference! And what Zone Conference is, is when all the missionaries in this area meet together and receive trainings from the zone leaders, the sister training leaders (us), and presidente! It was so much fun to get to know more missionaries, and to be all together in person!! 

Zone Conference 5/28/21

We had our friend Kalim come to church this last week! He is super awesome, and super short hahaha! But he loved coming to church. Almost everyone who comes to church, always tells us that they love the reverence of church and the feeling of the spirit there. I always love hearing that. We also gave him a Book of Mormon and will hopefully see him at church next week as well!

We visited our bff Rafaella, and taught her and her mom the plan of Salvation. Rafaella is a little hard to teach, because she is so set on her beliefs. But her mom, was alllll for the plan of Salvation. She accepted it so easily! She will definitely progress! We just don't remember her name though.... awkward hahah! 

This week was awesome, and the miracles are showing from our faith and hard work! Tomorrow marks 17 months of being a missionary, and it's been the hardest and best 17 months of my life! 

♡Sister Guilott♡

Baking - in 100 degree heat and humidity!

At the end of the day!

While I was in Yuma, we found and met this wonderful man and began his teaching. He got baptized this weekend.

My companion I trained is now in that area and helped finish his teaching. AWESOME DAY!

Week #70 - We can go back to Sunday Meetings!!

 Monday, May 24, 2021

OI GENTE!! Another fun week here in Palmas! Not gonna lie, this week was fun and HARD!! We have some pretty awesome people we are teaching who just don't want to progress hahaha! So it's been a little hard, but we saw some miracles this weekend. Let me tell ya about them! 

We have our friend Ederme, who we taught the Restoration and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and he loved both of the lessons. And then... He disappeared! He didn't respond to any of our texts and we were so confused, then this week he finally responded back to us. He was just busy with a project hahaha, but we went over to his home and gave him a Book of Mormon and taught him about faith. He is super cool and has the potential to progress, if he puts in the work! That's the hard thing with being a missionary, seeing people use their agency wrong haha. But we are going to go over this next week and teach him the Plan of Salvation.

Our dear friend Brenda on Monday told us that she didn't want to learn with us anymore, because she was feeling pressured.... It was because we made this calendar for her for 2 weeks worth of scripture readings from the Bible and the Book of Mormon, with a different topic each day. And she told us she would read it everyday, and on te 5th day we asked how she like the reading, and she told us that she wasn't reading... so we of course showed our sadness about this, and that's when she told us she was feeling pressured. So we decided to take a step back these past couple days. And then, Saturday morning we get a text from her saying that she had read the Book of Mormon everyday that week and was a couple days ahead on the calendar that we made... WHAT?? Miracles are real my friends. We are going to have to take more baby steps with Brenda, but I am just happy that she still has the desire to now learn with us again.

Saturday morning we had the chance to meet with our ward at the church building to clean the church building! It was so much fun hahah, pretty hard because the church building had so many bugs and was just super dirty. But after 4 hours of hard work, it was clean! It was our ward (Palmas 3) and the Elders here, their ward (Palmas 4), so we had a good amount of people there to help out. Me and Sister Hernandez have been wanting to find more service opportunities so that we can get out of the house more! So this was the perfect opportunity! 

Sunday was the best day ever, because it was the sabbath, and also because we had church in person after not having in person church since march. But, now we are back in person! And it was so awesome! Especially because our friend Jeldes came. And oh my gosh... the members were so kind to him, and just helped him feel so much love and he felt so welcomed. We gave him a tour of the church building afterwards, and we showed him the baptismal font. The funny thing is that the elders had cleaned it the day before, so it still had water haha. I was so tempted to tell Jeldes "Look, it's ready for ya!" But I decided it would be better not to hahaha. But after the tour, a wonder sister in our ward had invited us to her home because her son received his mission call and he was going to open it that night, but we could only go if we had a non-member there. So, we turned to Jeldes and asked him if he wanted to go to this random persons house to watch him open some random calling hahaha, but he was all for it! And he actually came! The guy got his call to Brazil Florianopolis, and it was so cool to participate with that, and even more cool that Jeldes was there. Everyone pray for Jeldes that he can continue to progress. He is soooo close!!

That's all for this week, but remember to always share your testimony with others so they can feel the love of our Savior in their lives!

Love you all!

♡Sister Guilott♡

Week #69 - Exchanges

Monday, May 17, 2021

Wowza, I just loving being a missionary! Talking about my Savior Jesus Christ everyday? Yes please! But this week was a pretty interesting hahaha, we definitely had some fun experiences...

We had exchanges with the Sisters in Miracema, which is a city like 2 hours away from here. We had planned that me and Sister Hernandez would go up together in the afternoon, and that she would stay the night there, then me and one of the sisters from this city would come back to Palmas right after the bus ride. Well... the sisters didn't understand the plans quite all the way... because we got there around 7 pm, and they told us the next bus leaves the next day in the afternoon... uhhh, what? All I had with me was my backpack with a Book of Mormon and my wallet. Nothing else. No pajamas, extra clothes, toothbrush, nada. So that was an adventure hahaha! But it was super fun to get to know those sisters better!

We also have the other sisters here in Palmas living with us right now because their new home doesn't have light or water... hahaha so they've been here almost a week. And our apartment isn't too big lol, but it's been fun to have other people here! 

This week was definitely a little harder on us, we are teaching people and finding people but they just don't want to keep committments. So that has definitely been a little harder. But, we were still able to see some miracles!!

Last monday, on our way to the mall to go SHOPPINGGGG we took an uber, and he was super interested in our church and what we believed, so we called him later in the week and he wants to learn more! Yay! His name is Kalim, pretty cool name eh? 

We have our english class every Thursday night, and we had this one guy that the missionaries here taught a while ago and he is now participating in our English classes. We asked him if he'd be interested in learning more with us, and he said yes! So we taught him the Restoration this week and he LOVED it! He especially loved the experience that Joseph Smith had! Such a cool experience! 

We have our awesome friend Gilcenes, and she has been praying about baptism and if that is something she really wants. We told her about fasting, and how we fast for 2 meals and she couldn't believe that we fasted for 2 meals. She told us she would never be able to, so.... we invited her to fast with us this past weekend, and she did! She also read Mosiah 18 (go read it it's so good) during her fast, which talks all about your desire to be baptized, and she understood all of it! She is definitely getting closer, but she has her best friend who is also her "pastor" and she doesn't want to make her disappointed if she joins our church. So we asked her if she'd rather have her friend be disappointed in her, or God? That made her really think about it hahaha! But we are gonna go over and teach her some more this week.

One thing that has been super hard is that we have not been to church in person for my whole time in Palmas! But, we got the news this week that we are returing to church in person this next Sunday, and I am so excited to finally go back to church in person! Woohoo!

Remember to always share the light of Christ with others this week so they can come to know our Savior better ☆

♡Sister Guilott ♡

We were teaching this lady, and a bird landed on her head1 haha!