"There's a cat in our house!" (Week #66)

Austin Ferrell	12:06 PM (21 hours ago)
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Hello All!
The biggest news of the week is that I got transferred to be the Zone Leader of the Leste zone. My new companion is Elder Romero from North Carolina, and were opening an area in Lagoa Redonda, Fortaleza.

I was a bit bummed to leave Horizonte, that was an incredible city there!

We will see how it goes! Im excited to finally be in an area with a real church building and a real ward! That will be interesting!

Our house has 2 companionships living there, and the other companionship are both Americans too, Elders Withers and Rogerson. Things should be pretty great!

The funniest story from this last week happened saturday night. Elder Mortensen and I were asleep, but there was a lot of noise on the street so I wasnt sleeping too great, and I woke up at 2 AM because of a cat Meaowing really loud. I thought that it was coming from outside of the front gate, so I didnt worry about it too much, and after a while it stopped. Then out of nowhere started up again but this time in our bedroom! I looked over and there was a little tiny kitten in the middle of our room just meaowing its little head off! I kinda sat there for a minute gathering the force of will to get up and throw the cat out of our house when Elder Mortensen woke up. He woke up, moved a little bit, and then gave a fast start and shouted ´´Theres a cat in our house!!´´ He always was so good at identifying a situation haha. I got up and threw the cat out the back door so it couldnt just walk back in, but then it somehow found its way alll the way around to the front of our house again and came back in and did the same thing......Elder Mortensen was not happy. Long story short, the cat ended up in a box, and I had to carry it with me fro 30 minutes after leaving to work on Sunday just to make sure it didnt wander back to our home!

Thats about it for the week!
Hope everyone is well!
Love

Elder Ferrell

Pics

1) Ward activity last saturday

2) The cat....

3) Saying goodbyes to recent converts

4) Lunch with the new crew!

The World Cup (Week #65)

GOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLLL!!!!!

Hello all! I´m gonna be real with everyone, while the World cup is cool, and I would be loving this stuff outside of a mission, right now it is just a major distraction! 

It is very cool to be in the atmosphere of it all. Brasil gets pretty lit for the cup, everyone as streamers going across the street, everyone is selling brasil jerseys, and you can hear fireworks going off basically every 5 minutes. Its cool for the expericence, but yesterday Brasil played their first gaime at 3 PM....our church meeting starts at 4 PM.... That one was a little rough haha. BUT it was incredible to see the Lord work miracles. 

Because of the game of Brasil yesterday, we only had 2 of the 6 people waiting to be confirmed actually get confirmed. The other 4 werent allowed to go to church because they were either at home with a lot of family visiting and their parents wanted them to stay with family, or their parents didnt want them to leave their house because its super dangerous here while there is a Brasil game because well.....people dont thing as clearly as normal. So that was a bit rough. 

But now the miracles! It was impossible to stay sad about the confirmations when we arrived in church and had more people in church this week during the Brasil church than last week!!!! On top of that there were 8 less active members who came to church yesterday that was the first time Elder Mortensen and I had even seen them in church! 

The biggest miracle of all was the Baptism of Ingrid which happened yesterday...

Ingrid is the kind of person that when you look at, it could be easy to judge just because of her situation. She always was with her group of friends that hang out at a mini gang hideout. She was always surrounded with lots of alchohol, drugs, and all kinds of iniquity, but luckily we have a loving Father in heaven who truly prepares his children to receive his gospel! Ingrid is the sister of Ana Clezia, our recent convert who got married and baptised a few weeks ago. We want to teach and baptise the entire family of...well...everyone, so we started teaching Ingride 3 weeks ago. Starting with the first lesson when she cried during the closing prayer we knew she was one of Gods Elect. The more we taught her, the more greatful we were that we didnt just pass her by because of the way things looked from the outside. We found out she had never drank in her life, never used drugs, and basically was already living all of the commandments outside of going to church on Sunday. Every lesson we taught here she started crying in her prayers, and always thanked God for what was happening in her life right now. We found out that the group of ´´friends´´ she is always with are actually family that she wants to help. Yesterday she was baptised and literally was so happy afterwards!

Take that Satan!

Hope you guys all have a good week this week, and as far as the world cup is concerned, may the best Brasil team win!

Love,

Elder Ferrell

1) Ingrid´s Baptism

2) Elder Mortensen

3) Every street in Brasil Right Now

4) Inacio´s Birthday Saturday

The Busy Life (Week #64)

Hello All!

This last week was really busy!

Tuesday we had Mission Leadership Council that went really well! It was cool because Elder Passos, the first missionary I trained, is a Zone Leader now too so we got to catch up a little bit with each other.

After that, Wednesday and Thursday we did 2 splits with companionships in our zone that were having a bit of difficulty, and those went really well. Friday and Saturday were normal days, then Sunday morning we had 5 baptisms!!!! After the baptisms we ate lunch and then we went on a split with members so that I could acompany 2 of our recent converts, Rogerio and Elizaldo, to Pacajus to be interviewed by the Stake presidente to receive the Melkesideque priesthood. (yes, i dont know how to spell Melkesideque) and Elder Mortensen could still accompany our investigators to bring them to Stake conference that happened in Pacajus yesterday. Long story short everything worked out, and they are now ordained elders and we had a wonderful stake conference! One cool thing was that the Stake Presidente told us that the stake is going to be divided and they are going to create a new stake here with our ward and a couple of other wards close to Fortaleza! 

The biggest story from the week though were our baptisms from yesterday. They were from 2 families. 3 were the step children of a less active member we found a few weeks ago. Yesterday we baptised everyone in that house that could be baptised right now and are excited to work with the parents here in the future to reactivate or baptise them! The other 2 were part of the lords Elect to be sure! It was a brother and sister who we met 3 weeks ago. The young man, Inacio, was soo excited about the gospel. He started to read the Book of Mormon every day, he loved church, he always is excited to know more, and is really set on serving a mission when he turns 18 now! He was soo excited to get baptised that he almost cannonballed into the baptismal font when it was his turn to be baptised! His sister, Ingride, is really shy and almost never says anything, so while we already knew that Inacio was really excited about the church, we had no idea what she would say to the invitation to be baptised, but when we asked, ´´Ingride do you want to be baptised too´´ the word YES flew out of her mouth before we had even finished talking! Their mom was soo happy for them to get baptised!

It truly was a week of miracles this last week! 

Love you all have a good week up there!

Elder Ferrell

1) Baptism of Bruno (from last week, first time his dad, Rogerio, baptised)

2) Baptisms of Eduarda, Emily, Marcelo, Inacio, and Ingride

3) Elder Passos with all the tall Elders on the Mission

Real Fast... (Week #63)

Hey everyone!

This last week passed by fast!

The biggest news is that yesterday we had the baptism of Bruno. He is the son of Rogerio, the guy who got married and baptised last week! Rogerio received the Preisthood yesterday so he was able to baptise Bruno! It got a little complicated because Bruno was affraid of water, but it all worked out in the end.

Actually it was a little funny because the baptism had already started and Elder Mortensen leaned over and asked if I had certainty that Rogeiro had officially received the Priesthood already. I figured it was a good question so I went to sit by bishop to ask. Bishop was there participating in the Baptismal service, but its good we asked because when I said it, Bishop called Rogerio into his office to officially give him the authority to baptise his son....not a tradicional day but it all worked out!
Hope you all have a good week!
Love,

Elder Ferrell