Faith is the Chave!

Hello from Brasil!
Thank you so much for the wonderful Christmas cards and packages! I hope you all are doing well and enjoying your Christmas break! Life in Brasil is amazing! Being able to teach Heavenly Father’s children everyday has been such an incredible experience! I continue to learn new things everyday about this gospel. My favorite part is when we teach with the Spirit!! We can testify all day long, but when we have the Spirit with us that is what is testifying to the investigators not our words. We continue to work hard and pray to have the Spirit with us at all times.

Important lesson I learned these past few days is about faith! If we have faith we can truly do anything we want to in this life. If I have faith in Jesus Christ I can continue to walk hundreds of miles to help people. With Faith miracles truly will happen! Our Zone failed its goals for the months concerning the number of people we wanted to baptize. Instead of getting mad at us and calling us slackers, our zone leaders gave a really good lesson about faith. It has helped everyone in our zone! We are all trying to have more faith in ourselves, companions, the people, and the Lord. When we have faith in the Lord and Jesus Christ we are able to overcome our difficulties with a smile on our face. We are able to look at each day with a better attitude and we are more focused on our purpose in this life! Heavenly Father wants us to be happy in this life and I think we are the ones who hold ourselves back from being happy everyday. People are so quick to blame God for their circumstances and they are choosing to feel sorry for themselves. We need to stop, have faith and trust in the Lord more. Every trial or difficulty we face is to help us learn and grow. When we realize this, we overcome our difficulties with a better attitude and we CAN be happy during our trials. Faith in the Lord helps us to be happy!!

Anyway, this week has been good. Neto has his interview for his baptism tonight. Hopefully everything will go well and he can be baptized on Friday. As far as things with Roseane, well she has disappeared and Neto thinks she stole money from him. So that is a problem. I hope we find her this week and are able to help her! We have some new investigators but I am not sure how interested they are yet, only time will tell. Claudia was supposed to be baptized last week but she has a problem with coffee so we are working on getting her to stop drinking it. The family that we have been teaching since November, they don’t want to get married. Well the husband doesn’t want to get married! Freak. We bore our testimonies to them last night about how important marriage is and how happy they will be after they get married and baptized. I said, “You have been together for 16 years, getting married won’t change anything except that you can get married and become an eternal family. After you get married you can get baptized and you will feel the Spirit so strong in your lives and the Lord will bless you.” Ah, marriage is so important, but hardly anyone is married here. But we asked them to pray about it as a couple and see how they feel. We have a feeling that they will be baptized; they just need more time!

Oh the other day during companion prayer I asked Heavenly Father to help us find ways to serve others. Well the next day one of our old investigators Maria (she is 70 years old) was taking out these huge bags of trash. So we stopped and helped her. It was funny because it was their bathroom trash and it was so gross. But hey any little service helps right? Haha, just call us the trash sisters! Haha.

I am doing FABULOUS! Yes some days are hard, but at the end of each day I always look for the tender mercies from the Lord I experienced that day. Whether it be Sister Boyack sneezing snot all over the street (yup happened yesterday) causing us both to laugh so hard we almost peed our skirts ha, or when the mangos fall from the trees and almost hit us on the head every day, or the kisses and hugs from the members/strangers, or the little kids that run after me calling me “little white girl”, or falling in the mud because I have forgotten how to walk straight, etc. All these silly little things cause me to laugh and help me to remember to relax and be patient. Whenever we have trials in this life and we keep feeling sorry for ourselves, we just need to stop! We need to look for the tender mercies of the Lord and be grateful for all the wonderful things we have in this life. Oh, and laughter truly is the key to solving lots of our problems.

I know this Church is True! I know that Heavenly Father loves you all so much! I know that the power of prayer is real! I know that if we pray with a sincere heart, Heavenly Father will answer our prayers!! I know that the Book of Mormon contains the teachings of Jesus Christ. I know that if we want to know more about the Savior and apply His teachings in our life, we need to study the Book of Mormon everyday! I hope you are all happy! I love you and the Lord loves you! Happy New year!

Love,
Sister Degen

PS... Hahah I forgot to tell you that I had to give my very first talk in Portuguese on Sunday! The branch President asked me during Sunday school. Hahahaha. It was way funny. Remember how I used to be afraid of public speaking? Well try doing it in a language you don’t know very well. Yup that has helped me conquer my fear! If I can do it in Portuguese, I can definitely do it in English now! Ha good times.
Love
Sista c