Hellooooooo família!

This email's just gonna be a bunch of random stories and tidbits from the last few weeks:

This weekend was super fun with General Conference and all. This is a special weekend where we get to listen to our prophet and other church leaders through a worldwide transmission and it's super duper cool. I know without a doubt that our prophet is a man called of God and I certainly felt that this weekend. We watched it from the stake center here and it was kinda fun to watch it in portugese. A little different, but fun. In between the sessions, some elders in our zone had a baptism and my comp got to be a witness for the baptism so that was exciting. One thing I definitely felt this weekend was that the Lord is aware of each of us personally and He speaks to us, through His servants, the things that we need to hear. Also, I know that these are the last days and we need to repent and prepare because Jesus Cristo logo voltará.

The apartment building we live in is called Edifício California. It makes me feel famous

We met an old guy and he invited us in and he and his wife showed us LOTS of picture albums of their kids and grandkids. He explained that he had lost his thumb in an accident years ago and kept it because he wants to be buried with it and, as he said, he wants to arrive in heaven with all his body parts. Unfortunately, he did not want to hear the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, but at least we got a good story out of it. The man and his thumb are pictured below.

We're getting out of winter and going into spring, but it's still pretty cold.  It's been raining a ton here. One day it even hailed!! It came out of nowhere. We had brought umbrellas, thankfully, because we could tell by the sky that it was going to rain. We were walking to a lesson and out of nowhere, it started raining and immediately turned into hail! My companion was freaking out because she had never seen hail before. We ran under a little covering on someone's porch. The hail stopped after about 10 minutes and turned into rain. It was a good time.


Teaching Maria and Luis with our friend Guillerme, a returned missionary who got home from Ecuador last month. He helps us a ton and is the best

General Conference with our sister leaders, Sister Motta and Sister Pereira

I really really love my mission and I just want to say something really quickly. As a missionary, we see just how important the role of members is. There's a quote in PMG that says that for converts, joining the church is like entering a whole new world and everything is unfamiliar. So many people are baptized but go inactive shortly after. I'm just gonna get on my missionary soap box for a sec and say that members are crucial because as missionaries, there's nothing better than when you bring someone to church and they love it because everyone welcomed them and they felt at home. I love you all so so much and I know that this is the Lord's work. I'm so happy to be here, grateful for all my Savior has done for me and grateful to be here serving Him.

Love,
Sister Dobbs