Monday, December 30, 2013

Words from Elder Clay & Sister Cookie Overson in San Paulo Brasil

"We serve in Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo State in the Church Office Building with the Perpetual Education Fund and in the Self-Reliance Center. Our mornings are spent facilitating classes for people who are looking for jobs, helping them however we can, practicing interview skills or personal power statements, etc., and encouraging them. These are awfully good people and we are amazed by their commitment to the church and to their families. For part of our day we work with people who have received loans through the Perpetual Education Fund.

One of the most fun things we do is teach Basic and Conversation English classes. We teach Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings from 5:00 until "whenever" because we don't know how to tell them it's time to go. We love our students and have a few who are not members of the church. We gave two of them Books of Mormon in English and in Portuguese and they said they would read them. One of them, Patricia, said that she doesn't understand it but she has never felt the way she feels when she is with us in our classes. Of course, we know that what she's feeling is the Spirit and we're hoping to send the missionaries to her soon. Though our mission is a PEF Self Reliance Mission, we understand that the purpose of all missionaries is to invite others to come unto Christ and we love it when we get that opportunity. We have distributed lots and lots of pass-along cards and hope we're planting lots of seeds.

On Sundays, we serve at the Missionary Training Center. Elder Overson is a counselor in a branch presidency and I work with him and teach Relief Society. There's probably no other place in the world, other than the temples, where the Spirit is stronger than in our MTC's. We get to give lots of talks and lots of lessons and are amazingly blessed to spend every Sunday there not only with the missionaries but with the other amazing Brazilian brothers and sisters who serve with us there."

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