Happy New Year!

My dear family,

Happy New Year!

Even though I know that this New Year was probably not what you all expected, I hope that you found a happy way to celebrate and look forward to the New Year. Something that I have learned on my mission is the EVERYTHING happens for a reason. So, there was a reason why you all were not able to go to Utah, even though it is frustrating and hard. Maybe you were saved from a plane crash or a car crash or whatever else. Or maybe you all just simply needed to spend more time together. I love trying to discover God´s will in His plan for us and how He is an active agent in our lives whether we realize it or not.

This week was very interesting. These past two weeks have been hard to feel direction and see success. It seemed like nobody had time for us and were only worried about their Christmas and holidays. But this past week we found some amazing people and saw some amazing miracles. We decided to put into effect a plan that the mission has for getting references and finding people. We presented the plan to our recent converts Ruben and Luana and asked them to pray about their family members and friends to know who would be ready to receive the gospel. Luana said that she felt good about her cousins who live in our area. We planned a night to go there with Ruben and Luana. So, we went out on our adventure with Ruben and Luana to an area that neither I nor Irmã de Almeida had been before. We knocked on their door and we found a house full of people! They are all from Cabo Verde and the people that we met are: Antónia (aunt of Luana), Kátia (cousin, 21 years old), Lu (cousin, 23 years old), Jacira (cousin, 14 years old), Erickson (cousin, 9 years old). Yeah, and there are two other boys who live in the house who are 18 and 21 years old. Crazy. So we decided to just say a prayer with them and talk about church and invite them to go. We said a prayer and started describing church when they said that they were contacted by Elders a couple of years ago and some of them have Books of Mormon. They all readily accepted to go to church (especially since it was the start of a new year--amazing how people want to change at this time of year).

On Sunday, they all came to church (and even beat us there!) They adored it and want to come back. Jacira already said she wants to be baptized and they haven't even been taught anything. It is so amazing how the church is true and how people really feel the spirit there! We also marked Linda's daughter, Daniela, to be baptized at the end of the month (I don't know if you remember Linda, but I baptized her my first week here). She will have her birthday and then will be baptized! We are excited. So yesterday at church, I definitely saw the record of my mission thus far: We had 11 investigators at church. Yeah, I don't know what is normal outside of our mission, but it is the most that I have ever seen.

Heavenly Father is really blessing us to find lots of families as well. We found 5 families this week (the family of Luana included) and 2 of them came to church. It is interesting because after 2 weeks of finding lots of men that we thought were interested in learning about Jesus Christ (when in reality were only interested in learning more about me or Irmã de Almeida), we got so frustrated and didn't know how to change our finding tactics. So, we decided to use the mission plan and since that time, Heavenly Father has blessed us with lots of families to teach (all of them being children with a single mom). Never in my life have I known so many single women with children. I sincerely hope this is not foreboding my future...

Anyway, it has been a week of lots of lessons and work, but I am feeling so alive in the gospel because I know it is true. Thanks for all of your prayers and support. I really felt them this week. I am realizing that I can be so much better than who I am if I just keep going, forget myself and my problems, and open my eyes to the vision that the Lord has. He has so much more in store for us than we can possibly imagine. He has a life and eternity laid out for us that is so much grander than we can conceive. My wish for all of you as well as for myself is to be able to catch glimpses of the layout Heavenly Father has for you--especially this year. There are so many possiblities for 2011!

To answer your quick questions:
The Portuguese spend the New Year at discotecas, drinking and smoking and dancing. Some people stay in their houses and spend it with family, some people travel to visit family, some people hold festas to celebrate, but that is basically it. Lots of music and dancing usually.

I have seen Irmã Morrison--I saw her at the Christmas conference and will see her today and tomorrow (I will spend p-day with her) and we have a zone meeting tomorrow. It's awesome. She's doing really well.

I am so blessed to be there in this area with my amazing companion Irmã de Almeida. She seriously is the best. :)~

Love you all! Have a happy week.

Irmã Pérez