Goodness Everywhere: Igreja Maravilhosa

With all the changes going on in the world, we are especially grateful for the constancy of our faith!

Since our first morning in the city, we have spent time nearly every day at our beautiful church building and with the amazing members of our church family. Here's just a few highlights from these past months.

Service

There have been plenty of ways to be involved in doing some good with these good people!

On Christmas day, we gathered with them for their traditional annual soup service.

Some of the members had spent most of their day chopping and stirring and cooking huge pots of soup.

We drove around the city and handed out cups of hot soup to many hungry and homeless, including Venezuelan refuges.

On national anti-discrimination day, our church hosted an interfaith community forum, we were impressed with messages shared by the Chief of Police, the Catholic Bishop, and the city domestic violence investigator. Such good people working for the good of everyone in the city.

And we really loved the community English class our church sponsored, we made many friends there, some from other faiths. We were so inspired by their hard work and striving.

We were inspired by the many members working to learn about their ancestors and to help each other figure out how to access local records. Mya was trained on how to teach family history in Portuguese as she accepted and assignment to help teach others.

We also really appreciate that the church has ready to use materials for teaching keyboard lessons, in multiple languages so we could go back and forth between English and Portuguese, and a few of our friends were very patient students learning from us as we were learning how to teach.

We had a jolly time laughing one morning with the few members of our branch who gathered for a blood drive.

The members here also spend a lot of time within the family of the church, visiting and cheering on and praying for each other, and working tIogether to clean and maintain the building, including mending and recovering old hymn books.

Friends

It's been amazing and wonderful how our church family has given us so many friends so fast, and such lasting friendships. David was a missionary here over 20 years ago. He didn't have very many names of the people he knew then written down, and no way to contact some of them over the years. But, as we asked some of the other members here about the few he remembered, even when he only knew their first names and a little of what he remembered about them, they were able to help us get in contact with a few and David had such joyful reunions!

It took a few months before we we able to find Franscico, but with the help of several people connecting us to others along the way, we finally did! It was a tearful re-connection, he shared that we came right at a time that was an answer to prayer. We are ever amazed how God can show love to people by weaving us together even over time and distance.

Rosa and her family had moved outside of the city, but someone helped us get the location, and we drove out and miraculously found her at home and had a sweet visit! She shared with us a whole bag of some of the tastiest tucumã (fruit) we'd ever had, gathered from her land there.

In many places as we talked to people about David's mission, we made new friends, many who he hadn't known then, but who lived in areas where he worked and who knew people he knew. It was always inspiring to hear their love for each other and we felt so loved as they treated us as good friends even after we'd just met. Here was a family we met in Manaus bringing their younger son to the temple for the firs time.

Children

Our littler girls were never without many little friends and good adults to play with and teach and watch over them.

Every night when were were at the building for English class or sports or other things, there were always people helping with and enjoying the children.

The leaders of the primary (group for children) worked hard on Sunday lessons about the Savior and teaching the children songs for the annual program when the children sang and shared beautiful messages.

These gentle women and delightful children really helped our girls feel so loved and welcomed!

Youth

Our older girls also had amazing leaders teaching them and organizing activities for them, and they made so many friends and learned so much from the strength and spirit of the other youth!

The tireless leaders had the youth at rehersals every night for many weeks preparing the annual youth musical performance and invited people from all over the city who were inspired by the performance.

They made sure that every youth who wanted could have a part, and were so encouraging of our girls working on their parts in Portuguese.

Here's a short clip of part of one song. They all worked hard and had such a good time together, dancing and singing uplifting messages that we were told later really brought light to some lives.

The youth leaders also taught seminary (a scripture study class for the youth) every evening, and wee so good to help any of the youth who would come to the building to play sports or hang out feel welcome to join the class.

And many, many leaders worked hard for months preparing a program called FSY.
Not all of our girls were sure how they felt about spending a week in another city speaking only Portuguese with people they didn't know, but they came back shining and full of stories of great experiences.

Over 800 youth gathered from all over the region.

They were put into smaller groups with very loving and inspiring leaders...

who organized fun activities like dances and games...

..and led small and large group lessons and discussions that our girls learned much from.

The youth seem to really help each other be strong and love each very much.

Families

There have also been great activities to strengthen families and marriages.

We've enjoyed family game nights and dances.

And volley many nights of the week for all ages, they play for fun and have a great time and include anyone who wants to play.


They also play plenty of soccer, here was the annual game of all the men from our church from across the city at the city's official field. We laughed that it's located right next to the hospital that you can see there on the right--they really know how to play hard and there are often plenty of injuries!