looking up

Querida família,
This week was pretty great! We tripled our church attendance! (Not hard to do when you only have one in church... Then again if we had only had zero it would have been even easier to triple that!) But the whole week has been full of miracles. Two of our investigators are marked to be baptized in the coming weeks, and we have a few more with a lot of potential. If you want to pray for anyone: Jorge (marked for baptism but he is on kidney dialysis and he might not be able to put his foot in the water because of surgery), Amilton (also marked but he gets huge migraines), Maria do Céu (needs to quit smoking), and Maria do Carmen (she is awesome. She came to church yesterday. She just needs an answer about the book of Mormon).
We went on a division to Lapa again. I stayed with Sister Austin. She is really fun. I forgot my camera but I´ll send some pictures next week. We had a lesson with a recent convert Paula--which was awesome because on my last division in Lapa, Sister Call and I marked her for baptism. We also had a lesson with Luana, the girlfriend of a member. We marked her to get baptized! Lapa is a really fun area. And Sister Austin was so loving and taught with the Spirit really strong. I think I learn more from these divisions than the other sisters do.
On Saturday was our pancake party! I think we made more than 200 pancakes. We were in the kitchen for six hours... (that was kind of frustrating because everyone left hte missionaries to clean up alone and that took three hours). But I think it was a success. Everyone wanted the recipe! We had a few investigators and more than 10 recent converts there. But I never want to see another pancake again.
Yesterday in church teh first counselor in the bishopric gave a sweet talk. He talked about how a few years ago he got depression. He said it was a "hole so dark that no light could penetrate", but that finally, three things saved him. 1. The faith of his wife. 2. His home teachers who came by and asked what he needed. and 3. Seeing his sleeping baby at 3 a.m. I thought it was interesting that the most important things to help us face our future are our families, and our home and visiting teachers. Before my mission I never really understood why they were so important but now I am going to do it every month, even if I have to go alone. So if you didn´t go in April, go in May :)
Besides that, we cleaned out our house this week. There was so much random stuff left behind by the elders... Some things we found: A giant wooden spoon (3 feet), some underwear, a million plastic bags, boxes of magazines, painting supplies, a gutter replacement, lightbulbs, and an electric generator.
I hope you all have a wonderful week! And a great fast Sunday.
Love you tons!!
Sister Gidney