Letter from October 17th, 2011

This week was good. On Saturday I officially hit my 10 month mark in the mission. I am officially in the double digits. This coming week will be transfers.  I am really hoping that I will stay here in this area. I'm liking it a lot here and there is a lot of work here that has to be done. And now that I know where mostly everything is makes it a little bit easlier. I don't want to have to learn where everything is again. But, I think that both me and my companion will stay here, but you never know - sometimes President does some pretty crazy things with transfers.

 

This past Wednesday was a holiday here in Brazil.  It was Children's Day (ha ha). The Church put together a way cool activity and everything with food and games. So we went there to eat lunch with everyone. They ended up renting a trampoline for the kids to jump on and everything. So, I got there and I just wanted to jump on the trampoline so bad.  So, I  waited for all of the little kids to get off and they said that I could get in.  It was awesome!!  It's been so long since I have jumped on a tramp. It was funny because the whole Church was there watching me and cheering (ha ha).  I did a couple of back flips and front flips and some aerials for them.  It was cool, and my comp took a sweet pic.

 

Yesterday the bishop asked me to give a talk, so I had to give a talk in sacrament meeting. Here in this area I have 2 chances to give talks.  Maybe I can dodge a bullet and not have to talk in the first meeting, but only in the second. I thought it went pretty well.  I talked about enduring till the end and some things that help us endure like daily scripture study and prayer and going to church every Sunday. I don't know if anyone was paying attention, but I thought it went well. We had a couple of our investigators that went to Church, so we will see if we can get a couple of people "dunked" this week. But, things are going really well. The only thing that's rough is the heat, but I am pretty much used to it now. It's just my face that will always be red (ha ha).  I hope that all is good and well with all of you and that you have a great week.  Much love. 

Letter from October 3rd, 2011

This week was pretty good. With Conference and all it took a lot of our time to work and everything, but we still had a baptism which was cool. We watched Conference and heard the words of the prophets and then had a baptism - doesn't get much more spiritual than that. Conference was way awesome, but a little different than normal. It was a little strange not to hear their real voices.  I'm used to being able to tell who is talking just by their voice, but here they just translate it live, so it's Brazilians talking. It was funny because before every talk there was a couple of seconds that you can hear them talking in English and then they start to translate it into Portuguese. So, I was trying to translate that little part into Portuguese before the translators said it.  It was pretty funny.

Things are going prettty good here. I didn't even realize how big my area is until this week. I knew it was big, but I had no idea that it was THAT BIG.   It's big enough to have at least 8 more missionaries here, but noooooo.  It's just us 2,  but we are making it happen.   If everything works out, we should be having a baptism this week as well.  


The only bad thing is that it's starting to get REALLY hot here, which is starting to suck. Everyone is always asking me if I use sunscreen, because my face is so red (haha). They don't know that's how I always look.  I hope everyone has a great week!

Letter from September 26th, 2011

Things are going pretty good here in the new area. I am getting a lot better at getting around and knowing where our investigators live and members and that kind of stuff, which is pretty dificult considering that we have an area that is freakin' HUGE.  Me and my comp are getting along and working really well. I made it through 6 hours of church yesterday, and let me tell you that it's a straight war to stay awake for 6 hours of church, but I managed. We had 8 investigators at Church yesterday which is really good. The family that we are working to marry was there, and we already got some things ready and only need a few more things to do the marriage.

I am sending one pic of our new wheels that we got this week. We have a member family here that absolutely loves and takes care of the missionaries. They had an old rusty bike in their backyard.  So, I looked at it and fixed it all up and everything.  I even put some pegs on the back for my comp (haha).  So, that's how we are traveling to and from our area!  Usually it takes about 30 minutes to walk to the house of this member family, but on the bike we cut it down to 10. It's hillarious (ha ha)!!

 

But like you, I am way excited to watch General Conference this weekend.  It  should be really good. The only thing that stinks is that we can't watch the priesthood session here because it starts at 9 oclock at night here (ha ha).  At that time we have to be in our apartment. It should also be pretty interesting that this will be the first time that I will be watching it in a different language which will be kind of weird not hearing their actual voices. l am gonna wrap this up. I hope  that you guys have a great week, and I will talk to you next week.  Much Love!

Letters from September 14th & 21st, 2011

September 14th- 2011

As you know, this week was transfers. And............. pack your bags - you're headed to Natal in Rio Grande do Norte. So, I switched capitals. Right now I'm in my new area with my new comp Elder Bandeira. He is REALLY new. He only has 2 months in the mission so he has only been in the area one transfer.  Needless to say, this could be interesting (ha ha). I personally don't think I'm prepared for this, so keep me in your prayers because I will need all the help I can get. It kind of stinks having to leave the area that I had just barely gotten to know and all of the people that I know there. But, I'm excited to be here in Natal.  It should be really good. My last comp was really bummed that I had to leave. He told me that I was the best comp of his entire mission which was really cool. We had a lot of good times together. This past week was really good. We had a baptism which is always way cool. I forgot my camera at the house, so I will have to send the pic next Monday on

p-day.  That's pretty much about it for this week. I will email again this Monday with more news on how things are going and all. Love to everyone!

September 21st- 2011

That is so cool that I'm an uncle again!!!  It will be crazy by the time I get home to see all the new kids and how big that they will all be. Well, I have been here a couple of days and I still have no idea where I am (ha ha).  We actually take care of 2 areas.  One is closed, but we still work there. So, we have a really really really big area to work with. We are going to have to work a lot with the members and get their help or it's gonna be really difficult. Also, as we work in 2 wards, we have to go to 2 blocks of meetings; one at 8:30 in the morning and the other at 3:00 in the afternoon. So a lot of my Sunday's will be spent at the church in 6 hours of meetings.  We had an investigator family that went to church this past Sunday.  They need to get legally married so we are going to try to help them with that.  That is one big problem here in Brazil.  There are alot of the people that just live together that aren't legally married.

We had zone p day today, but we didnt even get to go. My companion and I got a phone call and we had to wake up at 4:30 this morning to go to Joao Pessoa to  have interviews with President Hall.  We just got back like 5 min ago.  So pretty much my whole p day was spent traveling, but it was worth it talking to President.  

That is so cool that dad pulled out the "W" on Show Low.  He is just the man!I  I hope that win doesn't rank above our State Championship though (ha ha). The new nephew is so tiny.  Tell Jessie that she spelled Chase wrong and that it is

with a "c" (ha ha).  I hope that you all have a great week. Much Love.

Letter from September 5th, 2011

Things are going pretty good here. We are working our tails off here in this hot weather which is awesome. I still haven't figured out how I'm not weighing like 100 lbs right now because i sweat so much (ha ha).  We did find this one guy who is great this week. He went to church and liked it a lot. He pretty much bore his testimony in our Gospel Principles class which was straight legit.  There is definitely some potential for this guy. We had a division this week. This was the first time that me and my comp have been seperated since I got here. But, it was cool to work with a different Elder for a day. I stayed with Elder R who is from Belem. He is way chill and we had a good time. The Elders that we live with had a wedding of a family on Wednesday and had the baptism on Saturday that we went to.  That was really cool!!  I hope to one day baptize a whole family like that. That was about all that happened this week. It was a pretty swell week. This is the last week of this transfer, so I won't be emailing until next Wednesday. Hope you can make it that long  Hope you have a fantabulous week. Much love!

Letter from August 29th, 2011

We went to the zoo last pday which was pretty fun. As you can tell by the photo, I wrestled with an anaconda. All I can say is, "THIS ANACONDA AIN'T GOT NUTHIN ON ME!!". There was like nobody there at the zoo. All you do is pay to get in and then after that we pretty much did whatever we wanted. I wanted to get in the cage with the lion, but I decided not to (haha:) We had Zone Conference on Tuesday which was awesome. It was cool to see all of the other people that I know - all my old comps and people from my group. The Assistants to the President (AP's) and President and Sister Hall all gave talks that were awesome. It was a lot of fun.

Things are going really good here in our area. We should be having some baptisms this next week. I'm getting along really well with my comp. He said he is gonna ask President if he can just end the mission with me. He only has 3 months left. We have a basketball court in our apartment complex, and since I'm in Brazil, of course there are soccer goals too. So, it's pretty sweet!! We get to play basketball and soccer everyday. Let's just say that the Brazilians are a lot better at soccer than basketball (haha). It's starting to change from "winter" to summer here. It's getting pretty hot. There was one day that it was like 105 degrees, and let me remind you that we walk everywhere! It's really humid here too. So, it takes like 2 days for your clothes to dry completly (haha). Hope all is good and that you all have a great week.

Letter from August 22nd, 2011

That's funny that Grandma and Grandad ran into Elder Gilliland over in Flagstaff. He was assistant to the President, and he was the elder that came to Pombal and I got to go on splits with him for a couple of hours. We ended up finding the family that was baptized a couple of weeks later. I'm glad that he spoke good about me (haha).

Things are going really good here. As you can tell by the photo, we did baptize the man that was super excited! My first baptism here in Mandacaru, and it's a man!! His name is Fabio. He was seriously so excited to be baptized. It was really cool that he understood how important that baptism is. He had a few things that he had to quit like coffee and some other things, but he dropped them like it was hot (Snopp Dogg haha)!! It was funny, he got so cold in the Church because of the AC that he started to shiver (haha). And the water in the baptismal font was a little cold too, and so he started to shiver even more when I baptized him. It shows how used to it that these people are to just being hot all of the time!! We will have zone conference tomorrow, so that should be really good. I will get to see my old comps and some of the elders from my MTC group which will be cool. And it will be at the chapel in my area so i dont have to travel. The last zone conference, I had to travel 7 hours there and 7 hours back!

This week too, (haha) we discovered that my comp has a deep fear of spiders. So, the other elders that live with us they bought this huge fake spider and they scared the crap out of him with this fake spider. It was so hilarious!! He was like yelling and screaming and we were all just laughing so hard. It was so funny!!

I hope all is well and you have a great week.