3/26/12

Well i know its been a while since i've sent out one of these emails, but the previous few weeks have been filled with illness and just a lot of uneventful things, but this week was a little better. We got new mission standards from our mission president last week, so me and my comp have been workin our butts off to try and achieve them. and we did pretty well if i do say so myself, preppin a few people for baptism, and havin a good time doin it, livin the good life! We had one cool/sad experience happen this week, so we baptized this guy named felipe a few weeks ago, and his mom is a member of the universal church(which basically worships the devil haha), and she is always just asking us a million questions, and is always telling us how her church is wrong, but she just cant seem to leave it. well earlier this week we were talking to felipe at seminary and he was like hey my mom said that she wants to talk to you guys, so we went over and she was sad because she said that her husband is leaving her, and her church wont help her, so we were finally able to have a good lesson with her, and she was crying by the end and accepted all the invites... but she still didnt go to church on sunday, and decided to go to another universal church in another area... which is really frustrating... but we're making some progress!! we found a bunch of new people to teach this week, so i'm hoping we can turn some of those into some baptisms! so this last saturday was my birthday...woo! not really diggin the whole 20 thing, i feel old haha. it didnt really feel too much like a birthday either, just because i had to work through it like normal day, luckily though i have an awesome companion and awesome ward members that threw me a little party with cake and balloon and some games, so i was super grateful to them, and it actually made it a memorable day. the part that made it most memorable though was the eggs. so in the states we have some weird tradition that you spank people for every year they have on their birthday... well here they do the same thing... but with eggs. so my loving companion bought 20 eggs, and everyone in my house took turns smashing them on my head haha, it kinda hurt, but its all on video, so its a good memory at least ha. well thats all this week!

2/27/12

Well this was yet another good week here in Fortaleza Brasil. At the moment it is pouring down rain, and has been for a good 7 hours straight now, and its not just like drizzling, it is pouring, to the point where roads become small rivers haha. I like it though, it makes it not seem so hot even though its still probably like 80 degrees outside. So this week we had some baptisms! Which i was lovin because its been a while since i've had one. It was for that one family that we've been teaching for the last few weeks, except sadly only the mom and daughter decided to get baptized this week, and the son is still undecided, but i have hope that he'll be ready this week. But anyways so we were stopping by there house every day this week getting them ready, and on one of the days that we stopped by and the mom was like "hey you know how you guys said that i get to pick who i want to baptize me?" and we were like yeah, and she said "well i had this dream, and i was pointing to one of you guys, guess who it was?" and we both shrugged and were like we dont know, and then she pointed to me and said that she had a dream that she was pointing at me, so she took that as a sign that i'm supposed to baptize her. So i was just like blown away, it was really cool though, so i baptized the mom, and Elder Baker baptized the daughter. It was a good day.

We've also been working a lot with a kid named Felipe who is 15, and he is pretty much an allstar, he agrees with everything we tell him, he's been going to church, and he's been talking to his friends about the church too trying to spark some interest. The thing that impresses me the most about Felipe is that he tells us how all the kids at school are telling him not to do this, but he just responds and tells them that he is gonna do what God wants, and nobody else, so thats awesome to me, he's already got a testimony that this church is true. We've been workin with a few other people too but not too much is really happenin there, so we'll work harder this week to find some new people.

2/20/12

Well this week went pretty well. So we were supposed to start out this week by casting out a demon of some lady that said that she was possessed, which is hard to tell if she is actually possessed or not because for some reason people here in Brasil are into that kinda stuff, like they have churches where they invite spirits to enter your body and crazy stuff like that, but even if she is not possessed she in down right out of her mind. So anyways we were gonna do that, but we had a suprise Zone Conference that lasted the whole day, and when we went to this ladies house they next day she didnt say anything so we left it alone. But on the bright side we have been teaching her son, and that if going really great, he's kinda crazy because of his mom, but he is really really religious and everything we teach him he accepts right away, he says that he can really feel a strong spiritual presence when we are there, and he said that he had a dream that confirmed that this church is true, so now we just gotta teach him and throw him in the water ha. We've been working with an awesome family, and they would have been baptized this weekend, but this weekend was the start of Carnival, so if you've ever seen the movie "Rio" that movie is all about Carnival, except here in my area Carnival is really weak because everyone that wants to party goes somewhere else, But anyways so this family went out of town for the weekend, but they'll get baptized this week for sure, i'm so pumped to baptized my first family! Thing here that past few days have been pretty relaxed, there was a crazy rainstorm a few days ago, which pretty much flooded the streets within 30 minutes of rainfall, the street that we have to cross to get home was like 5 inches deep so we had to take off out shoes to cross and walk home barefoot. Also there were a bunch of little kids running through the streets enjoying the rain, the streets in my area are all dirt so i felt like i was in some weird slumdog millionaire type situation ha. Oh and another bit of the social norms they have here, so we taught a couple earlier this week, and the girl was 15 years old, and the guy was 24, and they live together and all that, and here in Brasil thats not weird or anything, so thats something that i thought was interesting. The next few days are gonne be pretty chill because Carnival is wrapping up so by now everyone is just hungover and walking like zombies through the streets, or just passed out on the side of the road, so it'll be pretty quiet around here. Well thats all for this week!

2/13/12

Well this was a good week! So this week started out with a family home evening with a part member family, and we invited a few families from the ward and watched the testaments movie, so that was pretty fun, the mom wants to get baptized but she has a problem with working on sundays that she just cant seem to drop, but i think with time she'll come around.So we have this awesome family right now that we're working with, its a mom and her 2 kids who are 14 and 9 years old. they really like us and we've been stopping by there every day for the last 2 weeks, and they've gone to church 2 weeks in a row. they are pretty much a perfect family, they ask a lot of questions, but in the end they accept everything that we teach. like when we taught about the word of wisdom the mom was a little unsure of whether she'd be able to quit drinking coffee, but she's already gone 5 days without it, and she said she feels better already! Yesterday in church though was just amazing though, so in the middle of sacrament meeting the mom, Norismá, leans over and asks us if her baptism is this weekend or the next, so we told her next weekend cause they told us they were gonna be out of town this weekend, and she said alright cool just making sure. then in the middle of one of the talks she asked to borrow Elder Baker's bible, and at the time we didnt know what exactly she was looking up, but later that day when we stopped by her house she was like hey i had a prompting to look up this scripture today during the meeting, can you explain what it means. so we looked at the scripture, and it was Isaiah 2:2, which is a scripture that talks about how in the latter days a temple will be built on the mountain tops and all nations will come to see it, so when me and Elder Baker saw that we both looked at eachother and were like "NO WAY!", and we asked her how she came to that scripture, and she was like "i dunno it just popped in my head, i'd never read it before" so me and Elder Baker were just blown away at this and we both just had huge smiles on our faces as we explained about how the a temple was built in salt lake which is on the mountain tops and people from around the world come and visit it. needless to say, this family is gettin baptized! so cool to see people that your teaching recieving revalation!! oh and on a funnier note, so a few days ago we were eating dinner at a members house, and the members son (who is 3 years old and an evil genius) was pulling on my arm trying to get me to play with him, but me and elder Baker were talking to the member, so i just kinda let him keep pulling me, and before i knew it that back legs of the chair broke and i fell on my butt, haha(it was one of the plastic picnic type chairs), i felt really bad about breaking the chair but the member said it wasnt my fault so i didnt think too much of it, but it was pretty funny, and the 3 year old got a kick out of it haha. oh and yesterday we found a lady that says she is possessed of a demon, so we're goin back there tomorrow with our bishop to cast it out, so wish us luck!!

2/6/12

well this week has been great! i know its been a while so i'll recap the last few weeks, so i got transfered early out of my area 3 weeks ago because my companion was gonna start training a new missionary that was comin in. so i got transfered to the outskirts of the city fortaleza. i had 2 very difficult weeks with a companion that didnt speak the language to week, and frankly we just didnt get along very well. but luckily regular transfers were last week, and i got a great new companion named elder baker. he is like 6 foot 8, and really goofy, he´s been out for a year and a month, but he speaks portuguese perfect, and he teaches really good as well, so needless to say, i'm pretty excited about this transfer. since i only spent 2 weeks in this new area before my new companion came in, we're pretty much starting new and opening the area, which has proved to be a little difficult this last week, but its starting to get a lot better. This last week we street contacted into this awesome family, and we have taught them a few times and they all came to church yesterday, so i was really happy. it was testimony sunday so they said they didnt like it too much, but we explained everything and they said they'll give it another shot next week, so we'll see how it goes, but i have a lot of faith. besides that we arent really with anyone else at the moment, we are doin a family home evening with this one older couple tonight though which should be fun. this new area i'm in is a lot different from my other area, my other area seemed a little more industrialized, while this area is a lot smaller, and has a lot of dirt roads and stuff, but i like it, everyone is into fitness too which is pretty cool. well not too much else goin on right now. till next week! write me a letter if you love me (valentines day is comin up;))