Will I Stay or Will I Go?

So, the week is going good.

One item of interest is that I picked up my first parasite, in the form of worms. In short, I feel officially inagurated into the country, because I have picked up what I´m sure is just the first of many little vermin that live inside the bowels of humans. Little wormies. I´m actually quite excited because even though the thought of having them inside me is a little weird, I feel like South América hás finally accepted me by blessing me with something.

Well, this is the last week in the transfer. We find out Monday where we are going. Elder J. thinks that I´ll be heading out, because he´s in the singing group that our mission puts on, and it´s starting up after the next transfer. So it makes sense that I would leave so he, as a senior comp, could show a new Elder the area. I´m not taking that as fact yet though, but maybe I´ll leave. Who knows?

Answers to questions:

• No, I havent´recieved my packages yet. We won´t until next mission conference, or next transfer, so maybe in about 2-4 weeks I will.
• I haven´t sent the memory card because of that, but when I get them, I will send it.
• As for the scripture cases, you don´t have to worry about them. Whatever case you find that works will be fine. Actually, I can probably find a place here in Brazil that makes one, so I could just do that.

Well, this week was good. We´ve been teaching this couple named Vanderlay and Patrícia. They have four kids, which qualifies as a riduculously huge family here in Brazil. The majority of famalies that I´ve seen have only one or two. Anyway, me and my last comp had talked with Vanderlay once about two months ago, but he was always busy and so we just gave him a Proclamation to the World pamphlet, and said that we would try again. The problem is is that he lives on the other side of our área, and we don´t pass there tôo often. So we lost track of him.

Then, one day, I remembered about him, and we went to the house that I thought was his. Turns out it wasn´t, but we taught that family that lived there. They weren´t very interested, but one day some girl was over there and said that she remembered us. Turns out she´s the daughter of Vanderlay, and she invited us to go to his house, which was across the street. Vanderlay was really friendly and welcomed us, but his wife seemed kinda lukewarm towards our message. But as the first lesson went on, she seemed to be growing in interest. At the end of the message, she was the one with all the questions, and she told us that she had been praying to find the true church for about 8 years. She said that she had tried basically every religion, but had never felt that those were right. She actually hás attened church once with a member friend, but she felt kinda forced so she didn´t feel the spirit like she should have. She´s reading in the Book of Mórmon and actually vistited mormon.org to find more info on the Nephites and Lamanites. (I´ve never seen na investigator do that before!)

They´re really a cool family to teach, and they are progressing very well. Plus, they fed us some cake, and the only people who have ever fed us have been members, or a Sister that will get baptized as soon as the drunk guy that lives with her moves out, so I see the cake as a good sign of how they´ll progress. In short, it´s been good to finally find someone who´s been searching after so long of having people be resistent.

As always, ´til next week. And maybe from a new town!

Excelsior!

Elder =w= Heperi

The Church Is True... but the e-mail service isn't always,

Sorry about the late letter, but yesterday the ldsmail.net site was down, so as a result I only have about 20 minutes or so to type. Massively annoying. Rejections and people telling us that our message and our Church is full of it I can take. But when the rejection is coming from our email service...that makes the blood boil more than the Brazilian heat. Hopefully the e-mail system will learn how to serve the Church better...

Anyway, this is a pre-written letter that I wrote last night and am typing very quickly, so if stuff stops making sense at a certain point, that´s why.

First off, no problem with only a letter from Levi last week. I figured that it was a technical problem, not you guys forgetting the poor gringo here in Bauru.

Very little time, so just one experience. We did a trade last week, and I worked with Elder Davis, an American, and the newest American besides me. He has about 7 or 8 months out, and is fluent, so I hope I can be like him, language-wise in 8 months. We´ll see.

Anyway, we went to a teaching appointment. A pastor in fact. It was supposed to be a resolving concerns thing, but it quickly turned into a Bible bash. We weren’t making any headway with scripture references in the Bible. (Turns out that he was using a different translation than the one that we have, so half the references weren´t working.) So I started using script’s from the BOM, and he had less to fight with. He would always just answer, "I have the Bible, and that´s all I need." So, I showed him the verse in Nephi where it talks about people who say that. He read it and was like "That´s interesting, but God has revealed his word in the Bible." The appointment continued like that, and after about the 3rd time of him telling me to, "go pray and renounce these false things that you´re teaching and call your prophet in the United States and tell him to get you out of here, with the cancerous sun, and come follow Jesus, because right now you´re a lost soul."

I got sick of listening to that, So I said "Look, I don´t speak the language very well, and obviously you know a lot about the Bible, and I can´t find a response that you´d like to your doubts about us. All I can say is that I know that the BOM is true and contains the fullness of the gospel." At this point his ears perk up and his repeats, "Fullness?" I say, "Yep" At this point he points at me and says, "Then I will read to see if you are correct." He said it in a way that was obvious that he will look for what he can to not believe the BOM, but at least he accepted the challenge.

But this brings me to the point of my story. It was a great feeling to put everything on the BOM, because it can support it. I didn´t have the slightest hesitation telling him that it contained what it contained. Now, based on his reaction to the challenge, it seems that he´s going to read it just to spite me and try to find some error in it. And no doubt he´ll find something to disagree with in his mind. But I felt satisfied with my effort. Most likely I´ll never see him again since he´s not in my area, but I´d like to find out what happens.

In short, that was one of the good experiences out here.

Some days the things that happen are a pain, and it seems like a bad day. Bad times like when the Internet doesn´t work on P-day, and your companion has been playing the "Sons of Provo" soundtrack for 5 weeks straight, and people aren´t understanding your Portuguese. But the good times like having good investigators seem to outweigh that.

So I hope everyone is good. I hear that Nate has his ups and downs in his mission, and that makes me feel better to know that someone else has hard times in their mission.

Well, enough insight/babbling from me for today.

Times up, and I´m tired of listening to this guy next to me listen to Maroon 5 and Kelly Clarkson. ‘Til next week!

Excelcior!

-Elder Luke Heperi

Belesa Presidente (Beautiful President)

Well that was a right short e-mail from you guys. What happened? Only Levi remember that I’m lost in a foreign country somewhere? That’s ok, s’all good. [The weekly family email we sent each week went astray, so Luke only got a short email from Levi this week.]

Did you send another email, Dad, that possibly got lost? Because I only received one that titled, “Spring is Coming” with a message from Levi marked 5:09 am on the 12th of March. It’s ok, but I just was wondering.

So another week, another spiritual dollar. Yesterday we had our mission conference, so we had to travel to Marilia. We had to wake up at about 5am to get ready, so I was pretty tired, and I’m still feeling it in fact, but other than that it was pretty good. Traveling is one of my favorite parts of the mission. It’s nice to see the countryside and other stuff outside of my immediate area. We also got to watch, “The Best Two Years” on the way, so it kinda felt like a road-trip.

The conference itself was good as well, but I guess that the guy who was coming to speak got lost on the way or something, ‘cuz we had to wait almost two hours for him to show up. Which was fine, but instead of a two hour conference plus lunch, we got to have a four hour meeting plus lunch. It was good and enlightening, but I was dozing off at the end.I also got to see two of the Elders from my MTC district, which was way cool. It was cool to converse in Portuguese, although we’re not fluent or even close to it yet. Also President Leal talked to us a bit. With me, he just asked me how I was doing, and I said, "Belesa Presidente", which literally means "Beautiful President", but they use it differently down here. Anyway, he seemed to think that my response was funny.

Well, we lost some of our best investigators this week. We were making some really good progress with them, but unfortunately one of the guys named Ad… got a talking to from their pastor about staying away from those Mormons, so he told us that although he really enjoys talking with us, his Mom doesn’t want us to come back. That was unfortunate. Also, he hadn´t quite grasped the message of us telling him that ours is the only true and living Church, so that may have been part of the problem. He just thought that Church is Church, no matter which one.Also, we got a referral through a member to teach and give a guy named Ric… a Book of Mormon. When we got there he let us in and let us share our message. He and his family participated as well. Normally the lesson is only about 20 min., but they had many questions and it stretched to over an hour. During the lesson, he told us that he had seen us speaking with a lady in the street before we came here (We were doing contacts around his area before we got there), and had thought that we were from some other church. Apparently he’s had some problems with other church’s missionaries, and he said that when he saw us coming to the gate, he was going to lie and say that he wasn’t Ric... But then he said that he had a feeling that he should let us in. And he said that he was really glad that he did, because we turned out to be the missionaries that he wanted. We taught a pretty good lesson, and he said that he would definitely begin to read and pray to find out if our message is true. And at the end, we asked if we could close with a prayer. He said that’d be good, but did he mind if he offered it? We said that was fine. Long story short, the prayer was like 10 min long, and was the kind where he’s talking really loudly while the other people are in the corner yelling “Hallelujah” every so often during the prayer. Very good guy, but I can see that it’ll be a bit of a challenge to change the way that he prays.

In other news, we’re goin’ to the zoo today, so I’ll be sure to get a lot of pic’s from there. I haven’t gotten the mail with the memory cards that you sent, and the next mail day will probably be during the next transfer, so until then, I’ll keep taking the pic’s.

Let’s see, what else. Oh, I got a letter from Elder Morrise over in that Taiwan place. It was nice to hear that he is still alive. And it made me feel better about my language struggles when I realized that I don’t have to learn a new alphabet. It’s weird to think that he and Rob are approaching a year already, and Dave Ridge has a year this month I believe. Sheesh, we’ll all be home in no time.

Well as always, Excelsior!

-Eldizzle =w= Hepizzle

Ants + Beef Jerky = Delicious

First off, I did receive my packages. And, Hallelujah for Butterfinger and Snickers! I haven’t had that in a while. They have Snickers here in Brazil of course, but at more than a Real [Brazilian dollar] for a fun size, I haven’t had any opportunity to sample.

One thing I discovered though, the bugs down here move more quickly than in the US, in terms of how fast they find stuff. I accidentally left one of the packages of beef jerky open for just a half-hour, and I had a small line of ants marching towards them and in the bag. But!...I couldn’t throw out precious beef jerky, oh no. So, I put it in the freezer, and now all the ants are dead. So...the bad news is that I have dead ants in my beef jerky. The good news is that that package of beef jerky has now doubled in the amount of protein that it has. Actually a win-win situation in my book. [Apparently the boy is much like his grandpa in NZ.]

Your package via mail arrived last Thursday, actually, so the mail does work here. I liked all the pictures of the crosses, it was like I was getting a package from the Pope. I think they protected it, cuz it wasn’t open, and everything was in there. Those “Y” pillow cases are way cool! Thanks, I didn’t know that they made those. BYU Bookstore I assume? I guess the mail thing actually is pretty good, thanks!

So, events from this week. The new companionship is going well, though I’m gonna have to have a talk with Elder R.J. about the amount of English that we’re speaking. I learned from my zone leader to always speak Portuguese in the road or on the bus, or when within earshot of other Portuguese speakers, otherwise people may be less inclined to talk to us, if we need to, because they think that we’re weird foreigners or something, or they might think that we’re saying something about them. Anyway, I just got the idea that it’s generally a good idea to speak the language as much as possible, especially in the road.

With my last comp., we’d speak English in the house, so I’m fine with that. I struggle a lot to remember to speak in the language, but usually I think to respond in Portuguese first. But...Elder R.J. never remembers that. And 90% of the time he speaks English at me. Which is fine for him, he’s already fluent, but I’m afraid that what little skill I have in the language will die if I don’t do something about this. So we’ll see how that goes this week.

Other than that, our companionship is good. Although we’re quite different, but I’ve found that every comp. that I’ve had so far is different than me in many ways. We’re both into music, but he’s only really into acapella stuff and Josh Groban and Michael Jackson, and he doesn’t like Rock music or the Beatles or anything like that. (He doesn’t know who John Lennon was, but he’s in love with Brian McKnight. What is that?) So, hopefully I can convert him to the great Church of Rock N´Roll that I am a member of, and get him to leave the Church of that weirdo-who-had-plastic surgery-music. We’ll see...

Oh, and Levi will understand this. He always sings songs in the morning while we’re doing morning study. It’s almost exactly like he’s Andy Bernard and I’m Jim Halpert. Maybe I’ll put the companionship cell phone in the ceiling to annoy him.

In other news, we’re starting to get some good investigators. We didn’t have much last transfer, so knocking doors for a while has been a daily activity. Actually, it’s probably the least inspiring way to work, but it gives me good practice with my speaking. We actually found one family he is really good. It’s a guy named Adlison who lives with his girlfriend, mom, and sister. All except the mom participate. We were knocking around and asked to share a message with them, and they let us in. They were really interested and accepting, and the next time we came back, Adlison´s girlfriend had a list of questions that she had written down. It was about ten questions long, from stuff like "What happens after we die? Should we use different words when we pray? Is there an end of the world, and is it true that Jesus will someday return?" It was pretty cool to answer those questions, cuz as of this point in the mission, I haven’t gotten much of those. I managed to answer the one about Christ returning someday, and why our Church is "Dos Santos Dos Últimos Dias", so that was cool. We’re gonna extend an invitation to get baptized next time (They’ve been reading the Book of Mormon, which is amazing I think because none here ever likes to read the passages that we give them. I don’t think it’s that hard, it’s just the Introduction, 3 Nephi 12, and Moroni 10:3-5. Something like 4 pages and barely anyone likes to do it, so far out of our investigators). We just need Adlison and his girlfriend to get married, and for them to attend church a couple of times. We’ve got other good prospects too, but those are the most interesting, so on to some entertaining stuff.

We had lunch at a members house, and I discovered that he’s a big movie fan. He showed us all the movies that he has, both English and Portuguese. I think his favorite is the super-hero movie “Hellboy.” In fact, he liked it so much that he named his goldfish after the movie. A fish named Hellboy. I think that was the title of the sequel to "One fish two fish red fish blue fish" that Dr. Suess was writing before he died. True story. (nah)

So Coach Pope is the Coach, huh? Sweet! That’ll be a good time there, I always loved his approach to coaching. and I hope that the old spirit of the team returns. (Not the losing part, but the "Hey, let’s eat McDonald’s at practice and make fun of each others mothers in Tongan" kind of attitude. That’s what that team (and this world too) really needs.

Well, times up.

Next week we got a mission tour conference thingy, so we have to travel to Marilia (bad spelling, that’s just how it sounds to me). So, Road Trip! Brazilian style!

Thank you for those packages! They were great, and I´m really happy to be playing those pieces of music.

And also, I did get that letter from Tota, and tell her thank you for that.

It’s good to here that the BYU Basketball team is doing well. I´d love to catch a game of theirs now.

In other news, I’m doing well here. The mission gets better as time goes on. I’m adjusting more to the culture, the language, and the work. Elder R.J. is good a good Elder, I just have to remind him to help me along with my developing language skills. I really enjoy study time now, and I wish that I had more time to just sit and read the scriptures. D&C I’ve found has some very amazing things in there.

Also, that’s an amazing story to hear about grandma and her parents. And, actually, I just read this week a quote in the Ensign from President Joseph F. Smith (I think it was him, or Joseph Fielding) where he said that family members may come back and appear with a message of encouragement, or just a reassuring presence.

Whelp, again outta time.

Like I mentioned, we’ve got a mission tour conference to go to next week, so I hope that it’ll be good. Actually, I enjoy riding the bus, but it doesn’t make for good letter writing. I don’t think P-day will change because of that conference, so should be business as usual next week.

I’m doin’ good, and sounds like you guys are too.

Thanks again for your love, your candy, your love in the form of candy, and your candy in the form of love.

Excelsior!

Elder =w= Heperi