Hey, so first of all, nobody told me that Elder Wirthlin died! My area is the farthest away from the center of the city, and as we´re without a cellphone, we don´t get too much contact with the rest of the mission. I was at a member´s house when I opened the Liahona and saw the “In Memorial of” page. Yeesh! I feel disconnected with the rest of what´s going on in the church.
This week we had great success in finding another complete family that truly has been prepared to receive the message. On Tuesday we went to an appointment at the appointed time, only to find that the people had forgotten and weren´t home. (Pretty normal, unfortunately). Looking to the trusty “Backup Plan” in the planner, we decided to do some door knocking to teach. The first lesson we taught was pretty lousy, as the lady we taught seemed to not even be listening. She responded like she wasn´t even paying attention to the lesson, so to grab her attention I invited her to be baptized, and she said “Yeah, that´d be nice.”
But, moving on we found success in finding W., his wife Ma..., and their 9 year old son who has a name that I can´t pronounce yet without people laughing at me. They accepted our 1st visit, and when we returned the next day, they had already read parts from the Book of Mormon and had questions, which was a nice breath of fresh air. Wan. works construction and is a bit rough on the edges, but he teared up as told us that he´s been looking for a better way of life for some time now. After the 1st lesson, they told us how they've been having some fights in their marriage. (actually, like almost everybody we teach, they´re not married but we´re working on that one) I felt inspired to teach them about family and couple prayer, and the committed to starting the practice. On the return visit, M... reported that she felt that they were starting to feel more united and that they were fighting less. I was grateful for being able to teach a principle that we´ve always observed (as we´ve always had family prayer) and help others out.
I really received a boost to my testimony about prayer this week. Me and Elder R. felt inspired to teach about marriage, Temple marriage, and the Law of Chastity on the 2nd visit, which is something that I´ve never done before. We prepared a special lesson about all those principles, and they seemed to like the lesson a lot. This coming week we´ll be helping out with their marriage as well. It really was a great blessing to be able to find them.
In other news, we managed to find the keys. Turns out that I left them in a member´s car last Sunday, so I was grateful that we don´t have to jump over the wall anymore.
In today´s plan for P-day, we´ve got a soccer game with some of the young men at the chapel, and then we´re gonna watch “Kung Fu Panda”. (Disney and other animated movies we can watch on P-day.) I´m pushing to get us to watch it in English subtitled in Portuguese instead of the other way around, so we´ll see what happens. It just won´t be the same without Jack Black´s voice coming from the Panda…
‘sall from me.
Till next week”
-Me
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Jumping the Fence
Thus ends another week. Levi tells me that the Magleby´s dog, Puppy, is dead, which does put a damper on the day. On a happier note, that´s cool to hear that Ilse and Jessica are gonna serve missions. How many is that out from the ward now, 6? 7?
Today I´m praying that we find our house key, as I managed to lose it yesterday. We can still get in the house, so it´s not like we´re without a house, but it involves a complicated process of using the neighbor´s ladder to jump over our wall and small fence, and then going thru the backdoor, so finding our keys would be a very good thing right now.
On a funny language note, I found a new phrase to be careful with. I learned that “jumping the fence” in Portuguese also means cheating on your spouse, as the sister who is our neighbor informed me when I told her why we needed a ladder. The language continues to be something new and interesting everyday…ha ha
Well, we managed to get Ros. and her husband married, but Ros. got cold feet during the interview and wants to wait a bit before her baptism. Our project for the next few weeks will be seeing if we can follow the Spirit and resolve her doubts. She says that she doesn´t doubt that the message is true and already received a response, but that there´s just something that she´s lacking to be baptized right now. One of our other investigators, Sus., with a baptism date is also in the same boat.
On Saturday we checked our internet references and realized that there were a few from December that hadn´t been contacted yet, so we journeyed to the neighborhood that sits at the very edge of our area, Los Angeles. A lady that had called from one of the pass-along cards was very receptive to the message, and was one of those people that really makes me love to teach and be a missionary. Her name´s Luciana, and she´s been in search of a church for some time now. She´s always visiting a bunch of churches, (and with at least two churches for every block, Brazil has a lot to offer) but never has felt satisfied, and has always prayed and asked God to help her. She shared a cool experience with us. She said that the Saturday morning before we found her house, she decided to take a nap prayed and asked again for help to find a church again, and dreamt that two people would come to her house with the answer. She thought about the dream all day, and when we came knocking, she was really happy to let us teach. I was happy that we found her, and also happy that Elder R. was inspired to have us go there to contact her, as that neighborhood is not one that we usually work in.
Today for P-day we´ve got a Zone soccer/basketball game planned. I say soccer/basketball because technically we´re not supposed to play soccer as President decided not to allow it, due to excessive fights. Every soccer game that I´ve seen played on the mission usually almost always ends up in a fight between some of the Elders as Brazilians take their soccer pretty seriously; but somebody always ends up bringing a soccer ball to the basketball game anyway and it usually ends up turning into a good ól time on the field. I don´t think I make too bad of a goalie myself…heh
I believe that´s it from me.
Thanks for everything as always, and till next time.
-Me
Today I´m praying that we find our house key, as I managed to lose it yesterday. We can still get in the house, so it´s not like we´re without a house, but it involves a complicated process of using the neighbor´s ladder to jump over our wall and small fence, and then going thru the backdoor, so finding our keys would be a very good thing right now.
On a funny language note, I found a new phrase to be careful with. I learned that “jumping the fence” in Portuguese also means cheating on your spouse, as the sister who is our neighbor informed me when I told her why we needed a ladder. The language continues to be something new and interesting everyday…ha ha
Well, we managed to get Ros. and her husband married, but Ros. got cold feet during the interview and wants to wait a bit before her baptism. Our project for the next few weeks will be seeing if we can follow the Spirit and resolve her doubts. She says that she doesn´t doubt that the message is true and already received a response, but that there´s just something that she´s lacking to be baptized right now. One of our other investigators, Sus., with a baptism date is also in the same boat.
On Saturday we checked our internet references and realized that there were a few from December that hadn´t been contacted yet, so we journeyed to the neighborhood that sits at the very edge of our area, Los Angeles. A lady that had called from one of the pass-along cards was very receptive to the message, and was one of those people that really makes me love to teach and be a missionary. Her name´s Luciana, and she´s been in search of a church for some time now. She´s always visiting a bunch of churches, (and with at least two churches for every block, Brazil has a lot to offer) but never has felt satisfied, and has always prayed and asked God to help her. She shared a cool experience with us. She said that the Saturday morning before we found her house, she decided to take a nap prayed and asked again for help to find a church again, and dreamt that two people would come to her house with the answer. She thought about the dream all day, and when we came knocking, she was really happy to let us teach. I was happy that we found her, and also happy that Elder R. was inspired to have us go there to contact her, as that neighborhood is not one that we usually work in.
Today for P-day we´ve got a Zone soccer/basketball game planned. I say soccer/basketball because technically we´re not supposed to play soccer as President decided not to allow it, due to excessive fights. Every soccer game that I´ve seen played on the mission usually almost always ends up in a fight between some of the Elders as Brazilians take their soccer pretty seriously; but somebody always ends up bringing a soccer ball to the basketball game anyway and it usually ends up turning into a good ól time on the field. I don´t think I make too bad of a goalie myself…heh
I believe that´s it from me.
Thanks for everything as always, and till next time.
-Me
Weddings and Toothbrushes
So the transfer came and went, and me and Elder R. are still here. The only move we had in my district was that Elder C. left, and now an Elder named Elder Harrison is here. He’s from Orem, and a graduate from Mtn. View, so we’re comparing people to see if we know people in common. He just finished being comps with Elder Monterosa as well.
It rained a lot here as usual, and whenever we have a day of hard rain, usually all or most of our appointments fall. I dunno what it is, but people just don’t wanna open there doors during these mini-monsoons that we get around here.
We are having some good success though. New Year’s eve we were knocking some doors before heading of to dinner at a member’s house, and we found a Catholic family that was willing to listen to the message. We returned New Year’s Day, and managed to teach a lesson to about 2/3 of the family. (The other third had partied a bit too hard that night and didn’t manage to get up for an appointment at 3:30 in the afternoon.) They seemed to understand well, but on the return visit we found that the Dad didn’t really want to hear more. But fortunately one of the daughters, named Susana, (about 20 or 21 I’d guess) had read the parts that we had marked in the Book of Mormon and felt that it was true, and has been going to church for the last two weeks. She has a baptism date marked for later this month, but still is unsure. I was thinking that maybe she didn’t feel like she got a response, but when we taught her yesterday, she said “No, I know that it’s true. I’ve asked three times for a response and felt that it’s true each time.” It was pretty cool to hear her say how she felt about the Book of Mormon. Her concern, though, is how to tell her Dad that she’s going to be baptized in the church, as he’s pretty hard-core Catholic and she dozen’t think he’ll be happy with that. We’re helping her along and helping here with the decision. We’ve brought over a few members to help us teach as well, including a girl in the ward who was in more or less the same situation, so we’ll pray and work to see how it goes. If you guys could remember her and her family in your prayers that’d be great.
We’re setting up two weddings this week as well. Three of our investigators (a guy named Fabio and his wife Marcia, and a woman named Rosanna) have to get married before their baptisms. Apparently there’s some bus that comes around every week or so and does all the wedding stuff right there on the bus for you, you just need to show up with who you’re marrying and some form of identification. Who needs Las Vegas and a little white chapel when you’ve got a wedding bus?
So Tuesday we’ll be helping those people tie the knot. (Or, as I found as they say in Portuguese, they’re going to “unite the toothbrushes” or something like that. I think it refers to the fact that your toothbrush sits alone on the bathroom sink until you get married, then there are two.)
My drunk-guy experience of the week (I pretty much always have one, I just usually forget to share it) happened close to our house. I was walking with my other shoes in hand to the shoe-repair place when the guy stopped me. I’ve gotten better at telling when someone’s had a few too many, but this guy was speaking coherently so I didn’t pick up on it before a conversation started. He must have talked with the missionaries before, as he assumed me and my comp were both American. Yelling quite loudly, he told me how he hated the US, but liked the Mormons, as the idea of more than one wife appealed to him. Elder R., trying to correct him, instead got a drunken-finger pointed at him with the comment “Listen American, you’re talking with a real Brazilian here. Don’t you try to tell me what I should think.” I started laughing at that point as Elder R. tried to figure out if it was worth his time to clarify his nationality. We left while the guy continued to yell at passersby. Good times!
Welp, not much else from me.
Thanks for the support and prayers from home, and until next week.
- Luuuuuuuuke
It rained a lot here as usual, and whenever we have a day of hard rain, usually all or most of our appointments fall. I dunno what it is, but people just don’t wanna open there doors during these mini-monsoons that we get around here.
We are having some good success though. New Year’s eve we were knocking some doors before heading of to dinner at a member’s house, and we found a Catholic family that was willing to listen to the message. We returned New Year’s Day, and managed to teach a lesson to about 2/3 of the family. (The other third had partied a bit too hard that night and didn’t manage to get up for an appointment at 3:30 in the afternoon.) They seemed to understand well, but on the return visit we found that the Dad didn’t really want to hear more. But fortunately one of the daughters, named Susana, (about 20 or 21 I’d guess) had read the parts that we had marked in the Book of Mormon and felt that it was true, and has been going to church for the last two weeks. She has a baptism date marked for later this month, but still is unsure. I was thinking that maybe she didn’t feel like she got a response, but when we taught her yesterday, she said “No, I know that it’s true. I’ve asked three times for a response and felt that it’s true each time.” It was pretty cool to hear her say how she felt about the Book of Mormon. Her concern, though, is how to tell her Dad that she’s going to be baptized in the church, as he’s pretty hard-core Catholic and she dozen’t think he’ll be happy with that. We’re helping her along and helping here with the decision. We’ve brought over a few members to help us teach as well, including a girl in the ward who was in more or less the same situation, so we’ll pray and work to see how it goes. If you guys could remember her and her family in your prayers that’d be great.
We’re setting up two weddings this week as well. Three of our investigators (a guy named Fabio and his wife Marcia, and a woman named Rosanna) have to get married before their baptisms. Apparently there’s some bus that comes around every week or so and does all the wedding stuff right there on the bus for you, you just need to show up with who you’re marrying and some form of identification. Who needs Las Vegas and a little white chapel when you’ve got a wedding bus?
So Tuesday we’ll be helping those people tie the knot. (Or, as I found as they say in Portuguese, they’re going to “unite the toothbrushes” or something like that. I think it refers to the fact that your toothbrush sits alone on the bathroom sink until you get married, then there are two.)
My drunk-guy experience of the week (I pretty much always have one, I just usually forget to share it) happened close to our house. I was walking with my other shoes in hand to the shoe-repair place when the guy stopped me. I’ve gotten better at telling when someone’s had a few too many, but this guy was speaking coherently so I didn’t pick up on it before a conversation started. He must have talked with the missionaries before, as he assumed me and my comp were both American. Yelling quite loudly, he told me how he hated the US, but liked the Mormons, as the idea of more than one wife appealed to him. Elder R., trying to correct him, instead got a drunken-finger pointed at him with the comment “Listen American, you’re talking with a real Brazilian here. Don’t you try to tell me what I should think.” I started laughing at that point as Elder R. tried to figure out if it was worth his time to clarify his nationality. We left while the guy continued to yell at passersby. Good times!
Welp, not much else from me.
Thanks for the support and prayers from home, and until next week.
- Luuuuuuuuke
Monday, January 5, 2009
Good sized explosions on the road...
So Levi tells me that the Utes won. What a terrible start to the year… And, Lauren´s driving? Ha, that´s funny. How things have changed...
New Year´s eve was interesting. We had dinner at a member´s house and then headed back to the house. It gets kinda crazy around here because all the kids around here make these kind of homemade bombs out of soda bottles and who knows what else and throw them at each other and at passers by. Every two minutes or so, during Dec. 31st, we would hear and see many good sized explosions on the road. All the kids think it´s hilarious when the adults yell at them and women chase the kids away from their houses trying to smack them with a broom.
It rained a lot on the 31st here, so there weren´t too many opportunities to see any cool fireworks. New Year´s day was a bit difficult to find people as everyone who wasn´t drunk asleep in their houses were asleep and drunk on the road, which are two hard teaching situations.
We did manage to find a nice family to teach. Their Catholic, and the dad said that he´d like to visit our church but always has a meeting Sunday morning. Oh, which reminds me, I had a good experience with developing patience. The Catholic family that we´re teaching has a family friend, a 15-year old guy by the name of M. who is visiting from another city and is staying just 4 houses down from them. He seemed really interested in the message and said that he´d come to church with us on Sunday. When I called him Saturday night to remind him about church, he said that unfortunately he had to go back to his city and had left Campo Grande, but that he would be back on Wednesday. We were a bit disappointed, but said we´d see him on Wednesday then. About a half-hour later we went to visit the family´s house to remind everybody else, and when we got there the guy was sitting there hanging out with them! (He must think that this American is pretty dumb, eh?) The look on his face when we showed up there was great, but me and Elder R. exercised patience and resisted the urge to burn the guy and instead we didn´t address it and just invited everybody to church. And, you know what? He ended up going to church and had a good experience. Controlling emotions works! (As a funny side note, the lesson in the new members class was about the Final Judgement, and how liars get a place in the Telestial Kingdom. We´ll work with him to be more honest next time)
Welp, I think that´s all from this side of the equator. Luckily this week has cooled down and I actually had to use my blanket for the first time since I got in this city. There´s hope yet…heh.
-Me
New Year´s eve was interesting. We had dinner at a member´s house and then headed back to the house. It gets kinda crazy around here because all the kids around here make these kind of homemade bombs out of soda bottles and who knows what else and throw them at each other and at passers by. Every two minutes or so, during Dec. 31st, we would hear and see many good sized explosions on the road. All the kids think it´s hilarious when the adults yell at them and women chase the kids away from their houses trying to smack them with a broom.
It rained a lot on the 31st here, so there weren´t too many opportunities to see any cool fireworks. New Year´s day was a bit difficult to find people as everyone who wasn´t drunk asleep in their houses were asleep and drunk on the road, which are two hard teaching situations.
We did manage to find a nice family to teach. Their Catholic, and the dad said that he´d like to visit our church but always has a meeting Sunday morning. Oh, which reminds me, I had a good experience with developing patience. The Catholic family that we´re teaching has a family friend, a 15-year old guy by the name of M. who is visiting from another city and is staying just 4 houses down from them. He seemed really interested in the message and said that he´d come to church with us on Sunday. When I called him Saturday night to remind him about church, he said that unfortunately he had to go back to his city and had left Campo Grande, but that he would be back on Wednesday. We were a bit disappointed, but said we´d see him on Wednesday then. About a half-hour later we went to visit the family´s house to remind everybody else, and when we got there the guy was sitting there hanging out with them! (He must think that this American is pretty dumb, eh?) The look on his face when we showed up there was great, but me and Elder R. exercised patience and resisted the urge to burn the guy and instead we didn´t address it and just invited everybody to church. And, you know what? He ended up going to church and had a good experience. Controlling emotions works! (As a funny side note, the lesson in the new members class was about the Final Judgement, and how liars get a place in the Telestial Kingdom. We´ll work with him to be more honest next time)
Welp, I think that´s all from this side of the equator. Luckily this week has cooled down and I actually had to use my blanket for the first time since I got in this city. There´s hope yet…heh.
-Me
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Christmas BBQ
I think the phonecall business is all a little surreal. Everybody sounded the same except Liam and Lauren. You guys both sound a lot older. The most similar were Grandma, Grandpa and Tota. Christmas was a good ól time.
Here in Brazil, everybody holds a “Christmas Supper” that starts at midnight on Christmas Eve and goes on ´till who knows when. Unfortunately, we couldn’t be out till midnight, but President did let us stay out till 10 at one of the parties. One of the families that we’re teaching invited us to their house for their barbecue, for which we were very grateful. It was basically like food from Tucanos, and even included a full roasted pig, head and all. There´s also this thing called Mandioca that is a bit like a potato that I like a lot, and there was plenty of it that evening. A good night.
So one of our investigators, named R., agreed to a baptismal date on January 11th. We found her and her family knocking doors one day. As the chapel is in the other Elder’s area, we decided to find the house that was the very closest to the chapel and knock there, and we ended up finding a whole family. She’s been very receptive and reads the Book of Mormon very consistently. The only problem is that her husband never shows much interest when we come to visit. He listens but never usually responds to questions or stuff like that. Also, we’re in the process of helping them get married, which isn’t too complicated, but we’ll depend a lot on him. R. is really excited to get married, but says that unfortunately he’s a bit fearful of marriage. Which, after 3 kids and 10 years of being together, I think isn’t justified at all. We’re trying to find a tactful way of telling him to just suck it up, be a man, and get married so that he can have an eternal family. We taught them about marriage and the temple already, and R. seemed quite moved by the doctrine. Please pray for them and for us to help him.
Last week after the Zone Christmas Conference, we went Christmas caroling as a zone. We all headed to one of the plazas downtown and set up our choir (about 22 missionaries) while others stopped the people passing by and got references and handed out pass-along cards. I was in the choir for a bit, but then I found it more interesting to talk to the people. There’s always quite a few hippies there (funny enough hippy is Portuguese as well) and they’re always fun to talk too. We found a decent amount of people that we’re interested in the message, though not too many who live in my area as it’s about an hour from the center. It was a nice experience.
It’s nice to hear that you’ve got a lot of snow there in Provo. As I mentioned on the phone, if the temperature drops below 70 degrees here, people close down their houses and half the city gets sick with a cold.
Welp, sáll from me.
Thanks for the support from home.
-Me
Here in Brazil, everybody holds a “Christmas Supper” that starts at midnight on Christmas Eve and goes on ´till who knows when. Unfortunately, we couldn’t be out till midnight, but President did let us stay out till 10 at one of the parties. One of the families that we’re teaching invited us to their house for their barbecue, for which we were very grateful. It was basically like food from Tucanos, and even included a full roasted pig, head and all. There´s also this thing called Mandioca that is a bit like a potato that I like a lot, and there was plenty of it that evening. A good night.
So one of our investigators, named R., agreed to a baptismal date on January 11th. We found her and her family knocking doors one day. As the chapel is in the other Elder’s area, we decided to find the house that was the very closest to the chapel and knock there, and we ended up finding a whole family. She’s been very receptive and reads the Book of Mormon very consistently. The only problem is that her husband never shows much interest when we come to visit. He listens but never usually responds to questions or stuff like that. Also, we’re in the process of helping them get married, which isn’t too complicated, but we’ll depend a lot on him. R. is really excited to get married, but says that unfortunately he’s a bit fearful of marriage. Which, after 3 kids and 10 years of being together, I think isn’t justified at all. We’re trying to find a tactful way of telling him to just suck it up, be a man, and get married so that he can have an eternal family. We taught them about marriage and the temple already, and R. seemed quite moved by the doctrine. Please pray for them and for us to help him.
Last week after the Zone Christmas Conference, we went Christmas caroling as a zone. We all headed to one of the plazas downtown and set up our choir (about 22 missionaries) while others stopped the people passing by and got references and handed out pass-along cards. I was in the choir for a bit, but then I found it more interesting to talk to the people. There’s always quite a few hippies there (funny enough hippy is Portuguese as well) and they’re always fun to talk too. We found a decent amount of people that we’re interested in the message, though not too many who live in my area as it’s about an hour from the center. It was a nice experience.
It’s nice to hear that you’ve got a lot of snow there in Provo. As I mentioned on the phone, if the temperature drops below 70 degrees here, people close down their houses and half the city gets sick with a cold.
Welp, sáll from me.
Thanks for the support from home.
-Me
Hot Christmas
Poor Cougs. I hope the Utes lose...We´re approaching 98 degrees today here. No white Christmas for me this year.
I finished up with my visa problem, so thus ended the biggest pain in the butt that I´ve had yet in the mission. I´ll definately be smarter in the future and not lose my identification slip. But all´s well after that.
We had Christmas Conference yesterday. Normally it would be mission wide, but President decided to save money and travel time for everybody and hold one yesterday for everybody that´s in the cities of Campo Grande, Dourados, and Ponta Porã, and another one today for the rest of the mission. It was really good and fun, but unfortunately I didn´t get to see anyone from my MTC group as they´re all in the other parts of the mission, but it was cool just the same.
Thanks to Talisa for the letter with Halloween pictures, and congrats to Amy on the mission call. Welcome to South America!
Welp, that´s it from me.
Today´s not actually officially P-day, so we´ve got shorter time than usual just to write a quick e-mail. I´ll talk to you guys tomorrow, and I´ll try to come prepared with something interesting to say.
Merry Christmas, Feliz Natal, Feliz Navidade, Happy Chanukah and Kwanzaa, and a Happy Festivus to all!
-Heperi the brown nosed Elder (not brown-noser, just brown nosed.)
I finished up with my visa problem, so thus ended the biggest pain in the butt that I´ve had yet in the mission. I´ll definately be smarter in the future and not lose my identification slip. But all´s well after that.
We had Christmas Conference yesterday. Normally it would be mission wide, but President decided to save money and travel time for everybody and hold one yesterday for everybody that´s in the cities of Campo Grande, Dourados, and Ponta Porã, and another one today for the rest of the mission. It was really good and fun, but unfortunately I didn´t get to see anyone from my MTC group as they´re all in the other parts of the mission, but it was cool just the same.
Thanks to Talisa for the letter with Halloween pictures, and congrats to Amy on the mission call. Welcome to South America!
Welp, that´s it from me.
Today´s not actually officially P-day, so we´ve got shorter time than usual just to write a quick e-mail. I´ll talk to you guys tomorrow, and I´ll try to come prepared with something interesting to say.
Merry Christmas, Feliz Natal, Feliz Navidade, Happy Chanukah and Kwanzaa, and a Happy Festivus to all!
-Heperi the brown nosed Elder (not brown-noser, just brown nosed.)
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