July.......

Monday, July 25, 2010

I love my hammock! It’s awesome! I don’t sleep in it because we don’t have hooks in our room for it. It has loops at both ends and they hook to a hook. I will bring it home with me! I do remember the hammock that I used to read in; but (no offense) it sucks compared to the one I have now! I read my Book of Mormon in Portuguese and Our Search for Happiness in it.

I am glad that you are not wishing time away! Because I love every minute here! I am growing so much and I am learning so much about myself and my relationship with the Savior! I am so happy to be here. Please don’t miss me too much! Please enjoy the time that I am on my mission! Please, please don’t live phone call to phone call! I don’t want you to think of my mission that way! This is the best thing that has every happened to me in my whole life! I am so grateful that you raised me and taught me that I needed to live the commandments to have a happy and successful life! I want you to know that! I also want you to know that I am safe and that I am very happy! I will be happy when the time comes for me to come home. But I know that I will also not want to leave! I know that to think about me not wanting to leave makes you a little sad! But please understand the love that I have for Brazil and for the people here. My life has changed because of what I have seen and the people that I have met here! I will always love the people and the country!
This week we had one of our investigators tell us that he does not believe in God. Then the next day the bishop called and told us that he wants to get baptized. So I don’t know what is going on with that. He was at church yesterday but we did not get a chance to talk to him for long. We have an appointment with him sometime this week. So we will see what happens with that. We have another person that I think will get baptized before the end of the transfer so that is good!
We found out about transfers.... We will both stay here for one more transfer at least... Elder Taylor only has two more transfers so I will probably kill him in this area in October.  I was hoping to get another Brazilian as a comp. so that I could speak Portuguese all day. But I will be fine with Elder Taylor! He will help me learn a lot!
Elder Johnson, the one from Green River, will get transferred to another state in Brazil so I won’t see him again. Sad. He will go home at the same time as Elder Taylor so I probably won’t see him on the mission again. I am going to miss him. But that is what happens on the mission, missionaries get transferred! Elder Calaza is going home tomorrow! I talked to him on the phone yesterday and it was good I like him a lot and will miss him as well!
Thank you so much for your prayers! I know that the Lord is blessing me and that He is blessing you at home as well!  I love you guys and hope you all have a great week!

Monday, July 18, 2011

Today has been a long day! We started this morning playing football.... and if you have ever seen me play football you understand... I fell in the sand and cut my elbow and knee pretty bad... It looks a lot better now but before if looked really bad.  I am pretty sure it will heal up well in the next week or maybe two... After that we went to a theatre for a tour.  Then we walked around the center.  Elder Taylor, Elder Soleburg, Elder Laws, and I all bought a hammock! We also bought one for Elder Dillman because he wanted us to get one for him. I am very excited about my hammock! It’s blue and awesome!
We are to the end of the transfer and we will find out on Saturday if someone is getting transferred... We are pretty sure that Elder Taylor will leave. He is really close to a missionary who is one of the assistants and he said that president had decided to make him a zone leader in one of two areas so we are like 90% sure that he is leaving.  
Things here have been good. I really like my area. I don’t know that many members and we hardly have anyone to teach but I like it and am glad to be serving. We did a service project the other day for some members, the family is awesome. It’s a couple and the man served in Japan and he speaks really good English. We spoke Portuguese because his wife does not speak English; but if I did not understand something he would explain in English. It was like having English subtitles it was awesome!
I finished Jesus the Christ the other day. I was going to start reading through it again but I told my mission president that I would only read in Portuguese so the day has come that I will only study in Portuguese. I think it will be good for me and maybe I will end up getting more out of my study, who knows...
That’s all for this week. I hope that you all have a great week.

Monday, July 11, 2010

I like that Mother Teresa line. I will remember that when I do everything that I can and the people still decide to use their agency to not accept the message of the gospel. I am also really excited about the language study and I have been reading the Book of Mormon in Portuguese. I hope to be done with 2nd Nephi by the end of the transfer. It will be a push but I think that I can do it! I have also made a goal to finish reading Jesus the Christ by the end of the transfer. That one will be easy because I am almost done. But I have had that goal for a long time. But I am still really happy about it!
I can't believe that Adam and all of them are coming home! That was crazy fast! I bet their families are very happy and ready for them to be home! Two years is a long time!
This week I had something really hard happen to me.... We were teaching this family and Elder Taylor asked these two women to read.  They could not read very well at all. It was really sad.  When an American that is learning Portuguese can read Portuguese better than two native speakers.....very sad.  I was really sad about the lack of education they have! After the appointment I sat on the curb and cried for about four or five minutes.... I know I am a cry-baby... But it was really sad. They are from the Interior, which means: a  small city away from the major city.  But Elder Taylor says that the education is always really bad in the Interiors. I knew that I would meet and find some people that were uneducated but to know it and then to actually see it is two DIFFERENT things. There is a quote that I like a lot from the book Bridge to Terrabitha that says "I don't know everything about God but I do know that he is not going to send that little girl to Hell" And though nobody is going to hell because of a lack of education I can apply the same thinking to this situation: I don't know everything but I do know that God has a plan for EVERYONE! Even the people that are uneducated. That is the great thing about this gospel!  God DOES have a plan for everything and EVERYTHING is going to work out! I don't know how it will work out but I do know that it will work out.

I think that is everything that I have for ya this week! I love ya and hope you all have a great week!

Wednesday, July 6, 2010

I am a little discouraged about the work in Tapajos.  We do everything that we can and people still don’t want to continue to learn more. This is my first experience with so much disappointment. When we go and knock doors we rarely get to teach anyone from it and the people we do teach we rarely teach more than once. I would tell you about our investigators but the people we are teaching will probably disappear. We taught this one family twice and they were really nice and we went there and they turned the lights on and I guess saw that it was us and then they turned the lights off and did not answer the door. We also taught another Catholic family and they were super nice. But they told us that they were really active in their church and were not interested in learning about our church, but they were super nice about it and told us to come by any time and we could leave them with a simple message. I think that we will continue to visit them like every other week or something like that.

My companion is great for my language study.  We started (and by we I mean me) reading preach my gospel in the morning out loud and after I read it I translate in to English. He also wants me to pick out the tenses and tell him what tense it is. So every time I see a verb he wants me to tell him if it is in the present, imperfect, preterit, two word future, future, past subjunctive, future subjunctive, present subjunctive. It’s really hard. And yes there is that many forms of each verb! I know you can feel bad for me.... LOL! but it should be good I think that I will learn a lot and my pronunciation will get a lot better.
I got some great news from Elder Calaza yesterday. Remember Tiago, Eudes’ little brother, he is going to get baptized on the 16^th! I think that me and my companion are going to go to it and see his family!
We were going to play basketball this morning but when we woke up it was pouring rain! So instead we went to the LAN house, where I email, and after we are going to meet some other missionaries to play soccer in an indoor court. I don’t really like soccer and am not very good and the place for me to learn how to play is not Brazil because all the people are from Brazil and are amazing at soccer! So I look even worse at soccer! But I love the missionaries that are going so it should be fun.

I am really excited about our new President! We had a conference with him on Monday and it was really awesome! He seems really cool and I am so excited to actually have a President that is from Brazil! I think it will be good for me! I still have not found out if I can write him in English but I decided the other day that I don’t care and that I will just write him in Portuguese. The letter to him might be really short and not very detailed the first couple weeks but I know that he will understand and will like that I am making an effort to write in Portuguese. Sister Klien is really cool too she talked to us for about 30 min and told us all about their family and how they meet and got married it was really cool. I think I told you that they brought two of their kids with them. A 17 year old girl and a 6 year old boy. The 6 year old is awesome, he gave me a high five!

I have some exciting news.... ................................................. Drum roll please........................................ (Did you do the drum roll?) Hahahahah
P-day has been changed to Monday!!! so from now on I will email you on Monday!!!! That is really cool because we get to have our P-day on this coming Monday!!! So I will email you again on Monday and I better have a response to this email because I have been a good boy and written a lot!
I think that is all I have to say...... You should be proud of this long letter....
I love you and hope you guys have a great four days until Monday!

Wednesday, June 29, 2010

I am glad to hear that everything went well with the camp. I think it is weird to think of you all at a camp and not be there. But such is life.....
Things here are pretty much the same we try and find new people to teach the gospel. On Saturday we went around doing door contacts and did not get any lessons out of it. We did that for about 3 hours and then got discouraged and went to teach a family in our ward. We watched Finding Faith in Christ. It was good and we felt better after. then we went home.
I don’t know if i told you but we have an American in our ward. He is leaving today but he lived here for about 2 months. He served his mission in Mexico and was here to study jungle diseases for medical school. He is starting Medical School in Arizona when he gets home. He told me a lot of helpful things for applying for Medical School.  I am really excited about meeting him and being able to contact him after our missions. He is really awesome!
President Jayme leaves today sometime this afternoon... and President Klein will come. President Klein is a Brazilian from Sao Paulo. He has two younger kids that will be coming to live with him. I am excited for a new President but don’t really know how it will work with talking with him. I don’t know if he speaks English or not. And I don’t think that I will be able to write him my weekly letter in Portuguese. We will see how it goes...
I had a dream last night that Ryan got his mission call to Reciffe, which is a mission in Brazil. So when you start guessing where he is going that is my guess. I think it would be really cool if he went there because then I would have someone to talk to in Portuguese when I get home.
I love ya guys and hope you are all doing well!