Random chicken appearance

Amelia Earhart the chicken
Cause she flew the coop :)

So Elder Puga is a 19 year old and has been in the mission for 1 year and 2 months. He's the second oldest of 7. He lives in *****, close to our mission. He's a funny guy. (Helping mom and dad to learn about Elder Lundy's new companion)

As for R..., he asked us to remark his baptismal date to be a little farther away, but honestly I think it'll be alright doing that because it's difficult to find and teach him. But when we have the opportunity to teach he's always open and receptive and accepts our messages. 

Random chicken appearance? (Dad had 5 chicken show up at work.) Awesome :3 We have those every now and then as well. And there mom goes again with her clever names :) (Amelia Earhart cause she flew the coop) I laughed quite a bit at dad's news about the chickens.

There are a bunch of lessons to be learned from chickens!

Oh so this Sunday our ward mission leader's wife gave a talk about food storage and I was just smiling to myself the whole time because I wish I'd printed off those photos you sent of our food storage at home.

Oh!! So when I was in Taubaté I baptized a man named V... and his girlfriend N.... Later I found out that they went inactive, broke up, and that V.... had a new girlfriend. This Sunday one of my past companions Elder Moreira (who was transferred to Taubaté) called me after church to inform me that V... had married and that they were going to baptize his wife in a matter of minutes! so I'm happy to know V... had returned and his new wife was being baptized but sad to not know N's situation.

Anyways, That's what I got for ya

I'm glad you were able to get the blessing of strength you were asking for mom. I had an experience with that early in the mission that I now use as my first message that I pass when I visit members in a new ward.

I'm trying to teach my companion to eat more during lunch. He's always complaining that he's hungry at night haha.

I know all about that sort of thing with investigators not being able to visit on Sunday for some forgotten or unforeseen problem. It's annoying. (Dad went with our missionaries to pick up an investigator and he had forgotten to get permission to come, so he couldn't.)

I thought I was starting to come down with a cold but I'm all good now. 

Anyways, I love you!!

First day of Fall in Brazil March 20th, 2017

The weather is getting a bit better now. There's still a lot of rain but it's not as hot out anymore.

Our teaching pool is very empty. We've got one investigator and some possible others, but that one investigator R... accepted a baptismal date of 

April 2nd yesterday! He's already been to church three times and really likes it. The ward has a lot of part member families so the ward's leaders have decided to work with them but slowly because they don't wanna "scare the fish by going too fast"

Speaking about numbers and all that, my zone and the Mogi das Cruzes zone were the only two that reached their baptism goals for the transfer! Our zone actually passed our goal by one person I think! Zones rarely reach their goals (at least in this mission) Our goal was 10/4 or 10 people with four of them being adult men. and I believe we baptized 11/4!

So this week is transfer week. I'm staying here and Camikado is being transferred to my last area Tiradentes 2. My new companion is going to be Elder Puga. I met him already and he's a pretty funny guy. I believe he was also Elder Medeiros' comp in the MTC (Elder Medeiros was my comp when I first became senior.)

You finally had your garden class!! YAY!! 

(We had an herb garden class along with the 175th Relief Society party.)

And I'm glad your stake conference went well!

My allergies aren't really giving me problems. The metal allergy is being a little annoying. I can't use my clip nametag p-day without it causing problems. I think I may have a big circular red scar from it now over my right collar bone.

My shoes still work. I believe they'll hold up for the rest of the mission. As it turns out, the black tennis shoes are the best shoes I brought with me!

I managed to contact one of the elders that I know will be going there but it seems like he doesn't have an apartment yet. I'd appreciate it if you went ahead with the search.

Oh! So the last bishop from this ward (Samuel Tsuchiya) who was released my first Sunday here is flying out to BYUI like right now! He and his family are moving there so he can study for the next 4 years, so we've already decided to meet up there! :)

Anyways, I love you!

Power Outages

Holy Cow!! Looks like you broke into the family history gold mine!

Haha I'm glad you're happy to know you have living relatives instead of being happy with just being extremely distantly related to royalty. Good job at work this week. That money save better earn you some points.

Power outages are really annoying. They were happening a lot a couple weeks ago in our area and it makes it really difficult to do anything. (Dad and I had a power outage that lasted for 72 hours. We were thankful that we followed the Lord and had our self prepared)

I hadn't heard about that reality show, but I've already heard of teen camp activities following those lines (without that ridiculous no rule thing) I'm saddened by that but honestly I'm really sad for Suzanne Collins (the author) Her entire purpose for writing the story "Hunger Games" was to point out the effect of violence in our culture and how it's something people (especially youth) are searching. These idiots making this show are trying to destroy her hard work. (but honestly I started to get nervous about this sort of thing since they announced the first movie)

Anyways... "Robert got married!?" was my first thought to be honest, but I'm happy for him! Their first "human" son... that guy hasn't changed haha.

So this week was rather slow. We have only one investigator and three more potentials (but they're all hard to find) We had zone conference this week. President and Sister Silcox always give some training sessions and the others are given either by the APs, or the Sister Leaders. This time it was the sister leaders. I was happy to see them again. The current sister leaders are Sister Dias and Sister Leite. I spent some time in the same zone as both of them early on in the mission. They're both really good and hard working sisters so it makes sense that they've been called to be the sister leaders. It made me happy when I entered the church building, they saw me and instantly lit up with big smiles and came to talk to me. And no I wasn't happy because they were two pretty sisters :P but because they were two people who were genuinely excited to see me.

One thing I learned this week is that I don't give myself enough credit for stuff in general.

Anyways, I love you so much and want you happiness and Joy too :3 haha

Love ya!

Baptisms after Stake conference!

The baptismS went well! The whole family was there! (the three being baptized and the mother of the two little girls, one of the girls fathers, and their younger brother) I baptized F...(the grandma) and Camikado baptized B... and J... afterwards. 

President and Sister Silcox attended the baptism because they were already there to speak during stake conference. The ward was very supportive of them (the whole family) too. 

I just tried to attach a photo and I literally couldn't. The system in this lan house is set up strange and it tried to make me attach the folder that had ALL of my pictures on my camera. So it seems like photos will have to wait a little more. Sorry.

BTW I have only taken 426 photos during the whole mission... but one of the main reasons for that is that everyone are always taking pictures so they just send theirs to me later.

Haha I'm glad you got to go to that Mennonite bulk store again :3 And more glad that you two took a day for yourselves.

Holy Cow!! That's crazy awesome about Grandma! Sad that it's only happening now that she's self-conscious about mortality. (Grandma started sharing stories about her family about when she was growing up.)

Irmão Adriano (that's so weird to me) was my zone leader in two different zones. He ended his mission in December and decided to visit some of his areas recently and we had the luck to encounter in the Cidade Jardim church building. I did a double take when he entered. As soon as I understood that it was actually him I hugged him and made him take pictures with me. (I was able to get a couple of pictures of Elder Lundy off Facebook)

We recently received a referral so I'm hopeful we'll be able to visit this person soon!

Yeah daylight savings time happened recently. (For the last couple of weeks we had only 2 hours instead of 3 hours difference between us. As of this comimg Sunday - daylight savings time happens we will only have an hour difference in time.)

That's great news about the M's! (the M's finally found a home to buy after their home burned to the ground in January.) And I'm glad the ward wants to help out, now I just hope the ward's goodwill doesn't go overboard haha.

I love you all!!