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!!

We got completely drenched

The weather this week had a lot of rain in store for us. Yesterday before we managed to get back to our house we got caught in a super strong rain. The rain was falling sideways as well. We got completely drenched. Trees were breaking in the wind. We also had a few power outages this week. 

I had to give a talk in the ward this week. I was told a week ago that it would be the 5 minute talk an basically introduce myself and give a message about missionary work. When we got to church, the bishopric informed us that C... would be giving the 5 minute talk and that I would instead give a 15 minute talk... okay then... But it went well. I introduced myself and our family, spoke about my experiences before the mission and a brief summary of my mission to that point, then gave a message about being a member missionary by the way we live and used your story about meeting mom and through her example you learned about the church. The councilor ended up having to give me the "1 minute left" tap and I still had stuff to say! :) And I did all that without writing down my talk beforehand :)

The big news for this week:

We have three baptisms for this Saturday! F... and her two granddaughters B... and J... will be baptized this Saturday between the two sessions of stake conference! F... is a mother of a recent convert/currently serving missionary of this ward, and the two girls are his nieces. Next up after them is working with the girls' mother!

 Holy cow that's a small district! ( I told Elder Lundy that our mission down sized and our 2 sisters were removed from our ward so we have just 4 Elders in our district.) That's sadly very common in this mission. Areas get closed quite often, but they usually don't stay closed for too long.

So I had lunch with one Irmã this week and it was her birthday. She turned 75 this year and was telling everyone that called that she turned 74 until someone corrected her haha. But I was struck by how better off Nana is physically. I told her about Nana's age (92 years old) trick (swapping the numbers 29 yrs.) and she said she'd use it too haha.

That's awesome about all the missionaries from our ward! Tell Bay and Sister Shirling congrats for me! (2 more missionaries that will put our ward at 8 missionaries out in the field from our ward.)

On p-day we don't do much. We usually just relax at home while we can.

It's still weird being around all these nice cars and nice houses/apartments. I've become accustomed with situations much more modest than this here in Brazil.

I love you!

2nd Week in Vila Ema

Hahahaha caramba mãe! That's a great picture. :3 (I sent him a cartoon pic of El Dorado)

Aww poor La-A :( (Elder Lundy's chicken is molting in the middle of winter)

So things are still kinda quite between me and Camikado. He seems reserved like me when I'm uncomfortable and stuff. Bishop Skouson told me before I left that outside of Japan, Brazil has the largest Japanese population in the world. I've actually found a number of Japanese memorial parks and stuff. Camikado personally doesn't have much of a connection to Japan. He was born here, aside from that one part of his name the rest is Brazilian, and I possibly/probably know more Japanese than he does haha.

I think we'll just be on fire in this area if we stay out in the sun. Yeah, the area is alright. We have a new Bishop in the ward and a new ward mission leader. We do have some investigators that are getting closer to being ready for baptism. They'll be the first converts baptized into this ward in over a year.

The interview went great. He didn't give me any assignments or anything, but he did confirm that this area is the richest area in the mission . . .

My health is alright. And no I'm not losing more weight. If anything I'm actually gaining (a little) muscle mass!

the LAN house in this area is pretty good. I forgot to try sending pictures the last time because I'm accustomed to it not working but I'll try this time.

This week all the cooking I did was the rice for one lunch. Camikado usually takes the lead when we have lunch at home. But we were given a simple coconut flavored bunt type cake this week so I bought strawberries and made that topping you make for the angel food cake and it was pretty good. (I asked if the type of food served was different between his last  two areas.)

The members don't really feed us different. The biggest difference has to be the candies and stuff. We've already received gummy bears and Twizzlers here and one Irmã is going to visit the states this week and asked if I missed anything and I asked for beef jerky.

It's super hot here but I've gotten accustomed to the weather here I think. I don't sweat as much (only sweat a lot when I exercise and yes I'm exercising :P)

I love you! 

Have an Attitude of Gratitude!

Irmã M... é tão legal, não é? oops I was thinking as I typed. Good news with that: I thought in Portuguese, bad news is that I wrote in Portuguese ha-ha. Sister M... is really cool, isn't she? Is what I wanted to type. 

So I'm alright. The transfer went by without too much trouble. The metro train lost power and stopped on the tracks but luckily that happened before I got on it. 

My companion is Elder Camikado. He's 19. He, his younger bro, his aunt and uncle and his cousins are members. His parents are divorced and he lived with his mom before the mission. He put college on hold to serve even though his own family (the members of the church) told him not to. He's kinda quiet and I think he's got one of the difficulties I've got which is taking a while to open up to new people. Oh he's a Japanese Brazilian hence the Japanese name.

Okays... my new area is over the top rich. Yes it's clean which made me happy. There are a lot more apartment buildings than my last area. The buildings are also bigger and have more security which makes it harder to enter. There are also gated communities. 

I ate lunch in one called Eldorado this week. That's right, I not only found Eldorado, I ate lunch there! As for the work in the area, we've got one family of investigators, one person almost ready to be baptized, and she'll be the first convert baptism in a year in this ward. 

Oh and the Bishop changed on my first Sunday here so they've got a lot of new going on here. The last bishop will be moving to Rexburg to study at BYUI soon.

I live in a rather large (for missionary standards) house with only my companion, and yes I have my own bed yay! I should eat a bit more. 

I've made some new friends. This zone is full of sisters and honestly I prefer it like that because sisters are more fun than elders ha-ha. One sister, Sister Araujo, was already talking to me like we'd know each other for a while as soon as I arrived, and when she realized I was confused she explained that one of her old companions Sister Dias talked about me a lot and said I was really cool. Aw shucks :3 (Sister Dias was in the Mogi das Cruzes zone with me a while ago)

I'm pretty happy. I think I might take a while to get used to this place, but I think I'll like it. Oh and I get to have an interview with President Silcox Friday! :)

I do feel the Lord's hand in my life and I did remember to try out your challenge a bit this week. It worked out a bit.

I love you mom!!

The weather here is really hot.

My week was kinda slow, people not being home and all. We didn't get too much done this week but I did get to do 2 baptismal interviews and then watch the baptisms the next day!

The weather here this week was really hot.

You mentioned the youth and that reminded me that we had a total of 5 young men attend our branch this Sunday! That was the first time since I arrived!

That sounds like an awesome experience you had at the temple! Really pretty cool about all the temple work and family history that's been going on! And that's really curious that our relative had his work done in Brazil!

I still remember the last time I went to do baptisms for the dead and the Stoltenburg family asked me to be baptized for their men. That was the time that I felt the spirit the strongest in all the times I went.

Oh something I never thought I'd do in the mission: We went house hunting! We've been trying to find a new place to live because of the situation of our current house. But that is no longer my preoccupation because I'm being transferred tomorrow. 

I know only 3 people in my new zone. I don't know my companion. It's kinda weird, but during all the other transfers I always got super nervous but this time it's all good. I'm not really nervous at all. I'm being transferred to Vila Ema with Elder Camikado as my companion I'll be the senior companion and the district leader. 

Oh and I still haven't pulled the journal back out but I might this transfer.

I don't really have much else...

I love you!