6-27-2011 Letter Home

Another Whirlwind Week

This week was great! We have been teaching a lot of people, and once again we got to church without any new investigators of our own, but the members had brought six friends in total that we got to meet who were interested about the church. This week we'll be focusing on them and we'll see if some want to get baptized. We tried to get into contact with Ed, our miracle investigator, the whole week but he was always busy. It was tough... this week was a holiday week and it is possible that he went on vacation for a while. Still, there are lots of possibilities in the weeks to come. We are continuously being blessed because of our hard work and effort. I can't believe only seven more weeks remain! President Batt is returning home tomorrow, leaving all of us Elders trunkier than ever. New President will get here this week and will probably want to interview every missionary, I am looking forward to my first interview in Portuguese, since the beginning President Batt and I have always spoken English.

We had a family home evening with the Araujo Family, of which Mateus, Jessica and Teresinha were baptized recently and to show their gratitude they brought out a present for me, which turned out to be a really expensive bottle of cologne from Rio de Janeiro. Not going to lie, it is as great-smelling as it is expensive. Those guys are crazy, they shouldn't be spending so much on me! But I love them. :)

Yep, everything going great here, just truckin' along!
I love you guys! Love love love!- Brendon


Not too many interesting pics this week

Lunch with the Coelho (Rabbit) Family!

Eu sou feliz porque sou Catolico...

Tranquil pictures outside of our apartment

A special present from the Araujo Family

6-20-2011 Pictures Home

Brendon gave no explanation - I am guessing an attempt at hamburgers (on a really dirty stove)

A typical phonebooth (phoneshell) in Ceara

Elder Pereira trying to rip out beard-hairs with honey (didn't work!)

The Park of Peace, built by local evangelicals

You can read the scriptures anywhere

Drying raw chicken on the wall

6-13-2011 Letter Home

On the side of the highway

Hey everybody!

Every P-Day I wake up more and more exhausted, we are still working as fast and furious as possible. This week we cut a lot of people out of our teaching pool, which isn't the funnest of things to do. No one we taught this week went to church :( 
Connor, even up here in the north we get the same kind of Sudden Sunday-morning Laziness Syndrome. But, we were blessed in that one of our investigators last week, Davi, was baptized, and another investigator, Joao who has been going to church for weeks and weeks finally decided to get baptized as well! That always makes the week better.

Our baptisms of the week! Davi and Joao!

Davi is an awesome kid, he's just thirteen-years old and on our second visit he told us he prayed and felt the Holy Ghost testify to him that the Church is true. He's already read several chapters of the Book of Mormon though he's had it for only a week, which, here, is rare among the ADULTS that receive the Book of Mormon from us. He also has several friends and has asked us for three Books of Mormon and pamphlets to give to them, we'll be teaching them this week we're very excited about Davi, he's already wanting to be a missionary just ten days after his first visit to the Church! Very funny kid too, if you guys could be here to see him laugh you would absolutely love him.

Joao, sixteen-years-old has been going to church for weeks and weeks, I guess he was a former investigator of other missionaries who just decided to go to church one day and no one ever told me he was a visitor. He's been going to seminary throughout the week as well and has a ton of friends among the youth of the ward. When we figured out that he wasn't a member, we set an appointment with him and this week we walked a long, long way to his house and taught him everything over again. He agreed with all of the commitments, told us he'd stop drinking coffee, and told us he would be baptized on Sunday. Yep, doesn't get easier than that. I am so grateful that the Lord blesses us for our hard work... we've taught more than eighty people since the beginning of the transfer and none of them look like they could be baptized here in a couple weeks (maybe some later on, possibly), but the Lord has still blessed us because of our hard work and allowed us to reap a little.

Buying lunch at a local restaurant

I took a picture of a random house

Another random little tiny house

Oh man, what else has happened this week? I'm completely stumped, after all the hard work, I've forgotten everything of interest that has happened this week. Just some interesting lessons and conversations with people from other churches, really. Teresa's family in Genipabu offered us dinner for Jessica's birthday and we went over there to celebrate with them, what an awesome little family we've helped out. While we were eating they turned on this survivalist program that we watched a little bit of, and since then Elder Pereira has been trying to make fire at our apartment with a couple sticks he's gathered, trying to imitate the guy on the show. He'll get there, the guy is determined.

Elder Pereira in the swampy neighborhood

Nope, nothing more than that this week, hehe.

I love you guys!!! Have a great week! Only nine more weeks! That's one semester of school!

- Brendon

6-06-11 Letter Home

Bichinho de Junio

Hey guys!

We had another awesome week. I can't begin to explain how hard we are working! Like Connor, we've really got the end-of-mission fire going, Elder Pereira and I. We taught 29 new investigators this week and have gotten 20 baptismal commitments, and we brought 7 people to church!  The only reason we didn't get into the 40's with new investigators is because we were running around the whole area helping the people we've already taught. We've also had to drop a lotta investigators, if we don't, we can't teach as many new people for the next week. For example, Neida and Carini and Gabrielle, as much as we love them and the lesson was awesome, when we went back they said they were sick and didn't even make an effort to come to the door. The next time we went no one was home. I think we'll give them another chance down the road but we've got to devote our time to the people who are excited about our message!

For example, we found one family: Nonato (husband), Claudia (wife), Romario and Renato (older brothers) and Michelle (younger sister). They just moved to the center of Caucaia from the interior and when we started talking to them one of the first things they said is that they didn't go to any church and were confused why there were so many of them and why they all say they are right. When we explained that there are so many churches because of the Great Apostasy, after prophets and apostles were taken from the Earth, it really struck a chord with all of them and they ended up going to church this Sunday and loved it. Perfectly prepared little miracle family. One thing great about them is that Nonato and Claudia are married (rare here) and we can see that their family has been blessed alot because of that. Their kids are obedient and happy, even Renato and Romario (19 and 17). Teenagers at this age are usually rebellious or not interested in religion. We can really see the difference between this family and many others we have taught, they already have a light around them.

Bonifacio went to church again! We woke him up Sunday morning (already late for church) and he said he wanted to take a shower and eat breakfast and we told him that we hadn't taken showers or eaten anything, so he thought a bit, went back inside to get some sandals and off we went to church! I don't know about you but that was a leap of faith there, at least for the people around here. You get used to hearing so many excuses, but with Bonifacio, he had the chance to let the natural man take over, but instead he just went anyway. We're hoping he can get baptized next week. 
By the way, did I tell you guys that we have like, 5 other investigators from Guineau-Bissaua just through Bonifacio? We're teaching all of his friends and families, it looks like... except from this one buff African guy with dreadlocks who lives near us who always scowls when we pass by... he's scary... (I wonder if I can get a picture of him one of these days...) For some reason Elder Pereira doesn't like visiting them too much because he says he can't understand their accent. "The only reason you like teaching these African guys is because they have funny accents like you do," he says, "and you can joke about Brazilians with them!" Well... that may be true, their accents are really cool, they always sizzle their S-sounds... "We shpeak portugaish". And they trill their Ts a lot more.

We were down in the favella one day, this poor neighborhood with houses made out of mud and streets made out of mud (everything made out of mud) and we passed this big concrete tower and this guy yells down at us "Hey, what do we poor people have to do to hear what you kids are teaching?" And Elder Pereira said, "Just mark an appointment!" And so the guy says, "Come by here next week in the afternoon, my name is Wilson." 
We come back a couple days later and teach Wilson the first lesson up in this concrete tower and he doesn't have any teeth and happened to cut a big gash in his foot and it's all bandaged up, he doesn't understand too much of what we explain but he has a lot of faith and told us he knew we were men of God. The next time we went to his home and taught him and his two adult daughters and we invited them to church. The two daughters would have gone but had to work Sunday morning, but Wilson surprised us when we passed by Sunday morning and walked with us to church for thirty minutes with this gimpy foot that was only slowly getting better!!! 
Great Faith!!! 
He loved Church by the way, he couldn't take the grin off his face and talked with everybody in the ward, a very friendly guy. Wilson is awesome, more news from him later. He does have some teeth, by the way, but he's missing a lot of them, poor guy. He's only 41 years old! 
Poverty sucks... The Gospel will definitely bless him a lot though.

Man, I'd love to tell you about my other miracles, but Elder Pereira doesn't get any e-mails from his family so he kind of just watches me the whole hour I'm at the LANhouse, asking me if I'm done yet every ten minutes... poor guy


.... I'll let the pictures explain what I haven't.

- What is this fruit called again? I forgot the name in English. 

Here it is called a Abacate. They are way bigger than in the states! The size of my head!

- Eating lunch at my last Zone Conference 

- Awesome desserts from Sister Batt!

- My group, almost everyone together for our last Zone Conference!

- Last picture with President and Sister Batt!
They are ending their missions in four weeks!

- Riding on the train back to Caucaia with some other Elders

- Elder Pereira taking pictures of me while I'm studying...
it looks like I'm sleeping but I swear I wasn't!

- Elder Pereira is burned out after a hard day of work

- The train that passes in front of our apartment!

- More scenery

- The box of the cologne I got from Natalie this week!
Awesome present! Hehehehe...

Yep, had my last Zone Conference, President and Sister Batt's last as well, they are returning home after three long years.
 I bore my last testimony with my whole group, got really emotional, I wish you guys could be there. I felt the Spirit really really strong.

I love you guys!!!
- Brendon