"The MISSLE-toe"

I was super tempted to just write this e-mail as a list of things I miss but in reality.. it wouldn´t be that long. Not that I don´t miss things, but I just don´t really care. haha I am way too busy having a blast in Brasil. Seriously. When else in my life would I have a chance like this? Never. So better make it awesome. But... I will say I do miss the MISSILE... just cause walking 10000000000 miles every day gets a little tiring. 

Ian that picture was so rad, I love jokes like that so thank you so much! Hahaha Kreggers is the new ward mission leader?? Not gonna lie I would love to be a missionary in our ward with him. I feel the work would explode. You would just have to plan in "Tear Time" with him hahahaha. Good ol´ Bro Peterson, tell him Merry Christmas for me k? 

Speaking of Christmas... We don´t spend money on Sundays cause we are LDS so we were thinking about Skyping with you guys Monday after Christmas, our P-day. The time difference is about three hours so I dunno when would work for you but I practically have all day so I am fine. But if that doesn´t work out I can always just call you on Sunday and do it the old fashioned way. I will probably be calling next P-day just to set up the time and stuff k?

   

We had a interesting week this week. We just had some tension between us because of teaching differences and our purpose for being out here. This is all new to me cause I have never been with a comp for longer than a transfer. And also at the start of this last week I was on a "woe is me" phase because of the language. But in reality I am not even doing that bad, I am just not progressing as fast as I would like to and I am just tired of hearing, it will come with time. Hahaha patience, can´t forget patience. But what is cool is on Thursday I just... got over it, and decided to start having a better attitude about everything. I love the talk from Elder Wirthlin from Nov 2008 General Conference. It is called, Come What May And Love it. It is such an awesome talk, I highly recommend checkin it out :) 

Speaking of The Twelve... we had stake conference yesterday and we got to hear from Elder Cook and President Eyring! So awesome. It was just over video and I didn´t understand a ton of it but I still felt the Spirit a lot and that is what matters. I just love hearing from President Eyring. I don´t know what it is about him but he just stands out to me a lot. Just how he talks and everything. And it was perfect cause we ended up having 3 gators there and they all had some really great comments after it ended. The best part though was right after President Eyring finished the little 6 year old kid behind us yelled, IT´S OVER!!!. Everyone started laughing pretty hard, whata stud. :)

   

The last thing for this week that is pretty neat is the missionaries in my zone are helping to sing in the Christmas choir. None of us can sing at all but it is fun to be with everyone and sing some Christmas songs. I haven´t really gotten into the Christmas spirit yet cause... it is still summer here. It feels like my whole mission has been summer haha. But I will say singing White Christmas in English either gets you in the Christmas spirit or trunky. One of the missionaries in our house goes home next week so let´s just say... it got him trunky, a lot. Hahahaha what a noob.

   

That pretty much sums things up here. We have our mission Christmas party tomorrow and I am super excited because the whole mission will be there. We are actually going to help set up after we finish e-mailing and having lunch. I am just excited to see Elder Finch. He went to Brighton and we had a few classes together so it will be fun to talk with someone from the 801! Mom. Idea: You should tell all the missionary moms to buy the soccer jersey of the country where their son is. Cause then when you wear the Brasil one everyone will be jealous cause Brasil is the best at soccer... no battle. Hahaha 

Well i love you all so much and I hope you are all enjoying the Christmas spirit. Dad did you end up going to Black Friday this year? What is the gift everyone wants this year, me home? Hahahaha just joking :) Have another awesome week and be sure to keep the real meaning of Christmas in your hearts. Stay fly...

 

Elder Big Deal 

 

P.S. We had lunch again at the house that gave us goat stomach, this time wasn´t as bad but we had to put sugar into our juice and we were legit just scooping ants into our cups... Yummmm. :)

Among my people......

Really Mom?? You are gonna send me a poem like that?! That was so unfair! I was literally sitting here at the computer with tears running down my face. That was awesome, and much needed. Thank you so much. And Dad, I have also been studying the love of Christ a lot lately... My favorite page in PMG is 120. It is in the chapter that talks about Christ-like attributes and that page has the attributes of patience and humility. Those two attributes are pretty much the themes of my mission, if I can learn to have to have those two attributes I will without a doubt change for the better. But we all know I struggle with those a lot hahaha. I actually have an experience for both of those this week.

Let´start with patience. We have a lot of really awesome investigators. All of them are truly searching to know the truth but they all have the same problem, no one comes to church. That is pretty much the hardest part of missionary work because that decision is completely up to them. We can even go to their houses before church and try to bring them with us but no one can ever come. And it is really frustrating to us because obviously if people don´t come to church they can´t be baptized and we are getting a lot of pressure to baptize right now. And then the other thing that goes along with this is all of our adult investigators are living with someone. No one is married here. And it is really frustrating because most of the time they make more money not being married so they aren´t willing to get married. 

But the cool thing about all of this is is this is where prayer and Heavenly Father come in. Every prayer we say is in hopes that Heavenly Father will help them to remember to come to church or to find their faith to be married. And we haven´t seen it yet but I know, without a doubt in my mind, that if we continue showing our faith by teaching and loving the people, Heavenly Father will help with the rest. I just need to be patient haha.

Now on to humility... haha remember how I hurt my ankle in Oregon? Think I would learn my lesson, nope! It hasn´t been bugging me since I got here which is awesome. But one night we were walking to go see an investigator and these people were having a caporeira, spelled wrong, party out in the street and it was sweet. It is pretty much like break dancing and so we went to look at it and Pinto pushed me into to doing a backflip... Don´t worry I didn´t get hurt again, I should have though. I knew the second I jumped that I did it wrong and I wasn´t going to get it around so I turned it into like a half back hand-spring and landed on my knees. Let´s just say I have learned my lesson, no more backflips while on the mission! Besides now I am to scarred to try them anyway which bugs me cause that is like the whole reason I took that class. But we actually ended up having a cool thing happen after. There was a girl there from the U.S. studying Portuguese and she came up and talked to us and said she would like to talk with us again but just cause we speak English. Who knows though, maybe when we see her next we will sneak in a little first lesson :)

   

That is pretty much my week though! The computer I am on won´t let me send pics which makes me sad cause I have some sweet ones like of a scorpion we caught in our house and what it is like to help someone move in Brasil. For Christmas I will more than likely be Skyping with you guys which gets me pumped! I will call before so we can set up a time and everything though, deal? Oh and by the way... I heard through the grape vine that USU beat BYU in basketball.... AWESOME! I miss my Aggie basketball - not gonna lie. 

Well that sums everything up I think... Thank you all so much for your prayers and your constant flow of awesomeness. I really love being here though.. I can´t even explain it. These are just my kinda people. Crazy soccer fans, trust me they are nuts esspecially yesterday, relaxed, happy, and always looking for a good time. I love it. Almost as much as I love you guys and this church. Have another awesome week and be sure to watch Garfield Christmas soon!!

 

Elder Big Deal

 

P.S. One more thing on humility... I had a kid ask me yesterday why my nose is so big... Ouch, Maybe I should have put Elder Big Nose this week...