"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...

"Get trunky.........."

Hahaha no family it is not what you think it means, I am in no way trunky except for one way... I miss the English super verb of, to get. It really has about a million uses in English and it does not exist in Portuguese and it pretty much kills me. I have a million verbs I have to learn instead of having one verb I can use for pretty much everything. It GETS really annoying, you GET what I am saying? Enough of this, I need to GET on with this e-mail.

So a little bad news for this week is I took some awesome pics of this weeks activities but.... I forgot my camera at our place, super smooth huh? We had a pretty eventful week actually. We both felt much better this week and that helped a lot. We didn´t do a ton for Thanksgiving, we pretty much just treated it like a normal day but we did end the night with a spectacular meal at Rodizo... So good. The one is Utah doesn´t even compare to the real thing here. You guys will have to try it some time! Hahaha Another fun activity of this week was... Elder Pinto and I both hit the 6 month mark! WOOT! Hahaha yeah I dunno if I have told you but my comp and I have the same amount of time out in the mission so it will be pretty funny when I end up leaving with my trainer haha. We had a little bit of a party and we burned ties together, memories. Sorry I have no pics of it though!

Work-wise this week was pretty awesome. We found two more families for us to start teaching and they are so dope. One was a referral from some Sisters and the family lived at the farthest place away in our area. It was an hour walk to GET there and when we finally GOT there they could only talk for maybe 10 minutes. So we just shared a quick message, but it was awesome. The mom just started crying and we could all feel the Spirit a lot and it just amazes me how fast the Spirit can work in our lives. Mom I really enjoyed what you had to say about the Spirit in your e-mail. Another thing that was cool about that family was that we, Elder Pinto and I, put on a activity at the church on Saturday and all of her kids showed up! It was a sweet activity we had about 20 kids there and we just played games and Elder Pinto did magic tricks for them, it was a memorable event. Since the kids lived so far away though after the activity we helped get them home and on our way back we had this guy stop us and say, "How come I never see you guys in the richer neighborhoods? I have had interest in your church but have never seen you come to my door." AWESOME. He had some great questions and we set up a meeting with him for tomorrow morning, can´t wait for it.

That pretty much sums things up here though. We are all getting excited for Christmas but I can´t tell you a lot of the traditions yet because... I don't know them! Hahaha so I will give you all those details later, deal? Mom I will be on the look out for a nativity scene of course but I will probably wait till next Christmas... deal? I love the picture of the Teach Me how to Douglas or whatever. I was dying cause that is my favorite dance move ever!. Thanksgiving sounded like a good time for you all and I hope the Christmas traditions are already getting started!

Oh! I totally forgot! I had to speak in church yesterday! Super intense because for some reason it was just me, not my comp as well and I found out like 5 mins before.. super legit. But whatever! I said a little prayer right before I got up and I could really feel Heavenly Father helping me speak correctly. It actually went pretty well and people said that they could understand me and liked what I had to say.. I am stoked. But what it all comes down to is the power of prayer is real, especially if you pray for specific things. Ah I love it. I love you all so much as well. Have another great week fam!! :) Stay Sweet...

Elder Big Deal

Ps that is awesome you saw Julie and Kara!! And it is even better you saw them at Café Rio... almost as good as the food here.

"No unhallowed hand............."

Can stop the work from progressing, but a sore throat and a runny nose gets really close to doing it. That pretty much describes this week. Elder Pinto and I both got sick and it was horrible. He got it first last Tuesday and that is one thing that stinks about having a comp is if he gets sick, more than likely you will get sick too. Being sick on a mission is pretty much the worse thing ever. It is not like you can just make some ramen, cuddle up in a blanket, and play HALO til it goes away. You just sit there and think about how miserable you feel and about how you wanna go out and work. And if you do go out and work you are just out of it the whole time and it is really hard to feel the Spirit. It is no good. I am just getting over it though. I had it bad Saturday and Sunday, and barely got any sleep.

Oh my mom!!! That picture was hilarious. I am legit just laughing out loud in the lan house! Hahaha I had to write that before I forgot. So we had Zone Conference this week which was pretty dope. I actually understood and got a lot of it. Pres and Sister Gonzaga are just awesome people. I had to bear my testimony and say the closing prayer. It was actually not too bad. They say I am doing really pretty well with the language already cause I have a flow when I speak but I need to work on using the correct conjugations mostly. It will all come with time. One reason I really liked Zone Conference was because I finally got to meet some of the other missionaries here in the mission and hear about other areas. For the past couple of weeks I have just felt like it was my comp, and the two other Elders in our house against Maceió haha. There are some really cool people here though for sure.

This week we obviously didn´t get a ton of work done but we had a cool thing happen with Rosa and her family. We went to just stop by and remind them about church and when we got there we found out it was someone in the house's birthday. We didn´t wanna interrupt so we tried to leave but they pulled us in and just started feeding us all this good food, plenty of coxinha :) But it was just so amazing because in all honesty, this family really doesn´t have a lot and there are a lot of mouths to feed but they were so willing to share with us and make sure we were full. It was super spiritual for me. Just the amount of love they have for us and their being so selfless was awesome. I love that family so much.

That pretty much sums this week up though, I didn´t eat anything weird this week or have anything too crazy happen. I am glad you all had a great week as well. Liza, mom said you got a pretty solid tan, we will have to compare :p hahaha Oh! for Christmas, I honestly don´t need anything. I guess the deodorant here isn´t that great so you could send some axe dry to me and that would be helpful. For Christmas I honestly just wanna buy soccer jerseys, they are ALL I EVER WANTED! (Prince of Egypt) People make fun of me here cause I haven´t picked my Brazilian team yet. It is kinda hard though when I can´t watch anyone play! Oh and another fun fact... cleats are super expensive here which just ruined my hopes and dreams of buying a really sweet pair but whateves I´ll live. I think that sums it all up though... Love you all so so so so much! and in case you didn´t know it.... THIS CHURCH IS SUPER TRUE!

Elder Big Deal

P.S. Elder Miller has been out a year now... what a nerd and the pics are of a baby lizard we caught, our room and a night of cockroach killing. We actually killed about 8 more that night I just took the pic a little early :/

Elder Goozy....Relaxa!!

Fam-a-lam-a-ding-dong!

Once again another awesome week here in Maceió! I really can´t get enough of this place it is so perfect. So I think it is time to talk about the food here. Usually it is pretty awesome, 90% percent of what we eat is chicken/sausage, spaghetti ( my favorite!) and rice. Then we usually have some type of delicious juice to go along with it or Coke. Everyone here LOVES Coke. So generally lunches are pretty good. I haven´t had to have a lot of beans yet which is fine. My comp doesn´t like um either and so when ever we have them we play a game called the QBean Sneak to see who can get the other comp to eat more beans hahaha. So the food is pretty good it is just the random meals that are crazy... like this week... I had goat stomach... Yum! No actually it was pretty gnarly and rubbery, not a fan. I should have stopped eating it when I noticed my comp not getting any haha. One food here that is such a tender mercy is this thing called cuxinha, it is this deep fried ball of chicken and cheese that is just delicious. It is my sub for T-Bell right now.

This past week was a solid week. I finished Jesus The Christ which is possibly one of my favorite books ever. The detail he goes into is amazing and it states everything so clearly. I honestly could not put it down, it was a constant flow of the Spirit while reading it and I loved that. I am reading Our Heritage now and after that I just am going to really focus on the scriptures which will be great. The people we are teaching are awesome. We have an awesome family we go and visit, the mom's name is Rosa and she has ... 3 daughters and 2 sons. They are a great family and are close to baptism, we just need to help get them to church! The two boys are around 7 and 8 and we are best friends. When I first meet them I couldn´t say much in Portuguese so I would just make faces at them and now that I am more comfortable speaking we just make jokes and laugh and they help me learn the language better too.

I have found that if I just relax and talk I do a lot better, hence the subject of the e-mail. I have been going 100 mph since I got here and I need to just breathe a bit and learn to have patience. I love working hard but I need to slow things down a bit so I can listen to the Spirit more instead of trying to do it all myself. During lessons is where I get the most stressed and if I just chill a bit and allow the Spirit to help the lesson will go so much better. The language is coming along well but I am still nowhere near where I want to be.

But back to the people. I love them, everyone is just super chill and always giving thumbs up and it just makes me smile. Oh! Except for this Saturday we were waiting to cross a street and some punk in a bus threw fruit at me!! I didn´t get anything on me but it hurt a bit. I love it though that is an awesome mission story now!

I think that covers most of it... Mom thanks for your e-mail! I really liked what you had to say about v/h teaching. I hope everyone else is doing well! Danger... I hope you are still being Dangerous and have you started playing HALO with the Bros. yet? Ian, sounds like you have a lot going on right now! Good luck with it all champ! Just remember, if your plane crashes it is because the pilot was a loaf of bread hahahahaha. I hope you all have another great week and don´t cause too much trouble. I love serving a mission so much, every night when I go to bed just physically, mentally, and spiritually spent I just think to myself, ¨this is awesome, I would never have stuff like this happen if I didn´t serve a mission,¨ then I peace out because I am so beat. This church is just so true!!! Love you all!!

Elder Big Deal

P.s. I accidentally hit the S so it said Elder Big Seal Hahahaha I shoulda left it

When It Rains It Pours

Opa fam!

Where do I even begin with this week... awesome! So Mom right off the bat I dont know all of the facts you want but I will try my best to answer everything. The address I have is just for the mission home cause that is where all of our mail will go so I dont know the address for my actual place, sorry. Here is the address:

Brazil Maceio Mission
Av. Dom Antonio Brandao
333 Sala 402 Ed Work Center
Farol 57021-190 Maceio-AL Brazil.

I am sure that is super confusing so just look in my call packet and I am sure you can find it there. My area is pretty sweet I am in the city pretty much, but not the actual city of Maceio. I can see it though. We have tons of investigators to me (coming from Oregon) but we are about average on Brazil terms haha.

The language.... is frustrating. I still can't understand people very well and the thing is I speak Portuguese, not Brazilian, and there is a big difference. And I am trying to catch on to all the slang terms and the pushing of words together but it is hard to learn how to listen. I guess that is where prayer comes in right? :) hahaha.

98% of our transportation is walking... which I am fine with. We ride buses and stuff when we need to go to the office or something, but that is pretty rare. The driving down here is crazy so I am fine with walking. We saw thess two trucks get into a accident and it was pretty sketchy. We do a lot of just street contacting, which I like a lot more then knocking cause I feel with knocking I am too much like a salesman. Street contacting I feel like a normal person with an awesome message about happiness and salvation haha.

Our walk to church isn't bad at all we can see the church from our place but to get where we e-mail it is about a 40 minute walk. I am fine with it. The church is really pretty here, I will get some pics of it soon when I am brave enough to walk outside with my camera. I am trying to think of what else to say area wise... The weather here is pretty awesome, not super hot but it can be. We had a lot of rain Saturday and yesterday so we were tracking in some mud and my shoes got a good work out. We usually get into our place by about 8:30 cause it is a little too sketch to be out after that. The black tag really is like a shield though. It is amazing how blessed I am just by being a missionary. Like a lot of the places where we work my comp said he wouldn't go down there in normal clothes and he is Brazilian.

The work is going great we are teaching a lot of cool people and I am actually helping with the teaching but the stuff I say is just kinda memorized phrases so I dont feel like I am doing much, but I know bearing my testimony helps a lot. I love how no matter what language it is in, a testimony is always so powerful. I always give the lunch message too, which I like cause I feel a bit more comfortable with members. The members here are awesome and they are super nice and help me learn the language more.

I think that is about it.. We had a black out last night which lasted for about an hour but it was pretty cool. They are common here. And then we killed 8 big cockroaches last night too... not bad. Oh! I finally had a meal with beans yesterday and I was more worried about the pig ear and intestine than the beans. It was actually pretty good but still... I felt like VooDoo. The food is good and I am still healthy so I can't ask for much more.

Sounds like stuff at home is awesome. Ry I am stoked for you and seeing that pic of Mac was awesome. I miss that kid so much you have no idea! Happy birthday to Trent. Get a Killionaire for me k? Have a good week, love you all so much!

Elder Big Deal

Voce fala Potuguese?! Hahaha... Nope!‏

Oh my gosh I cant even explain how awesome this place is!!! First off the keyboard is different so excuse my poor grammamaer. Second... happy HOLLAween!! Hahaha I have been waiting to make that joke alllll week!

Okay now to the good stuff.... I am never coming home this place is so amazing like... AHHHHH! It is everything I thought it would be and better! So after I talked to the fam, sorry I missed you Ian and Holli, I flew to Atlanta and had to run all the way to my next flight cause the train was broken and it was leaving in like.... 15 mins. Super intense but obviously I made it. There I met up with some other missionaries all going to different missions so I flew from Sao Paulo to Maceio alone but it was nice. Oh and durning the flight to Sao Paulo I flew over Port-a-Prince and was stoked. I was so beat though, flying and sleeping dont work out. 

But seriously this place is awesome. I can see the beach from my area and everyone is so laid back it is awesome. It is honestly just like board shorts, regge music, smoothies, lizards, and awesome. The area I am working in is called Feitosa and it is pretty dope. We work in kinda the ghettos but I love them! They are called Grottas here and Ill try to get some pics but I am scared that my camera will get stolen. Some fun facts about this mission is that it is the most poor and dangerous mission in all of Brasil... How awesome is that?! So I have a few pics I will try and send today but I am not sure if they will work.

   

My new comp is awesome. His name is Elder Pinto and he is from Sao Paulo so he is a native but he lived in the US for awhile so he knows English. We get along super well and he is an amazing soccer player. Dont even get me started on soccer here, it is everywhere!! I am honestly in heaven. Seriously, you guys better have a cute girl ready for me when I am done or else I am just gonna stay here and play soccer till I die. Our apartment is awesome too, better then the one I had in Medford which is funny to me. I have a video I am gonna try to send to you of it though. The food is pretty good as well and I have probably only eaten a couple of bugs - nothing too bad, it is just protein right? :)

  

The language.... Hahaha I dunno it isnt too bad actually. The thing that is killing me is that I cant understand people. Cause I can speak the language fine but I just have no idea what people are saying to me so that is what I am really trying to learn. But dont get me wrong I still struggle forming sentences and like not being nervous when I talk but it is not AS horrible as I thought it was going to be. My new pres is awesome too. President and Sister Gonzaga really just welcomed me with open arms and I am so grateful for it. They really are amazing people... when I can understand them :)

   

I think that pretty much covers it... We are working with a lot of families which is really cool, some that are super close to baptism so I will keep you updated on that but I cant understand what they are saying so I cant really tell you too much about them hahaha. I love you all so so so so so much and it was awesome to hear from you the other day!! I hope everything is going well and life is going well back in the states. I. LOVE. IT. HERE.

Elder Big Deal

P.S. I have yet to have beans hahaha how lucky is that?