Christmas

What kind of things can I say about this week, this was one of the better weeks that could have happened on the mission, we had a huge mission conference where all the zones here on the bottem part of our mission where we had a huge spirtual moment with our mission president where he shared a little bit of here personal study on the atonment of Jesus Christ, and he blew away my mind let me just tell you that, each year he does something like that and each year he blows away my mind.

We had some skits from our zones, it´s sad that my video isn´t sending from our skit, let me just tell you if you could see it you wouldn´t believe that we did that, we ended up doing a funny dance thing with me and another american, something that i would have nver done if i was at home, but hey the misson really changes people doesn´t it. 

This week we had a chance to talk to our familys also, which was amazing to be able to talk to them again, it´s crazy to think that next year i won´t have to skype them on Christmas but will be able to talk to them for the first time in two years, it´s crazy how fast the time flys by, it was fun to talk to them, but not fun to talk in English, that was a little hard to do this year, which is really where, when you sister and brother and law start to laugh at your english because you sound like a Brazilian tying to speak english you know it´s a rough life. 

But overall it was one of the best days that could have happened here, I love this time of year to get to be a little close to my Savior and really remember what he did for us, and how we can return in the presence of our Father because of him.

Natal

What is the true meaning of Christmas in our lifes? What kind of things are we looking forward to this next week, what kind of things are we doing to get into the Christmas spirt?

I really love this time of year and have really learned more about these questions that i have put here, being far from home during this times is the hardest thing that we can do, but everything works out for the better, what´s the true meaning of Chirstmas, whenever I think about Chirstmas I always think of the day before Chirstmas on Chirstmas eve, in my family we have a family tradition on that day, everybody gets together to have a big dinner and then we have a little skit that we do to remember the true meaning of Chirstmas in the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. For the longest time I remember my Grandpa Hernandez reading in Luke, having the kids play out what happened that humble night. and remembereing the special day, till this day it continues with my Grandpa Horsley reading those same scriptures. Everything about that night was special and values a lot more then all the gifts that come and go thoughout the years. 

What´s special about being a missionary is that we get to help people have this same kind of joy with their familys, we spread the true meaning of Chirstmas and how we can embrace this gift that our Heavenly Father has given us, we can learn about his, but even better then just learing about him, we can become like him and our Father that´s in the heavens, because of his loving sacrifice for us. 

To become like him we need to serve like him, love like him, and have the disire to change and use his loving Sacrifice in our lifes. 

That´s the purpose for this time of the year, to really learn about of loving Savior and really look to share it with everybody, it may feel like nobody wants to hear aobut it, but somebody out there needs what we have, they need the love of our Savior, we just have to ask and look for these people. 

How are things going back in the good old cold, out there in Brasil it´s so hot that even the dogs that are normally in the road are hiding under the trees just to get some shade and cool off a little bit. Here in Bagé is the hottest area that you can work in in our mission so i got the good luck to be able to roast a little bit.

Fun little fact that i learned during the week, did you guys know that it´s possible to be hotter at 7-8 at night then at mid day when the sun is at the highest point? here as the day goes on it gets hotter and hotter.

As far as this week everything went pretty well for us, i spent the week going on splits with the other missionarys here to help them out in their areas and we found a ton of poeple to teach and to hopefully baptize if everything works out in this month of miricules.

 Our mission is really trying to have two things happen this month, we are trying to make this month a time for people to come closer unto Chirst with our misssionary work, and have a month that is full of Mircules, our mission president is really focusing on that and reestablished our goals that we have for this month with bringing people to church. 

The whole purpose is to help us out grown in our faith in the lord, and really have to have the help of the lord to be able to do all things. 

December

How´s everybody doing on this fine Monday morning, or at least i think that it´s morning there right now. Everything is going great out here from Porto.... Oh wait I´m not in Porto Alegre anymore, I got transfered to Bagé! here is a little update on how things are here in Bagé, it´s a small little town and the farthest one from our MP, our 8 hours on bus, so last monday I spent my whole P-Day taking a trip on a bus seeing things out here in Brasil. I broke my streak of American comps and have a new comp, Elder Macedo, from the top part of Brasil, and let´s just say that we are going to kill it out here in Bagé, I´m pumped for this transfer to work because this is the best time of the year to work.

It´s the best time of the year because we are coming up on the end of the year, this week we are going to start the Month of December, the month of our Saviors birth. what a amazing time that we are going to have teaching the restored Gosple to the people that are so ready to hear the Gosple. 

I´m also pumped for this transfer because it will be the first that that i will be in charge of helping out the other missionarys here, my mission president called me to me a Distric Leader here in Bagé so I have the chance to serve 8 other missionarys in my Distric so it will be a great time to be able to serve and learn. 

Lets all make this Christmas season a special one, one of serving others and helping others out, i love how the church is always looking to serve others and this year like last year we are going to have a video everyday in December on how to be a light for the world starting on the first, Look up these videos and look to serve those by you.

A semana

What can I say but that this week was just like the rest, crazy busy, so many things to do and such little time to be able to do it.

Last week was our temple trip week so we had a chance to relax and just feel like you are a whole new person after the temple. The temple is honstly the best place to do able to do and just feel the peace and love that God has for each one of us. 

But what were the high lights of the week. I think the biggest highlight of the week is who we found to teach, we found a American in our area!!! It´s so dope to be able to talk with him because he wants to talk in English and he has so much american stuff in his our, you feel like you are back in the US it´s so nice. He even made us waffles, it was so nice. 

That´s just one thing that happened. 

So pretty much this week we spent the week trying to find new people to teach, it´s one of the hardest things to do as a misisonary is to let someone go that isn´t wanting to accept the Gosple, and pretty much everybody that we were teaching we had to let go for the good of them. So we spent the week doing was missionarys do, and that is go knocking on doors, The worst thing to do when it´s hot and you have nobody to teach, but things turned out really well, we ended us finding new people to teach this week and didn´t spend as much time in the road in the heat but got to spend some time teacing people and doing the fun part of the work, teaching. 

After this week I really started to learn more about the scripute in James, Faith without work is dead, or something like that, it´s been a while since I´ve said it in English. 

As missionarys we are always wanting to baptize and teach the restored Gospel, we alwys say that we have faith to put in the work. But the way we show our faith is how we are doing things, are we really putting in the work to recieve the blessing that we are asking for, when we start to show our faith in the Lord and his plan for us, we will be able to see the things that he is really doing for us, it´s when nothing seems to be going right and we feel like we´ve done everything we could we get the blessing that we need at that exact moment. God is always there for us, but he also wants us to grow and learn. 

The week

I hope that everybody is having a fine day on this fine Wednesday, I´m pumped for this day because today we get to go to the temple and have a good time in the House of the Lord.

This last week was a busy one, we had a ton of stuff to get planned out and one of the highlights of the week was our Halloween activity here in Brasil. Something that isn´t very big her in Brasil is Halloween so they needed a lot of help, and when you are in a house of 4 people with 3 Americans it makes for a good time. Everybody had a blast and made for a fun little night. 

The highlight of the activity was what I learned. I leanred that Brasil are crazy competive, like more then my family I´m pretty sure, we were playing a little kids game and I thought that some peole were going to start throwing punches it was so funny for me.

But all jokes aside lets go to the spirtual part of the week. Just the other day, i don´t remember what day it was i started to think about our first message we normally share with people and about the first two things we teach, in how God is our Heavenly Father, and then how the gospel blesses our family, I started to think about that a lot and one question that I like to ask people on what´s the most important think in our lives, Which is of course our family that we have. 

I started to think a little bit more about that and what is the most important thing for god, it´s of couse of and our happiness, and with that it´s our family that we have. Because our family is the most important thing for him and us he gave us the gospel to bless our family, a way to strenthen our family and hold us steady during all those hard times, because as we know our lifes aren´t always these happy moments. 

But the question is how can we help our familys even more? This is why we have the Book of Mormon in our lives, to bless us in every aspect, some of the greatest moments on the mission is when you see the change in a family because of the Book of Mormon, when we study this as a family we will recieve the blessing from heaven to bless us in every moment. 

That´s one thing our misson is really focusing on right now is to have every member to read the Book of Mormon, we have a challenge to read the whole Book of Mormon before the year ends and i would like to make that same chanllenge with each on of you this day, to really study the Book of Mormon, and gain a testemonhy of it´s truthfullness, and if you have done it before to do it again to help you even more in your life. 

B.O.M

How´s everybody doing on this fine Monday one of the best days of the week?

Things out here in Brasil are just flying by, the time here has to be differente or something becuase it feels like a week is the time of one day, We have so much to do and talk about that i don´t even know where to start. 

These last couple of weeks have been a time of learing for me, from reading in the scriptures, lesson on the streets, or talking with my Mission President it´s been a lot of learing these last couple of weeks. I´m not going to share everything because if i tried so I´m just going to start with the basics. 

First of all in Third Nephi when Christ was visitng his people here the nefitas in chapter 11 it was interesting on what he did at the moment, first he did his introduction, that he is the living Christ who the profits where talking about, he showed himself to the people and then the part that is interesting is how he organizied his church again here in the Américas, that is the first thing that he did, and then the first thing that he teachs is about baptizem, how importante it is for everybody and how his disiples need to help out with that. 

And what is it that we are to do as missionarys of his church, that answer is from one conference that we had with part of the 12 and some other people, to teach repantace and to baptize converts, i really like one of the parts where Elder Anderson said that every misionary needs to have this word baptizem in their mouth and never feel scared to ask someone to be baptized, because if we don´t ask then they can´t repent. That´s part of what i got from 3 Nephi 11, then the rest of the book of 3 Nephi is amazing, but i want to move over to Mormon right now.

In Mormon i relized something that I´ve never relized before where the first time that Mormon knoew that he was going to be a profet and get the plates was when he was 11, for some reason i started to think about that a lot, i wondered how Mormon felt during that moment, if he felt overwhelemed, or scared or just thought the guy that told him was a little bit crazy, but he did the right things and got the plates when he was 25 like that guy said he needed to do. 

What i started to think about right there was how many times do we feel like we aren´t the right person to do something, how many times do we feel small or like it´s for somebody else and not us, I know that I´ve felt that way a lot during my mission or even during my life, the first months on the mission to learn Português, to feeling comfotable with that and then being called to train when you are still new on the mission, not feeling that I knew enough or wasn´t ready, but what i learned during these moments is how to really trust in the Lord, to learn taht you can´t do things without 

God, and how he is always here ready to help you out. 

And the last thing is in Ether 12 where it´s like the last thing, here Morôni is talking about faith a lot but what i thought was interesting was when he started to wonder why he was asked to write in the plates, He was asking why him, when he doens´t right that good, why doesn´t he have that gift to right like other people, how is this going to work out, all short of things like that. And that the Lord gives the famous sciprture, in Ether 12:27 where the Lord says that he makes weak things strong for those who humble themselfs before him. But what i liked was a couple of vereses after where Morôni says that he was conforted by the words of the Lord.

Waht was intersting to me at that time, it was like i was in the plce of Mornôni, where at that time I wasn´t feeling like I was enough to do the work of the Lord, things weren´t going out at planned and it was wearing on me at times, but it´s amazing how the Book of Mormon will always teach you no matter how many times that we read and study the words. 

I want to make the same invite as the Profets in thse latter days to everybody to really study the words of the Profets in the Book of Mormon, it´s here to help us in our lifes and will always guide and confort us when we need it. 

Temple day

How´s everybody doing on this fine Monday??? Oh wait it´s not Monday.. It´s Wesnday here... Today is a specal day because our P-day moved because we are going to the house of the Lord today!! That´s right the beautiful temple here in Porto Alegre.

This week I´ve been thinking a lot about what the best part of the mission is, I´ve heard that question a lot and I started to think about it for the first time before going to bed one night. I came to the concustion of two things, first of all is the Personal Growth that happens here on the mission. You learn so much that you can´t learn back at  home, your focus is always on other people and what they need and you start to study for these people and their needs and when you start to do this everything starts to change in your life and how you see things. It happens just a little bit everyday where if you´re not looking for the change you won´t see it, when you take a time to look back and see what has happened in your life you see that you´re a totally different person. Or at least that´s what´s happned for me during my time here in Brasil. 

And the second is the people that you get to meet here during the mission, you are always talking to people here on the mission and learing more about how people really are, you talk to the richest people in a city and the poorest and learn what makes people happy and what makes people sad, how their life is and how they grew up, you learn about their past and learn about what they truely want for their life, you learn so much and it´s funny what happens with more time during your mission, or at least what I´ve felt during my time here is the love that you are going to have with each person, even if you don´t know anything about them the first time you start to talk to them you love them. 

The people that I´ve meet here during my time here in Brasil have honestly changed my life and the way i see things and the love that you have for people.

Today I want to talk about two people that really have helped me out to grow and learn with them. In Thayronn and Tywai. I started to teach these two in my last area when i first got there, so 4 months ago i started to teach them, and when i first got there they didn´t want anything to do with baptizem or much about the church, but after talking to them for a little bit we started to see some big changes in their lifes, to the point where they just wanted to be baptized, but their mom said that they couldn´t be baptized at that time for reason unknown to us. But they wanted to be baptized so we had to keep working with them. Long story short i ended up leaving the area without anything happing, I have to get going so I´m going to cut this story even shorted now. Last week i got a phone call saying that the mom wants me to baptize thayronn in my old area and that they already called our MP saying that it was alright for me to go back. and when these two got baptized it was one of the best moments on my mission so far to see them during this moment, after all the work that they put in to be converted to the Goseple of Jesus Christ. 

I love the work and I love the people here in Brasil, I woun´t trade anything in the world for this time that I´ve had here in Brasil.

The rain

How´s everybody doing right now in their lifes???

Things our here in brasil are going good, the work of the lord is coming a long and everybody out here is working hard and staying happy. This week the work was a little different because when we planned to go find new people to teach the rain started, and didn´t even think about stopping until 3 days after it started, but there is nothing we can do about that, just put a smile on our face, put on the good old rain jacket and get to work in the rain, you know it rained a lot when you get back home after a day of work and your rain jacket didn´t seem to work because of how much it rained that day. 

Besides the rain everything else to seemed to be pretty good, we are looking for a lot of people to teach this last couple of weeks and things seemed to be working out for us here, we jsut need to work a little harder to bring people to church but when we get that secret down things will be going perfect here. 

But the thing that I wanted to share is a miricule that happened yesterday, to tell a miricule you all need to know the story so let´s start from the start. 

In my last area that i was working in Ala Intercap we have a investagator that I really loved to teach, him and his family, he really loves the church and to learn about the goesple, but his mom didn´t let him get baptized yet, I was working with him for about 12 weeks trying to talk the mom into letting him be baptized and teaching him and the rest of his siblings. Sadly I left without anything happing with him. It´s been about 3 weeks that I left my last area and last night I got a phone call from the LD in this area saying that Thyronns mom is going to let him be baptized and that he wants me to baptize him, and that they already talked to our MP and that on September 30th, I can go back to my old area to baptize him that day. It was honestly a big miricule for me to recieve that day because the end of the week didn´t seem to go as planned and really helped me out in the moment. 

I wanted to share this experince today because it´s helps me know that God he reallys knows us and what we need, he has a perfect plan for everything and knows when his sons and daughters need help. He´s always in our life and when we look for the blessing that he gives to us we will always find them. 

Wow just let me tell you that things are going good here in Brazil, I have a new area called Agronimia where everybody calls it the Céu, or heaven, and let me tell you it is here, everything just seems to work out for the good here and man are we doing our part to be part of this amazing work in the Salvation of Souls.

We spent the week finding people to teach and found a ton of familys to teach which is a miricule normally you teach one or two people in each family and not the whole family, but right now we are finding whole familys who seemed to be prepared to hear the goesple. 

I really love this the mission and all the lesson that we learn here, it´s really the best time to learn and grow in your life.

Well I´m running out of time this week to write a group message but i just wanted to send some quick pics and do a quick update on what´s going on out here in brasil.

As far as today we had transfers and i left my old area that is Intercap to agronomia now, where everybody calls it the Céu, so i´m pummped to be working out here, I´ll be working with my new comp, Elder Johnson, who´s from Vegas, my first american comp so i guess we will see how this goes with two americans working hard in Brasil. 

As far as these photos, the ones with the car is a group of teens that we are teachingt and wanted to take a photo with us so we had to go with the abanden car, and then we bought some pizza because I´ve been out here for one year on the mission now!!!!!! 

We baptized JESUS!!!!

First of all i have to give a shout out for my man Jesus.

Right now I´m talking about Jesus who we got to baptize this week who is also one of my favorite people in this world now. He´s one of my favorite people because of what he has helped me learn in this short time with him here in this area. 

One of the greatest lessones i have learned from him is the meaning of true repentance, Jesus had a very different life when he was younger, he didn´t always make the right decisions and it ended up making a big change in his life, I won´t tell you all exactly what happened but what i can tell you is how we can all change for the better. 

After a while of having some serious problems in his life he decied to make a change, and man what kind of change did he make in his life. When you talk to him and everything you would never think that he had the life that he had, and about all the things that happened. 

 

This is honeslty one of the best parts about serving the mission is getting to know people and learing with the people, I always thought that when you serve a mission you just teach the people and have them do the things to get ready to be baptized one day, but it´s a lot more then that, you are always learning how to change how to be better, you are learing when you just listen to the people and what they need and you learn how you can be better during all the moments in your life. If i learned one thing out here it is that everybody has a story, everybody has a past. When we look to serve others we are going to have a better life. 

One other fun fact about Jesus is that he´s a rapper so when he´s famous i can say that i taught him and know him!!!

Miricules

It´s been a while but how´s everyone doing back in the good old USA? As far as things here in Brazil things are going good duirng this hot winter. I´ve never had a winter in my life where i was dying from the heat until i came here in Brazil.

As far as the past little while we are doing the same thing as always workin hard and teaching the Gospel, who could ask for a better life then this. 

We sent this week trying to find new people to teach, the old teaching group we had wasn´t really progressing so we had to let a lot of people go to find the right group to teach. We spent the first 3 days of the week knocking on doors and getting a lot of no´s, i know it´s hard to bealive people don´t want amaricans talking to them in Português about the Gospel but it happens a lot here. After the mission i think I´m going to have PTSD and never knocking on a door again because of the no´s, but as far as right now we have a work to do and that´s part of the work. 

After three days of a lot of no´s we ented into Thursday trying to keep our heads up strong to teach some people  we had a miricule of a day where everything seemed to work out right and everywhere we knocking seemed to answer the door and felt the spirt during out lessons, and that kept going until saturday. 

Sunday we had big plans with bringing people to church but when we went to go pick up everyone nothing went right, it´s one of the saddest moments when you go to church empty handed after a good week of work because you feel like you did all that work for nothing. 

As i was thinking about that and praying to my Heavenly Father about this before our sacroment meeting he put a Mircule in our path with someone that has come to church more then one time and has had the missinarys before, and pretty much everything pefect to a missionary, So we wrote down her adress are going to vist her this week. So hopefully things work out when we go there.

That really made me think about how God always hears our prayers and is always lisiting to us, he is our Father in Heaven and knows how we feel, he always wants to help us out but he always wants up to learn in grow, when we do everything possible to do something we want that´s when we are going to get these mircules in our life at the time we need it. Always trust that thing will work out right and always work to put in your part.

The life of a missioary is a good life to say the least. Not because the life of a missniary is easy, it´s quite the oposite actually. It´s a good life because of what we get to do everyday, what we do is look to help others feel the love that God has for us. We get to help all sorts of people learn that true church of Christ on this earth. But what does all this mean in our lifes. I want to share two experiancias from this week to explain a little bit more about what happened.

The first experience I want to share is from one investigator that´s been having a rough time in her life, we went into the lesson ready to teach about eternal familys and the plan of salvation. But we eneded up teaching a lesson really different, as we started talking she started opening up to us with everything, during this moment we talked about how God knows and loves her, and about how she can feel Gods love for her and how we can always ask for help to our Father in Henven. Just a small lesson that made a big differerce for her during that moment, 

The second lesson happened with a less active member of the church, the same thing happened where she opened up to us with everything that´s going on looking for some light of hope, something to help her in her life. This time we taught a different lesson with her, about three things, prayer, scripture study, and church attendence. How when we do these little things we will be blessed in our lifes, Then we left two captiers in the Book of Mormon to read, in Captiers 21 and 22 of the Book of Mosiha. I spent my personal study today reading with her situation in mind, and this changed everything for me with the story. There you have the people of the kind in a dificult situation, where the laminites are making their lilfe a rought life. What the people tried to do at this moment was use the strenght that they thought they had to overcome the laminties, but ended up worse then before. They did this three times before they learned their lesson. After the thrid time they went to war with the laminites they humbled themselfs before God and asked for help. During this moment God helped them out with their hard times, they weren´t made free from their trails but made it so that they could prosper in the land a little bit more. 

I´m out of time this week but i wanted to share with everyone that in our trials we can turn to God for help and he will always help us. 

Man was this week a different week for me. I think most of you know that the week was different because we went on a temple trip Wensday, so our P-day moved which pretty much threw off the whole work. But it was worth it. The temple here isn´t very big, it was one of  the mini temples that the Profit Gorden B. Hinkley did to bless the lives of many.

The cool thing that happened for us is that our mission president. ( Presidente Cruz, the best missin president that you could ask for) ran everything for us. Normally he doesn´t do that for the other missionarys, but we had the chance to see him there in the temple leading and guiding us in everything that we do. 

That happened on Wensday for me, then i spent the next two days in a different area because we went of splits for a little bit. So my LD worked in my area while i working in his. i had a chance to work with a Elder Mana, whose from Salt lake, He´s pretty new on the mission and only has 6 months in the field. So i spent these two days helping out in his area and with his Portuguese, which is also fun to learn. We spent two days knocking on doors and spent pretty much one day without anything. But one thing that our mission President had us do during this week is look for the mircules in things, and that´s what i tried to do. We might not have entered all the houses or even one house, but one thing that we had was good weather and did everything we could do to help our brothers and sisters learn more about this amazing gosple that our Father in Heaven has for us. 

I wanted to share more but I´m running out of time, just wanted to say that during this week everybody look for the miricules that God has for you in your life. It doesn´t matter what´s going on in your life God always has a miricule for you every day.

Faith

What a crazy week has it been down here in brasil. The life as a missionary is pretty much this, you don´t have much of a life, you are running from house to house trying to find people to teach or teaching people. IT also good becasue you don´t have time to think about yourself, you are always thinking about how you can help others come unto Christ, and you you learn that you learn realize what you need to change in your life to come unto Christ.

This week was intersting during my personal study, last monday our Mission President, Presidente Cruz gave us a assinment to study to say the least, he wanted us to study Christ´s atributes, (or something like that in English, I honestly don´t remember right now...) But this is something really interesting to study, it´s werid because every little atribute of Christ is tied in with another, when you learn one you are contenstly working on other and contenstly working on coming unto Christ. But something intersting is how it all starts with a little thing called faith, faith is a interseting topic and has a lot of meaning to it, but something i really like how explain faith is with two words, some wtih a disire, and others wtih hope. When we have a disier for something we are going to have to put in some work to find the anwer, we are going to have to put in some work to get what we want, we can´t just want something and sit there and wait for something to happen. This works with fatih becasue faith isn´t just waiting for something to happen, but we have to do our part to make things work. And then with hope we have a surity that things will work out in the end. we know that God will do what´s right and always have hope in the time that things work out. 

It was interesting how that works with missionary work to me, when you are out on the mission it can be hard, like really hard, you have days you feel like you tried everything but nothing seems to work out. But when we keep our faith and trust in the Lord, things will always work out in the end.

 

I`m not going to be able to email today. i have p day wensday this week

Joy

Wow has it been one crazy ride these last couple of weeks, just a quick update on what´s been going on last week we had a emergency transfer because of some mix ups in the office here so I ended up leaving the little city of Canguçu to the big city everyone talks about in Porto Alegre. And man has it been one big change. The life back in Canguçu is the slow life, almost nobody has cars there and you have one bus that takes you around the city and just a really slow life. To the new big city in Porto Alegre where everyone has cars here, theres a bus pretty much for every person and everything is in a rush.

But it´s been a good change for me. Things have been going really good in this area because it´s one really blessed area to work in, the people here are just ready to hear the gosple and are willing to hear and accept the gosple in their lives. 

But one of the highlights of the week was yesterday at church, we had a stake conferce at church where Dallin H. Oaks came to talk to us with his wife and some member of the 70, and man was that a great day. All of the talks where about the same topic, on how we can have joy during any moment in our lifes. And i realized how true that is, because the gosple helps you feel joy during all the moments in our life, we have a message of joy and love to share with everyone and when we look for that and look for our Savior Jesus Christ we are going to find that joy in our lifes. 

But one member of the 70 gave us a good invitaion to do, he had this question for us and it´s a good one i must say he asked. Who is Jesus Christ for you? What do you think of when you think of Christ? That´s the quesiton that I want everyone to think about and search for during this week. And when we find that answer we are going to find more Joy in our lifes.

The 70

Wow did this week just fly by, normally the weeks here are quick, but this week was faster then the others because we had to go to a city called Pelotas for a thing called a mission tour. For a mission tour normally you have a 70 or one of the 12 come and help you out pretty much on how we can improve and be the best we can be. We had the opportunity to hear from Elder Costa, just a little back round info about him, we was called to the 70 in the year 1994, and has been doing so ever since, he has the most time in the 70 then whatever other person, so he´s pretty dang good when he comes to help you learn.

He started off talking to us about our potential we have, not only in our mission but also in our lives, and on how we can really know more about our potential in our life when we learn a very important lesson, that is that we area all children of God, the God that has done everything, created this earth where we live and countless others, who knows everything. We are all sons and daughters of God. When we learn that important lesson we can really start to grow, because we know that our Heavenly Father will help us do everything we need to do in this life, we just need to trust in him at all times.

That was his first little part of his talk, and then he passed the time over to his wife Sister Costa who is amazing also, and she talked about our missions, what happens before and during and after your mission, which is something interesting, she said that each of us enter the mission field as a child, and leave as a man, a real man.

I really thought that was interesting for me, when i came into the mission field i had a totally different view on what life is then what i view now, things that were important before aren´t as important, and things that weren´t on my priority list is more important then anything else. Then i thought of a sciptuture that the ctm president shared with us a while back.

Corinthian 13: 11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

This is something that I´m trying to work on more during my time in the mission, how can i become more of a man, and do things that will help people in their life to hear of this amazing Gospel and the love of our Heavenly Father

Hows life back in the good old USA???

Things are going good here in good old Brazil, but one of the biggest changes here is the cold... While you guys have the good old heat I´m out here dying in the cold which is weird because I´m out here in Brazil, it´s suppose to be hot right??

But with the cold comes another good thing, the rain, and man was there a ton of rain this week for us, as you can tell in these pics we got a little wet that day... But it´s all good because of what we know, the more rain you have on your mission the more beautiful you future wife will be!! (Or at least that´s what the missionarys here say to feel conforted when we have a lot of rain) 

I don´t have a lot of time to write you guys today, but this next week should be a party!!  We have a member of the 70 coming to visit us and have a good old training with him to learn how we can improve here in our missionary work and help more people return to our loving heavenly father, and have a eternal family. 

Happy mothers day!!!

I know it´s the Monday after Mothers day but just had to give a shout out to the best mom out there in this email!! Thank you for everything that you do mom, i honestly don´t know what kind of man i would have become without out you and your example that you are for me.

People always ask what´s the hardest part of the mission, and the hardest part of the mission is not being with you mom to help you out. I´m convinced that moms have a special gift that nobody else in this world has right now, and that´s the gift to know what´s going on at all times, it doens´t mater how far you are you mom will always know if your happy or having a hard time. I don´t know how but they always know. 

This week we had a chance to have a activity in this branch to help out the members here grow and become more of a family, and i had the chance to give a message to the members here, i was thinking all week on what I could talk about and had to go with one atributes of Christ in charity and love. 

we are to love everyone as Christ loves us, what better example do we have then our moms in our life, moms will do anything to help us out with whatever things that we need. This is one thing that everybody can always work on, loving as Christ loved. When we do this we will become more like Christ in our life.

Amor de Cristo

How´s everybody doing on this fine Monday afternoon?

I just wanting to start this email out by saying CONGRATULATIONS to Arrie and Ian on the big weeding day!!! It´s sad that I couldn´t be there but I was rocking the tie out here in Brazil and putting in the lords work. 

I wanted to start off the email from a part of my boy mikes email. Mike wrote 

it was interesting, every P-day morning in our house we listen to some conference talks. This morning we were listening to a talk by Elder Holland way back from 1989. He talked about success and envy. It was interesting. With the Elders in my house we had an interesting talk about that specific talk by Elder Holland. We talked about our Mission, and Missionary Work in general. As Missionaries we are always trying to do our best, we are always trying to do the right thing, to always follow the commandments, always help others, and spread this happy message. We are all trying, but all of us each aren't having the success we might desire. So sometimes it is easy as a missionary when you are going through a tough situation with little success and you look to your right and left and see missionaries with baptismal dates and success, and just think to yourself... why! Why am I not having the Success!? I am not doing anything wrong... I am trying my best... but just the success isn't there. It is sometimes tough. But, Elder Holland just told us to not worry about others happiness and just to be happy for them! That God doesn't look at our individual successes and compare us. SO he told us not to compare ourselves. That just be happy for others and what they do, and just try your best with the blessings that God has given you. All we have to do to be good in the sight of God, is to try our best to fulfill our individual callings, keep His commandments and rely on Him IF and WHEN we fail. All we have to do is Press Forward, and Try!! `

  

I wanted to start off the email with this because man is it true, Last transfer was one of the hardest transfers on my mission and in this email, started to train for the first time on the mission and nothing seemed to be working, we spent days and weeks knocking on doors and talking to people in the street, we tried everything but didn´t seem to have any succuess. So of course when President Cruz waned me and Elder Rofino here for this transfer I was a little nervos on what i was to do, i felt that we have done everything, we just have one little area with just 4 streets what we havent tried, how is this going to work out for 6 weeks. But man was this a week of mircules for us. 

We spent the week doing what we normally do, visiting the people that we teach and seeing how they are doing, helping them learn about the gospel and the love God has for his Children, and when things didn´t work out we went knocking on some doors. The blessing didn´t come on the first doors we knocked but quite the opposite , the blessing started coming when we were ending the streets and felt that we couldn´t do anymore, we found the people that needed the goseple in their life, and the love the Savior has for us. 

One of the greastest lessons I have learned here on the mission is how much our God loves us, he loves us enough to give us hard time and help us learn, and during these times we can always find comfort in our Savior Jesus Christ, he knows how we feel and will always help us, if we just search for him and keep trying he will make up the difference in our life. 

I love my life as a missionary, not just because it´s a easy life, it´s quite the opposite infact, i love it because of what we get to do, God trust us youth to preach a perfect Goseple and help others live with their familys for eterenity. What greater blessing and oportunity can we have then to help soemone else out in their life, and to feel of the Saviors love. 

Bah (wow) was this week a good week. This week i had a chance to go on splits with our zone leader who´s name is Elder Alrocha, and wow did i learn a lot. That´s one thing i really love about the mission is no matter how much time you have on the mission or who you work with you always have chances to learn and progress, and wow did i learn this week.

I´m going to start with our area first. in our area here we´ve been working hard but not finding anyone to teach, so we decied to switch up where we focus our teaching and the area we teach in, and we struck gold. During these splits we worked on just 3 streets for 3 days, and didn´t even knock that many doors and had the best week that I´ve had in this area in two transfers. We just kept finding family after family to teach and the lord just kept putting people in our way who wanted to learn more about the goesple. 

Of course after you find people to teach you have to teach them, and man did i learn how to teach during this week, Let me tell you Elder Alrocha knows how to teach, I just sat there and wanted him o teach me more just about everything because of the exampls he uses. After this first day we spent the week praticing using examples and just practicing, and the phrase practice makes perfect is true, let me tell you. 

And i almost forgot that today we had transferes, the good news is that I´m going to be staying here in Canguçu to finish training Elder Rofino, and the other Elders in my house are going to be staying also, These next six weeks are gonig to be legit because the people in our house are legit.