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.