Linhares - Week Six

Sorry, I didn't bring my camera this week. =( I'll have to try again next time.  We had a zone conference this week, but your package didn't get here yet so I don't have it still (the Brazilian post office doesn't bring on more people during the holidays, so things get slowed down.)  I’m doing better with the language, I still don't understand everything that's being said.

So, this week was pretty hectic. We didn't have much time to work, because we had interviews with the president on Tuesday, and then zone conference on Wednesday, and a baptism on Saturday, and the English class on Friday, so we've been losing a lot of time. We've been having problems in the area of Interlagos, we only have one good investigator there after this week. We had to cut Sirley because he doesn't really want it now, and Cida again, because she refuses to feel the Spirit. We spent like an hour, doing all we could for her to understand, and recognize that she has felt the Spirit already, but she just wouldn't, (so frustrating) so we're done teaching her too. The good news is, we had a miracle find this week! And had 5 people in church on Sunday!

This week we're going to be working in Araca.  It's the area across the bridge from Interlagos. We were going through there on Tuesday night to visit a friend of one of the members here. Cida was with us too, so we stopped at the house of a less active because she needed to use the bathroom. There was someone moving in at the same place, just at the house below them, so we helped them carry their furniture down to the house, after, we decided to teach them a message and marked for a day to come back. On Thursday, Elder Furrows (one of the other elders in Linhares, because we were doing divisions) and I went back to teach them, and the mom of the house (her kids and her grandkids and the whole family, almost, lives there) said that she saw us walk by her house a few times, and wanted to talk to us, but didn't have the courage to, and then she prayed that she could talk to us, and the next day we showed up! It was awesome! There were so many things that had to happen for us to be there, especially since we hadn't really started moving over to that area yet! That was a pretty awesome miracle. She went to church and is super accepting of everything that we taught her so far, but then, she wasn't married legally yet. =( so sad! But the whole family is elect, we have 6 baptism dates marked with that family already. It's going to be awesome. Her daughters, Juciara and Polina, are both accepting, one of the men in the house, Fabiano went to church and loved it (we still need to mark a date with him,) and some of the kids want to go and get baptized with their parents too. SO awesome. Anyway, that's been the highlight of the week.

Oh and it was raining a lot early in the week. We ran through a flooded area, and got drenched in the rain. And for lunch with the president, we ate at a restaurant and just loaded these huge plates, and ate chuhasco? I don't know how to spell it, but its Brazilian food where they have different types of meat on big sticks and they just cut it onto your plate as much as you want. Dad's going to love that when you come and get me haha.

Well that's it for this week. Love you all, sounds like you're having fun! I’m happy here and doing my best. =)

Linhares - Week Five

Well, I sent an email and pictures last week, I don't know why you didn't get them.  I tried forwarding them again, so hopefully that works. [It didn't.  We don't have a letter from Jan 2.]

Anyway, we haven't had much success this week. It's been a hard week. We were supposed to have a baptism on Saturday. We were meeting with Sirley, (I spelled it different last week) every day to get him ready for his baptism. He seemed like he was progressing soo well too! So this weekend was really disappointing. On Saturday, when the baptism was supposed to be, we spent the whole day trying to get it ready. We had to wait and fill up the font, and were trying to get everything together because we weren't really on the ball with that. We went to his house at about 5:30, because that is when he gets home from work, and we waited, and waited, and waited. It was really sad! He just didn't show up like he was supposed to. =( he lives at the house of a recent member, who is super excited about missionary work, so she was super sad too. Later we heard that he showed up at nine, still somewhat drunk, and then left to another city and haven't heard from him since Friday. We did everything we could to help strengthen him and prepare him for the temptation to come. It stinks that temptation is so strong for people right before their baptism. Lame.

Sunday was good though. We had a good church meeting and we had a big planning session on how we can get people to church. (Because that is one of the most important things for investigators.)

This past week we have been trying to be finding people. We don't really have any progressing investigators. We have one woman, who is the sister of a member, who is going through a hard time, and we're trying to teach her. We've only been able to really sit down and teach her once though, which stinks. But she will be progressing this week, if we can get her to church. We also found the father of one of our investigators who has been to church a few times, we're going to start working with him to try and get him excited and baptized. He's worried about raising kids in these troubled times, so hopefully that will help us teach him.

We also started an English class this week to help and find new investigators. I basically taught it this first time! haha We were just teaching basic things like introducing yourself and getting to know other people. And a member here painted a custom picture for me! I'm going to try and send it home so you can put it up on the wall. =) It might be a while though.

Sorry I’m kind of all over the place with this email. This week we were trying to work with members more, but it just kept not lining up right, but we have two family home evening marked for this next week, and we're going to try and get a member to come out with us every single day, because the investigators also need a friend in the church, because we can't take everyone to church in the morning.

Well sounds like you are having fun! Go drew on basketball! Yeah! Haha sorry the email didn't get to you last week. That's about it, I’m having fun, well, I’m happy at least, for the majority of the time =) I’m still trying to get this missionary thing down. Love you all!

Linhares - Week Four

[On January 22, Riley forwarded this message he wrote on January 2.  I put this in its chronological position on the blog.]


This week went by really fast! The time has just been flying! We did pretty well this week with teaching with members, and we actually got some investigators to church! How exciting! Haha Well I guess I'll start with the biggest events of the week. My birthday was Saturday, kinda lame. Haha It was just like a regular day, and because it was fast Sunday, I couldn't eat anything after lunch. Lame. So I made a cake the night before from a mix thing, and it was pineapple flavored. It was pretty good. We ate cake in the morning, right after personal study. (See picture). We used a match for a candle, so I didn't really have to blow it out. And luckily, the last missionaries left some chocolate frosting in the fridge for my birthday cake. After all of our studies, we went to lunch. The member who was supposed to make us lunch knew they wouldn't be able to, so they gave us R$50 to buy lunch. We found out that there is a REAL Subway here, so we went there! It was a real Subway! Looked exactly the same, and they even had the cookies! (Cookies are pretty much unheard of in Brazil. It's an American thing. Just to give you some perspective on price, a combo with the 30cm(foot long) was like 20 bucks each. After Subway because we were still looking for a little more before the fast, we went and got some soft serve ice cream. That was basically it for my birthday. The rest was all normal. And people here don’t get it. We were teaching this family that is really awesome, and they like talking to us, but then they said, yeah we know God might have something more for us, but I don't want an answer to our prayer about it because we're comfortable where we are. Lame.

For new years, basically everyone travels and has parties at the beach. Well at least here anyway. A lot of people left to either the beaches, or to the bigger cities. I was asleep before midnight, (because I’m a good missionary) and didn't hear their celebration at all. My companion woke up and said they were honking and shouting and shooting off fireworks. I must have been out pretty good.

The other good event this week was yesterday. The bad news was that we found out that our group is being closed and becoming a part of the branch again because there isn't enough priesthood support there. =( The good news is that we brought our investigator, Serlei to church. He was a little drunk from the night before, but he never drinks and he felt really bad about it. We still let him get interviewed by the other elder, and he told him that he had a huge desire to be baptized and wanted to keep all the commandments. Wow! So he has a baptismal date for Sunday, we're going to try and visit him every day this week to keep him ready.

We really need to find new investigators this week. Our pool is dying down because people don't want to put any effort in. and one investigator who has tons of potential, and three kids of baptismal age, is never there now when we schedule. Lame. So hopefully we can't find some other good people to teach. I think that's about it for the week. Oh, and one day it rained really hard for the majority of the day, and I don't have an umbrella so I got pretty wet. =)

Looks like you guys are having fun! I can't go on youtube [we sent him a link to a video of our family singing “Happy Birthday” to him], but I have been looking at your blog.

Thanks! I love you guys, I’m working hard, and the days are passing pretty quickly!
até próxima semana!

Merry Christmas from Linhares!

We got to talk to Riley for Christmas!

Here's what we learned:

He's happy.  See his face?

He eats with the members everyday for lunch.  Mostly rice and beans.

He is known in certain circles as the guy "who can't eat all of his dessert."

(He says some of it is nasty!)

He has never walked so far for so long in his life. 

They live 30 minutes away from their area.

They aren't worried about being robbed in their area!

He and his companion live in a nice apartment--just the two of them.

They've found three cockroaches and incinerated them.

They are implementing a new 12-week training course for new missionaries.  So far so good.

He actually speaks a foreign language that other people understand!  (We assume it's Portuguese!)

The days seem to fly by.  The hard work makes him sleep well at night.

The Brazilians are so friendly and invite them in to talk all the time--

even when they are NOT interested in the gospel.

He is happy to be a missionary in Brazil!

Linhares - Week Two

Hey FAM! Well my pday has been switched to Monday, so this is the time when I’ll be emailing you.

This week has been pretty rough. Both me and my companion are new to this area, so we've spent most of our time trying to build our teaching pool. This area is huge too, so we spend a LOT of time walking, and we only are teaching a few lessons a day, which is not good. We should have a baptism this week, our investigator, Cida, should be baptized, and she went to church again, but for some reason she wants to ask her pastor if this is good for her. We tried all we could to tell her that she needs to ask Heavenly Father, and not her pastor, but she's stuck on that anyway. Our other investigator that we've been teaching regularly is being weird about baptism, he recommitted to a day, but we think he's having problems with the law of chastity and he is still drinking coffee. He says he knows that it's true though, which is really disappointing. A few of the others we are teaching are having a lot of trouble actually doing things. We  have one who just refuses to pray. Really sad and frustrating. We met with one family this week, the parents are Roberto and Rosangela, and they have two kids of baptism age. They're a really great family, and would be awesome. We've only visited them twice, but they haven't prayed about the Book of Mormon yet. They have friends in the church too, so we trying to get them to go teach with us this week. We are also trying to start using the members more, have a lot of family home evenings and have the members invite friends so that we can start teaching them. We do a LOT of walking. But I like this city. It's really clean compared to São Paulo, but our area is ridiculously huge. It takes us like 25 minutes to walk to our area from our apartment.

I don't think I have anything else about the actual work, since it's been a short week. We're looking to improve a lot.

Well, it's been really hard for me this first week--a lot of walking, which I’m not used to, haha, and I don't understand people very well, and I can only say most of the things I want to during lessons, some things I still have trouble with. And only one investigator is progressing so that is discouraging too. I hit a low point this week, but I've been reading the scriptures, which has been helping me, and I have some goals this week for me to talk and teach more, rather than my companion, who has been doing most of the teaching (mostly because he just keeps talking and I don't really get a chance to do much.) We re going to be working on that this week, but I think that was also a contributing factor to my discouragement, because I felt like I wasn't helping at all.

This week is going to be awesome. I can just feel it. I just have to use more faith. I can do this, because this is where the Lord wants me to be. I was reading in Mormon 9, and I don't remember what verse right now, but the basic message that I got out of it was that if we are really disciples of Christ, we need to preach the gospel to everyone. I really like that chapter. Ths week will be awesome.

Thanks mom and dad for everything that you've done to get me here.

Can you send those family history stories when you get a chance? I would really like to have those. I think that's the only thing that I need, and those shoes. =)

I love you all!
até proxíma semana!

Linhares - Week One

I’m in Espirito Santo! How exciting is that? I got to Vitoria around midday yesterday, and met with the president. We flew Brazil’s version of Jet Blue, and they gave us all the snacks we wanted, but only to the missionaries. haha. The mission president is really cool, but I don't know him that well, and I can't speak Portuguese very well either. We took a three hour bus ride, (me and my companion) to where I’m serving, for the life of me I can't remember the name of the town, it’s about three and a half hours north of Vitoria, and I get to email again on Monday so I’ll tell you then. But my companion's name is Elder Fischer, he’s from Manti, has been in Brazil for about a year, and was in Texas for about 6 months when he was reassigned. He basically knows Spanish too. He's a really cool guy. We got to our home really late last night, probably about 9 at night. Today was a pretty good first day, besides the fact that I hardly know what anyone is saying. If everything works out right, I should have my first baptism on Saturday! I’m so excited. I also taught my first few lessons today, even though my companion taught most of it. Oh, and me and my comp are the only elders in our house, so it's a little weird. There is one other companionship in this city. Oh and my trainer's trainer was Devin so he knows him because he was in campos when Devin was visiting I think. Anyway, we studied a lot today, and when we finally left we had lunch at a member's house. The mom had to go to work, so we ate with the son Gabriel, who is 14. He's a really cool kid. We’re going to play soccer with him on our next pday. After that he showed us around part of our area, since my companion is new here also. After that we went and tried to find the investigator that the previous companionship left. The best part of today, we met with a recent convert, named Valda, she just got baptized about a month ago, she is super excited about the church and has a ton of referrals for us. We went over there--she's the only one in the house who is a member. We taught two of her daughters today, Fernanda and...dang! I can't remember her name. haha I’m really bad with names, especially because I can understand hardly anything being said. My companion teaches most of the lesson anyway. And we were teaching her mom too. I invited them to be baptized and all three of them said yes! How awesome is that?! I have two baptism dates on my first day! We can't baptize the grandma because she lives in a different state is leaving soon. The two daughters are going to get baptized on the 1 of January, so we're going back there tomorrow. The other investigator that we were teaching today is a friend of that family, and lives there too so we were there twice today. Hopefully we get them all baptized. I’m going to be in this area for 12 weeks. This area is really great, I’m excited to be here and actually teaching people about the gospel. I felt the Spirit a lot today, which was a great counter to the worry and the anxiety that I don't know the language. I’m going to work as hard as I can here, I will talk to you on Monday. And I hear that for Christmas we will be able to Skype with you. I’m kind of excited about that too. Well I’m really excited to work here. That's all for now I guess.

Oh! And Monday we went proselyting in downtown Sao Paulo, it was really easy because there was a TON of people and none of them already had 3 copies of the Book of Mormon already like the first time we went out. It was a great experience.

I really like this city too, even though I can't remember the name. Haha I’ll tell you on Monday.

And yeah, that was Rick at the Melting Pot, he's a really cool guy, I liked working with him.

It’s nice hearing from everyone, and for Zack, Alma 26 is my favorite chapter. And I really enjoy reading Jesus the Christ. It's an  awesome book. Well I love you all! Talk to you on Monday!

Elder Woodmansee

PS.  I remember now. The city is called Linhares, and my area is all of Interlagos. It’s the part that is surrounded by lagoon water. It’s a really beautiful place, and I’ve walked more today than my entire time in the MTC. haha. Oh, and the bus ride on the 101 from Vitoria to here was really long, but oh my goodness was it beautiful! Pretty much once we left the city it was green mountains and forest. It was really awesome.

Brazil MTC - Week Six

Well, first of all, this week is going to be different because it's not all class and we have some orientation classes instead of learning the same thing over and over and over. We went proselyting yesterday and it was awesome! Me and my companion had four Book of Mormons that we were supposed to give out, and we ended up giving out all of them with time to spare! It was a neat experience. (And I’m looking forward to doing the same thing every day out in the mission field because were actually helping people come into the gospel, and not just teaching fake investigators.) Anyway, it was really hard at first, we didn't really want to talk to people and we were pretty nervous. After our first time talking to someone and talking about church with them, (which we were rejected,) it was a little easier, especially after we handed out our first book of Mormon ever! It was fun, but had at the same time. Trying to get people to stop and talk to you was kind of difficult. I was surprised that I could communicate pretty well, but it was hard to understand them sometimes. And if they're not talking about church things, (like if I hear someone just talking on the street) I have no idea what they're saying. haha I guess I’ll learn pretty quickly when I get to the field though. I can't wait to actually go out and teach people. It was interesting, the two things I heard most often while talking to people yesterday was, "I already have one," (we just went out in the neighborhood around the CTM this time,) and "the bible is hard to read" which I thought was pretty funny. I wanted to say, "Well this is way easier to read!" it seemed like the women were more willing to talk to us than the men, we haded out three to women, and one to a man. I can't imagine doing this in the states. The people here are really nice and friendly and willing to talk to us, even if they don't end up walking away with a BoM. Well that one experience was the only thing that really stuck out last week. We all came back sunburnt because we are only in the sun for like 30 minutes a day anyway. haha. Oh and I've gained like 10 pounds since I've been here, but I don't feel like I've been getting fat, and I don't think I look fatter either haha. Especially because we have to walk up more than 100 stairs every time we want to go to our room for something. Today was the last time  that we got to go to the temple. I’m really sad about that, I like going every week.

I can't wait to get out there. Just one more week!

Oh and I got your package! It was a miracle! Normally it takes about a month but it got here in 11 days! How cool  is that? I love that flag, its hanging up in my room right now.

Well I'm really excited to get out of here, I'm kinda sick of all these classes, I want to go out and talk to people and teach real people! Sounds like you're having fun at home still. Oh and no we didn't watch the Christmas devotional thing. I don't know why. Well I'm just about out of time.

I love you all! Sounds like you're having fun, and congrats Cam! Starting real life and moving on from BYU finally. haha =) sounds like a lot of fun. I miss you all, but I want to be here right now instead. =) See ya next week!