Linhares - Week Ten

I had some interesting experiences this week!

First off, it's been a hard week of teaching. We been trying really hard to find new people, but many of them just don't have a very strong desire to learn or do anything to get there. That's the most frustrating part, is that they just won't do anything.

I had a few new experiences this week. I talked to a drunk murderer with a revolver in his pants. That was new. We were at a house in a poor area (this was the second time we were at their house) and just decided that they were the kind of people that wouldn't do anything, and were just making excuses of why they can't go to church (all of which didn't make sense). We were about to say a prayer and leave when this older drunk guy comes stumbling in, grabbing something in the front of his pants. He started talking to us, crying about how terrible a person he is and he doesn't want to feel bad anymore, rambling about how he had a revolver, (which he really did. Guns, BTW, are illegal in Brazil) and how he was the most feared bandit in Espírito Santo. Well, we managed to escape that one after he kept rambling. So that was something new, and a little scary.

Other new experience. We had a service project today at a members house that they are building outside the city. It was about a 20 minute drive out there (they took us out in their car), and we helped them build their new house for a few hours. After we ate lunch there, they had to leave, so we taught the first lesson to the other guy helping us that lives at the same place--his house is just farther back--and then we had to hitchhike back to the city. We started walking for about 10 minutes without any luck. If we walked all the way to the city, it would take a few hours. Finally, we managed to flag down a guy in a fiat pickup (it looks kinda like an El Camino, not really a truck) who was turning onto this main road. He let all 4 of us missionaries ride in the bed of his car all the way back to the border of the city, then we had to walk another 45 minutes to our apartment to change and get ready to work again. After getting soft serve ice cream. =) First time in my life that I hitchhiked.

Another awesome experience this week. I know they say not to tell home when you're sick and things, but this one is worth it. Friday, Elder Fischer and I ate something that was bad. We think it was a papaya that someone fed us. We each ate half and it's supposed to be a natural laxative. Anyway, Saturday, Elder Fisher woke up sick. By the time we were halfway through studies he had already been in the bathroom like 7 times. It got worse for me throughout the day. Basically the whole day we had headaches, our bodies felt tired and sore, stomachs were hurting all day, but we just kept working. The last visit of the day, we caught a recent convert smoking, and helped her realize that she needed to go to church this Sunday, not next Sunday like she wanted to, and she was really grateful for our help. When we got home, we realized that miraculously, all of our lessons that we taught that day were with members, even though we didn't have someone leave with us, which allowed us to reach our weekly goals. Also, when I got home, the pain and tiredness hit so hard, after we finished planning the next day. As I lay on my bed, I realized that angels had been helping us through the day. There is no way we did all that by ourselves. And we probably walked more that day than any other day this week. I knew that angels were helping us along that day. That was an awesome experience of the mission.

To answer some of your questions:
There are no sisters in this area, just me and my companion, and another companionship with a Brazilian, and an Argentine.

Culturally, I like that nothing is open on Sunday. But that means they're all going to bars, watching soccer, and maybe going to random churches at night. But in Center, nothing is open. Except for some ice cream places.

I don't like that people will lie just to make you happy. They are more emotionally driven, so they'd rather hide from you, or lie to you, than tell you that they don't want to take the lessons anymore. Or that they won't go to church/keep commitments. People here are also lazy. They'd rather just do what's easy. haha  Maybe that’s not so different!

Sounds like the family is doing great! I liked hearing about what every member is doing. Exciting things are happening at home! Well I already typed a lot and I still have to mail president. I love you all!

Scripture of the week. is from Jacob 6. I think its verse 10? I don't know but you can find it. I had Drew in mind especially for this one. All it says is "O be wise; what can I say more?" So just don't do dumb things. Keep the commandments, live the gospel standards, even if it's not the cool thing to do, because the Lord will bless you and you will have more happiness. I just liked how plain that scripture was. What can I say more?

Linhares - Week Nine

 Riley with either William or Ciaque (he didn't say which!)

 At their baptism.

 Playing soccer on p-day.

At a fast food place thinking it's funny to see Scooby and Shaggy!

Again, I'll just answer your questions first because I think it's easier that way. haha.
Yes, we use a cell phone, and most people have one, even the poor people. But we only have a certain amount of credits on the phone, and there is a stupid think in brazil called "liga a cobrar," which means, call to charge. Basically, if you don't want to use your money, they call to charge, which makes our phone ring, but if we answer it nothing happens and it hangs up. So then we have to (or not) call them back because they think the church has money. So this will be our second week without being able to call anyone because we ran out of credits. LAME.

The church we have here is pretty small. None of the churches here have carpet, just tile. No AC either, just ceiling fans. But even so, it's a nice building, and even has a family history center (which is small too).

 I have no idea why we don't have bikes. Would make the work SO much easier, but I guess they're worried about them getting stolen or maintenance or something. We hardly ever walk on dirt roads, about half of the roads are paved, and the other is like cement stone roads.

I still study the scriptures in English in the morning, but I read from the Portuguese ones a lot too. I understand just about all of it, there's just a few words every one and a while that I don't know. Especially because the scriptures use different language than the rest of the people here.

Anyway, I BAPTIZED THIS WEEK!!! WOO!!

The baptism was awesome.  It was just a great experience! We baptized the two kids, William and Caíque, (13 & 11) and we should be baptizing their mom soon too. It was just awesome! I've realized what a huge difference I've made in their lives, especially William. This week we taught them every day to get them ready for baptism, William even left with us two or three times to go teach people! He's just awesome, and will be such a great missionary. I found out at the baptism from his mom that just 3 weeks ago he was rebellious and hard to deal with but now he is completely different. He wants to go on a mission, when we come to teach he gets everyone to come and listen, and after the baptism he even wanted to stay and clean the chapel with us! He's just such an awesome kid. Caíque is great too! He just isn't as mature yet, but he's excited to go to church, and live the gospel with his older brother. Those kids, even though the family isn't that well off, bought white shirts, ties and dress pants for going to church! The mom Poliana will be baptized Saturday after next. She still has some problems with the Word of Wisdom, but I think the spiritually powerful baptism will help her change, and make the same changes that her son made.

Well this week was pretty good, we're still trying to find more investigators and people that we can bring into the gospel. This week we happened to find a relative of William and Caíque, who has noticed how much they have changed and thought it was awesome. We started teaching her too, there was also a friend of hers there when we taught her the first time too, who really wants us to come teach her, but because we don't have any credits to call people, we can't find her house. So annoying. umm I didn’t bring my planner to the lan house with me so I can't remember much...This week just went by so fast! Oh we did have a Zone meeting, but the Zone leaders forgot to bring the letters, so i dont know if I have anything still.

That’s about it this week. It sounds like everyone is having fun.  Has dad bought a new car yet?  Is Zack getting married yet? The political news isn’t that important to me right now, but I like hearing what going on. A member told me yesterday who was playing in the Super Bowl. I didn’t care much. haha.

Well I love you all, I’m having a good time learning and preaching the gospel!

Linhares - Week Eight

The youth of the branch (with some investigators) who were at our English class one week.

 Having some fun while we were filling the font another week.

I’ll answer your questions first. The week was good! It also went by super fast. It's week two of this transfer already. We had 7 investigators at church this week! 6 are from that family we found.  The two boys are getting baptized this Saturday (so excited for my first baptisms!!!) The mom went to church also, which is awesome! We marked a date with her for two more weeks and we really need to work with her to overcome her Word of Wisdom problems. Anyway, the two boys, William and Caíque are really awesome. Especially William. Every time we come over, they're normally playing soccer in the street or something, he gets everyone in to listen, and is just all around awesome! He was already asking us about serving a mission and baptizing people. haha. I'll send you pictures of the baptism next week. We had the grandma of that family come again, and two other kids that live there. The Grandma, Maurina, (the one that prayed about us coming to talk to her) really wants to be baptized, but can't yet because she isn't married, but living with her "husband." She's trying to do all she can to be baptized though. So awesome.

The other investigator that we had was Vanessa. She is 16 and lives next to her aunt, Irmã ZuZu, who is a member (and really old crazy). She had been going to church regularly, but doesn't want to get baptized for some reason, so we told her to pray about it, but we haven't been able to talk to her yesterday. We'll still be working with her this week.

We haven't really found anyone new to teach this week =(

The past few weeks it's been raining a lot, a few days out of the week, so it would be nice to have an umbrella. The ones here are kind of cheap so I don't know how long they'd last.

I haven't gotten your package yet, but im sure it will still come, the Brazilian post office gets backed up during the holidays. Anyway, I just got a package from the Mortensen family! Neal's family that is. I got their Christmas card, Snickers of every kind, (ooh soo good!) and two sweet ties! I’m going to write them a letter today, I didn't have time to take a picture with my new ties, so I'll do that next week and send it and you can show it to them? haha

Food wise, I only have to cook it the morning. I generally have one of two things. French toast, (because it’s super easy to make and tastes good) or breakfast tacos? It's basically a breakfast burrito with a small tortilla so it's more of a taco. They don't have tortillas here, which was surprising, but they have this dough for making pastels, that will make tortillas if you cook it without oil. So I have that with eggs and french fries. And that's basically it for food. I like to buy fruit, bananas are super cheap here (R$1.40 a kilo), but other fruit (like pears that are super good here) are really expensive! (R$7 a kilo) I also like buying food from the bakeries on the street.

This week I also took up the role as cleanup crew at lunch, eating the rest of the food. Hopefully I won't get fat because we're starting to run in the morning and do better workout things. I just like eating though. haha

Anyway, we had one more fun thing happen this week. We had divisions with the zone leaders, so Elder Fischer left to AraCruz, and I "stayed" here with Elder Barr. We had to travel by bus for an hour both ways to meet the zone leaders, and then the next day did it again, which killed study time this week =( Elder Barr was really cool. We got along really well and worked together really well fast. That day was pretty normal, other than having a different companion for the day.

I wish I had more time to study during the day. There's SO much stuff in Preach my Gospel that I need to know and can help me be a better missionary, but there's just not enough time to study all the things that I want and get through it as fast as I want! This sounds funny because I didn't do this when Zack was saying it, but Drew should start studying now! haha I wish I had studied Preach my Gospel more before the mission.

Also, I am seeing how important the member are in missionary work! Missionaries find, teach, and baptize, but without the members, those are just less-actives waiting to happen. It's such a huge responsibility for the members to friendship the investigators, make them feel welcome, and help them through the changes that they are making. What the members do with converts really makes a huge difference on whether they will stay active in the church.

Well that's about it. (Whew, that was a long email....) looks like everyone is having fun! Love you all!

Linhares - Week Seven

This week went by pretty well, the last week of my first transfer. I made it through. Haha I can't put an exclamation point because this keyboard is broken, so just pretend I’m more excited about these things than it seems. It was our last week of the transfer, Elder Fischer and I are staying here, but the other two guys here are leaving, and one of them is going home. Transfers are sad, you make friends and then they leave.

Anyway, that family is doing all right, more of them went to church this week, some of them will still be able to get baptized, but we found out this week there are huge word of wisdom problems going on there so we were trying to work with them on that. Some of them still have that desire to change. I really love that family. There's Maurina, she's the mom of the place, she has two daughters that live there with their kids, Juciara, and Poliana. There is another woman that lives there too but I can't remember her name right now. Anyway, there are a ton of kids there and they're all awesome. William, Wallace, Cayeke, Idline, Marina, and Giovanni. That's from oldest to youngest, and they don't all have the same parents but they all live there. William and Cayeke will be baptized first I think, but we want one of the adults there to get baptized with them.

We teach them almost every day, and we found another awesome investigator this week. She was a reference of one of the members, and she had a New Year's goal to find the "truth." She's going to get baptized too. She's really awesome. She's 21, and she is really accepting of the lessons, is already living the commandments, and she was telling us why she needs to go to church. How cool is that? Haha She's had an answer already and she is reading the Book of Mormon every day. She didn't come to church on Sunday because she was in the hospital because her head has been hurting. So we're not too worried about her yet.

We've been trying to find more people to teach, and we're working in more areas than just Interlagos now, so we can't get as many lessons in. I think that's all the big things that happened this week.

If your package is here, I'll get it this week, if not, I'll have to wait until either transfers, or another zone conference or mission conference. And I don't know if I'll have an interview with the mission president every transfer.

Sounds like everyone is having fun at home. And poor Mugsy (insert exclamation point here). Sounds like everyone is doing well and life is going on as normal. From looking at the blog am realizing how funny our family is, and I love it.

Anyway, I love you all, talk to you next week.

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!