Week 23

Hello friends, family and anything else you might be! This week has been really great for a lot of reasons (I feel like I say that a lot) and I hope it only gets better. This area was a bit dead when I got here just about a month ago and now we are really seeing some miracles start to happen here. I'll share the ones that I think are the most important. I'm trying to cut out the fluff of my emails so I can spend a bit more time actually preparing for the week. I'll try to keep them detailed as possible though.

So starting with around Wednesday I think is good. I went on splits with the ZL's that day and we had an awesome day. We visited Sis. Pumphery as per our weekly schedule and had the most awesome soup ever. It was some sort of Japanese mix of noodles (shocker) and onions and parsley and a whole bunch of other goodness. I've really come to look forward to these weekly visits. We shared a good lesson and set up some service for the next day and headed down to a place called Echo Park, in the north east corner of the mission. Yep, we were about 200 feet from the boarder for the next mission.

We got there and Elder Simpson and I felt like we should talk to this one woman under a tree listening to her headphones. I was a bit reluctant because around here we call those "Headphones of death/satan/the devil" for good reason. It usually means you can't get half of a word in before they wave you off. But we both felt we had been prompted to talk to her so we did. It turned into a 45 min full blown lesson! It was great and when I shared my testimony of the Book of Mormon she asked for a copy and promised to read it. We tried to set up a return appointment but she was reluctant to give her address or phone number, so we gave her ours and she said she visited the park every now and again and that she would talk to us if we found her. So right now we are really praying to find her again. She said her name was Taleina (I think I butchered that ta-LEE-na) and we really hope to meet her again.

We had a really good day at that park which included unexpected dinner. We went up and talked to a Mexican family in Spanish and it was awesome. That's right I said Spanish. The Lord has been great and has really helped me pick up enough Spanish to actually talk to people around the street. It wasn't very hard granted with a Portuguese background but I know the Lord has had a huge hand in my mission in this aspect. I think if my visa doesn't come (Heaven forbid that) I might ask to be transferred to a Spanish mission.

Anyway we approached these people while they were eating dinner so that there was no escape (Mwa-HAHAHA!) and started talking to the group of about 8. At first they seemed really reluctant but then they actually offered us some Carne Asada (look it up, you'll learn something) and as soon as we started eating they all seemed to love us. Elder Simpson underestimated my Spanish and kept telling them to give us more but I was quick enough to actually deny the stuff. I did end up drinking some of the devil's water: Soda, but it was worth it. The Spanish Elders just picked up a really solid referral. One woman actually asked when we could come over and expressed a need for the gospel in her life. It was awesome!

The next day we spent in service at Sis. Pumphery's house. We gardened literally all day. We pulled weeds, mowed the lawn and helped re-seed some of her yard. She has an electric lawn mower and I was so graceful as to run over the chord about half way in. Just your typical smoothness from Elder Teela I guess :). I spliced it back together and continued without issue though so I guess the only real damage done was to my pride. I was a fun day and it was good to get nice and dirty again.

The next major thing that happened I guess was an emergency leadership training meeting. Elder Phelps went to this meeting and I went on splits... with more Spanish Elders! It was great, Elder Peangee (Pee-an-ee) and Elder Santos were with me and we did yet some more service. This time remodeling the back of a house and no one there except us missionaries spoke English, so yet another time I was thankful for the Lord's gifts. It was fun and I got very messy. 
Hopefully I'll have those pictures to send next week.

One final miracle that happened was this man Kenny. We met with him walking along the street and he stopped us half way through a cross walk. I felt like I wanted to keep on walking but the Spirit told me otherwise. We went back and talked to him and he said he really wanted to learn about the church and that he had read a lot of things he could tell were lies.  He is a street poet and currently building his way up from being homeless so we hope we can really brighten his life and eventually baptize him (we can't baptize anyone without an address). We're meeting him at a Starbucks to teach him tomorrow so that will be cool. It's a bit ironic, meeting missionaries in a coffee shop :).

Anyway, I would like to finish this email with a bit of revelation that was dropped on me Sunday. I was thinking about how to become great like the prophet Joseph or David or Thomas S. Monson or people like that. I wanted to be like them one day and I was wondering how to do it. While I was pondering this the parable of the current bush came to mind (look it up on Mormon messages under "The Will of God") and how I couldn't be anything the Lord didn't want me to be. So then I asked myself:
"How do I become who the Lord wants me to be?"
After pondering that for a while I decided I needed to read my patriarchal blessing to really know that. I also know that for a basic fact for all of us he wants us to keep his commandments and be humble, something I felt I really struggled with. So I figure there all a few things we can do to help discover this idea of who God wants us to be. I even made a list:

1. Decide right here, right now you will devote your life to God. In every aspect, thought, deed and goal you will remember God in it and everything you do will be for his glory.

2. Repent, that's the first step to getting to be who you want to be. Start with a clean slate. Stop being who you were and start being who you will be.

3. Read your Patriarchal Blessing (if you have one) and list out the gifts you find in it. You will see God has given you plenty, also think of other gifts you have developed in this life.

4. Take these and see how they can help you a). Spread the gospel b). Improve the lives of those around you and c). How they can help you improve yourself.

This isn't really complete yet and relies on the spirit  and personal revelation a lot. I think we can all get a little guidance from these steps though.

I forgot to mention one last thing. We've discovered biscuits.

Elder Phelps, Elder Teela's current companion

 We had some missionaries in our district ask us how to make them and we had no idea, so we spit-balled some ideas and just threw em' together till they worked. It was so funny because it only took about 2 tries really (more tender mercies!!). They are super good actually and I think you should all try them. Here's the recipe:

2 Cups flour

4 Tablespoons butter (softened, beaten into the dry ingredients till fine)

1/4 Tablespoon salt (so a teaspoon I guess )

3 Tablespoons baking powder

2/3 cup of milk

Bake at 350F for about 12-15 mins. 
Enjoy! It's sounds dumb but it was actually a really cool district bonding type thing.  I loved it so much we just had to keep making em' lol

Well, that's it for this week. I love you all and hope you all have a good one!

-Um no exercito de Deus

Elder Teela

Week 22

Hello world (or the small portion that I know of it anyway), how have you been lately? This week has been pretty... um interesting. Let's put it that way so it sounds more positive. Let me explain:

So I'll begin with last Tuesday. Me and Elder Phelps had gone to dinner the night before with Sister Henriques and had some great Ravioli. We were really excited about it because she even gave us all the left overs, which means we had dinner for 3 days! But that morning Elder Phelps woke up and literally said "Oh no" almost immediately. He spent all morning at the super bowl if you know what I mean, It was horrible for him. I felt pretty good and worked out like normal and even ate some breakfast, but when we got on the bus I got hit with some really bad nausea. Me and Elder Perez (another visa waiter in my district) were going to get our finger prints done that day in Santa Monica which meant 2 hours of buses. Yeah, that was fun. 

I managed to get through the finger printing fine and all that. The good thing that came of it though was I got to see Elder Light again. He was my temporary companion on my first day out and honestly we were both disappointed we weren't permanently comps. It was cool to see him again and we still had fun even though I was super sick. After all that we got pretty lucky actually and got a more direct ride home from the Hurleys, some senior missionaries in our ward. We got home around 4:30 and deiced to try and do some studies, but I feel asleep in about 5 mins. I woke up and felt a bit better but still didn't want to do any work. 

After I woke up I went into the bathroom and splashed a bit of water on my face and said a quick prayer for strength. I came out and asked for a blessing from my fellow Portuguese man and decided it was time we go out. We had a sister that needed help moving her trash cans down from her steep driveway because she's old. The problem was her house is 4 miles away. I decided I wouldn't let my weakness impede us and we would go anyway. It was a mistake honestly. We rode there, almost literally up hill the entire way, got there and helped her out and I collapsed into a chair in their back dinning area. It was so sick I almost threw up on the spot and so weak that I could barely stand.

Sister Pumphery (the sister, about 60) then came out and offered us dinner. I said I wasn't feeling well enough to eat but Elder Perez was welcome to. She said she would make me some ginger tea while preparing dinner (it's herbal, don't trip). I remember hearing somewhere that ginger is what sailors used to combat sea sickness so I went for it. It was SSSOOOO good. I had almost no nausea as long as I drank it. I was still tired, sore, hot and weak, but hey, any improvement is good. I thanked her heartily and they had dinner and we spoke a while with them. After that we were lucky enough to get a ride back home from our companions and I went to bed almost immediately.

The next day was more of the same. I felt awful and so did Elder Phelps, but we needed to get back to Sister Pumphrey's home again to help with the trash cans again and fill a hole for her in the front yard. On the way there we were biking in our service clothes and I noticed my front tire was hissing. Yep, I had a flat. One mile into the journey. How fun is that? Walked for about an hour the last 3 miles and nearly died doing so, but Sister Pumphery had given me some tea to go so at least I wasn't throwing up the whole way. We got there, filled in the hole, and collapsed into those same chairs. We stayed for 4 hours and had an extremely light lunch so that we would have strength to get home. It was pretty awful honestly, but we needed to get the work done. We walked over to our friend Anthony's home and took a break there to visit him and rest again. We managed to get home around 6:30.

When we got home we both literally fell on the couch and said nothing for about 15 mins. We were both soooo tired. We decided to go to be early again but this time around 9:45. We talked for the time in between about heaven knows what, I was not in the state of mind to remember. I really like Elder Phelps though, I can honestly say he's my favorite comp. so far, despite his nerdiness.

The next day we felt much better but it was weekly planning and correlation meeting so we basically got one more day's rest. 

The next day was awesome because I got all my birthday stuff! YAY! It was a week late due to the mission's mail system but I was happy all the same. I got a nice new sweater, new BYU sun glasses (to replace my stolen ones), some CD's and tons of food and other stuff from my family. I also got some hand made gifts that are just great. My sister made me this cool necklace that has both my missions on it and my brother made me some BYU/missionary magnets. I love em' both and it was awesome reading all the cards and letters from everyone. I had so many it took all of lunch and some of dinner to read em' all! Thank you all so much for your love. 

I spent the rest of the day on splits with Elder Spencer. We spent most the time walking to the bike shop to get my tire replaced because once again it had popped, but this time it had split 3 inches along the seam, so it was a write off. I like Elder Shepard, he's as cool as he is tall (I'd say about 6'5") and we had a good time making our tacos for dinner and talking with people on the street. I even got to work a bit of Spanish around the way. 

Not much really to report the next two days. We had stake conference broadcasted from head quarters with Elder Eyring, Anderson and a few others. We went to both the adult and general sessions which was fun. I'll write more about those in letters. 

One more funny thing I guess is what happened this morning. We found a park to work out at finally and we went there this morning. As I was running around and as Elder Phelps was stretching, he heard some girls apparently talking about me! Haha, that made me laugh. He said that I was turning heads and I think it would have been funny to give them a pass along card or something but I didn't hear of this till later. 19 more months ladies, haha. 

Anyway, I've got to get going. lots of missionaries are here to Email at the mission office so we've been asked to limit our time. I'll be more spiritual some other time I guess. But to leave you with a thought I would recommend reading Alma 36 where he talks about his repentance story. It's really good from he point of view and it's one of my favorite sections in the BoM. Love you all and hope you have a good week! 

-Um no exercito de Deus

Elder Teela

Week 21- My Birthday!

Hello one and all! It's crazy to see my list of recipients grow so much and I love all the friends I've made out here! This week has been another fun ride in the life of Elder Teela but this Library only has one hour usage so I will need to type like possessed man to get this all in!

 

Anyway to get started I've got into this new area this week and it is super cool. We have a downtown business-y area with tons of people going everywhere that I am sure are just dying to hear the gospel. We also have the fashion district in our area, lots of open air markets and Latinos really. This area also has The Alley in it. It's basically a super-cheap-for-a-reason type place but it's pretty cool. A man named Tony the tie guy works there and we get ties for $6 a piece so that's pretty cool. W al have a place called Little Tokyo and you can basically guess what that is like. One cool thing there is a Buddhist temple. Finally we also have Skid Row, basically homeless central. It's a very sad place that I wish I could help more but can't do much about. Such a sad situation.

 

To start off we had splits right off the bat on Tuesday. I went into the USC student ward area with one Elder Davie. He's a quite man but he's pretty cool once you get him talking. We locked up our bikes at the ward/institute building and basically walked around the campus (not into it) for all day. I checked my watch and it said we clocked just under 20 miles! That's Brazil numbers there.

 

 Anyway we spent the whole day contacting and didn't really get too much. One cool miracle that happened though was around 3pm. I was getting tired and a bit down with how little success we had that day. I prayed to God asking him for one meaningful contact so that we could at least have something to show for the day. Shortly after this prayer I started listening intently for the spirit. After about 5 mins we walked by a man and he called out "How goes the work Elders?" Needless to say we quickly turned around and started talking to him. He said he had seen Elders around the campus but never really talked to them. He said he was in a rush and had to go but asked us for a Bible. We didn't have one or a Book of Mormon (how great missionaries we are) but invited him to church tours the next night and told him we would have a Bible then. I was so grateful to have such an immediate answer to my prayers! We started up again with a new vigor and had a great rest of the day.

 

The day after we went straight onto more splits! How fun is that? This time I stayed in my own area with Elder Manning and Lee this time. The only problem was I didn't know the area! The good thing was Elder Lee is actually Korean called and we live right next to Korean town so he knows the area very well.

 

We headed back to the apartment only to find that Elder Phelps still had the main keys to the building! I had our room key but that was it. So, being the intelligent man I am, I immediately, and without any apparent grace, jumped a gate to get in. Only to find the door behind it locked as well! What's up with these people being so secure? Anyway I went back out and found out there was a call box so we called an old investigator to let us in. How fun is that?

 

Anyway right after some quick lunch we headed out to an appointment with an investigator that actually isn't ours. His name is David and he actually belongs to one of the other two missionary companionships in the ward (3 total). He is an older black man honestly searching for the truth and seems super solid. We talked all about Jacob chapter 2&3 and invited him to think about a baptismal date.

 

The next day we had interviews with the mission president, Pres. Weidman. We were supposed to be in and out in about an hour but ended up waiting around there for about 3 or 4. It was kinda annoying but, as good missionaries do, we started practicing our contacting and reading scriptures. It was a really good time actually and I learned a lot. When I finally got in with Pres. Wiedman it was great. He asked how many areas and comps I had and laughed pretty hard at the response. He said "I guess The Lord wants you to get a full tour before you leave". We talked a bit about language study and my knee mostly. He said he wants me to be smart about this so I can still go to Brazil. I understand his concern and feel it too, we decided to pray on it and continue on as normal for the next few weeks. I think it will not be a problem. We spent the rest of the night weekly planning.

 

On Friday, MY BIRTHDAY!!!, we had Zone Training Meeting. It was really good and we talked about become consecrated missionaries. It was a talk I really needed and I feel there are a lot of little things I can improve on. But we all know little things become big things very fast. It was a very good council that we had.

 

After that we all went and had zone lunch together at Chick-fil-a, which I was particularly happy about because I have $30 in gift cards to there. I got a nice milkshake to celebrate and almost instantly regretted it honestly because I was super drained in about 20 mins. but it was super good and worth it. I spent the rest of the day in USC zone again but this time with Elder Wright. We did more of the contacting and visited a few people by surprise just to mix things up a little. We ran into this one man, Roger, who is super prepared. He hailed us actually while we walked by his delivery truck, the 18-wheeler kind, and we stopped to talk. He said he had a lot of respect for missionaries and would love to meet some time. I was pumped until I learned he lived in another area again. It's okay though, he'll get baptized either way and will attend our ward.

 

The next day we went to got meet an investigator that lived in a Rotary home. Not sure what it is exactly but there were a lot of people there and a lot of preachers. We met one who was actually talking to Jessie, our investigator, and when we tried to teach him the preacher would just talk over us and would draw our conversation to him. We figured we shouldn't try to contend with him since the spirit wouldn't be there so we let him rant. In the end he talked a lot about how we don't need works to be saved and all this apostate stuff we could have bashed over but we figured it wasn't worth it and that we would set a different time with Jessie. It was funny cause in the end he said a prayer with us and "saved us". Haha, poor guy didn't know we could have ripped his arguments to shreds, but like I said, it wouldn't matter if the spirit couldn't be there.  

 

I'm almost out of time so I'm gonna go to my spiritual thought. This week I've been reading in PMG about recognizing and following the spirit in chapter 4. I did the personal study ideas in the back and they are so great! I challenge you all to do the same. One that I particularly liked was a paragraph from Elder Dallin H. Oaks along with some readings from D&C. It talks about how sometimes the Lord doesn't want to give us guidance in absolutely everything. Sometimes he expects us to use our best judgment because he knows that we know what we should do. It's not always about getting an answer, sometimes it's about doing what you know to be right.  

 

Well that's all for this week. I hope you all had a good one too and that the Lord blesses you with everything you need. Read that section if you get the chance and respond! Ficam doce

 

-Um no exercito de Deus

Elder Teela

 

Week 20

Hey everyone! This email will have to be a bit short because we don't have too much time and I didn't get a chance to write everything I wanted to talk about down. And it's been a crazy week, so I'm not gonna really be able to keep it all in order, so I'll go by importance. 

To start with I am no longer in a trio or in the same area. Yep, another ET and a new companion. His name is Elder Phelps and he's also a district leader. He's been out a year this week apparently and he seems pretty cool, for a guy from Utah. Anyway this ET happened because a missionary named Elder Rogers (from my zone back in Redando) broke his foot walking. It's a stress fracture so he's in a boot and he's an office Elder now. When we got to the Artesia building we saw that it was no simple ET though. There were well over 12 companionships there and the entire thing was a mess. It's a bike area too.

Elder Pollard (an AP) called us last night right before dinner And I flipped out like always. He said "Elder Teela will be leaving the area.... to LA 3" I swear he gets a kick out of this stuff cause he really did pause like that. But I'm not mad becuase I would totally do something like that to mess with Visa-waiters like yours truly. So we basically spent all last night and this morning packing. 

Anyway the next important thing I guess would be this woman named Luz. She's an investigator we ran across in the area book and we deiced to go visit her New Year's eve. When we knocked her door her mother answered and she only spoke Spanish. I jumped into action with me trusty gringo and got it out of her that she wasn't home and that if we came back in the afternoon we would catch her then. As we walked away though a car pulled up to the curb and a husband, wife and three kids got out and we deiced to say hi. Turns out this was Luz! She was really excited to see us all and asked that we come back on Thursday.

Fast forward a few days and we came back and taught her a lesson. When I say we taught her a lesson I mean we answered a ton of her questions and somewhat struggled the Plan of Salvation into it. She had a ton of questions about life after death and where we came from and the spirit and everything else you could possibly imagine. It was great, she was so prepared and God found a way to get us to her. She especially liked the doctrine of the pre-mortal life and how we can have a body again after we die. She kept saying "Oh my gosh! I can't believe this! It's too good to be true!" She was so excited and really wants to keep meeting but she's super busy all week with school and work. I hope Elder Froisland and Alls can help her out though.

We had a fun night new year's eve. We came in around 6 because the mission President doesn't want us out while all they crazies are out partying. We got home and did dinner and stuff and broke out a monopoly game that we found a couple weeks ago in the apartment. It was a pretty fun way to spend the night since we couldn't go out teaching. We broke out some sparkling grape juice that a member gave us and Elder Alls drank pretty much all of it but it was fun. 

We had an interesting meal 1/2/14. Sister Rogers was feeding us and she prepared for us a real southern black dinner. It was greens, pig's feet, black eyed peas and chitlins. The greens are basically some boiled spinach with some butter and salt and chitlins are pretty nasty tasting honestly. They are boiled pig intestine, and it tastes pretty much exactly like you would imagine. It was okay when you mixed it all together though, tasted like soul food salad. But food is food and I got a whole plate down and then some. 

We actually also had a lesson with her daughter, who we thought had dropped us. She was usually at Sister Roger's home but we never really taught her. But that night after dinner she said she wanted to have another lesson with us, and we never turn those down. So we went over and had a discussion with her about The Gospel of Jesus Christ and basically told her the history of the church as well because she didn't remember much of it. She found it all a bit hard to swallow but is willing to come to church and start coming to church and reading the scriptures again, so we have very high hopes for her. 

OH! I almost forgot! We had an awesome miracle happen this week! We were out trying to meet up some appointments which all end up falling through. So, feeling a bit discouraged we deiced to walk to the market and get some fruit to brighten our spirits, but we would contact all the way there. As we took off walked to 3 or 4 Spanish speaking people and gave them LA English cards. Not only that we also found 4 new investigators in one hour! Turns out they all lived outside our area but that just means some other missionaries got some really cool new investigators. When we got to the store I was looking around the fruit section and saw a pineapple. I made a joke about carving it up on the way back and eating it to Elder Froisland and for some odd reason he thought he should give it a shot. So we bought it and I loaned him a knife and he skinned that sucker and started eating it like a giant chicken leg. I'll attach the picture so you all can see. Basically he ended up in a nice, tropical, sticky mess. 

I wanna finish off with this cool dream I had last week. I know it's not something I usually do but this one is cool:

It started off with me and a huge crowd of people on the shore at Lake Powell, Utah. We visited there right before I left so I felt I know the place. Everyone was getting onto this huge cruise boat so I followed the crowd and got on. When I had gotten to a rail on the side I looked back to the beach and found that there were actually a tone of missionaries on the beach, many of whom were my friends. I looked down and saw that I was actually in my missionary get up as well, taking special notice of my tag, and felt like I should get back to the shore to join them all. 

I turned to start leaving but immediately was block off by some girl who I had never seen before. She started saying that it's okay if I stayed and that there would be time for me to go back later. She told me all I had to do was take off my tag throw it into the lake. She smiled at me and I noticed she was extremely pretty, so I felt a bit awkward and looked away. A lot of missionaries were on the boat at this point and I saw some of them taking their tags off and throwing them away. I looked around for a while and turned back to the girl. I thought for what felt like forever, but deiced to go back. 

As I moved past her thought I noticed the huge crowd working against me and knew it would be hard to get through. I pressed on though and the further I got the harder it became. People started grabbing at me at tearing my clothes so I started running. I felt like I was playing rugby again as I ran through the crown and they tried to hold me back. I felt their nails cutting me and my shirt and slacks getting torn. 

With one final push I collapsed on the beach as the boat was departing. I was tired and drained of my strength. I was so spent I and looked down at my clothes torn to shreds and the blood staining them. I started crying (dream me that is, I'm tougher than that in real life lol) and sat there on my hands and knees for a while just doing that. After a while I became aware of the rest of the missionaries around me on the shore. All talking and just standing around like nothing had happened. I felt like someone more important than them was near though. As I stood up, on man caught my eye. His hair was long and he was dressed in a robe, He seemed to emanate warmth and light. I knew it was Christ in an instant. 

I stumbled toward him for what seemed like ages again. As I approached Him he seemed to sense my coming. He turned around and I started crying (dream me is such a wimp! haha) and I fell on his shoulders and felt his arm wrap around me. I seemed to stand there, once again forever, but finally, I drew back. He looked me up and down and said "I was hoping you could make it"

With a weak smile and even weaker knees I paused for a while and said "I knew I had to come"

With that he smiled at me. I felt like a million bucks, I felt the spirit fill me and tears come to my eyes, this time for joy. It was so amazing, I wish I could tell you all how it felt. He then said "Come on then, we have work to do". I noticed then I was in a new suit with a nice blue tie on (my favorite color). Jesus turned and started walking away. As I went to follow him I looked and saw a group of all my friends. They were all in street clothes and a few of them looked back to me. Our eyes met and they beckoned for me to come join them. They seemed to be chatting and having a good time, just standing there on the beach. But I just said "See you in two years, I've got work to do".

Now I know this is just a dream and none of it was real but I really believe it was sent from heaven. This was just after my grandma had died and I felt my conviction to serve renewed and more powerfully than ever. I know that God was helping me through this simple dream.

I hope you are all doing well and to see you all sooner or later. God bless you all and please tell me how you're doing. Even just a line or two is nice. Have a good week!

-Um no exercito de Deus

Elder Teela

Week 19-- Happy New Year!

Hey, I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and I wish you all a happy New Year. It's been a good week with some rough patches but I am doing great now. I'll just dive right in and get to it so you'll understand. 

Last P-day we went to go have dinner at a member's home but everything kinda went crazy after that. She and totally spaced on it and didn't have any man in the home so we couldn't go in. So we figured we would go find a referral in that area but she wasn't there so we went out and found us some dinner. We walked by a papusa stand and we figured it was a good time to try some. We all bought some Mexican deliciousness and chowed down there on the corner. It was not the night we expected to have but it was super fun and delicious.  

The next morning we went out to our car and found that we had been robbed! I'm not even kidding, the car was a mess and someone had stolen Elder Froisland's GPS, his CD's and my shades! It would be the most disappointing loot ever though. The GPS doesn't work without the charger and they left it and the CD's were all church music. Suckers are probably gonna get baptized for all that, God works in mysterious ways like that and always gets you in the end. I'm not really too mad about it mostly cause I didn't really lose too much from that but Elder Froisland is super paranoid about locking the car now. 

As we were walking around that day and as we were doing so I saw a woman putting away some groceries. I felt the need to talk to her but at the same moment I felt like every time we had tried that it came up to nothing but an annoyed woman and a bit disappointed. I turned to Elder Alls and told him we needed to talk to her anyway though and so we went.... and exactly that happened. But, her brother came out! He was 21 and talked with us for about half an our about religion and God in general. We gave him a Book of Mormon and a Mormon.org card and he said he would read and go to the website! We were super pumped, too bad he lived out side our mission by about an hour. It's okay though, some missionaries just got a golden referral. 

That night we had dinner with a Latino sister. Turns out that Christmas Eve is Christmas to Latinos.... who would have thunk it? So she had the whole spread for us. Turkey, mashed potato and tamales galore! I only ate a bit, truly, but the spirit in the room was one of close friends and good food.  I brought my guitar and sang the family "Silver Bells" and they were really appreciative of that. I didn't think it was much but they loved it and it felt nice to have done so. We went home with warm hearts and full bellies.

Christmas day we went to work as usual. We went to go meet a young man named Kenneth, and we found him close to his home throwing a football around. We started teaching him about the Plan of Salvation when his uncle came out. The man was more than a bit tipsy and louder than a pregnant   angry lion. He went on a rant about not being fake and some other stuff and we all just stood there awkwardly for about half an hour while he went off. We ended up just leaving mid-sentence and taking off. You sure meet some crazies out on your mission....

That night was super great. I got to finally Skype my family back home and see them all again! It was so fun and we talked for waaayyy longer than I would like to admit. It was super great and we talked about everything from the mission to the MLS final. I was just thankful to see all my family again. I got some super great gifts too, but my favorite was a calendar of my family for 2014. I thought I would be more trunkie (missing home) after that but it just rededicated me to the work and got me even more ready to find, teach and baptize.

The next morning we had a district leader training with Elder Froisland that we got to sit in on. In it we learned a lot of things: 

1. We will be moving apartments at sometime this transfer because we live outside our area

2. We should only do sports on P-day once or twice a transfer (I'm a bit ticked about that one)

3. We will be going "electronic" in the next 12 months.... I won't be here

4. More missionaries will now be using public transportation

There was more but that was the gist of it. It was cool to be there because it was really a representation of all the mission in one meeting.

That night we went to have dinner only to find our dinner appointment wasn't home! We were a bit sad about that but luckily a tender mercy happened in the form of an old investigator. He was walking by and told us where to get some cheap dinner so we scurried off and got us some Chinese food. As we were eating the Sister we were gonna have dinner with showed up at the restaurant. She had just gotten back from a doctor's appointment and had saw us in the restaurant. We went back to her home on foot and helped her with some online job hunting through lds.org for about 2 hours. She was super pumped about that and it was good to she her in such a good way. 

The next day we found the worst smelling home in exsistance. I kid you not, it is that bad. We went and visited an investigator at his step-mother's home where there are 12 cats. Just imagine that smell. The place smelled so strong of ammonia that it stuck to our clothes and we had to go us some fabric cleaner to get off us. It stung your nostrils so bad we couldn't even think straight. I swear the place has never been cleaned. Ever. It was sooooo bad.

That night got a little worse though. I got a call from Pres. Weidman saying that my great grandma was in the final hours of her life. It was pretty devastating and I admit I cried very hard. Pres Weidman then asked me to teach the Plan of Salvation to him in a minuet and a half. Through sobs and tears I managed to get it out and kinda took the night off. It was 9:30 so I went to the kitchen and made some hot chocolate, which always helps me feel better. I calmed down and kept telling myslef "I'm gonna make her proud, this is what she wants me to be doing". It was a hard night but I know God gave me this trail so I can grow. I'm fine now, I was a bit shaken but I'm doing well now. 

The next day went by fairly unremarkable but we had dinner at our bishop's home with the entire district. That was fun, he's a character and a half and he actually brought an investigator. We answered some of his questions and bore some testimonies but bishop finished off the night with a spiritual thought. He told us about his mission in Germany and some cool stuff from it. I was pretty pumped to have another German-fanatic around and it was good to geek-out with him for a bit. 

After that we went to visit Louie, where we finally met his daughters! With him having a baptismal date and wanting his daughters to be baptized too it was about time we met them in 2 months. We talked for about half an hour and we've got another appointment with them soon. It is so good to see these miracles happening in my life!

We went back over the next night to actually do a lesson with Louie's housemate/friend Brother James. I was actually super skeptical about this lesson because he tends not to make commitments. We watched Finding Faith in Christ with him and that went so well that he promised to read the BoM every night! I was blown away. Here we were, meeting with this man for the past 2 months and he had always told us "I can't promise anything"  and now he was actually gonna read the Book or Mormon! Such an awesome miracle! I love seeing God work in these people's lives!

Well that's all for this week. I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and hope you will have a happy new year! God bless you all!

- Um no exercito de Deus

Elder Teela

Week 18- Christmas

Hey, I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and I wish you all a happy new year. It's been a good week with some rough patches but I am doing great now. I'll just dive right in and get to it so you'll understand. 

Last P-day we went to go have dinner at a member's home but everything kinda went crazy after that. She and totally spaced on it and didn't have any man in the home so we couldn't go in. So we figured we would go find a referral in that area but she wasn't there so we went out and found us some dinner. We walked by a papusa stand and we figured it was a good time to try some. We all bought some Mexican deliciousness and chowed down there on the corner. It was not the night we expected to have but it was super fun and delicious.  

The next morning we went out to our car and found that we had been robbed! I'm not even kidding, the car was a mess and someone had stolen Elder Froisland's GPS, his CD's and my shades! It would be the most disappointing loot ever though. The GPS doesn't work without the charger and they left it and the CD's were all church music. Suckers are probably gonna get baptized for all that, God works in mysterious ways like that and always gets you in the end. I'm not really too mad about it mostly cause I didn't really lose too much from that but Elder Froisland is super paranoid about locking the car now. 

As we were walking around that day and as we were doing so I saw a woman putting away some groceries. I felt the need to talk to her but at the same moment I felt like every time we had tried that it came up to nothing but an annoyed woman and a bit disappointed. I turned to Elder Alls and told him we needed to talk to her anyway though and so we went.... and exactly that happened. But, her brother came out! He was 21 and talked with us for about half an our about religion and God in general. We gave him a Book of Mormon and a Mormon.org card and he said he would read and go to the website! We were super pumped, too bad he lived out side our mission by about an hour. It's okay though, some missionaries just got a golden referral. 

That night we had dinner with a Latino sister. Turns out that Christmas eve is Christmas to Latinos.... who would have thunk it? So she had the whole spread for us. Turkey, mashed potato and tamales galore! I only ate a bit truly but the spirit in the room was one of close friends and good food.  I brought me guitar and sang the family "Silver Bells" and they were really appreciative of that. I didn't think it was much but they loved it and it felt nice to have done so. We went home with warm hearts and full bellies.

Christmas day we went to work as usual. We went to go meet a young man named Kenneth, and we found him close to his home throwing a football around. We started teaching him about the Plan of Salvation when his uncle came out. The man was more than a bit tipsy and louder than a pregnant   angry lion. He went on a rant about not being fake and some other stuff and we all just stood there awkwardly for about half an hour while he went off. We ended up just leaving mid-sentence and taking off. You sure meet some crazies out on your mission....

That night was super great. I got to finally Skype my family back home and see them all again! It was so fun and we talked for waaayyy longer than I would like to admit. It was super great and we talked about everything from the mission to the MLS final. I was just thankful to see all my family again. I got some super great gifts too, but my favorite was a calendar of my family for 2014. I thought I would be more trunkie (missing home) after that but it just rededicated me to the work and got me even more ready to find, teach and baptize.

The next morning we had a district leader training with Elder Froisland that we got to sit in on. In it we learned a lot of things: 

1. We will be moving apartments at sometime this transfer because we live outside our area

2. We should only do sports on P-day once or twice a transfer (I'm a bit ticked about that one)

3. We will be going "electronic" in the next 12 months.... I won't be here

4. More missionaries will now be using public transportation

There was more but that was the gist of it. It was cool to be there because it was really a representation of all the mission in one meeting.

That night we went to have dinner only to find our dinner appointment wasn't home! We were a bit sad about that but luckily a tender mercy happened in the form of an old investigator. He was walking by and told us where to get some cheap dinner so we scurried off and got us some Chinese food. As we were eating the Sister we were gonna have dinner with showed up at the restaurant. She had just gotten back from a doctor's appointment and had saw us in the restaurant. We went back to her home on foot and helped her with some online job hunting through lds.org for about 2 hours. She was super pumped about that and it was good to she her in such a good way. 

The next day we found the worst smelling home in exsistance. I kid you not, it is that bad. We went and visited an investigator at his step-mother's home where there are 12 cats. Just imagine that smell. The place smelled so strong of ammonia that it stuck to our clothes and we had to go us some fabric cleaner to get off us. It stung your nostrils so bad we couldn't even think straight. I swear the place has never been cleaned. Ever. It was sooooo bad.

That night got a little worse though. I got a call from Pres. Weidman saying that my great grandma was in the final hours of her life. It was pretty devastating and I admit I cried very hard. Pres Weidman then asked me to teach the Plan of Salvation to him in a minuet and a half. Through sobs and tears I managed to get it out and kinda took the night off. It was 9:30 so I went to the kitchen and made some hot chocolate, which always helps me feel better. I calmed down and kept telling myslef "I'm gonna make her proud, this is what she wants me to be doing". It was a hard night but I know God gave me this trail so I can grow. I'm fine now, I was a bit shaken but I'm doing well now. 

The next day went by fairly unremarkable but we had dinner at our bishop's home with the entire district. That was fun, he's a character and a half and he actually brought an investigator. We answered some of his questions and bore some testimonies but bishop finished off the night with a spiritual thought. He told us about his mission in Germany and some cool stuff from it. I was pretty pumped to have another German-fanatic around and it was good to geek-out with him for a bit. 

After that we went to visit Louie, where we finally met his daughters! With him having a baptismal date and wanting his daughters to be baptized too it was about time we met them in 2 months. We talked for about half an hour and we've got another appointment with them soon. It is so good to see these miracles happening in my life!

We went back over the next night to actually do a lesson with Louie's housemate/friend Brother James. I was actually super skeptical about this lesson because he tends not to make commitments. We watched Finding Faith in Christ with him and that went so well that he promised to read the BoM every night! I was blown away. Here we were, meeting with this man for the past 2 months and he had always told us "I can't promise anything"  and now he was actually gonna read the Book or Mormon! Such an awesome miracle! I love seeing God work in these people's lives!

Well that's all for this week. I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and hope you will have a happy new year! God bless you all!

- Um no exercito de Deus

Elder Teela