Week 44 ( 10 months ) I get why girls wear them skirts now...

Top o' the marnin' to ye/Shalom/Bom dia/Guten tag/however else not-American people say hello. 

This week has been a pretty good one down here and there's more to come. Real quick update on the visa before I start though. Looks like they'll be holding off on it till after the world cup is over, so I'll be here at least a few more months. It's bitter sweet for me because I know now at least I won't be leaving out of the blue but it also means I won't be in Brazil for a bit. Oh well, "I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord"

 

So this week has been pretty fun like I said. The first week in a new area is always a bit rough but now I'm over the hump and we're having some fun. A quick few stories are in order I guess.

 

So the first one was at this older lady's house named Sister Green (the house and the lady both are called that). She was making us lunch Thursday and when we got there all she had was a little 10" oven pizza for two Elders who can eat more than most Olympic athletes. We ate the pizza though without complaint and then she brought out dessert. She made 3 pies. All for the two of us, haha. We only manged to get 1 3/4 down but man they were good. We ate more pie than pizza! It was super good, we told her she should have just skipped the pizza so we could have had more room for the pie.

 

Saturday I did exchanges with our district leader. He's from Vietnam and is super hard to understand sometimes, but he's really cool. The cool thing was he has always only had sisters in his districts (his nick-name is the Relief Society president) so I was his first split ever! Victory! It was fun and we did a lot of good work together.

 

So you're all probably looking at that picture and are having 2 thoughts. 1). Man he makes a skirt look good and 2). Why does he have it? Well, There are a ton of Samoans in our ward and for some reason they get a kick out of giving us "pilongis" (white kids) them. I think they either are being nice or it's super funny to them, not really sure which. Anyway, made my day! I get why girls wear them skirts now, super comfortable. I'm still straight, just saying that we wear em' every chance we get now, haha. I always told my mom I wanted 6 things out of my mission:

 

1. Change some one's life (check)

2. Grow closer to God (check)

3. Wear man-skirts (check)

4. Sleep in a hammock (pending)

5. Forget English (pending)

6. Finish ( T-minus 14)

 

So I think I'm getting along pretty well, haha.

 

Okay, time to get for real though. I wasn't too sure what really to write about this morning but I feel like I've got a decent idea now. My mom said something pretty cool in a letter recently. She reminded me of Zion's camp in the days of the early church. For those of you who don't know Zion's camp was a band of men called to go assist the saints in Missouri in getting their land back from the mobs. They marched 900 miles from Kirtland to Missouri with almost no food, clean water or provisions and got there only to have the Lord tell them not to start a war. Many were frustrated and left the church because of it, but all of the 70's and most of the quorum of the 12 was called from that march. Why were they asked to do it? Joseph Smith offered a great answer. He said that they had to sacrifice to the same extent Abraham did. They had to show their commitment to God.

 

This morning I read a cool message from Alma 58 too along the same lines. It says:

 

34 Now we do not know the cause that the government does not grant us more strength; neither do those men who came up unto us know why we have not received greater strength.

 35 Behold, we do not know but what ye are unsuccessful, and ye have drawn away the forces into that quarter of the land; if so, we do not desire to murmur.

  37 But, behold, it mattereth not—we trust God will deliver us, notwithstanding the weakness of our armies, yea, and deliver us out of the hands of our enemies.

 The Nephites had been at war for a long time here and their resources are running thin. They didn't know at the time but the government was being overthrown while they were at war. Helaman wrote this letter in their great afflictions and fear of death because the Laminates had such greater recourses then them. But I love the two statements "We do not desire to murmur" and "It mattereth not, we trust God will deliver us nothwithstanding [our] weakness". That's real faith right there. I wish I could say I had that faith. Do you know how much I've complained or thought God wasn't being fair with me? I felt a little chastened to say in the least. So trust God. Let him lead you. Don't waste time trying to figure out what the end goal is, just do it. That's what made Nephi so great, that's what made the stripling warriors great, that is what makes Thomas S. Monson great and that is what makes missionaries and members great.

 

We'll be having a baptism Sunday so I'll have something cool to write about then! I hope you all have a good week and I'll write some more next week. "Don't sweat the petty things and don't sweat the petty things" (George Carlin)

 

-um no exercito de Deus

Elder Teela

 

Week 43- C'mon, even the pilongi ate one!

Hello ladies and germs. These past few days have been pretty hectic and I've got some stuff to tell.

Elder Richeson and Elder Teela

So first off my new area is called Carson 2 but we're really in a city called Wilmington. It's fairly residential but surrounded by factories and such so we live in a bit of a pocket of houses. It's a fairly nice area but coming from the hustle and bustle of downtown makes me feel like the place is really dead. Oh and it's 85% Hispanic (quoting my mom on that one) so we don't really have a lot of people that speak English..... Makes things real fun. We don't really have investigators except this one guy named Vincent. He's 17, really cool and being baptized on the 29th. He's already attended church enough too so no worries there! He's really prepared! Oh, we also get dinner every night and sometimes lunch too, so the members take good care of us.

My comp is now Elder Lui (as I said last week) making this a total of 6 areas and 12 companions in 10 months roughly (8 1/2 if you take pout MTC time). Elder Lui is from Utah but is super Tongan. He was raised by his grandparents who are from Tonga and spent a lot of time there so he speaks it fluently and has a good grasp of the culture. He's a great singer too and is one of those people who can ear out just about anything on guitar or piano. He's fun and cool and we get along great.

So a funny story this week happened at dinner Wednesday night. Were eating with this Filipino family named the Garruchos and I was literally  the only white kid there. The father is super buff and funny, the mother is an excellent cook and great woman and together they have 2 kids ages 12 and 17. Their 17 nephew lives there too and Bro. Garrucho's sister. They are the ones that brought Vincent to us. Anyway the family and us all sat down had some BBQ, potatoes and the like, but after the main course of served they thought they could mess with the white boy. They brought out some good old baloot (forgot how to spell it) and thought they could gross me out. HA! I laugh at you silly people! I ate one and so did Bro. Garrucho but everyone else just sat around and tried to get each other to eat it. Elder Lui thought this was funny and just yelled out "C'mon, even the pilongi (white kid in Tongan) ate one!" We all about died laughing and we actually saw they still have those baloot in the fridge, haha.

So for my spiritual-alities this week I think I'll just go back on what I said about work. This area is a really dead one and it pretty much always has been for English elders. in the past 6 years or so there have only been 20 or so investigators. A lot of people let those numbers get them down but I for one will not. I know one thing for sure, if God sent me here, it wasn't for me to slack off for 6 weeks. God helps those who help themselves I've always believed. We're gonna try and find through members but sometimes that doesn't always work out so well. Let me tell you, if you invited a friend over for dinner or something and let the missionaries teach them, you'll make their day. Try to prayerfully consider someone that can use the gospel in their lives this week and help out your missionaries!

Anyway, that's really all for this week. I hope you're all doing well and stuff. Till next week!

-Um no exercito de Deus

Week 42-- Faith is the anchor of our souls

Dear one and all,

Hello again to all of you I usually write and to those I am just adding I hope that you all get this email fine. This week has been a good one but this letter will be a short one. Most of the week has been spent at our usually teaching, finding and we even got to baptizing this week.

So I guess the first question on every one's mind (but not really because you probably don't know it's transfers) is where I am going. I am being moved to a place called Carson (or for those of you more familiar with Cali, Wilmington). My new companion will be Elder Liu (Lu-ee). Elder Richeson talks pretty highly of him so I am pretty excited to be his companion. He says he likes to work out so I figure I'll have to put him through his paces soon enough and see if I can keep up. I'm moving tomorrow morning and with this being P-day I'll probably have seen everyone here in downtown for the last time for a while. Sorry in advance if no letters come out today, we'll see how tonight goes.

As for some stories this week? Well, nothing too crazy/exciting really happened this week. The highlight for me was of course the baptism. He name is Patrick and he and his (soon to be) wife have been meeting with us for about the last two transfers (about 3 months). They have been so prepared by God to receive the word that it's not even funny. Carol was baptized a few weeks ago as some of you will remember and Patrick has followed suit. We had a great service that was shared by one Manuel Nunez as well which some other Elders have been teaching. I'll be sad so leave them both right after all our work has come to it's head. Good luck to you both if you are reading this!

So this week in spiritualness I want to talk about faith. I had a pretty awesome experience that really got the gears working in my head. As we were texting and calling and letting everyone know I would be leaving we had a bit of a problem come up. We have an investigator who really doesn't like meeting new people, so much so that it took her 2 days to decide whether or not we should meet again when we did because I had a new companion. I texted her telling her how I knew that the Lord would only do what is best for us and then it hit me. I was going somewhere I've never been, with a person I've never known, trusting that the Lord wanted me to. It was pretty cool to feel that I had the faith to trust Him to the point where I could comfort others about His plans for us.

So a scripture to add that, I like Ether 12:4:

4 Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God.

Faith is the anchor of our souls. Not the something nice to have or something that kinda just floats around us. It is the very anchor, the steadfast point we can go back to when we are on rough seas. When the wind and the waves are breaking over the bow and the black sky is streaked with lightning, we can really on our faith to hold us firmly. That is the kind faith that is needed today in this crazy world. If we can come to trust God like that, we will never fear. We can confidently "Fear not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord" (Exodus 14:13).

I hope you all have a good week and that the Lord bless you with all you need.

-Um no exercito de Deus

Elder Teela

Week 41-- Brazil can wait until the afterlife

Hello my pretties! Thanks for all the emails and stuff, I love getting em' back and it's cool to catch up on you all. Anyway some crazy (well not too crazy really) stuff happened this week so I'm gonna catch you up with some stories first.

Well Wednesday we were out trying to hit a zone goal we had of everyone in the zone getting 20 meaningful conversations that day. Meaningful conversations include good contacts, lessons, less-active visits and stuff like that. Anyway we were at around 16 or so when we took off to have dinner at the legendary Sis. Randlof's apartment complex (we don't go into her apartment with her, that would be sinning so don't get your knickers in a twist). On the way there we pass by some train tracks that go through a major intersection but they have lights for the trains too (weird right?) so it pretty much runs like a normal intersection. Anyway, when I hit the intersection the light was green but right after that it went super fast. I looked back to see if Elder Richeson was gonna follow or not but didn't look that far because a train was about 30 feet away going full speed! I was like "Well, Brazil can wait till the after life I guess" But not really, the train just honked real loud and didn't actually come anywhere too close to me. It was a wake up for sure though cause I thought Elder Richeson had followed me! I turned around and could see him till the train passed and basically freaked out for 30 seconds thinking I had killed my companion. He's fine though, he just punched the train off the tracks (not really, he just circled back). End of story we're both fine but were kinda freaked out.

So Sunday was da bomb. Elder Ballard (yes, the apostle, who else would it be?) came and spoke to our mission! First off he's a lot shorter than your think. I'm 5'8" and I looked down to him when we shook hands (haven't washed it! jk) so that was a bit of surprise. Second he was really informal. Yes, he was every inspirational and apostolic and all that but he was cracking jokes and making side comments the entire time. At one point he said "Your mission president is a great man, I hate to tell you this though..... He married way over his head. I'm not sure how he pulled it off but he did" He told us some cool stories and some funny ones too but we learned so much from him it was awesome. We were told to show up with questions written down that we wanted answers to just in case we did a Q&A with him, but we didn't need to for me. He actually spoke on the two topics I was thinking about! Talk about inspiration! The spirit was so strong too you could practically feel the angels around us. It was something I'm sure I'll never forget.

So this week in my attempt at spirituality I want to talk about something Paul says in Romans that I really liked. He said in Romans 8:

35 Who shall separate us from the love‍ of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

 36 As it is written, For thy sake we are killed‍ all the day long; we are accounted as sheep‍ for the slaughter.

 37 Nay, in all these things we are more‍ than conquerors‍ through him that loved us.

 38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

 39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be 
able to separate‍ us from the love‍ of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I loved that so much this week. It came to me in a time that I was pretty down and needed a bit of help. I just love in 38 & 39 there about nothing will separate us. God will always love us and always want us to come back, Even if we are ungrateful, unprofitable and unworthy servants. Just keep that in mind whenever you feel down. God will always take us back. We might need to do a little work to be able to feel comfortable with that and there may be some repenting to do but God always is on your side and wants your back. 

I hope you all have a great week, especially all those that just got out of school! Parents I hope you have a lot of patience. 

- Um no exercito de Deus  

Elder Teela