Week 91- Section 59 ( 2 months/ 8 Sunday's left )

Hey everyone! This week was interesting enough. We had two divisions this week and it was a bit crazy because I left our area for both, so that was fun. The one day I was in my area we got stopped by some guy in a car and started asking for our address to stop by and give us some referrals. We both thought it was a bit weird so we told him we would meet at a near-by supermarket. We talked a bit more and found out he´s actually from another state... which is a bit weird here in Brazil. Turns out he gave us some awesome referrals while I was gone. I really don´t know any of them yet, but Elder Nielson got pretty excited about them all. 3 Came to church yesterday and seem really elect, we´re hoping they´ll be baptized this week. 

Um, I went on the splits and the Elders are doing good, but one when we were walking home at night turned to me and said ´Oh, just to say, a crazy guy jumped out here a few nights ago and chased us with a 2x4, so just be ready to run´. He said that while we were walking on the edge of the city, close to the ´forest´, so that kinda freaked me out but we got outta there fine. Thanks for that bro, ha ha. 

The other division went off without any sort of craziness, just a few baptismal interviews and a lot of walking as always. 

Some Elders from our house were really poorly mugged it looks like last night as well. I guess robbed is more of the word. A guy stopped them, they talked for like 10 mins and at the end of the conversation ordered them to give him their phone. Little did he know our phones are crap, ha ha. They gave over what maybe values 15 dollars and left. They dude didn´t even pull a knife or anything and seemed drugged they said. Kind of a funny way to get your phone stolen, ha ha. 

We´ve also had a bit of a card game tournament going on at night in the house, ha ha. Winner will get his pizza payed for at a buffet tonight by the rest of us. I got knocked out in the semi-finals and the thinnest kid in the house won! He´s only gonna eat like 3 pieces anyway! It was fun though, lots of bro-bonding.

For a spiritual thought I guess I could talk about Section 59 that I read today. I gotta go here quick so I would suggest give it a look see and think about the blessings we get from going to church simply. 

Hope you all have a good week! Tchau! 

-Um no exérctio de Deus

Elder Teela 

Week 90- Section 67

Hello again! 

So this week was good until about Thursday... but I´ll get there in a bit. 

First we made some awesome lunch last Monday using our fire-pit in the apartment which was sick. I also made a pie of course which was great it not huge. We didn´t have a pan to make it so I bought one but it was a little big you could say. Also we then made some ´doves´ out of origami and then tried to get the Levite in our house to offer them as a ´burnt offering´ but ended up just buring them ourselves, ha ha. What happens when missionaries get bored.... 

We also had interviews with president Wednesday so we also did district meeting that day. It was cool to see him one last time. He said that it would be our last interview together, but the secretaries called and asked if I wanted him to do my final one as well and I said yes. They didn´t make any promises but I might have it with him. We talked about goals and what not and in the end we man-hugged it out and were both a bit sad. 

The next few days we were tearing it up. We don´t really have very many investigators so we just kinda went crazy and hit a ton of doors with members and taught tons of lessons we also had the young men out with us so it was a pretty good blitz. Then.... it happened. We were both a bit hungry so we decided to go get some Shish-kabobs somewhere, so we got some from an old guy cookin´ em up on the street.... not our best idea. 

We spent the next two days in the house. I´ll just say that. Our poor toilet...... 

Our week was at least pretty good even with the sickness, we just did some interviews for some baptisms and then got our two ready for the week. We baptized these two: 

They are both super cool. The black guy was the one that stopped us on the street and the girl was a investigator that has a cousin in the church. Her friend baptized here to the left there. Blessings from Gob the two of them! The water was so cold I literally didn´t feel my feet after the 30 seconds I was in the water. The poor Haitian guy literally ran into the bathroom afterwards to change out. It was a good baptism though, both were super prepared. 

I then chatted with the family for the last time on the mission..... I´m so old in the mission! It was fun and the sister kept bringing us Brazilian doughnuts and stuff. We also had a little talk and I translated for everyone. A great time in all. 

So this week I learned a little about preparation. I was supposed to talk to my family on Saturday but the computer didn´t have a mic or enough power to really run Skype. It was really frustrating and we ended up wasting a good few hours that could have been used a lot better. I really should have made sure everything was good to go before, I would even call it a spiritual prompting I got to check that the laptop was good to go before we started but I ignored it and well... this happened. Just for the future, always follow the scout motto ´Be prepared´. The scriptures say ´ if ye are prepared ye shall not fear.´ and ´gird up your loins and be prepared´ in D&C 38. 

That´s all for now. Everyone have a great week and prepare for my glorious return!

-Um no exército de Deus

Elder Teela 

Week 89-- Section 79

This first week was pretty awesome I think you could say. It was  a bit of a surprise from the start. We got to transfers this week and I went and found the guy who has been my ZL for about 4 transfers or so while I was in São Leo, Elder Nielson and I saw that he was in the same transfer group as me. I looked at him and said, ´Do you think we´ll be comps?´ We then both thought that would be impossible and laughed a bit until I got the envelope with my zone on it. He was on it.... And well, you can guess what happened, we´re companions now! After this we´ll be staying in the same complex at BYU as well..... yeah I guess that we were just long lost brothers or something, ha ha. He´s really cool and we are tearing it up in the area. We are the ZL´s of one of the high baptizing zones, so President and the AP`s are expecting a lot of us. 

The area is pretty good but we mostly just work in the ghettos. It´s not dangerous, just really dirty, smelly and a bit hard sometimes to see all the poverty but it´s going well. Just from the last week we had 6 baptisms just in our house. Oh, yeah, we also live with not one but two other companionship's in our house, ha ha. It´s way bigger than the other houses in the mission but still very small for american standards but it has two bathrooms at least and two bedrooms. Here´s the whole gang: 

​So we got Elder Barnes on the far left, then his comp in front of him, Elder Sacramento, then our two beloved Cariocas (people from Rio) Elder Dos Anjos and Elder Vicente then me and Elder Nielson. Elder Nielson and Barnes go home this transfer and I go home the next one..... We are  ´house of the dead ones´ to translate, ha ha. 

So this week we went to leadership meeting this week, which was cool. President had some fun comments like ´I´ve made it. I´m a zone leader, how cool´ and talked about fishing for men and stuff like that. He sure is one great man. Everyone here loves him and he always leaves us inspired. He made a interesting point about how soon we are going home. He said `you are all going home tomorrow. You don´t realize it, but you are. This time is short´ he made some points about how after all the time he had lived the time on the mission seemed way shorter after it was done and how we should leave it all here if we can. Very inspiring. 

We had a cool investigator this week that showed up. His name is Jean and he is from Haiti (I say that because I have no idea how to spell Hai-shun.... don´t judge me) and he almost scared me to death. He called out to us from behind a tree at about 7:30 at night and being a big black man how´s worked construction all his life, he´s pretty formidable. I thought we were gonna get mugged but he just invited us to teach him because he had been studying with missionaries about a year ago in São Paulo. He´s so cool but speaks very littler Portuguese but is fluent in french and we were lucky to have a French BoM in your house to give him. We think he´ll be baptized next week :). 

Speaking of baptisms, we baptized a fairly portly man name João this week. He´s at least 270 and we had to get some special pants for him, but they turned out to be way too big for even him. We put this Karate style belt on him but that didn´t help, so we ended up baptizing him together for me to help Elder Nielson bring him back up and to hold his pants up with he went down..... one of the most interesting baptisms I´ve had to date, ha ha. 

Well, that was my week, hope you all have a good one! If you missed the spiritual stuff look just below the photo a bit, about President. 

-Um no exército de Deus

Elder Teela 

Week 88-- Section 80

Hey everyone! This week was a bit slow because my comp was a bit sick but I've still got a few stories to tell, ha ha. 

So this week we found some cool people that are really prepared. One is evidently the grand-father-in-law of the bishop and is pretty cool. We also found a cool woman who evidently already checked out the church but wasn't baptized for a unknown reason but she is super cool and ready. 

Another thing we did is that we went to a pizza place to celebrate the transfer ending. We got the buffet going and had a competition of who could eat more pizza. Elder Lago ended up champion with 31 pieces, Elder Ramirez with 29, Me then with 23 and finally Elder Sanchez with 18 (he said he got 22 but still had 4 halves of pizza left on the plate so I didn't count them). The best part I guess was after we started heading home and Elder Lago was bet over and almost died on the way home along with Elder Ramirez. The two sat there and every time the other asked for a piece the other was like "one for me too!!!" It was super funny. 

After that we had a bit of a funny moment at church. The man I wrote about a bit last week told everyone in the elder's quorum that "the pig is a cursed beast".... We both about died laughing at that but managed to stay quiet. It was sure strange.... he's always doing something like that, ha ha. 

We've also passing all of our favorite families and stuff, so I have some good pics of them. One of them gave us a fruit called a Conge Fruit. It's like this weird mix of a banana and a pineapple that is super sweet and stuff like that. It's pretty much a dessert really.  

So just to finish up I forgot to say that I am being transferred and that I was called as a zone leader. It's pretty exciting, another area and another companion and yet more responsibility in the mission. I thought I would end district leader but looks like the Lord has other plans for me. Just gotta keep on working and see what happens here. Should be good. 

So you all have a good week, until next time! 

-um no exército de Deus

Elder Teela