Week 79 -- Lamenting my oldness

Wow, next week will be week 80 of my mission.... That´s crazy. I´m on the way down for sure, but I´ll get on to the week rather than lament my oldness, ha ha.

First off we had zone conference which was cool. Just a big old ball of spiritual coolness really. The mission President said something interesting.... ´chastity is exhaulatation´. Food for thought. 

So a few cool things are going down here. The woman we are teaching in who is deaf gave me a book of hers to try and learn a little sign language but it´s not very much still. Step by step I guess. I think it´s not ASL either which could be a little harder but we´ll see how that goes. It´s cool though, learning new stuff. I´m not sure if I´ll be using it too much when I get home but it still feels cool. I just wish I had learned more when I was with Elder Shamo, who was an ASL elder.... Oh well, too little too late. Also they made it to church last week and their daughters (11 and 10) want to be baptized! It´ll take a little convincing of the dad and some strong spirit but I think he´ll let them here soon. 

We had a cool ward FHE this week about BoM knowledge. We divided into 4 teams, one for each elder. With 3 elders out for more than a year and a half and one greeny (my comp) one poor team was a bit short handed, ha ha. We had a good night there and we had an investigator who walked there with us with her two little cousins. She liked it enough but didn´t quite get what was going, which is justified I guess, seeing as she never has read the BoM. 

We also had a cool lady just drop out of nowhere. She is the future mother-in-law of one of the members here. She just came to church last week and lives with her daughter (future sister-in-law of the member) and we didn´t get much of a chance to talk to her but she seems pretty open to the church. I think we´ll be seeing between 3-5 baptisms these coming weeks in our area alone. 8 in total in the ward! Should be quite a sight to see! 

We helped a member kill his grass this week the old school way. We had these hoe-like things that they call ´enchadas´ which being interpreted is ´swollens´. I guess they looked at their hands after they were done and gave em´ the name, ha ha. It was pretty brutal work but cool at the same time. I think everyone left with some blisters due to the pansy-ness of missionary hands. I need to hit a weight room again to toughen em´ back up.... 

So this week I said something that I kinda gave a second thought to... It was something like this to an investigator ´yes, Christ will give you a new heart, but you have to give Him yours first´. It kinda hit me when I put it that way. It gave new meaning to what king Lamoni said ´ Yea, what shall I do that I may be born of God, having this wicked spirit rooted out of my breast, and receive his Spirit, that I may be filled with joy..?´ to me. We need to literally rip out our old ways to give more room for the new ones.... Much different when I thought about it that way.

Hope you all have a good week. Keep calm and pray on! 

-Elder Teela 

Week 78-- Less Than 5 Months People!!

So now begins the countdown my friends.... The home stretch, the final run and end of the line. This week I´m gonna start something called the D&C countdown. Everyday you read one section of the D&C starting with section 138 and working your way down to one and that last one should be the last non-pday of the mission. I start Friday...... I´M SO FREAKING OLD!! 

But for this week we had a good one. Monday was fun as a P-day of course so I´ll get to the fun stuff this week. We had a cool activity in the church that our WML called ´project multiply Sapucaia´ which was basically a huge FHE. We ate some pastels (some sort of fried bread filled with meat and stuff) and played that ´what am I?´ game where everyone has a card with a thing on their forehead and need to find out what it is. It got a little loud with about 40 people but went pretty well I think. Everyone had a good time and some investigators showed up, so it was all good. 

It also rained a lot this week. We got home one day after lunch and it had been raining a bit so we thought that the storm had pasted by about 2:30 so we went out and left our umbela´s in the house. The rain came back around 5.... and you can guess what happened there. We took shelter with some old lady near by who turned out to be sweet as the ice cream she sells. She wasn´t too interested in our message but we did have a good talk about church and stuff for a while and said a prayer. We then went to a recent convert´s house to dry off a bit and drink some good old grass tea (Chimarrão). 

We then had an awesome less with a family that seems really prepared, the only problem is that the parents aren´t married so that could put the whole baptism off a few months. It takes at least a month to marry here in Brazil from the day you submit your papers. I´m still not entirely sure why but it´s whatever. They are super cool and they´re kids are pretty funny. 

We also discovered this bakery that makes awesome cake :). Only about a buck fifty for a huge slice.

Also our fridge broke.... I had the great idea to try and break some of the ice that was building up. I ended up making a bit of a mess of it all.... Not my smoothest moment, ha ha. I left some milk in there over the weekend and literally none of it came out as liquid this morning when I poured it all out.... yummy. 

In other news my workouts are going well. Ladies beware! By the time I get home I´m pretty sure no one will believe it´s really me, ha ha. My comp also cut my hair too, which didn´t go so well... He cut it WWAAAYYY short. Good thing mission conference isn´t for a while still, I´ll have a bit of time for it to grow out before Pres. chews me out. 

To end it all this week was stake conference which was great. Pres. Wright made it out with his wife and so did a counselor in the temple presidency! It was really cool to hear their talks but the temple president made some awkward moments for our investigators. He kept asking ´do you want to be Gods one day?´ Which really threw a few people for a loop, ha ha. That took a little explaining. Then the stake president did a bit of work... He had some stuff to clear up and basically spent his time calling repentance on a few things. It was the first time I´ve ever seen anything like it in a meeting like that. 

We finished the night at a long earned baptism. Not from our area but it was a kid I´ve come to know pretty well and I was happy to finally see him baptized. He´ll be a real strength to his family in the times to come like his brother was before him when he was baptized. 

In the end I think I´d like to quote Churchill on one thing. He said this: 

`Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be´ 

However long and hard the road may be is a phrase I have fallen in love with. Everything in the end will make it worth it, that´s just what I keep telling my self when the days get long and the lessons fall through. Keep that in mind and it will pull you through anything. 

Have a good week everyone! 

-Um no exército de Deus

Elder Teela 

Week 77-- I started a war

Hey everyone! Thanks for all the suppor I´m getting still guys. It really means a lot to have so many good friends. I love getting your emails and I respond to them the best I can but sorry if I miss a week or two here and there. Thank you all so much :). 

So this week went by pretty quick for me. Monday and Tuesday had some rough beginnings though because my companion was sick Monday (so no B-ball :( ) and Tuesday I was sick. I made a resolution that day that I would work anyway but only lasted till about lunch. We got there by bus which was just fine until we ate and I pretty much passed out then and there, ha ha. They said I was super red and looked like I was about to die.... so we went home and I napped all day pretty much by orders of the mission president´s wife. 

Wednesday I was better-ish. I didn´t do my normal intense workouts but we managed to actually do some missionary work without a problem. We had a good day but I really don´t remember it, ha ha. I was pretty exhausted and hit the hey hard that night. 

 

Thursday was district meeting and I about started a war. Every meeting we usually have ten minutes of language study with the district. Most of these involve games and I did ´Scatta-gories´ if anyone is familiar with that. I did Elders against sisters too..... Wrong move, ha ha. The sisters basically complained a lot and everyone kept using Brazilian fruits as words which I didn´t count and that got everyone going pretty well, ha ha. The sisters ended up winning by a bit but basically it was a war in the church, ha ha. That night we also had a super cool FHE with a member where his mom and sister made a TON of pizza for us. We almost got it all down but even four hungry missionaries after a good long day´s work wasn´t any match for how much pizza there was. For those of you who know a missionay´s appetite that should be pretty surprising.

Friday we had lunch with the ward mission leader and almost got kicked out because me comp was dogging on his soccer team too much, ha ha. It gets real down here people. I swear it´s crazy. Elder Lima here told me that at home people get shot over games and often there are fights after a big win. It´s pretty nuts. That day also started the rain that is still hanging around here. It´s been raining off and on for the past 4 days. It´s nice though because it cools down the weather a bit. At least we´re not kissing 100 (38C) everyday. It´s nice not to sweat until I die everyday now. I only drink a liter of water when I get home now a days as apposed to the usual 2, ha ha. 

Saturday we found a cool family. The dad is a delivery driver for a big drinks company here so he gives us a lot of soda and the mom is deaf, but she seems really cool we learned a little sign with them and they seem pretty cool. They have 3 little girls, like the gospel and accepted baptism already! It was pretty legit how we found them too. We were there for another appointment but as we were at the gate their little girls kept giggling and hiding from us so we deiced to hit them up. 

So a little spiritualism here. This week I´ve been really focusing on change. What final changes I want to make before I get home and shock the world with how awesome I am, ha ha. I´m sure physically we´ve all made a goal at some point but also I´ve been thinking a lot about myself really. I´ve realized that really the only thing that gets in the way is our pride. Just the fact we think that the way we do it is justifiable or that we know better, but in the end we just need to let go of that and honestly just be who we know we should be. It´s so simple but so hard isn´t it? 

Well, that´s it for this week. Have a good week everyone! 

-Um no exército de Deus

Elder Teela 

Week 76- Happy Carnival, still

Happy Carnival still! Yeah, it´s about a 4-7 day ordeal here.... Except nothing crazy has happened. Just the fact that the internet cafe we normally use is closed.... And that´s more annoying than anything. I swear, any excuse not to work and these people down here take it. Lunch, rain, and the shops don´t even open till 9 and that´s if they ´get up early´. I was talking with some people and they say going to bed before midnight is just absurd. Everyone seems to stay up till at least 1 or 2 here (I know that´s not wierd to college students but     I´m a missionary here). 

 This week was good, tons and tons of finding but then I can´t really complain. This was probably the most accepting week  I´ve had in my mission. Everyone seemed to just let us in without a problem. It was kinda weird really, after being hardened to hear every excuse in the book to be just let in without a bit of a fight comes across as all too easy, ha ha. 

So some fun stuff that happened... We went to a lunch (which I´ve been to at least 5 times now) and the sister there kept calling me`German´. It´s fairly normal here to call someone german if they have a lighter complextion but the funny thing here was that she actually thought I was from Germany, ha ha. I´m not sure why but it was pretty funny to me and she didn´t seem to understand I kept talking about how I was from the States. 

After lunch that day we went to take the bus home but we kinda hithced a ride on the wrong bus and ended up a city over.... whoops! Luckily it stopped by the train station so we didn´t end up too far off course but I about died when the bus didn´t follow the normal route and asked the money- changer-lady where we were going and she responded the city over, haha. 

A few nights later we had a great FHE with the family I first met here in Brazil. It was fun, I remeber that first night here I only caught maybe %60 of the conversation there and had to kind of fill the rest with my guess work and now I was there and didn´t miss a beat. It was cool how much I had improved in the language is such a short time. When practice meets nessecity and inspiration from God, miracles happen :). It was good, I gave their little daughter about 5 peices of origami. She seemed to just be tickled pink. The way home was less fun though but we managed to make it through the sketchy part of our area without a problem (don´t freak out Mom :) ) 

 

Church was good yesterday, we didn´t really have anyone on the meeting because of holidays but it was good none the less. One little kid right as we were starting to sing the opening hymn had one of those moments where a kid is just unconsolable and started screaming `No! No! NNNOOO! Don´t take me out!´ Poor mom about died of shame but it was one of the those moments.  I thought... I used to be like that kid.... It´s crazy how much we change. 

We had another little boy at lunch who locked himself into the bathroom and started freaking out. His Dad quickly arrived to save the day but the little boy was crying and screaming too much to hear his dad give instructions. So his dad patiantly called out to him until he had calmed enough to hear his voice. When he finlly calmed down he got out just fine with some instructions from is dad. I imagaine that´s a lot like the life here and God above. To Him it must seem simple really but He understands our trouble and panic so He helps us out, even though we can´t seem Him. He will call until we are calm enough to let Him help us and then opening the door is all too easy. 

So that´s about it, gotta  go now, we all have to do e-mail one by one today so I´ll be leaving. Hope you all have a good week! 

-Um on exército de Deus

Elder Teela

Week 75-- Happy Valentintes Day!!

Hello once again everybody, and Happy Valentine´s day! Here in Brazil it´s actually in September and in Feburary we have carnival! Well, carnival isn´t actually that big here in the south. Everyone says that it will just be a few parades instead of the normal madness that you see on TV. That only really happens in Rio de Janeiro and the Northwest so it should stay pretty calm here. 

This week is transfers so that´s exciting. Execpt I´m staying again, I´ll have a new compaionion but still the same old Sapucia. I´ll admit I´m a little down on that as I was hoping to go to a new area but I´ll just have to stick this one on the Lord and hope for the best. It´ll all be great in the end I bet. 

So starting off with Monday night things got crazy kinda fast, haha. We normally have 4 Elders sleeping in our house every night but that night because of departing missionaries we had a grand total of 8! Yeah, this can´t go well, ha ha. Two of them were pretty late though so we grabbed some extra matresses from a near by member and put them on the ground for them to sleep on. After we were done we looked at eachother and thought.... wouldn´t it be funny if the last two came in and we were all in the same bed? So take a wild guess at what we did, ha ha. They came in the room and one of the two said ´I think I need to call president now´. We all had a fit of laughter after that :).  

We´ve been out to eat our giant mess of french fries 3 times this week which has wreaked a little havoc on my stomach now, ha ha. I guess it´s not the best idea to got there more than once a week when all you eat is grease filled devil-food. 

Um, basically the work has been pretty good, we´re on a bit of a down cycle now so that means plenty of finding and work, but that´s what we came out here for right? We baptized the teaching pool we had so that means we gotta build it back up. I guess that about sums up the week... We had one day where literally we had 5 or 6 appointments so we grabbed our best buddy from the ward and did some work but literally EVERY one fell through, luckily we found tons of work to do still and did well but it was a bit ridiculous. 

We also had a funny little ´funeral´ for 2 missionaries going home this week. We made WAY too many sweets and then of course ate them all in order not to be wasteful :). It was fun but it´ll be good not to have all the thoughts of home the weeks that come, you get a bit distracted. 

So, to finish up I´ll give a little thought I had here. I might have already wrote about it a bit but I like they way it came together. In district meeting I was thinking and made a note: We give up the things of the world to gain the things the wolrd cannot give. It just kinda came together for me in that minuet. We don´t just lose things when we go on this mission, we gain things that we can´t even imagine of gaining any other way. The blessings, the faith, the tesitimonies and of course the funny stories. These are things that an education, a pretty girl and money cannot give (okay, the girl maybe, haha). It´s all gonna be SO worth it in a few short months here. Even the darkest, hardest moments will make the reunion that much sweeter. 

Hope everyone has a good week, keep calm and pray on! 

-um no exército de Deus

Elder Teela 

Week 74-- This Week Was Pretty Awesome

So this week was pretty awesome really. We pretty much are still rolling on all the same, great work and good times. Here in Brazil the Lord really is preparing the people. 

We had our 5th baptism in a row this week in the form of the most shy little girl I´ve ever known I think. She our recent baptism´s niece and she loves the church. She gets really nervous usually around new people but seems to love primary every week. She was baptized by my beloved comp Elder Sanchez and we even had a special appearance by the primary at the meeting to sing a hymn for her. It was great :) 

So some funny stuff this week came in the form of a Sister that I won´t divulge the name of. We´ll call her Sister X for now. So we were at our ZTM which was fun but she added a bit more to it. She said that she want to have a ´scissors war´ (yeah, forget English spelling) instead of a pillow fight and that they spent the day ´patato-ing´ doors instead of knocking them, ha ha. The meeting was pretty sweet though, lots of good stuff there. 

The next day we went up to Porto Alegre for a special meeting with Pres. Swenson of the MTC here in Brazil, which I just left a bit ago here, ha ha. He gave a talk about how we need to live our purpose before we teach it and then called a missionary up to help him write out the purpose, guess who it was? Sister X! She got up there and wrote a few words and ended up butchering how to spell baptism in Portuguese. We all had a bit of a laugh but I feel a bit bad for her honestly. The rest of the meeting went great and we shook their hands after it and Pres. Swenson´s wife said that she remembered me! I was taken off guard and gave the extremely intelligent remarks of ´thanks...´ ha ha. But we talked a little then and that was fun. I also ran into Elders Francom and Collett there which was cool. 

So Sunday was really cool too with the baptism and all but after lunch we were lacking on some new investigators so we were ´clapping at gates´ to try and pick some up. We were there calling the district to see how their baptisms were and this man just walked up to us with a pitcher of water and a cup and gave us some to drink. He then invited us in and we taught the first lesson and they accepted baptism! They should be pretty amazing and they seem super open and prepared! 

So for a quick thought I thought I´d talk about finishing. We have an Elder here in our house that is finishing his mission here and I thought I´d talk him up a bit. Here he is in his last week and he´s been working hard like never before. I think that´s pretty sweet. We had a saying back in my football days (ha ha, I feel old saying that) ´chest down finish´ referring to when you are running a sprint you want to be running as hard as you can, throwing your weight forward to do so, moving your chest down. That is the kind of finish every one should be seeking, especially on the mission. So keep on keepin´ on and finish strong! 

-Um no exército de Deus

Elder Teela 

Week 73-- Elder, just get home after the interview

Well, another week came and went pretty fast. It´s been pretty great and there´s really more than I can tell that happened, as always, ha ha. I´ll try to be fast and tell it all like usual though. I think I´ll be a bit briefer this these ones though. 

So Tuesday we went to the temple with some sisters in our district which was fun. Especially for them when it started pouring and none of us brought our umbrellas. My comp was making a video and started doing a commentary and said    `It´s too late for their make-up.... hope is lost´, ha ha. 

Thursday was fun because we had district meeting and the sisters brought some brownies that were to die for. I almost did because I ate too many of them, ha ha. After that we went on exchanges with my good bud Elder Gomez. We bro´d it up all day and had lunch with a recent convert which was AWESOME and then we went and lit the world on fire. We spent 2 hours teaching and finding I think and we found 11 new investigators! 

That night we also had English class which was fun as usual. The other Elders basically just let me teach and I went to it. But this kinda annoying guy showed up and everyone got mad at him in the class because he kept asking questions that had nothing to do with the class and repeating them sometimes 10 times before I could answer, which got old fast. It was funny though because he kept calling me ´pastor´ which we all got some good laughs out of. 

Friday and Saturday we spent literally all the days at interview. It was super cool because the whole district baptized this week!  It was fun traveling but it kinda wasted all our money.... good thing I had a reserve fund! Ha ha! But really it was cool. One interview we showed up at 8 o´clock at night and she said she didn´t want to be baptized but after a bit we started bearing tons of testimony and the spirit touched her strong. She told us ´I don´t know what happened but suddenly everything I was thinking just... clicked and changed...´ it was SO cool! She was interviewed and we ended up getting a ride home at around 11 at night from her not-so-boyfriend (it´s complicated). The spirit was SO strong and when we called President he just said ´Elder, just get home after the interview, have a good night´ 

Oh and Sunday I played the organ.... well, I programed it and sat there touching the keys in time like I needed to but the chorister had other ideas..... She kept pausing and changing the time and slowing down and speeding up, ha ha. It turned out okay until the last hymn which kind of just burned and died, ha ha. 

We also had yet another baptism this week! That makes this 3 weeks straight! And 5 for the ward! It´s pretty awesome to see the Lord in the work and the miracles that are happening here! 

For my little final thought I was thinking this week of a quote I heard once from Winston Churchill, who was okay for a Brit, ha ha. He said this: ´Never give in, never give in, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.´ That is exactly how we should be. Never, Never, Never give in. We may feel weak, we may even look weak and the forces of evil in this world may be far greater than us, but we had the All Mighty on our side, we cannot fail. So keep your head up and ´keep on keepin´ on´ as my mom always says. 

Have a good week! 

-Um no exército de Deus

Elder Teela