Kyle's last email!

I can't believe he's coming home!  It feels so surreal.  I am so proud of him.  His fun loving personality has touched the lives of so many.  He has grown into a fine young man.  Well done thy good and faithful servant.  Love you son!

December 23, 2013

elder hals last email. 

well i went to the center today and bought stuff for everyone. I tried to find stuff but unfortunately im terrible with presents but i did the best i could. I couldnt find anything for dad or the boys tho. everybody else is good tho. i did my best i hope everybody is happy with what i found. Eliana calls me once a week and i asked her to find a nativity set cuz i couldnt find one here. shes coming to visit on friday. i dont know exactly when im going to the mission home or anything, they havent told me anything yet. but im leaving saturday night or sunday morning. I think saturday night. Im 6 hours away from Teresina and to have an interview and dinner with the President it makes more sense to leave on saturday but if not im speaking in church on sunday. we had our branch christmas party and the branch president asked me to speak about the mission and all that good stuff and i cried. a lady recorded the whole thing. that was when it really set in the i was leaving. its sad thinking about it, i try not to cuz its so much happiness and sadness all bundled up together. but im happy the mish is coming to a close, im tired.

o yeah so on christmas we are going to skype. im not all that excited about it cuz like 4 days later ill be at home.....but itll still be good to talk to you guys. we are going to skype at about 5 pm here. thats like what 1 or 2 in the afternoon in arizona?

i feel for you about your laptop. one of my friends that i baptized here got his bike stolen yesterday (its his only means of transportation) i hate thieves with a passion. They make me angry but it happens, life goes on unfortunately theres nothing we can do about it. it was sad tho. hes a 13 year old kid and his life was his bike and somebody stole it. he was pretty upset about it. if i had the money to buy him a bike i would, his parents left him with his grandparents and they dont really care about him. they feed him and give him a place to live but he doesnt really have anybody. I promised him that i would pay for his mission. if somebody doesnt pay it he has no way to go and he really wants to go on a mission. I told him that when he got baptized 5 months ago and he still reminds me about it almost daily. im gonna miss that kid so much, hes awesome.

anyways im excited to see you guys and see arizona and sammers. oh i want to talk to the bennetts before i go to school. the post office here is a joke and i gave up on writing letters. anyways love you all byeeeeeeeeee

Then he sent a follow up email with food requests...

oh and food requests. NOTHING WITH CHICKEN and no i dont want to eat at a brazilian restaraunt. (I will explain why christmas)

Beef o le

alfredo

doritoes

those bacon ham rolls 

and anything else you can think of that i loved before the mish

A building for our Branch!!

December 2, 2013

i try not to think about going home cuz theres still like 4 weeks left. but i dont think theres anything i want you guys to get for me. im gonna need alot of things when I get back so dont worry about it. i just want to get home. I love the mish and its awesome but i want to be home again.

but yeah so the work this week was interesting. basically all of our investigators just decided to disappear so we had to knock doors all week. it was cool cuz we found alot of new people and alot of people let us inside to talk to them, one of the perks of working in Brasil. OH yeah so it was district conference this week and we got to the auditorium and the first thing we heard was that Salt Lake approved the building of a chapel for our branch! Me and my comp almost cried it was like the most exciting thing that has happened on my mission. we were in the back hugging everybody it was awesome. then they came and made us stop and rained on our parade. but it was awesome. we worked so hard and i knew that we were close to getting a chapel but last i had heard it wasnt approved. so that was awesome. other than that we are just knocking doors and trying to find people to baptized. Its hard and got harder. Theres a new rule in Brasil that kids 15 and under have to go to church for 3 months before they can be baptized. that seriously messed our whole month up which happens to be the last month of my mission. we dont understand why but it is what it is and honestly it happened and im going home so im not all that upset about it. but i feel bad for the other missionaries. its gonna be harder to baptize now.

Eliana called me this week. she said that shes gonna come to Parnaiba to visit me before i leave. thats gonna be awesome. im gonna want to see them before I leave. it was good to talk to them. i havent seen them since são luis.

i miss all of you terribly, im super excited to see you guys again. I hope everybody is well. sounds like everybody is doing good. well ill talk to you guys next week. byeeeee

Rededicate the house...

November 25, 2013

so the good news is im legal now. everything went well in Teresina. They said that usually the people that wait as long as the mission did to renew my visa get deported but they like the missionaries so there wasnt any problem. I didnt get to do anything I wanted to though. I asked the assistants if I could visit people and they said no and made me do a division with the zone leaders. It was cool but not nearly what I had planned on doing. I got to see a few people but other than that it was just normal work. But our week got destroyed cuz I was in Teresina for a few days and my comp was stuck working in another area. I didnt get to call that one lady to register for classes i called you when the President wasnt in the office but he always gets there when the office in provo opens so it didnt work out, sorry.

But the scariest stuff happened in our house this week. So it started when I was in Teresina when one night the other Elders heard a crash and they were like what happened but went back to sleep. The next morning they found one of the other elders cologne smashed and broken in the middle of the room. so like whatever stuff happens. but then when I got back at like midnight on saturday morning we got back to our house and we were doing our things getting ready for bed when I went to put some things away next to the window and I heard something rush by the window and there was a loud bang and we lost power in our house. we all flipped out but we didnt really think that much of it until we realized that our house was the only house that had lost power....anyways so we put our beds in front of our house cuz it was freaking hot inside our house. so there we were chilling just chatting in our beds when out of nowhere 2 feet behind me this chair moved back about a foot and my comp flipped out cuz he saw the chair move and there was nobody there. needless to say we were super scared so we rededicated the house just to make sure cuz we dont know when was the last time it was and what had happened since and it all stopped but it was a super scary 2 or 3 hours in our house.

Other than that everything was cool and normal. nothing all that exciting happened other than going to Teresina. Oh I got the box with the cookie stuff and the ghosts but other than that nothing has gotten here. oh sweet baby rays beef jerkey is incredible. and question with those cookies do I have to make the cake mix first and then mix in the other stuff or just throw everything together? seeing as I only have one shot I want to do it right. ummm anything else, I dont think so. Well I love you guys I hope everything is well with you guys. miss all of you byeeeeee

Going to Teresina this week!

Kevin and I had sent the Mission President an email because we had never heard a word from him.  We weren't even sure what his name was.  He told us that he hadn't worried about contacting us because our son is obedient and he doesn't worry about him.  He told us his biggest priority is the Brazilian missionaries because they are the future church leaders in his country.  I understand what he is saying...but it was a little disappointing that this is his attitude.

November 18, 2013

yeah the president is like that. I only get like a few words out of him in my weekly emails and my comp always gets 2 full emails from him. its extremely frustrating but the more i think about it and the more ive tried to understand it I see that he is really busy. Our mission is a mess and its enormous, I feel bad for him. Ive also thought about it and Im a low maintenance missionary that other than my sleeping problems i dont have alot of problems. So he really doesnt worry about me. yeah im upset cuz i lost out on being a leader but I thought about it and had i been a leader i wouldnt have passed through the areas that i did and i wouldnt have met the people that i did so theres always a bright side to everything. No im not the best missionary and theres alot of parts of the mission that I loathed but ive learned alot and im happy with the mission ive served, yeah i couldve been better in alot of aspects but i know that god is happy with my mission and i know that had i not gone on a mission i wouldve been in a much worse position. but it is what it is.

Im going to Teresina this week. Im going to renew my visa. ive been illegal since february and finally i called sister and complained and she resolved everything rather quickly. So ill be spending a few days in Teresina just hanging out. I want to visit some of the people I met last year in Teresina. I havent been to Teresina since last year, like a year and 2 months ago. itll be good to see it all again, its been awhile. oh and the stake president from imperatriz came to Parnaiba for a conference and he called me and visited me. It was fun talking to him hes a really good guy. Hes the only stake President ive had that interacts with the missionaries. He even bought us pizza! good times in Imperatriz. Oh Elianas dog had puppies, she offered one to me and I accepted. I dont know how its gonna get home with me but im gonna make it happen. <3

other than that it was a pretty normal week. We are working alot trying to find people to teach but thats the hard part of missionary work. President hinted that im gonna end my mission here in Parnaiba so im pretty happy about that. I hope everybody is well, tell colin happy birthday, I remembered before and after last p day but i forgot on p day....my bad. love you all byeeeeeeeeee.