Past two weeks

 This week's email:  He's been trying to figure out where he is going to college when he comes home.  He has to get registered and everything ready soon because he will be home in December and school starts in January.  Time is flying by...

I still dont know where Im gonna go to college. Its gonna be Weber or UVU, one of the 2. I have to do something with portuguese I just dont know what yet. But this week was pretty awesome. So the work sucks like we cant find alot of people to teach but we are still focusing on the members. And Wednesday we talked with an active family after lunch about helping the others in the branch that are needing help and doing just a little bit more to help the other members and they took 3 less active guys to church on sunday. But after all that we got the ward attendance up from 61 from the first week I got here to 90. I dont really know what we did but we had 7 less actives and a bunch of recent converts and everybody went. It was good to finally see some results. We havent seen much results until now and the zone leaders were getting a little bit annoyed by our lack numbers. But it was awesome, I almost died when I saw the attendance.

Kathleen is awesome. shes 16 but she helps us out alot. She went to the the temple for the first time, well shes on her way right now. the temple is in another state so 4 times a year theres a district wide caravan to the temple. She was like dying to go it was funny im happy that she was able to go. Its funny how people here like die to go to the temple and its like a massive sacrifice and Utah has like 16 temples now its kinda weird seeing that big difference. oh she doesnt speak english but her mom is an english teacher so she speaks well but her mom translates everything and sometimes stuff comes out goofy. and yes we did fish piranhas and it was awesome we caught one...it was tiny but we caught it.

Anyways thats all ive got for you guys. Love all of you hope eveyone is well. byeeeee

Last week's email:

yeah well im trying its just hard to get a bunch of people motivated and moving, this week was better kind of. Well tuesday morning at about 8 in the morning my comps mom died.....so hes pretty upset. So he spent about 4 days in that i wanna go home but I dont and then at the end of the week we were able to start working well. 

Oh but funny story, so last p day we went fishing. I told a member that I wanted to go piranha fishing so we went. and we caught a piranha! it was super tiny but we caught it. it was a cool place to go fishing. It was like a lake in the middle of sand dunes and I guess its just full of piranhas. we took alot of cool pictures im just afraid to put my memory card in the computers here. one elder lost all of his pictures and if that happened to me I would cry. 

But ummm I had to give a talk on sunday, that was an adventure. I gave a 10 minute talk about missionary work with members. Its not really that big of a deal anymore. I really dont like it but its not that bad. I think giving a talk in english is going to be harder now. and Jean from Teresina came to visit me! it was good to see him again. im alot closer to Teresina now so he came to see me it was awesome.

anyways I dont really have anything else for you guys. I hope everything is well at home. I miss everybody and love all of you. byeeeeeeeee 

Is it already September!

As a Mom I feel like such a slacker!  I can't believe how many emails I was late getting posted.  With this one, I am all caught up.  He is really enjoying his area.  The closer he gets to coming home...the more I miss him!  

Well unfortunately my comp got transfered today. Im super sad I really liked him. I didnt really like him all that much in the beginning like we got along well but towards the end I grew to love that man. Im gonna miss him too. I didnt get transfered, and I have no idea who my comp is. I dont know him. Hes relatively new on the mission. my old comp said that hes super cool, so thats comforting. other than that this week was really cool. We are trying to get the youth going cuz the branch is kind of dead. so we sent them out to do like missionary work. They are posting pictures on facebook about all of it. They are really liking it its cool to see them get excited to like do missionary work. I got sad though cuz we were just talking to everybody in the streets and this one guy let us in and his wife told us how the missionaries had passed there and taught them like 10 years ago and she showed me the book of mormon they had left and it was dated 2002 and she was like yeah I already read it quite a few times and i really like it but I dont want anything to do with your church so you can keep the book and give it to somebody else. and like nobody else really wanted to listen but it was cool to get the members active. Thats pretty much what we are doing now. We are working more with the members than investigators cuz its so hard to get good people baptized with the state that the branch is in. Its actually more fun here. I really like the environment of a branch more than a ward. I like the work more here.

Im so glad that everybody is enjoying all the baseball games whilst im slaving away in the sun everyday. I hope everything else is good with you guys. I love you all byeeeeeeeee

More August 2013 emails

August 26th email;

So we had 2 baptisms this week. We baptized this kid whos 13 and a girl thats the sister of a member. The 13 year old kid is awesome. His name is Marcos, he stopped us in the street  a few weeks ago and hes been going to church and hangs out with us on P Days. But of course we spent 3 days without water in the whole city. And i got all excited cuz we got authorized to baptize in the ocean that close by. I almost cried cuz all I want to do is baptize in a river or something cool and I thought it was finally gonna happen but water came back right before the baptism so it didnt happen. :( but the baptism was still awesome. So my first week in Parnaíba a lady stopped us and said that shes a less active member that wanted to start going to church again. Shes 29 and has 3 little girls and they are so adorable. We go teach them and they listen and they fight over whos gonna pray and whos gonna sit next to who and when I went to that other branch they said that they didnt like the other Elder that visited them in my place. Basically I love these little girls and so they went to church on Sunday and I went and watched Primary with them, so we were coloring pictures and the youngest one (who is my favorite) asked me which soccer team I root for and i told her which team and she got mad cuz its not the same team that she roots for and she stopped talking to me. she spent 3 days not talking to me until I "switched" teams. They are super funny. Shes also mad cuz shes 7 and cant get baptized yet. Her sisters are getting baptized next week and she cant so shes a little upset. 

oh and today we went to play volleyball and I had to climb a tree to cut a branch that was in the way of the game and I got attacked by bees. I didnt see the bee hive like 10 feet away and they got mad. We were gonna go pirana fishing today with a member but my comp didnt want to so we are going next week. Its gonna be awesome.

Im glad that everybody is good. I miss everybody tons. I love all of you until next week byeeeeee

August 19th email

this week was awesome. The church opened a group in a city not to far from parnaiba but its in Maranhão the other and still like isolated from the mission but is part of my district. They dont leave their area for anything though, so we have to go there to help them out every once in awhile. So me and my district leader left on friday and spent saturday and sunday in another city. It was cool seeing everything there, the church has been there for about 5 months and the missionaries house is the chapel and doesnt have beds so the 4 of us slept in hammocks. its also the neighbor of a bar/farm so all during the meeting there was like pigs squeeling and cows and farm animals making noises. and they have to baptize in a river. But the church is growing really quickly. They already have about 50 members active going to church. But the missionaries have to do everything. Sunday morning we woke up and cleaned the house/chapel and then after church we had to clean it again. The 2 elders talk every week in sacrament meeting and everything is done by the missionaries. They loved having 2 more elders cuz we got alot more done. So i stayed with the primary and helped out the 2 sisters there. Its crazy cuz the lady thats in charge of the primary got baptized like 2 months ago and is in charge of teaching the kids everything. Theres things i didnt even think about before watching the primary like all of the songs we learned growing up are completely new to these people. shes did a really good job though. it was pretty neat seeing the church start up and seeing all these people learning new things. Its funny cuz the missionaries have only been there for about 5 months and already the other churches are nervous. The other churches started giving anti mormon classes. 

oh and my president is the man. I love my president. We had interviews with him this week. I always try to get him to let me play soccer but he hasnt budged yet, I almost had him but it didnt work out. I also tried to watch the Motherland play Brasil in soccer (the motherland won by the way) with the President....he also shot that down but he said that next time they play i can watch it. Its cool cuz we are closer to Teresina so the President comes here more. I saw the President twice in São Luís, but thats cuz its really far away.

Well thats all I have for you guys this week. Hope everything is well at home. Ill try to send some pictures home next week. Im to scared to put my memory card in the computers here but ill see what I can do. Love you all byeeeeee