Week 25 - December 29, 2014

We saw Santa sellin' drinks, so we took a picture. HAHA

Honestly I don’t even know where to start with this letter but Christmas was freaking bomb! Talking with the whole family and stuff was probably the best thing ever! I love my family so much!

Cool thing: Got to talk with the family! That was sweet! And we got to eat a ton of food and stuff so that was awesome! And on the thought of good food, I had Mexican food yesterday for lunch at a member’s house for the first time in the mission.... I died. It was delectable.

Funny thing: We were at a member’s house eating lunch and this lady showed us a video of Rudolph the red nosed reindeer. Someone caught it on "video" And so that was interesting.... She was so convinced.

Weekly Difficulty: Hanging up the phone when I was talking with the family on Christmas.....And we totally got our umbrellas stolen so we’ve been walking in the rain without umbrellas the past couple of days. It has been effective way to get into peoples homes though, it’s hard not to let someone in you house who doesn’t have an umbrella in the pouring rain! hahahaha

Spiritual Experience: We were running in the rain because we were getting absolutely destroyed and some people saw us running in the rain and let us in their house. It was awesome! We totally shared a message with them and everything. BAM. We have 21 new investigators this week, I knew all the rejection would pay off! This week will be busy!

Scripture of the Week: 1 Peter 1:7-9

Love you all and hope y’all have a fantastic week and a HAPPY NEW YEAR! Tchau!

Elder Buck

In the words of Dad, "I don't care what white man say, Santa Claus is a Black Man."

Christmas Day... BOOYAH!

Week 24 - December 22, 2014

A family from the branch in Biguaçu.

Our investigators Lucia and Guilherme.

Elder Magalhães and I before leaving Biguaçu!

Welp…it’s been a really awesome week. I love my companion and my new area. It is WAY different here. First, it’s a ward. YIPPIE! Not a branch. And second, we teach so much here, it’s the best! It is not that I don’t like doing contacts or anything.... but teaching is awesome.

Cool thing: Its ALMOST NATAL!!! The ward members gave all of the missionaries in the ward Christmas baskets with a ton of food and candy in it so that was dope. And my companion is American, so I’ll be brushed up on my English a bit before talking to y’all!

Interesting Character: The Pastor guy. We totally had a lesson with a pastor of a church and his friends so that was cool. I’ll be talking a little bit about that in the call...

Weekly difficulty: The house is disgusting so that’s just great...

Spiritual Experience: Well there was a ton this week. We have been teaching a Christmas lesson for all of our investigators and the people we meet and using the “He Is The Gift” video thing. That has been awesome. We have a bunch of investigators and a lot of people who seem genuinely interested in hearing about the church. That video is super powerful and super cool! But yeah the work is so much different here. 

Scripture of the week: Lucas 2 :)

Well that’s really all I have time to write about this week, but I love you all and hope you have a very Merry Christmas! Tchau!

Elder Buck

A member here has a parakeet - so that was fun...

Hey...and Feliz Natal! 

Week 23 - December 15, 2014

Transferred DOOOOD!!

Hey! So it was a really really good week!

Cool thing(s): Conferencia de Natal! A ton of missionaries got together and played a bunch of games and talked and ate and stuff, super awesome! And on top of that, I totally got transferred to a city called Itajaí! I got off the on a bus about four hours ago and met up with my new companion, Elder Burton. He is from South Carolina and is super cool. He will most likely be finishing his mission with me as his companion. So that’s cool...

Interesting Character: Ronaldo knew Beethoven...

 I don’t have time to write the rest but I will next week. Love you all!

Elder Buck

Week 22 - December 8, 2014

A cool dock here is Biguaçu and also the nasty nasty water that flows beneath it...

Oi!

So I don’t really remember all that much from this week other than it was really REALLY hot and sunny. But I have to say I am super grateful AZ prepared me for it! Haha Its hard to want to go outside right now, but we have work to do! The weeks have been pretty tough to remember, but I’ll give it a go.

Cool Thing: We had investigators show up for church! That was awesome. I love it when investigators decide to come to fast and testimony meetings, the spirit is always so strong. 

Weekly Difficulty: Like I said the weeks have been pretty tough in respect to teaching people. We teach a lot of the first lesson for people and after that a lot of them decide it’s not what they want to hear. So I guess the difficulty of the week(s) have been just not having a ton of people to teach for the amount of contacts we do. 

Interesting Character: I have to say this honor goes to Cleusa. We were doing a ton of contacts on Friday and we came to a house and met this woman. We came to find out that she actually is a member, has two kids, one of them is in the US going to school at BYU, and her husband is not a member. That was an interesting find! 

Spiritual Experience: This week was about prayer. I can tell each and every one of you that I know with all certainty that our Heavenly Father really hears and answers prayers. And that He truly loves every one of you and me more than we could possibly imagine. 

Scripture of the Week:  2 Nephi 4. I love this chapter. 

Love you all and hope you have a fantastic week!

Elder Buck

Brasileiros make killer hot dogs! (And Nick you would die over this soda)

Our last district meeting together! (In order from left to right) Elder Mendieta, he arrived in the field the same day as me and he's from Panama! Super cool guy, probably my best friend in the field! Next to him is Elder Anderson. He's American and from Pennsylvania...and next to him is Elder Magalhães my comp!

Week 21 - December 1, 2014

Look who I found at Zone Conference....

The Weeks are Staring to Fly…

Cool Thing: We had zone conference this week but this time with a General Authority. Claudio R.M. Costa is truly a man called of God, I have no doubt in my mind! So that was cool.

Interesting Character: Drunk Guy. There is this guy who walks around the center of Biguaçu looking for shoes to shine. This week he was walking around completely hammered, totally fell over and hit his head on a parked car, and cut up his hands and elbows. Elder Magalhães and I helped him up and stuff and this man was kinda gross. I touched his armpit.

Weekly Difficulty: I got my first in-grown toenail in my life this week so that was a treat...

Spiritual Experience: Last week I had made an appointment to visit a family who the other Elders had been teaching but kind of stopped teaching because none of them were making any real progress. So... Elder and I taught Lucia (mom) and Guilerme (son) about the Holy Ghost. She had explained to us a little about why she didn’t make a commitment to get baptized and it was partly because she felt like she was being forced to do something she wasn’t ready for yet...(sounds familiar). So we began teaching a little about the Holy Ghost and stuff and Elder asked, "Do you remember a time when you were just the happiest you’ve ever been? A time when you were just so happy you could hardly contain yourself?" He asked Guilerme and as he was thinking, Lucia started crying (first of all, Lucia is the type of person you would never see crying. She got in a ton of school fights and stuff when she was younger, She smokes, pretty intense personality, etc...) Guilerme said, "I’m trying to think but nothing is coming to mind..." After he said this, Lucia said, "I can. When you saw your brother." He broke down in tears (a 14 year old boy breaking down in tears is not very normal) I don’t really know the whole story behind the brother thing but that’s not the point! We explained a little about some of the fruits of the Holy Ghost and it was a moment when you just know for a fact that they felt the Spirit and things just make sense in their head. It is beautiful!

Scripture of the Week: Matthew 17:14-21. It talks a little bit about faith and there is a part that I found kind of funny in verse 20...Its good!

Love you all and hope you have another good week! Tchau!

-Elder Buck

On top of the world...

My level of animation at this moment is just off the charts.

It's that time of the year!

Week 20 - November 24, 2014

"God and Faithful"

Oi!

This week was super boring again! But just to fill you all in:

Cool thing: We had a Zone Meeting this week and I’m officially not the worst Portuguese-speaking American in the field! YAY! (I think I’ve said this before but to reemphasize...)

Interesting Character: Ronaldo took the cake the week! ...again. New news on Ronaldo... This week he was telling us how there used to be 12 Apostles in Biguaçu, but they started robbing people and taking their money and after blaming him. This is why he can’t have a car registered in his name because the police will find him. I thought that was pretty crazy...

Funny thing: We were at the grocery store and needed cash, so we went to withdrawal some from the ATM and saw that a member from our Branch was taking money out too. (The same member who threw me a Birthday party.) So we waited for her to turn around before we greeted her to say hi, but what we didn’t know that she gets really nervous taking money out of the ATM when she’s alone. So she turned around and Elder Magalhães stuck his hand out to greet her and scared her SO bad. She totally thought he was going to take her money...I died laughing because the look on her face was exactly like the face of the one other lady we scared in the middle of the night a couple weeks ago! We are awful.

Weekly difficulty: Well this week we bought a pull-up bar and put it in the door frame, but with time, I noticed it was kind of crooked the way we put it up. So I took it down and put it back up, and when I was testing it to see if it would hold (I am attaching a picture of it to illustrate what I mean. I’m so dumb haha) It slipped and SMACK! I totally dome-rocked myself in the face and now I have a big welt just above my eye...dangit! Oh and the drain to our sink broke so I have to figure out how we are going to fix that...

Spiritual Experience: I have to say this week was really great for doing contacts. I’m starting to notice that you really can have the spirit when you’re just simply talking to someone on the road, or in front of their house. It is truly awesome!

Scripture: I really enjoyed reading 2 Timothy 1-2. I really loved what was said in 1:7-8! Check it out!

Love you all a ton and hope you have a great week!

Elder Buck

Week 19 - November 17, 2014

You know me, just hangin' around!

This is what happens when you miss your bus 

out of an area really far away from the house. 

You sleep at the house of the Zone leaders like this!

​
Opa! 

This week was pretty short and uneventful so don’t be surprised if this email is short and uneventful...

Cool Thing: The work is progressing! And I can officially do contacts with people on my own now!

Interesting Character: Ronaldo always...This week we found out that he entered college at the age of six. Yeah...

Funny Thing: Presidente Soza in the stake presidency here is pretty flippin’ hilarious! We had stake conference this week and he used a shepherd’s staff and a lifeguard floaty to describe how the members need to work. Haha I’ll let you guys try to figure that one out! Good times...

Weekly Difficulty: We lost Zelia, one of our best investigators, this week...that was really sad.

Spiritual Experience: MY spiritual experience was during the interview with the mission president. We discussed D&C 19 and that was really awesome but at the end he asked me if he could do anything for me and I said no, but that I really hope I get to know him and the rest of his family throughout my mission. At this moment I felt Impressed to tell him about a part in my Patriarchal Blessing that describes how I need to watch and follow the example of my mission president as he exercises his responsibility as the mission president and demonstrates love for his family, especially his wife. His example will in large measure form a foundation in which I will build my family... more or less like this! And I really could feel that he felt the spirit and his eyes were opened a little. It was super cool!

Scripture of the week: Romans 12 is fantastic. In seminary I had written in my scriptures at the top of this chapter saying, "DONT FORGET WHAT YOU WERE FORORDAINED TO BE." And if you decide to read this part I’d like for you to just keep that in mind. I love this chapter! 

Eu sei esta igreja é verdadeira. Eu sei O Livro de Mórmon é a palavra de Deus. Eu sei que Cristo vive e Ele nos ama. Eu sei por causa do sacrifico dele, cada um de nós pode voltar na presença de Deus. Eu amo Ele e amo esta obra. Eu sei a obra do missionário e MUITO importante. Através esta obra nos podemos ajudar nossos irmãos tem um conhecimento de seu Salvador e Redentor. E como cada um de nós não pode ter felicidade real nesta vida sem Ele. Esta obra é maravilhosa! 

Eu amo vocês e realmente espero que vocês tenham uma semana muito boa! Tchau!

-Elder Buck

Translation:
I know this church is true. I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God. I know that Christ lives and He loves us. I know because of His sacrifice, each of us can get back into God's presence. I love Him and love this work. I know the work of the missionary is VERY important. Through this work we can help our brothers have a knowledge of their Savior and Redeemer, and that each of us can not have real happiness in this life without Him. This book is wonderful!  I really love you and hope you have a very good week! Bye!

Week 18 - November 10, 2014

Me and Elder Coelho

Me and Elder Albano

Hey There!

Well, I’m officially going into my third transfer in the field and boy it went fast. The first one not so much , but the second...WOW. And I thought with absolute surety my companionship with Magalhães would come to an end and I would be transferred somewhere else, but the Lord thought different! (See Isaiah 55:8-9) I am in the same area with the same companion again! Still trying to decide if I’m happy about this or not, there is obviously something I need to learn in this area with this companion that I haven’t discovered yet. I’ll make sure to keep y’all in the loop! Hahaha... 

Cool Thing: With the whole transfer week and all, I get to stay with my companion. That’s cool, but what’s even cooler (maybe, not quite sure yet...I’m keeping my hopes up here) is that the 2 other missionaries in our house moved to different areas and we don’t have other missionaries moving in with us. As a result, Nós vamos ter menos sujo em casa. Com certeza! Yippie! Less dishes, less gross stuff in the bathroom, less wet clothes in the washing machine, more water, less sweeping to do, and just simply more space. Our house was just simply too small for 4 people. So that’s really cool! On top of all of this, we are going to have WAY more work to do and more investigators and more lessons being taught and I just have a feeling we are going to find success this transfer. I am super pumped! I don’t know about y’all at home, but  I’m feeling the first Baptism in Biguaçu for the past 1 1/2 years coming on...So yeah that is really cool!

Sad Thing: The other 2 Elders left today... I’m going to miss those guys a ton! Elder Albano especially. He was our district leader here in Biguaçu for the past 2 1/2 transfers and he was probably my favorite guy out here. I know for a fact (and I’m sure you guys do to...) missionaries are most certainly not perfect, but Elder Albano showed me that you can come really close. He was really really cool. I will miss that guy!

Interesting Character: RONALDO. Where do I even begin with this guy??? I am going to go ahead and keep this pretty short ,but Ronaldo is a less active member in our branch here in Biguaçu and...you know what…I’m just going to go ahead and tell you his story. It goes a little like this: He is 154 years old, he used to Know English, Spanish, and Italian before his accident where he was shot with a gun under the chin and bullet came out of the back of his head. As a result he no longer remembers any of it, he has had so many children and women that he has officially lost count. He is a worldwide military sergeant, and has now settled down in Brasil because of his bad knee. We are currently in the process of getting him reactivated but I’m not so sure he can make it to church. He has A LOT of commitments now with the bike gangs here in Biguaçu. 

Weekly Difficulty: Getting Ronaldo to church...

Spiritual Experience: Elder Magalhães and I were walking down the street on our way to a lunch appointment with one of the members here and while we were walking, a man and his wife walked past us and the man kind of gave us a weird look. We said good morning and he walked maybe another 50 yards before turning around yelling for us to stop. We turned around and walked in his direction and started talking with this guy. He asked us, "Are you guys missionaries?" We replied "yes, have you conversed with the missionaries before?" He said no but what he said next was really cool. " I would really like to have a visit from you guys in my house this next week. I’ve been diagnosed with throat cancer and it is looking really bad. I am not exactly sure why, but of every person I’ve talked with about religion just doesn’t seem right to me. I’ve really been looking for salvation but I haven’t known where to find it. You guys think you could visit me this week?" UH DUH!!! Hahaha no we said yes and marked a date with him this week and needless to say, I am so excited to see what’s next. I really REALLY have my hopes up for this man because not just anybody stops dead in their tracks, turns around, yells at us to stop, and suddenly starts talking about salvation and stuff. Please keep this guy in your prayers! 

Scripture of the Week: I really enjoyed reading in Alma 23 this week. It talks a little about becoming truly converted to the Lord and laying down our weapons of rebellion. I would love to hear what you have to say! 

Thank you for all of your love and prayers this week. I love each and every one of y’all! The Church is True!!

Till next week,
Elder Buck

Week 17 - November 3, 2014

 Cookin' like nobody's business...

Our new friend...just take a look at your hand, it's just a little smaller than that...and it had a little special something attached to it's rear end too!

You know me, I just do what I want!

Well Halloween was Laaaame!

SO this week was good and not full of a whole lot of exciting experiences, but I guess I'll go ahead and fill y’all in a bit! And by the way my (2nd) favorite holiday passed and NOBODY here even celebrates it. So if you could imagine (while eating candy and having a jolly good time) I was thinking about everyone eating candy and having a jolly good time without me! Glad the parties and festivities continued without me. Haha

Cool Thing: We have ward activity every Tuesday night (as you probably already know...) and it was the best turnout we have ever had! we had a bunch of members there and investigators and everyone was having a good time. Finally. It feels good when the things you plan go as planned.

Interesting Character: ANDERSON. Elder Magalhães and I were walking down the street, just finishing up the day and on our way home (it’s about 9:00 at this point) and this guy on his bike pulls up and yells, "MORMONS!" I swear (well I don’t swear I’m a missionary…relax) the missionaries are drunk people magnets. We talk to so many people who are under the influence of drugs, alcohol (however that’s spelled), and other things it’s kinda ridiculous. But we had a very ignorant conversation with this guy and invited him to church but surprisingly he never showed up... haha so yeah that was weird.

Funny Thing: The same night we met Anderson, we were almost home, about 50 yards away from the street that leads to our house and we saw the other 2 Elders walking in the opposite direction towards us. They were about 100 yards away from the street that leads to our house. So my intelligent companion decided it would be really funny to turn on to our street then hide, then just at the right moment when they turn the corner, jump out and try to scare the two. Alright cool lets do it right?! So we hide. And when he sees their shadows he jumps out and lifts his arm like he is going to hit them or attack them, but the thing is.... it wasn’t the elders. It was a poor middle-aged woman just minding her own business, and if you could have seen the look on her face you could have cried. It was the funniest, saddest, thing that I think I have ever seen because she didn’t scream, she just took a big gasp of air and I don’t think she will ever be the same. I died! I’m not exactly sure any of that made sense so sorry.

Weekly Difficulty: Elder Magalhães and I had to go to the mission home earlier this week and a miracle happened. The bus we take everywhere costs about $4.50 (in reais) and the both of us had to pay this three times. Elder Magalhães had $20 and I had $2. But the thing is that we have a bus card we get from the mission home that has money on it but when we tried using it, it didn’t have any money on it. Well dang. We have to find a restaurant where we can eat...so we take the first bus straight to Florianópolis where we meet with Elder Gallegos in the mission home to fill out some paperwork and to meet with the doctor there. Elder Magalhães paid for my way there so now he is down to $11 and I’m still at $2. Luckily we found a place in Floripa where they feed the missionaries for free. We ate there. I have the Missionary debit card, which has $12.50 on it. So we decided to go find a bank and pull it out. But silly me, you can’t pull out less than $20.00 in cash from an ATM. Well shoot. So we take another bus from the center of Floripa to another area where elder has Physical therapy. We finish there and at this point Elder has $2.00 and I have $2.00 well our house is like a four hour walk from here... but we didn’t have to walk because we had faith! I was like, "Elder hold on I think I just might have some more money in my bag..." I look in my bag and its just change. Enough change. Exactly $5.00 worth. I kid you not I almost cried. So that was fun.

Spiritual Experience: Wow this is going to be short but a family of investigators we have who is really progressing finally gained a testimony of the Book of Mormon. And the mother of the family bore her testimony in church. BOOYAH. The Book is Blue and True my friends.

Oh and this next week I have an interview with the mission president and I’m supposed to teach him D&C 19. So if any of you would like to study that chapter this week and tell me what you think (via email...snail mail just wont cut it haha), that would be really awesome! Just any thoughts or parts you like, anything would be cool. I’d love to know what y’all think! The chapter is kinda intense so brace yourselves...

I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Elder Buck

Week 16 - October 27, 2014

Welp folks. It’s been a pretty good week. Let me just fill you in a little bit!

Cool Thing: Yesterday we knocked SO MANY DOORS in a part of the city we haven’t done work in yet and it was the best experience doing contacts since I’ve been out here. I can honestly say I really REALLY dislike doing contacts because they are so hard and so SO awkward sometimes, but this time was different for some reason. I can also really say that it makes a world of a difference doing contacts with the Spirit. He helps so much. Nothing really happened in specific but I can say the next few weeks will be crazy with appointments, lessons, etc. I’m really looking forward to that!

Interesting Character: Carol... This woman is an investigator we found in our area book. She had been taught by sisters before us and had a Book of Mormon and three of our pamphlets, gospel principles book, everything. This should be a good lesson right? Yeah! NO. She was the craziest lady... she started talking about mermaids and all of the stuff she believed and it was kind of ridiculous. We asked her why she thought God didn’t just appear to her and tell her what church is true and he response was, “He’s timid." It was just an interesting lesson needless to say.

Funny Thing: The district has decided to stop using all slang and we soon realized that we really don’t have an extensive word choice or a big vocabulary at all. I dare you to try this for one whole week. Oh, and we also figured out why there are only Elders in our district too. I guess there is a rapist running around Biguaçu so they thought it would probably be best to take the sisters out of our area...so anyway!

Weekly Difficulty: I’ve felt pretty crappy all week and I’ve been drinking water with a "fermented smell" whatever that’s supposed to mean Haha!

Spiritual Experience: Elder Magalhães has needed to go to the physical therapist every day all this week and every day without fail while I’m waiting in the lobby, the Lord had provided with somebody to talk to about our religion and God's plan. I gave out 5 Book of Mormons in 5 days. It was super cool!

Well that’s really it for this week I love you all and hope you’ve all had a good week!

Till next time,
Elder Buck

Week 15 - October 20, 2014

The lake next to our house

My new house shoes :)

My birthday cake from last week HAHA

Well this week went a lot quicker than the past two let me tell ya! But here we go...

Cool Thing: This week on Friday our Zone got together for a family history fair thing where people could just walk into the church building and learn about family history and more about our church. The missionaries' job was to simply proselyte on the street to get people to walk in for just 5-10 minutes. Haha It was awesome and a lot of people were really interested.

Interesting character: Elder Albano started to talk with this guy who was walking down the street in the same direction as us, and asked him a few questions to break the ice. Questions like are you married, what do you do for work etc... The last question Elder asked was, "Do you drink chimarrão?" This is why it was interesting. The man proceeded to respond by saying, "No, I just smoke a lot of weed." Wow... we didn’t make any more conversation with him because it just got kinda weird...

Funny Things: Well the weed guy could certainly fit into this category, but I’ll put this guy I met (wow I am awful with names) at the fair thing. We were all sort of wrapping things up at the end and just talking when this guy walks up, looks at me and says, "well…are you gonna speak English with me?!" At this moment I just exclaimed, "Yes!" And preceded to give this guy a big ol’ hug and it was glorious! I didn’t even know the guy. But I found out he served his mission in Oregon a few months ago and it was awesome. Oh and I also found out that Calvin Thomas from Highland High School is in my mission so that’s pretty cool!

Weekly Difficulties: Elder Magalhães lost his phone on the omnibus... my bed kinda broke... and yeah that’s all!

Spiritual Experience: During church yesterday we were sitting in gospel principles with a family of investigators we have, and the lesson was about the roles within the family. I was just sitting there listening and I hadn’t felt this kind of love for my own family as I did in this moment. The instructor asked the son of the family, "when was the very last time you gave your mom a really great big hug, and kiss on the cheek?" He responded with, "Well, I don’t really know..." and this just made me feel really sad - but really happy knowing I have a really great, loving family at home. It also made me think about how big that hug and kiss will be from my mom and dad when I get home in.... 2 years HaHa. I love my Family!

I love you all so much! Till next week!

Elder Buck