Week 29 - January 26, 2015

Oi!!

It was a fantastic and busy week so I will try to sum it up the best I can with the time I have!

Cool Thing: So the other Elders we are living with had a Baptism this week which was super cool! They baptized a 14-year-old kid named Artur. It is so awesome to see these young guys accepting the gospel!

Interesting Character: GRACIELA. So we were walking down the street this week and a lady walking behind us called for us and we talked with her. We found out she is like 50 from Uruguay, works for a traveling Circus (which just so happens to be in Itajaí), and she’s a member. We totally got her a ride to church this Sunday and everything it was cool. She is too old now but she used to be a trapeze artist...so cool! And her mom used to work with three different elephants. Yeah so that was awesome!

Weekly Difficulty: Something smells like it died in our house.

Spiritual Experience: So a big problem in our ward is how "difficult" it is to go to church on Sundays because the chapel is so far away. There are a lot of people who have just simply stopped going because of it. We have a chapel that has been built a lot closer to where everyone lives and the thing is that everyone will begin going to church again when this other chapel opens up. So what the bishop decided to do (he’s a really cool guy) is to do a ward fast for the chapel to open, or get approved. We fasted on Saturday to Sunday and during church he totally announced that the church will be opening in a few weeks. THE CHURCH IS TRUE Y’ALL! Oh and another experience this week was that our oven has had a lot of problems lighting and stuff lately. Elder Burton made banana bread this week and tried to light the oven and it didn’t work...I then proceeded to say, "Elder, did you even pray?" And at that moment we both said personal prayers asking that the stove work and the first time he tried after the prayer, it lit. I know I got chills too! And as fake as that story sounds, its totally true hahaha! God really does answer prayers!

Well that’s it for this week, love you all!

Elder Buck

Week 28 - January 19, 2015

 The only thing that gets me through this heat...tereré!

morro da cruz, hoje de manhã!

Hello!

Cool Thing: We had Interviews with the president this week and every time I meet with him I always get a very reassuring feeling that he is indeed a man called of God. I love my mission President! He told me some cool stuff.

Interesting Character: Old Lady... Me and Elder were walking down the street and this old lady was sitting out on her balcony and reading her Bible and as we walked by she just said, "Jesus is awesome!" We stopped and she proceeded to tell us a bunch of stuff about Jesus. She was really crazy but she is so right! Jesus IS awesome!

Funny thing: I got nothing for this week!

Spiritual Experience: We gave a ton of priesthood blessings this week and they were super powerful! (Sorry I’m not going into detail I have like two seconds to write this...)

Scripture of the week: 1 Nephi 21: 14-16. We shared this scripture with a lot of people this week and I love it!

Hope y’all have a good week!

Elder Buck

Week 27 - January 12, 2015

 Me and Elder Coelho....

 Light pants in the summer is a NO people...

Oi!

So it was a fantastic week with a ton of cool stuff that happened, I try to explain it the best I can...

Cool things: We have 2 Investigators that are progressing so fast. Rosinha: She is a middle-aged lady with super bad depression and every time we teach her she is laying down on her bed. She had prayed about the Book of Mormon and she knows it is true! We marked a date to get her baptized and she said she would try! She’s really awesome, but the only problem is she never leaves her house much less her room. We gave her a priesthood blessing and met with her again this week and she was up about walking around and it was the first time I had every seen her walking, or sitting up while we taught to her. Wow the church is true! The other is Francinaldo: He is a twenty five year old guy who we have been teaching and he also has a testimony of the Book of Mormon. He knows it is true! And he’s part of the spiritual experience this week:)

Interesting character: JACKSON: We taught this guy and his girlfriend a little about the restoration and how the gospel blesses families. At first he was super skeptical of the LDS religion and began kind of trying to break us apart... we answered all of his questions, started with a prayer, taught about families and stuff and by the end, he was completely different. He is super intelligent and stuff but I think he realized that the internet is not the most reliable source for information, but the spirit is! :) We will be teaching him again this week.

Funny thing: We gave a blessing to a baby this week because she was sick, and during the blessing she grabbed my tie and put it in her mouth. It was really cute!

Weekly difficulty: The drunken people just love the missionaries.... Also, we left the window open for a whole day while it was raining and Elder Burton’s bed got drenched and our room was a mess.

Spiritual Experience: We had a lesson with our investigator on Saturday and he said he would love to go to church with us. We told him what time the bus would come around to pick up all members (the chapel next to where we work still hasn’t opened so we meet at a different chapel far away) and told him that we could stop by his house in the morning and walk with him to the bus stop place. We went to his house in the morning, knocked on his door and nothing.... we waited like five to ten minutes outside his house and knocked again.... nothing. Dang. So we walked to the stop and waited another 10 minutes before the bus came. The bus rolled up and we all got in. As we sat down I look up and Francinaldo is in front of my face and just says," good morning ;)" he sat down and he went to church with us and it was seriously one of the best sacrament meetings I had ever been to. It was awesome. 

Scripture of the week: Isaiah 53: 3-5 ....My favorite "Christ scripture" :) Oh and last week was Luke 2:52…

Welp, that’s pretty much it for this week, Love you all! Tchau!

Elder Buck

Some time of "pie in the face" activity for Zone Conference...

Our Zone...

Week 26 - January 5, 2015

What did I get for New Years? America.

Welp folks, It’s officially been 6 months. That’s weird! But here we go with the week....

Cool thing: New Years Eve! We got to spend time with our bishop and eat a lot of food and stuff it was fantastic. And new years day, we weren’t allowed to go outside so we had our own barbeque and it was awesome. We cook meat so good! Matt would be so proud! (Don’t leave raw meat in the trash can, it stinks really bad after a couple of days...) But on top of that, there were fireworks going off the ENTIRE NIGHT and it was really annoying but cool! I missed home a lot on that day!

Funny thing: Elder Burton and I were on the public bus going to the center for a district meeting and I was sitting down and for some reason he was standing up. He was holding on to one of the railings above his head and he said he kind of zoned out for a little bit, but he totally did a “George of the Jungle” swing on the bus when a sharp turn was made. So if y’all can imagine a little missionary guy a little shorter than me swinging into the bus doors in the moment a sharp turn was made, you would know that it looked really hilarious and really embarrassing. It was a good laugh I had!

Weekly difficulty: Elder Burton and I were teaching a lesson outside this old lady’s house and in the middle of me talking about how Jesus suffered for our sins and through Him we can return back to the presence of our Heavenly Father, Her little Chihuahua decided to pee on my shoe.... and my pants.... and my sock.... I wanted to kick that dog so bad. But regardless of the dog peeing on me the Spirit still testified of the truth! And it rained really hard that night and because we don’t have umbrellas Elder Burton and I got absolutely drenched. We decided to jump in some giant puddles and I jumped in one and totally wrecked my ankle...

Scripture: Luke 2:42... With the whole New Years thing, we should be making our goals, but this scripture is a good guide to know what kind of goals. It’s a good one!

Spiritual Experience: So I forgot to tell about this last week, but I helped with my first confirmation in the mission! Its a weird story but there was a lady who Elder Burton and his other companion baptized, but didn’t get confirmed until 2 weeks after I showed up here so that was cool. Elder Burton did the blessing, but it was in front of a lot of people because 2 wards from this stake had to do sacrament together, but it was super cool experience! We have also had some really great lessons with some very cool people this week so that was awesome as well!

Hope you all have a great week! Tchau

Elder Buck

The BQ we did in our house...

What we use to mop the house...