Week 38 - March 30, 2015

Hey There friends and family!

Cool thing: We had a baptism this week so that was super cool!

Interesting Character: PETER. So a member brought an investigator from Haiti to church, but turns out he was already baptized in our church when he lived in São Paulo. hahaha. Good kid.

Funny Thing: Watching my companion exercise in the morning is a treat! It is one of his transfer goals to exercise more. bahahaha  - it's funny.

Weekly Triumph: So we went to Darlen and Carlos' house this week and she told us she has good news and bad news... so the bad news was that we won’t be able to teach her during the week anymore, and the good news is that she is working during the week so she can get Sundays off to go to church! Fasting and prayer work miracles people! Oh, and Vilmar (our other investigator who we had planned to get baptized this week) had a problem with coffee. We told him he wouldn’t be able to get baptized if he still drinks it and we thought we lost a baptism for a couple weeks. The story turns out that the day of his baptismal interview he showed up super sick. And we asked him what was up and he said he stopped drinking coffee. Que alegria! And he passed the interview. He told us why he quit drinking coffee and he said when he poured himself a cup, the glass mug blew up.... It was truly a very strong response from God!

Weekly Difficulty: We had 2 baptisms planned this week with 2 of our investigators. Vilmar (dad) and Vitor (11 year old son) When we got to the Baptism no one had heated the water and it was super cold. The bigger problem though was that after we had baptized Vilmar, Elder Cordeiro went to Baptize Vitor. It turns out that Vitor has a huge fear of being submerged in water. So we didn’t baptize him this week but are working with him to build up the courage to be baptized in a few weeks by his father.

Spiritual Experience: The Baptism of Vilmar was absolutely incredible. He is a different man!

Weekly Scripture: Alma 34

Love you all!!!!

Elder Buck

Week 37 - March 23, 2015

Cool thing: We had 18 non-members who showed up to church yesterday and it was awesome.

Weekly Triumph: we found a family to teach this week and they are so elect! Like they are getting married and are looking for the truth!

Weekly difficulty.... So me and Elder were walking to an appointment we had with Carlos and Darlen and one of the members stopped us and told us to tell Carlos and his family to go to the ward dance. We were all like yeah! So we told Carlos and Darlen about the dance at the end of our lesson and about the law of chastity and stuff and went home. We had marked the next day to teach their daughters with Carlos and when we showed up, Carlos pulled up behind us on his scooter and the moment he got off his scooter I knew something was wrong. We went inside and he started to tell us about his work and stuff and then we asked him about the dance.... He mentioned that Darlen went and did not like it at all because of the music and dancing that was happening there. She actually ended up grabbing all of her children and leaving the dance because the played a song called "Lagradinha" and other bad music. Additionally, a lot of the members were actually doing the dance that went along with the song... Que vergonha. So we marked to come back to his house when Darlen was actually there so that we could talk with her. We returned and before we could even sit down, she destroyed us. She burned the church and us so bad. It was so embarrassing. But after she said all of this she asked us what we had to say about it all and the only thing I could think of was to say a prayer. So I said, "can we start with a prayer?" and she just kind of turned calm and we were able to explain that even though the members don’t always follow the commandments, that doesn’t mean that the church isn’t true. Luckily for us she had a strong enough testimony to still go to church this Sunday with her family. It was painful. Especially when she said, "You know it’s so hard when you look for a church your entire life and when you actually find the only true church something like this happens." Keep the dances rated G PLEASE.

Anyways..........

Scripture of the Week: Exodus 32 - this is how I felt.

Spiritual Experience: Being able to be in tune with the Spirit enough to know exactly what to say to someone with so much confusion and anger.

Besides the little hiccup (hahaha) it was a great week and I’m still continuing to learn a lot!

Love you all!
Elder Buck

"The grind..."

Week 36 - March 16, 2015

Selfie of the week...

DIA 251… HaHaHa I counted yesterday!

Cool thing: So yeah things are going super duper over here. We have six baptisms marked for this month and the next month coming up - so sweet! The family we had planned to get baptized at the end of the month will have to wait until April to get baptized because of work issues and stuff. It is really tough for them right now. BUT we have been teaching this guy and his son and they are planning on getting baptized on that date instead! I also get to stay in this area for another transfer with my same comp!

Funny thing: We have had two elders in our house who are going home this Tuesday and every morning for the past week one of them (Elder Galvão) would yell "EU VOU EMBORA!!!!!!" When my comp and I were talking to our neighbors (who happen to be members) about something else one day, she said that every morning at about 6:30 in the morning, she has been waking up to Elder Galvão yelling that he would be leaving.... Bahahah I laughed!

Me and Elder Galvão

Weekly triumph: I killed two cockroaches two nights ago like a boss.

Weekly difficulty: The cockroaches just disappeared after I killed them.... AND you know that moment that every missionary never wants to happen to them when the Bishop comes up to you and your companion before the meeting starts and says, “can you two give 10 minute talks today?" Then there is that moment where you just cant say no and so you say yes? So I gave a talk this past Sunday that turned out to be fine but it is kind of stressful when the only resources you have are the book of Mormon and the Bible... 

Spiritual Experience: After my talk I sat down and asked my companion if everything made sense and he said yeah it was really good, you corrected yourself on words I’ve never heard you correct yourself on. The thing is I don’t remember correcting myself at all.... So I think there might have been some divine intervention going on during my talk.

Interesting News: It has been pretty wacky over here because everyone is trying to impeach the President! The area president over Brasil sent out a letter to our mission president saying that yesterday we are not allowed to leave our houses to work at all just go to church and go home.... so yesterday we didn’t do anything! It was awesome! I read Jesus the Christ like the whole day. 

Scripture of the Week: All of them! 

Tchau!
Boa semana, 
Elder Buck

Oh Elder Cordeiro...

Week 35 - March 9, 2015

Diligently Studying...

Me and Beecroft

Hey there!

Just another normal week here in Brasil! Not too many new things...Lets see...

Cool thing: In Gospel Principles class our investigator Darlen told us about something that happened to her at work, and a time she did missionary work. She explained how she was at work and was reading the Gospel Principles book at lunch and a co-worker asked her what she was reading. Darlen told her about the book and stuff and afterwards the co-worker asked her to read about the fall of Adam and eve, so she flipped to the page that talks about it and started to read. Afterward the co-worker explained that the book had explained so clearly something she had a question about and wanted to know more. The funny part is that Darlen didn’t know if she was allowed give the number of the missionaries to her co-worker or not. HAHA So, that was cool!

Funny Thing: There is a little Asian boy who is maybe 2 or 3 years old and he was running up and down the stairs in the front of the chapel, and as he was running down the 2 stairs, he tripped and fell flat on his face during the hymn. The conductor and the bishopric just lost it and started laughing hysterically. The little boy was fine; he kind of just jumped up and started running around again! hahaha

Weekly triumph: Someone had an American football last week so we played some 2-hand touch on a sand field. BOOYAH.

Weekly Difficulty: My glasses broke.

Spiritual Experience: We always have a good experience with our investigators Carlos and Darlen But when I walked in the house on Friday night and saw the dishes done and the floor swept, boy did my heart rejoice!

Scripture: Well I really liked singing Hymn 270 in English this entire week hahaha It’s my new favorite hymn!

Welp that’s all for now! Till next week! Tchau!

Elder Buck

There's dad! Oh wait...

Week 34 - March 2, 2015

This week was the busiest week ever. And we got some stuff done!

Cool thing(s): We had a zone conference with President and it was really really good. Every time he speaks I just get the feeling that he truly is called of God, and I respect him so much for it. Also, we had the dedication of the new chapel here in São Vicente. It is beautiful! There was a ton of people there too! There were less actives, actives, investigators, etc...It was super duper cool! And we worked really hard the entire week inviting people on the street to enter to check it out and stuff so seeing that the work we did actually paid off, was a really good thing!

Weekly triumph: MY FIRST BAPTISM OF MY ENTIRE MISSION. We finally baptized Ester! After all the fasting, and praying and persistence, we finally got a baptism. She wanted Elder Burton (my last companion) to come baptize her and the President allowed him to do it! We were able to confirm her and everything on Sunday, it was super cool.

Weekly difficulty: I left by bag in a cleaning closet in the new chapel and when I went to pick it up, I had rested it on one of the soap bag things that go in the bathroom, so it got covered in soap. That was awful.

Interesting Character: I don’t remember his name but the night of the dedication of the new chapel, there was this guy who walked up to us when we were greeting people who were walking in, and asked if there was a place inside where he could sit down. Of course we said yes and sat next to him during the whole dedication ceremony thing. At the end of the first prayer he stood up and yelled, "amen. Amen! AMEN!" And everyone looked and it was kind of funny hahaha. And after the special musical number he started clapping and stuff it was weird. Oh!!!...and then the Stake President welcomed all of the visitors and people and then this guy yelled "OBRIGADO!" It was interesting but I’m glad he came!

Spiritual Experience: We went to the house of Carlos and Darlen and taught them the restoration again. We started the lesson and before we could even really finish the part about the families being blessed by the Gospel part Darlen cut us off and said, "So I went to the pastor of my church and told him I was taking the missionary lessons and stuff. But the thing is when I started talking about you guys he got all weird and started saying a bunch of stuff about how you guys don’t believe in the Holy Ghost and the commandments, but I know you guys believe in these things because it seems like its all you talk about! And I told him that he needs to go home and do his research about different churches before he started saying bad stuff about them." And a problem she was having before was making the switch from her church to ours. And so after we asked her again if she and Carlos would be baptized on the 28 of March (because of work difficulties) and they said without hesitating "of course!" And they had both received an answer to their prayers if the church was true or not the moment they went. I thought that was cool! And also during the dedication I definitely felt the Lord accepting His house. It was so cool!

Welp, that’s all for now!

Elder Buck