Week 51 - June 29, 2015

Hello there!

Cool Thing: We are starting our Portuguese classes this Tuesday for the Haitians so that’s cool stuff!

Weekly Triumph: We have spent most of our time here just trying to reactivate members and it is awesome to see the ward growing and filling up with people these past few weeks!

Weekly Difficulty: Our house got so filthy this week and so we cleaned for like a whole 3 hours and now it is spotless...

Interesting Character: The guy we met... We talked to this guy who is a part of another church where their day of rest is on Saturday. He taught us for like 30 minutes why we shouldn’t worship on Sundays.

Spiritual Experience: Bearing my testimony for this man.

Scripture: Alma 17

Tchau! (Sorry my week was not very exciting!)

Elder Buck

The things you find in Brasil...

Week 50 - June 22, 2015

A butterfly...

Cool Thing: Stake conference was this week and President gave a fantastic talk on the Book of Mormon. I still know he is a man called of God. Also, we are about to start teaching Portuguese to the Haitians in our area so that will be interesting! And one of the Haitians we have been teaching, read and prayed about the Book of Mormon and he knows its true!

Funny Thing: We had lunch with one of the members this week and he had a blast telling me that 9/11 was not a terrorist attack, but the government. I just told him to pray about it and God would give him an answer! Hahaha

Weekly Triumph: A member gave a referral this week!

Weekly difficulty: We waked on the dirt roads like the entire week.

Spiritual experience: We walked halfway across the universe to get to the house of the referral that one of the members gave and when we got there we shared a message about the Book of Mormon. She later explained that she has everything she could ever want in her life, family, work, house, etc., but she feels empty inside. We left her a promise that if she reads the Book of Mormon, the empty feeling would go away, and we bore such a strong testimony for her and it was way cool!

Scripture: Romans 8:28

Have a great week! Tchau!

Elder Buck

How we dress inside of our house these days...

Week 49 - June 15, 2015

Cool thing: The ward had Festa Junina this week and it was pretty wacky hahaha. Brasil has some pretty weird holidays!

Funny thing: There is a member in our ward who always says he will help us teach people and said we need to call him, but every time we call him, he always has an excuse and this week we called him and his phone was disconnected... Don’t be like this member bahaha.

Interesting Character: Darci (dar-cEE) So we did a contact with this guy on the street and he told us a bunch of stories about the missionaries when he was a little boy. We returned to his house this week and got talking to him and turns out he was a pastor and he knows the Bible really well...Yeah he was just full of interesting questions and turns out he wasn’t looking to learn more about our church... But its good to exercise the testimony a little bit!

Weekly difficulty: The work is super slow right about now and it’s been hard getting into some houses! And the area is huge!

Weekly triumph: I made some freaking awesome cookies today!

Spiritual Experience: I’ve found that I’ve been exercising my patience in ways that I never knew possible and it is helping to reactivate a lot of members and its super cool! It was awesome this week to see a lot of less active members show up to church for the first time in a very long time :)

Scripture: Ether 12:4 

Have a great week y’all! Tchau!

Elder Buck

 We had almost the entire zone in our house - minus 6 elders and 2 sisters! haha

Week 48 - June 8, 2015

#willkeepselfiesalive

Cool Thing: We are officially teaching some Haitians so that’s cool! They are hard to understand but are reading the Book of Mormon we gave them in French! I got super pumped to do street contacts this week and it worked out because we have a bunch of people lined up to teach here soon!

Funny Thing: I started teaching English for the whole district (3 elders and 2 sisters). It’s been a good time and thanks to Franklin South Spalding I’ve been able to explain almost everything…but seriously English is a really weird language! :)

Interesting Character: Old Guy on Bike. So elder and I sat down to look at our map to find a road and this old guy with his bike rolled up and started talking with me. I quickly realized that he had some kind of disability like maybe autism, so I made room for him to sit next to me on the bench we were sitting on. He just started talking about God and how God talks with him and stuff and so I just started talking about his family. He told me that nobody visits him and how he missed his dad and stuff. I didn’t understand a lot of what he said but I just listened. He was super awesome! I talked with him for like 30 minutes because one of our appointments fell through. The mission has changed me so much!

Weekly Triumph: One of the sisters made special planners for all of the elders in our district this week that was cool!

Weekly Difficulty: I did a contact with these two teenage girls who were seated at a bus stop and I stuck out my hand to be polite and introduce myself and they kind of just looked at my hand with disgust and wouldn’t shake it. Wow. That made my blood pressure go up a little bit! Heh.

Spiritual Experience: I did a contact with this guy on the street yesterday and went to shake his hand and he did the same exact thing as the two girls I mentioned, but then he said "speak". So I induced myself and Dos Anjos and he started saying a bunch of stuff about how he follows God and not a church and he said if we had a message (invitation to go to church) we could leave it with him. So instead of giving him an invite to church I took out the Book of Mormon and left a message with him in Alma 38. I talked about a person who was truly good and without guile. Then I was able to bear one of the most powerful testimonies I have ever born in my life and I KNOW that he felt the Spirit cause I felt it! It was awesome!

Scripture: Alma 38

But that’s all for this week! Tchau!

Elder Bailey Buck

Brasil knows how to make pastries

Week 47 - June 1, 2015

The picture after Raul’s Baptism (Tyrone in the backround)

Spiritual Experience: Raul’s baptism went perfectly and I love being able to see how happy a person is after being baptized. The change is always super drastic and super awesome! Raul is a champ!

Weekly Difficulty: We had to clean the baptismal font and the water heater wasn’t working so we baptized Raul in cold water YEESH.

Funny Thing: So one of the Elders in our house (one of the Zone Leaders) did a split with one of the other new Elders in the Zone who got here like 4 weeks ago from his mission in Utah and that night, (Elder Mueller is his name) Elder Mueller got locked in one of the bathrooms in our house and we could not open the door in any way. So we called President that night and he told us to do what we need to do in order to get him out, with the least amount of damage being done to the door. The moment we hung up Elder De Jesus (the Zone leader) broke down the door and the door is just a mess now. But it was funny because we were trying to open it with knives, screwdrivers, everything for like 30 minutes bahaha. So yeah...

 The Door.

Cool Thing: Dos Anjos and I spent a whole day in another area and zone because Dos Anjos had a doctors appointment! We were in Blumenau again.

Weekly Triumph: We had a baptism this week! Raul is official now!

Love you guys!
Elder Buck