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

Week 14 - October 14, 2014

So this week was a little crazy (and slow might I add...) and the work didn’t really accelerate all that much, but things are all good! SO first sorry I didn’t email yesterday, Magalhães and I were in Florianópolis ALL DAY and we didn’t get a chance to email at all. It was a real bummer! So - no I haven’t died mom so you can stop worrying! :) 

So last Monday we were in Floripa again to pick up some stuff at the hospital for Elder Magalhães, and it turns out he has nothing wrong with his kidneys but instead has a problem with his spine. So once a week he will have to do physical therapy for a while. The next day we were in Floripa again because he needed to sign some stuff for the President and I needed to pick up a special something from the post office. Oh you know... just a flippin’ box that was sent for my Birthday! (And by the way I am sorry to those I did not respond to last week concerning my Birthday, I had like two minutes on the computer.... but I certainly felt the love! So thank you!) I had to carry this sucker for like a whole two miles from the post office, to the bus station, from the bus to my house. I swear mom put bricks or something inside... but I got the box on Tuesday and waited to open it until Sunday. This made my week feel like an eternity, but boy was it cool to open it on Sunday! Thank you so much for everything…it was awesome!!

Tuesday night we had ward activity and had planned this activity called "Gato ou Cachorro". haha It was super funny cause Elder Magalhães and elder Albano dressed up like a cat and a dog and the ward mission leader made the comparison between the two animals and the members. Sometimes like a cat we don’t really do anything or are just super lazy and sometimes we are like the dog that is over enthusiastic and sometimes gets preoccupied with other things. The last point was that we really cant make this comparison cause we aren’t cats or dogs, but children of God, and everyone on earth are brothers and sisters and this is what we ought to remember when we do missionary work. It was cool! 

Wednesday I don’t remember other than we now have another new investigator named Giovanni. We have only met with him once but he is 23 and has a true desire to follow the will of God and is really cool. He seems pretty interested and I hope he really starts to progress! 

Thursday we had Zone conference, which was good. We have two new zone leaders who are really awesome (and crazy) and it was good to see all of these different missionaries. 

Friday we came across this crazy drunk lady who wanted money to buy more alcohol and it was really weird but funny encounter. Definitely a story ill remember for a long while... 

Saturday we helped a member move their whole house all day and that was cool. It was really the first time we have done any service in a long while and it felt good. 

Sunday was nuts. It was fast Sunday so sacrament meeting was really awesome. The members here have really really strong testimonies. After we had lunch with the member we had helped move the day before and that was good. I was really surprised that everything was put away and organized before getting there. The people here are notorious for simply not finishing things... but it was good! That night we were invited to the elders quorum presidents house to celebrate my Birthday which was really really awesome they made me a cake and pizza ad sung for me and everything. I definitely felt the love! 

My love for the work grows more and more every day and things are going great. Definitely going through that refiners fire and boy is it hot!

Love you all,
Elder Buck 

Week 13 - October 6, 2014

Did I get  my package?? Why YES I did!!

Mom I’m really sorry but I only have forty-five minutes to write and read all of my messages. Then we have to head to Floripa (Florianópolis) on the bus for about half an hour walk half an hour to the mission home walk back to the bus station and take the bus back home for thirty minutes and try to make it home - all before 7:00!

So my week was really really good, but really really slow. Nothing big happened except for getting the package. Thank you so much! Thanks to that I was also able to make peanut butter milkshakes for everyone, which was cool! We had another lesson with one of our progressing investigators, Zelia, and we asked her to say the prayer again. It was so simple and so sincere and I really think she received her answer. She started to break down in tears and it was so cool. The Spirit is strong in Brasil!

Elder Abano has a new companion who I really like. He’s been in the field one transfer longer than me, he Brazilian and his name is Elder Coelho. Super cool guy!

On Tuesday one of the members from our ward was involved in a terrible motorbike accident and got was hurt very badly. He has seven broken bones and a collapsed lung. He’s doing aright, but it was one week before he was supposed to get married. That was a real bummer.

I was able to watch all of conference in Portuguese and it was really hard to understand, but there were some really great talks and there is always something we can be doing as members to help in this great work. We truly do have a living prophet who leads and guides this church. I love the gospel! 

Love To All!

Elder Buck

Week 12 - September 29, 2014

Primeira Transferência: COMPLETE

Hey!

This week was really really good!

First Biguaçu is really awesome and the members have finally come around to help us out a little bit! It’s really amazing how much the members here do. We finally have some investigators! It feels so good to finally be teaching real lessons more often! But lets start with some other things that happened this week.

Cool things: Zelia & Guilherme both showed up for ward activity night (which we hold every Tuesday night) and it was so so fun. The members truly love being able to get together and play games and meet new people. The second cool thing was that we went to go teach a lesson and these investigators straight up fed us some of the best soup I’ve had since I’ve been here. And we went to visit them again and they fed us AGAIN. And these are investigators, not members I might add. They are so cool, but have been really hard to get a hold of because of how much they work. But that could have made my whole week regardless! Oh and one more cool thing, I didn’t get transferred and neither did my comp, so we have another six weeks in Biguaçu together!

Interesting character: EDSON. Elder Magalhães and I were walking down the street to make contacts with random people and out of nowhere this worker starts talking to us from across the street in ENGLISH. DUDE! So we end up having this long conversation with this guy and turns out that he lived in the United States for 5 years, served in the AIR FORCE, and had to move back cause of his drinking problem. He told us that he is SO desperate to change his life and try to make it back to the states, so we gave him our number, he put it in his weekly planner and we told when and where we hold sacrament meeting. He put the address down and everything and when Sunday came around... he didn’t make it. He had to watch his daughter and couldn’t leave the house. I was such a bummer but he is such a cool guy. I really hope we can do some work with this guy because he is so awesome.

Funny Story: Elder Magalhães bought a flippin’ Taser, and now threatens to use it all the time…but the real story is that one of the days this week he was playing with it and after using it, he touched the end and shocked himself. I died! Hilarious.

Weekly Difficulty(s): Emailing flippin’ pictures is THE WORST! And I didn’t get to send letters out either so that was the bummer of the week.

Spiritual experience: Well, I think the Lord has finally used me for the purpose I’m out here for! We were teaching one of our investigators named Cris and she has been living with her boyfriend for twenty years, has an 18-year-old daughter, and is 41 years old. We taught the law of Chastity and honestly I wasn’t really thinking that the lesson would go all that well because we had only spoken with her once before this visit (and talking about Chastity can get a little weird). But during the lesson Elder Magalhães taught most of it but asked me to read a part of one of the pamphlets we have in Português. Yeah…all right…cool! So I read the pamphlet without a flaw and afterward Cris said, “Wow you read better than you can speak.” I honestly am so bad at reading anything in Português but my mind was clearer than it had ever been before. And Elder Magelhães, after talking a bit about what we have to do to be clean, asked me to talk a little about the importance of all of this. Honestly I can’t really remember all that I said but I do know that I remembered a really random quote from "Our search for Happiness" about chastity, translated it into Português, and did not have any doubt in my mind that what I had just said was perfectly delivered in Português. But for the rest of the day after that I was pulling random words from who knows where and then very next day I was back to speaking the same, really bad Português I was the day before that lesson. It was really weird but so cool.

Missionary work truly is the work of the Lord!

Eu amo vocês!

Elder Buck

Week 11 - September 22, 2014

Sorry this letter is Probably going to be pretty short but hopefully it’ll do the job in comparison to last week haha. The past two weeks have really been a blur and I realized that missionary work is SO hard! Sorry about the missing letter from last week, I really meant to send one! The past two weeks have moved really really fast.

Monday: Elder Magalhães and I went to the hospital to get his kidneys checked out and we go back today to see the results. We met with the doctor and holy cow; this lady was speaking a different language or something because she was talking so fast. The fastest I think I’ve ever heard anyone speak Português. It was NUTS.

Tuesday: Every Tuesday night we have ward activity with the members to play Pingy pongy, games, etc. and we had 2 investigators show up! It was so cool that someone finally stuck with their commitment! One of our investigators is this 14-year-old boy named Guilherme and he is so good at futebol. The people here are nuts about soccer. And on top of that he’s really really good at ping pong. STUD. I’m really hoping he gets baptized because this kid is awesome.

Wednesday: I got three letters from my family and Rachel Riffey! Thank you very much I love you all! #3lettersweg

Thursday: We had a district meeting with our zone leaders and I actually understood stuff! Yay! It feels good when you can actually say something in response to what you heard in a language that’s not your own haha :)

Friday: We visited a less-active member in our ward and he claimed to be studying English for about 14 years by himself and when he attempted to speak in English to me, it sounded like Russian. It is so awkward when you can’t understand your own language...haha especially when he tries telling a joke and you don’t laugh because you don’t understand. And then him telling the same joke in Português and you laugh like you got the joke but you really didn’t because it was in Português...Good times! Haha It was so weird!

Saturday/Sunday: ......

But a cool experience that happened last week that I wanted to write about was about one of our investigators named Zelia. We showed up to her house, sat down, and before we could really say anything she described how she felt every time we stopped by. She is so cool. She said she can’t really explain why, but every time we come by she is always so awake and happy. She says she works a lot and doesn’t sleep very much but every time we stop by she feels a sense of peace and happiness that comes from nowhere. And how she feels when we leave is like something left with us. All we’ve really taught about is the Restoration and the Plan of Salvation. She also described the felling of wanting to change when we leave! Hurrah! And on top of that, she has told all of her friends at work about the feeling she gets when we are around because she wants them to feel the same peace she feels. It made my entire week! Her 10-year-old son is also sitting in on all of the discussions and at the end he gave the sweetest prayer and I swear the Spirit was tangible and he started crying after! It was so so so awesome. Experiences like these make the walking all day, getting windows shut in your face all worth it :)

That’s all I got for this week, Thanks for all the prayers and love, amo vocês!

Elder Buck

Week 10 - September 15, 2014

Bailey's computer erased his big email this week. So here are some pictures and a short message he was able to send to his dad.

The work...Frustrating but we have a couple investigators that are really progressing. People think that all of Brasil is a place where you get most contacts and baptisms, but it is really so different where I am right now. Florianópolis is another planet in comparison to the other missions in this country. People like to talk about religion here but nobody progresses. It's tough. Then put on top of that the learning of a new language and that makes the process even harder. We did finally get the gas working in our apartment TODAY! This is super awesome because now we can cook whatever.

Well my computer is being so lame and it erased my whole email :( I'm trying to send pictures and stuff too! I want to cry, and I only have five minutes because my companion has to go to hospital for something. I won't be able to try later because it is like a thirty-minute walk from our house to the computers I'm sorry I have to go. Thank you for your prayers, I can feel them. :) Glad everything is going all right. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!

Love You!

Elder Buck

The book is blue! 

Our Zone 

Chimarrão

Ward Building

 I don't know....