Week 81 - January 25, 2016

...someone still likes to sing!!

We have had a great week, got some work done! So let me fill y’all in!

Monday: We went to a ton of houses that people wanted us to return to on our pday, so we walked "até o pó" and we ended up not teaching a single person... luckily we bought some quality things for our apartment and its looking pretty shnazzy now so... yeah.

Tuesday: Well we went out to a lunch appointment pretty far away and they talked to us about a niece they have who just recently got married. They said that they would refer them to us and then asked us to go with them to visit. The members are really coming around these days. It’s good to see the members get excited about the work! We also visited a woman who goes and preaches in other churches... we just try to help her the best we can. Later we visited a less active family that is in almost halfway reactivated (meaning two daughters are going now) so it is coming along. 

Wednesday: We went to Joinville for the entire day watched a worldwide missionary broadcast then missed our bus going home so we stayed in the Zone leaders house. They actually have an AC unit and it is the only one that exists in the entire mission (not including the staff at the mission home). I slept with it running. It was amazing. 

Thursday: We had something really exciting happen and it’s a secret :)

Friday: We had lunch out on the other side of the planet then we visited a few people and went home where I ended up feeling really sick. Elder Peterson got sick too not long after that so we ended up staying home for the night. It wasn’t pretty.

Saturday: We were both still sick so we decided to take that day off too.

Domingo: We went to church (recovered and well) and had our normal reunions and did some other visits and we talked with our recent reactivated member and he’s decided he is never going back to church because someone treated him badly at a service project or something. Also Jone's mom cut us off and doesn’t want us teaching her son anymore. It was just a crazy week …but it was good at the same time! Oh and I pet a random goat too!

That’s all! The church is true!!

Elder Buck

Week 80 - January 18, 2016

The district

Hey y'all!

So as for this week we didn’t have a whole lot of interesting things happen but we are working hard and trying to help people get back to church and get the members fired up about our mission plan! For some reason these days everyone is making appointments with us on our p days and we have been desperate for lessons so our p days are full of walking cleaning and barely getting what we need to around the house... Our scheduling is whack!

Tuesday we met with one of our recent investigators and he is pretty awesome. He said he would go to church and read the Book of Mormon so we’ve got some high hopes for this guy. He’s got a soft heart so its been easy talking and working with him.

Wednesday we found ourselves another less active to start teaching that hasn’t been to church in forever, and his wife actually is not a member of the church. We look forward to trying to help his family approximate themselves more to Christ!

Thursday we had to go to the other area because the other Elders had prepared 2 people to get baptized this week, and I had the privilege of doing the interviews. They were super ready! We took advantage that day and did a split with them, its good to learn from others!

Friday we had our district meeting and traveled and did some visits after.

Saturday we tried visiting a bunch of people with our ward mission leader, and let me tell ya, the guy really goes the extra mile with us! He’s great! We also visited with Jone and the young guy really wants to do what is right and he has a great heart! We are helping him the best we can.

Sunday we had a really special visit with a less active member who’s Husband is not a member and wants to investigate the church a little bit! Score! I can’t really tell the rest because I am out of time, but we had a great week!

Tchau!
Elder Buck

"Thank you to the members back at home for all of the notes and letters!"

"Thank you Aunt Viola for the yummy treats!"

Week 79 - January 11, 2016

Hey everyone!

Not much happened this week, but Ill try to get y’all filled in...

Monday: We talked with a Pastor here in our area and it was strange because he called us off the street to talk with him because he wanted to learn more. When we got into his house and started explaining what we believed he started telling us about everything he new about the Bible and ended up talking our ears off for like an hour. Every time I would try to say something, he would always cut me off...but we ended up leaving him with a Book of Mormon just to see if he would read it! 

Tuesday: We did some door knocking in kind of a sketchy area and found some cool people to teach! It was a super long day of contacting...

Wednesday: We found this kid knocking doors whose name is Joni; he’s 15 years old and has a bunch of tattoos and piercings. We talked with him about Christ and going to church and he agreed to go which was super surprising!

Thursday: We had a ton of appointments fall through and we just visited some members.

Friday: We had our first district meeting in three weeks and we had to travel.... It’s so draining some days! We talked about how we can help our investigators and people we teach keep commitments.

Saturday: It was the ward mission leader’s birthday and so he invited us over to eat and his ENTIRE FAMILY was there. There were a lot of people and we ate SO MUCH! Then later that day we went and did visits to less actives with him! The guy is a champ! 

Sunday: We went and picked up Joni to go to church and he was ready and he went! It was pouring rain that day, but he woke up on time, got himself ready and went to church. It was awesome to see him there. And Peterson and I gave a 25-minute training on our mission's plan to baptize more this year (because our mission is not a baptizing mission). We showed them how it would be completely possible to make their branch into a ward in less than a year, if they followed the plan. It was super cool to see everyone get kind of excited about helping us with referrals so we can strengthen the church here in São Francisco.

But that’s it for this week, Tchau!

Elder Buck

Week 78 - January 4, 2016

Sister Mission: COMPLETED

Hey y'all!

So this week was kind of lame because everyone went to the beach for New Years and the work slowed down significantly....Hahaha there is a lot of apostasy in this city!

As for the teaching, we are still focusing a lot on less actives and there has been a lot of drama in one of our favorite families, where the husband and wife are splitting up because the dad started to drink and use drugs again. Unfortunately this is a pretty common problem here... We found two boys our age who are both members of the church already and they committed to go to church on Sunday with us. Cool guys. Church attendance is kind of improving, but we are working hard with the leaders to get their visits done, and fulfill their callings.

Something exciting that happened this week was that we were able to spend New Years at the elders quorum president’s house to eat some BQ and some other really great food. AND I totally have been in the mission longer than the sister missionaries that already went home this past transfer. So yeah I totally accomplished a sister mission bahahaha.

Something interesting that happened is when we were walking back to our area of 3km radius of the chapel from the other side of the planet (after a lunch appointment), we saw a guy like crawl out of a ditch from the side of the road and he started crying and took off his shirt. We thought for sure this guy was probably on drugs. He approached us as we were walking and started telling us (in a really panicked voice) how a guy in his car cut in front of him on his motorcycle and he had fallen into the ditch on his motorcycle. So we looked into the ditch and there his motorcycle was with his helmet about 5 meters away. So we flagged a car down and some other people called the police and the ambulance to help the guy out. Me, Elder Peterson, and 4 other guys totally helped pull this guys bike out of the ditch, it was pretty nuts. He was fine and everything turned out okay though! And we also found and caught a bat that was inside of our house…oh my gosh it was so scary!

We walked a ton this week too, not a TON of Success, but we are counting our blessings hahaha! Boa semana pra vocês!

Tchau!
Elder Buck

Week 77 - December 28, 2016

After the Skype session with the family...

Our giant cheeseburger on Christmas Day!

Making sock "snowmen"...

Well there was a lot of build up for Christmas (as always) so the "crash” is always a little rough, but anyways...

Starting with investigators... our only really "solid" investigator quit on us and doesn’t want to keep trying to do the right things because it is too much for her at the moment or something. She runs away into the forest behind her house every time we stop by so...*snip!* As for others, we found some more people to start sharing the gospel with and they were pretty receptive and are willing to listen! So that’s exciting! As for the less active reactivation movement in the branch, it is going well! We had a whole less active family show up to church yesterday, of which one of the sons is an ex-convict...but the church is just a big hospital right?! 

As for exciting things that happened, I totally got to Skype the family and let me just say, I got the best dang family that ever existed! So that was fun, and I also got a couple new ties and socks from Santa Clause so that was neat too! We ordered a giant hamburger to commemorate for an equivalent of $14 dollars. It was so good!

We had a good week though and we are exercising our faith a lot and trying to make the best of the time that we have out here. Maybe the work isn’t the easiest all the time, but it sure is good when you see the gospel work magic in families and changes in the hearts of the people. The book is blue!

Tchau!

Elder Buck

Week 76 - December 21, 2015

Hey!

Well our week here in São Francisco was pretty wild but on the bright side we had a really good time and got some stuff done! 

Well starting out with investigators... There aren’t very many YET, but we have one named Patricia and she’s not progressing very much anymore so we are mostly working with her to help her to get an answer about the Book of Mormon. She is coming along slowly. We also have been teaching a family who looked pretty elect, but we came to find out that they do drugs and steal, and beat their kids and stuff so... Jesus is really going have to help us out with those guys. We actually found a couple this week that are AWESOME! They are from outside the state of Santa Catarina and just recently got married, don’t have addictions of any kind, and are looking for a church to attend. They are really good listeners and have a ton of potential to be really awesome members! 

As for exciting things that happened during the week, we had our Christmas Conference with three zones from our mission (Joinville Norte, Joinville Sul, and Itajaí). I had a really great time being able to play a little bit and rest my mind for a day haha. Elder Peterson (the rock), me, Elder Oldroyd, and Elder Berquist (the Sons of Thunder) or formerly known as the Singers of Solomon, sang a special musical number for the 3 zones. We killed it! I’m pretty sure I saw some sisters tear up or something, I don’t know! And I would like to give a big shout out to the families that sent me boxes and Christmas cards; it really made this Christmas conference a special one!

And for those of you out there that don’t believe in Christmas miracles, I’d like to tell what happened on Sunday. So Elder Peterson and I went to church yesterday (after thoughtfully bringing ALL of the plastic containers and plates that were in our house for the sisters to reclaim) and went to Priesthood opening exercises. As I was sitting there, along with the 4 other brothers and elder, I look to the back of the room and there walking in was Vilmar from Itajaí. The same Vilmar that my former companion (Elder Cordeiro) and I baptized about 10 months ago. I stood up and gave him a big ‘ol hug and asked him briefly why he was there and he simply drove almost 2 hours just to visit me. Since I had left his son Vitor had been baptized, they both have received the priesthood, and their family has been preparing to go to the temple. They have been super firm! It was one of the happiest days of my entire mission!

That’s all for this week, love you guys!

Tchau!

Elder Buck

Week 75 - December 14, 2015

Making paper snowflakes...

Hey y'all!

So I’m gonna be frank and say that not very much happened this week, but the week went well and that we have been working hard. It was sunny this week, so it’s been a lot easier to work and find new people to teach. This week there was a member who had passed away form breast cancer and it was very sad because she was someone who we would visit to help her family get back to church. We did have a family home evening with a family in the branch here along with a family that we have been teaching and it turned out super well! Unfortunately when Sunday came around for church, they didn’t go...So looks like we still got a lot of work to do! 

I figured I would take a moment to bear my testimony of this church and this work (because it is what I do every day, but also because I need to fill in some of this extra space I have hahaha). The Book of Mormon is true, and because of this truth, I know that Christ lives, that He is the Savior and Redeemer of all mankind. I know that Joseph Smith was called of God to be the prophet of the Restoration. Because the true church was restored, I know that there is a living prophet on the earth today, and that he receives revelation from God in our days. I know Thomas S. Monson is a prophet because I live his teachings and they have not led me astray! I know that as we live in accordance with Gods plan, he promises us joy. I know this because I feel this happiness that living the true gospel brings every single day. It is wonderful! 

Have a great week, Tchau!

Elder Buck

On the way to zone conference...