Week 53 - July 13, 2015

The District...

Cool Thing: It is transfer week so looks like I’m getting a new companion tomorrow!!

Interesting Character: NICOLAS...Nicolas is the 3 year old son of one of the less actives in this ward and he has a really bad allergy to mayonnaise, but he LOVES mayonnaise! He like eats it plain, and when he is finished, his mouth gets all red and stuff. But I asked myself, "Why do his parents let him eat it?" I found out real soon when they tried taking it away and he threw THE BIGGEST FIT. It was funny. He also likes the skin of roasted chicken. Hahah He’s crazy!

Funny Thing: I made like 3 pizza cookies this week and they were delicious and now everyone wants me to make one for FHE and stuff! Thanks Skylar!

Pazookie!!

Weekly Triumph: We found a long lost member this week and we invited him to come to church and he CAME. He’s been going to other churches for the past few years and just hasn’t felt anything for a long time. We invited him to church again and he said it felt good to be singing normal hymns and to feel welcome somewhere! That was cool!  I will also be getting a new companion from Bahia. I think it will be a good change for me cause this Elder is really calm. Hahaha It will be a dramatic change. I am still in a district with 6 Brazilians and 1 American (me) so that’s fun!

Weekly Difficulty: Finding people to teach. This week was super slow because of transfers and doctor appointments and Elder dos Anjos saying goodbye to the members, but we did return to a lot of contact’s houses. It turns out that only one family really wants to hear what we have to say.

Saying goodbye to Elder dos Anjos...

Spiritual Experience: This week I had another confirmation that Joseph Smith really was a prophet called of God. When we were giving the first lesson for one of our investigators, I don’t know what our investigator felt, but what I do know is how I felt when giving my testimony. The church is true!

Scripture: Omni 1:26 my new favorite scripture!

Everyone have a great week! Tchau!

Elder Buck

Week 52 - July 6, 2015

***ONE YEAR TODAY!***

Thank you all for your love and support!

Hellooo friends and family!

Cool Thing: Elder dos Anjos and I had the opportunity to participate in the CTR class this Sunday and bear our testimonies and draw pictures and stuff this week! Those little children are so cool! And one of their names is Néfi! 

Funny Thing: We taught an older lady this week from a different church and she was super pumped when it came to saying prayers! We offered the first prayer and asked her if she would like to say the closing prayer. Before she started, she told us to throw our hands in the air to praise God and stuff and she said a super colorful prayer....hahaha

Weekly Triumph: one of our other investigators, Anitta, read the Book of Mormon and thought it was cool! She is golden!

Weekly Difficulty: I nearly freeze to death every night because it is so flipping cold. (The cold and I don’t do well together...) 

Interesting Characters: IRLAN & RITA... So Elder dos Anjos and I were waiting for our bus at the terminal to go home and there was a guy there who started a "conversation" with us (he had been drinking). Later on in the discussion we found out that he was actually baptized in our church 3 years ago. The bus arrived and we hopped on and I continued talking with him. Elder dos Anjos sat down next to this lady and she was not anyone dos Anjos or I knew.... She started talking with dos Anjos while I was talking to Irlan and later we came to find out that she was actually baptized in our church and was inactive too. It was kind of weird situation, but looks like we have 2 more people to visit!

Spiritual Experience: When dos Anjos and I got to participate with the little ones in the CTR class, I felt such a peace and sweet spirit radiating form those little kids. The teacher asked them if they would want to serve a missions like us and they all said yes with so much enthusiasm and I seriously wanted to cry. It was so awesome to see that they all had testimonies at such a young age! That made my whole week!

Scripture: Psalms 118: 24

That’s all for now! ‘till next week! Tchau!

Elder Buck 

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