Feb 24th, 2014

Family!

 

Its good to hear that you guys are busy with the house. I am sure someone will buy it super fast. Thats way exciting!

 

This week was super busy and super rushed. My companion went to the hospital for an upset stomach. haha He ordered to have an endoscopy done. Its a good thing he did because he has these two pockets in his esophagus that collect food every time he eats. This creates bacteria and it is causing something wrong in the stomach. If he doesn't treat this infection soon, he will have stomach cancer..... So it is good we spent a few days in the hospital. We also saw a few miracles just from spending time in the hospital. We were entering and this man came running across the street calling us. He was on the verge of crying. And kept repeating I cant believe it! He and his wife moved to Caldas Novas a few weeks ago and couldn't find a church. So they had been having church in their house just the two of them. He was so happy to find us. The next day we went to their house with the branch president and we pulled up and they already opened their front door and came running up to us. It was pretty funny. They were so happy that they found us. They are an older couple from Sao Paulo and served a mission together a few years ago in reactivation. They will be a great help to all of us.

 

This type of thing happened a lot this week. It was pretty cool! I have been trying to leave a card (that has a picture of Christ and the name of the church and a map and hours on it) in all places for people to see that the church is back again.

 

 another funny story. There is this family in the ward with a son that is having some obedience issues. He is also robbing and doing other bad stuff. They already have him on a tight chain, but things still aren't going good. The dad was talking to me and was said that he really doesn't know what to do more. He has tried everything from talking nice to giving him the belt. Then I thought to myself `what would my dad do?` I told him that he needs to take everything away from him because he has fancy clothes, expensive watches, gold bracelets, expensive shoes, everything fancy. I told him that my dad would just take everything I had and pick me up and drop me off to every class if I did this... hahaha So today his son came home to an empty room. no clothes, no shoes, no nothing. haha he took his deodorant, hair gel, EVERYTHING! hahahahahahaha. He gave his son some old jean shorts and a polo for school with some old stinky shoes. hahahahahaha. And sure enough the dad walked in the school to his first class today. hahaha. I am so glad I did not have to go through this.

 

This week was fairly good. besides the hospital. We found a lot of new people to teach and are getting to know the members pretty good. It is weird being so far from everything, but one day there will be a strong ward here and not just 20 people in the school house.

 

This week I finally gave my first talk in sacrament meeting. I talked about how we are a covenant people. I told the story of the Lamanites making the covenant to never kill again. it was pretty good. i thought. hahaha

 

Well this keyboard is driving me crazy so I cant write a whole lot more. Hope all goes well with the trip this week and selling the house. send me lots of pictures when your hands heal and get some rest! hahaha love you all!

 

elder wild

 

this is the picture of the couple we found at the hospital, and my companion crossing the street after 10 minutes of convincing him that he will just have to get wet. hahahhahaha

Feb 17th, 2014

Family!

This week was crazy fast flew by like it was only one day. We had our pday on Monday. Tuesday we got a call that we need to get to the bus station immediately, we picked up some tickets to travel the next morning to Uberlandia. (a city super long, another state) The next morning we did our normal routine, then ate lunch, then had a 7 hour bus ride to Ublandia for a zone conference. I has a super good bus ride! I read half of Alma. I learned a lot and then when we got there we went to bed. Then we had the zone conference the next day. But the missionary that bought our tickets messed something up so we had an extra day outside of our area. We got back into Caldas Novas about 1030 at night on Friday. We had Saturday and Sunday to work, and now we are here! 

The zone conference was way good! It got me excited to work and to talk to everyone. He talked about how we are really talking part in the gathering of Israel. 

Sunday was good, we had church in the school again, but the pink house that the church almost bought some other guy jumped in and out bought us. (the story for now) So we found another one that is way better! IT has a soccer court, swimming pool, and a bbq place and is super big and has lots of rooms for meeting. The swimming pool will be good for activities and baptisms. just needs a good clean. 

This week we marked a date for this woman to be baptized in a few weeks. It was a lesson that I felt the spirit more strong than any other lesson. It was super powerful. She talked about how she planned her suicide and went up to do it, then she saw a vision of her grandchildren and decided not to do it. We taught her the plan of salvation the other week and one of her friends was about to commit suicide, but this woman we are teaching (Marta) explained that our time here on earth is very precious and we cant afford to lose it. I was so happy to hear that the things we teach actually affect people. Unfortunately she has health problems and couldn't go to church. But it will all work our if it is Gods will for her to be baptized. 

This week we are on the conquest to find more families and men to be baptized. Our branch is lacking priesthood and it is something that is super crucial. We will do some fasting and praying. I ALWAYS see really good miracles from fasting. Even more miracles come when I get around to paying the fast offering. haha 

Sorry the letter is short (but sweet) this week. I love you all and get some good relaxing time in. 

If I need the card I will use it. I used it the other day to buy a watch cause mine broke and my companion was getting  sick of me asking what time it was... hahaha dont worry it is really modest and simple. It is a casio, but just a really plain and simple watch. 

thanks a bunch. 

love you all!!!

have a steller week!

Remember to relax. lay in bed and just breathe. I learned that his week and a book we got from the mission on how to have a stress free mission and how to deal with stress. haha. its a good one. 

LOVE ELDER WILD

ps this picture looks like i have put on a few KGs but it is just the shirt is big. (I hope) haha 

`FAMILY the key word of life`

Feb 10th, 2014

Oi família! 

This week has been good as always. Especially this sunday. We had a baptism this week but becasue we dont have a font, we had it in someones pool in their house. It was pretty cool.   

The branch here meets in a school, but the school called on saturday afternoon and said that we couldnt meet there on sunday because they had a city meeting there on sunday. So we had to scramble to find a house to meet. We had the meeting at the same house that we had the baptism. It was pretty strange sitting on a bed for priesthood meeting. But it was one of the most spiritual sundays I have had on the mission. It was really cool.  I am not sure when we will move the church into that pink house but it should be in a month or so. As for now, we will just meet wherever we can. haha It is neat there is a family that brings the electric piano and all the hymn books every week. I think that once we have an established meeting place, the branch will grow a lot quicker. 

This week we would be walking in the streets and people would stop us and be super excited that Caldas Novas has missionaries again. They said that they were baptized 10-15 years ago but the branch closed. We also found this older lady that lived alone in this huge house. We started to teach her and were talking about baptism. She told us that the person that baptized her had authority and everything. She said she was baptized in the water and it was a valid baptism. She said, `I will show you a picture of my baptism!` She grabbed the picture and it was here infont of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and had 2 sets of missionaries standing next to her. hahaha I guess she forgot which church she was baptized. 

My new companion.... He only has 4 or 5 months in the mission. It is all good. He works hard with a little push but I guess that is why I am here. Every day I see exaclty why I was sent here. It is pretty cool. He is from Curritiba. Continue to pray for us! 

I also wanted to tell you a story about our branch  President. 

He is a doctor from São Paulo. He had a practice well established there and had everything. Family, work, temple, good schooling, and they had a good life there! He got a job offer to Caldas Novas and he came here and they prayed about it and they felt like leaving everything behind in São Paulo was the right choice, even though work was good there, the church was strong there, and all of their family was there. After they sold their house and moved to Caldas, he was called to be the branch president. Shortly after, the job he was promissed fell through. He still had many options back in São Paulo and people were giving him many  opportunities to go and work there. But he knew that he was called to serve here and help the branch here. He found a few places to work for and he is doing well here, but he knows that he is not here in Caldas for the work. He is here to be the Branch President of Caldas Novas. He is a good example to me on how I need to sacrifice everything for the will of God. 

I am excited for you guys to move to Idaho. Make sure to take a lot of pictures of the move, the new house, the house that you are leaving, and everything. Dont worry about the package. Thank you for just sending an email to the office. They get frustrated when a lot of people call the office. 

We have an apartment. It is pretty nice. And we have a lunch everyday with the members. Food is not a problem here. It is nice not having a bus system here because now we have more money to buy food. But I can assure you all is well. 

Have a super good week! I love you all! 

Elder Wild

Feb 3rd, 2014

Hahahahahahaha wow. When I read that you are moving I felt really good! I hope everything goes well. Take good care of my guns. haha 

So my new area......... It is an area called Caldas Novas. Look it up! It is way pretty here, but the church not so much. hahaha

I am really excited to work here. 

They had a branch here 10 years ago but it closed because the members werent doing very well and no one was following the commandments and everything was wrong. So for these ten years there has been a few families that just had a Book of Mormon and a hymn book and would meet every sunday. Now President opened the area again and now it is a branch. He had the assistants here for about 4 or 5 months but their time on the mission finished so he put me and another new missionary here. My companion is a Brazilian and he has 4 months in the mission. It is really exciting! We took about a 3 hour tour bus ride to get here. So it is really far. And it is just us here. We dont have leaders or anything. The branch is really small and struggling a bit to stay open. On sunday there were 21 people at sacrament meeting including me and my companion. When we started the meeting there were 10. I am really excited to help this branch out a lot. We wont do a lot of proselyting because it is a tourist town so it is hard to find a person that lives here and doesn't work on Sunday, but we are working more with the reactivation of members. There are a lot of inactive that we are going to help out. I am really excited to be here and to work here. 

When the area President of Brazil (Elder Costa) visited our mission a few months ago he talked about rescuing the less actives. He said that for every less active that we rescue, we will will baptize one or more people. The retention rate is very low here. It is a little less than 4% so he wants us to focus more on retention than finding a bunch of people to be baptized then two weeks later be less active. It will be fun to work with everyone and to see this branch get bigger. Right now we meet in a school house, but they are signing papers to buy a house to have the church in. We walked by it. It is pink. haha Maybe for a service project we can paint it another color. 

I am still being 100 obedient here. always will be. 

But for your questions, my birthday was good. A lot of members baked me a cake my last day in Ipiranga so that was nice. The wife of the president gave me a call on my birthday so that was good too. I still havent gotten those packages. They said that they only give mail and stuff out at zone conference or misson conference. But we are having a misson conference in March so it wont be too long. By then you will be in ID! haha. 

I am really excited for you guys to move! It will be good to be close to the family. Continue to pray for guidance. If you decide to move to a place that has some land with some horses or something, I wont be sad. Or snowmobiles too. hahaha. I hear the hunting is pretty good there too. I am excited! 

Love you all!!!

Elder Wild