Full of Faith and Desire

I don't have much time today so here I go-

My new companion is Elder Nunes. He is from Fortaleza, up in the North of Brazil. He and I arrived on the mission together. So he has a transfer less than me in total because of MTC time. He was baptized only a year and a half before he came on the mission. I had a cool picture to send you all but it´ll have to be sent next week. But things have been good.

Last p-day I read the book (the whole thing)' Lifes Lessons Learned' by Elder Oaks while eating freshly picked grapes from the vine in our backyard. It was really good -very good book. It is a quick and good read. I recommend it.

Do you all remember that story told in General Conference a few years ago about the boy who was an inactive member of the church, who surfed on Sunday mornings, and then his Young Men's President came out in the water to get him on Sunday morning to bring him to church? When I heard that story, I thought it was a really cool story, but it never crossed my mind that I would meet that young boy.

That yound boy is now Elder Araujo, the area Seventy over my mission, and he came to Santo Angelo on Saturday. He did a devotional for all the members, telling everybody that they had to work hard to make a new Stake here, and beforehand, he had an hour and a half long meeting with us and the other missionaries in the city. It was really cool and really good.

I am really excited about where I am at this point on the mission. I feel so excited, and full of more faith and desire than I have been at any other point on the mission. And I feel like at this point, I know how to do stuff pretty well - teach, work, etc. So yea, I´m excited.

SANTO ÂNGELO!

So, last p-day, that night we taught Laura and then afterward Alexandre and Luciana. Laura is so intelligent and has been studying the scriptures a ton- quite impressive. I joked with her that she would be able to teach Relief Society better than the rest of the sisters at church.

Then we went to Alexandre and Luciana's house with members Caudio and Camila. Camila is Relief Society President, and informed us that she would call Laura to teach a Relief Society class! Haha, so funny how that happened, and also awesome. At Alexandre and Luciana's house we taught a lesson about Lehi's dream. It was way good.

Saturday there was this big Regional Leadership Training, and while we were at the chapel about to do a Family History center activity, we saw like all the church local leadership from the mission. It was cool to see the people I knew.

Sunday Bishop Augusto from my ward in Cruz Alta was visiting relatives here in Santa Maria, and came to our ward. It was way cool to see him.

Also on Sunday we found out that Elder Jones, who was my roomate in the MTC, was going to take my spot as assistant! Cool huh?!

During the afternoon we went and did a bunch of visits with Victor, it was way good. He was talking about how he wants to serve a mission and stuff, he is awesome!

Then on Monday I helped with the transfer and stuff in the office, and at night, Alexandre & Luciana and Laura and her family got together and made me a Churrasco. It was way good.

Then Monday night I was up until 1:30 am packing, and then I woke up at 5:30am to get the bus to SANTO ÂNGELO!

Santo Ângelo is pretty cool. It is probably the nicest city in our mission - well taken care of, beautiful scenery and buildings and such. I am liking it a lot. I lot of my companions served in this area too: Elder Black, Elder Wiscomb, and Elder Marx all served here.

When I got here at the begining of the week, we were living in a really old and horrible apartment, that the missionaries had lived in for a while.

Then the day after, we moved to a new little apartment condo thing. It's way way nicer. And then that day a new companionship came to the area too. We have 3 companionships in our Branch! That is because like I have told you in the past (if you remember) Santo Angelo and the sorrounding cities are very important to the mission right now so that a new stake can be formed!

The move took like 2 days, it ate up a lot of time, but it was worth it. Then the day after the move, we had Zone Leader Counsel in Santa Maria. It was nice going there just to listen and stuff for a change, instead of having to give all the trainings and stuff like the last 6 months.

Lately I have been studying a great deal about Zion and building up Zion. It is a very good study subject.

On Saturday, we went to a meeting with the District Presidency and all the Branch Presidents, and we talked to them about we as the missionaries can do better to help build Zion. It was really good, very helpful.

The District of Santo Angelo is the 2 branches here in Santo Angelo, 2 branches in Santa Rosa (a city one hour to the north, Elder Rodrigues is district leader there right now actually), and one branch in São Luiz Gonzaga, a city a bit to the south west. we need to stregthen these branches, baptize families, and make a stake!!

Have an awesome week!

Santo Ângelo Here We Come!

So, my term as Assistent to the President is coming to an end!

So last Friday we went to Porto Alegre to pick up 4 Americans that just got their visas and got here to Brasil, and then two of them stayed with me and Elder Menk so it was pretty cool. On Saturday I worked with Elder Powell, from Santa Cruz, CA, and on Sunday I worked with Elder Miller from a place near Oakland. It was way cool.

We taught Alexandre and Luciana about temples and eternal marriage, and they accepted our invite to be sealed in the temple in a year!

Also we found and taught this guy named Milton. He is really good. Yesterday we marked Milton's baptismal date for the 28th. He said he will read the whole Book of Mormon before the 28th. Eleven years ago, Milton took a 40 meter fall. He is completely okay today except for that he hit his head in a spot that made it so he cannot use his right leg, nonetheless, he said he would go to church on Sunday even if he had to walk! He is a very interesting guy. He was a catholic monk for a year. We are going to baptize someone who was a monk! So cool! Also currently he is apparently a member of the Knights Templar organization, interesting right?

Anyways, these last few weeks, President had the intention of keeping me here as assistent for a bit more. But then he called me up Saturday morning and asked, "Are you a little tired of your area?" and I said, "Well, not really, but a little bit." So we talked about what he wanted to do with me for the rest of my mission. And we talked and stuff. In the end, I am going to be transferred to Santo Ângelo to be Zone Leader there! I am so pumped. It is going to be way sweet. I told you all about the situation there. There's lots of good work to be done there. The members there are excited about working to make the district into a Stake and so am I! My zone there is going to be huge. The biggest zone in the mission. There will be 15 companionships, 5 cities, and 5 districts in my zone. That is big. It's going to be awesome.

On Sunday, Elder Menk and Elder Powell went to visit Victor, and read D&C 20 with him and Victor got super excited about fulfiling his priesthood duties of teaching and visiting and stuff. Elder Powell asked him if he wanted to serve a mission, and he said he would like to!

Yesterday we visited that Milton guy with Alexandre, it was way good. Alexandre and Luciana are both super exited about serving and participating in church. Anyway, Alexandre said in the lesson, "When me and my wife came to church, we knew this was where we wanted to raise our kids" - so good.

Also other cool news, Elder Jones, my roomate from the MTC is going to be the one that will be taking my place here as assintent, cool right?

Also the area where I am going is an area where a lot of my companions have already served. Elder Marx, Elder Wiscomb, and Elder Black all served there.

Feliz ano novo!

Hey lo!

So on Saturday (New Year's Eve) we ate lunch at Alexandre and Luciana´s house. It was really good they invited us over. They told us that the night before, they had done a family night together! They read the Book of Mormon together and made goals for the next year! They even made a little notebook to record all of their family nights and what they did.

We thought New Year's Eve the work would be tough, but it was actually pretty good, we found a pretty good family. Hopefully they progress well.

New Year's night was normal, we went to sleep, and at midnight I got woken up by all the fireworks and stuff, but not very interesting.

New Year's day was kinda lame, everybody was jsut sleeping. Not a very productive day.

This week two men were shot and killed in my area, but mom, don´t worry or have a heart attack or anything. They got killed because they were involved in drug deals and stuff, that's why. Also, we don´t even work on that side of the area (Vila Oliveira, Northwest part of the area) we work all on the south side of the area, nobody gets killed there.

Two days ago an American arrived on the mission who just got his visa. We picked him up with Presidente and then went to Subway (the only Subway that is in my mission boundaries), it was really good. Its been a while. But it is way expensive here. It was like 20 reals for a 30 cm sandwich.

Yesterday we visited Laura. She is doing really well. She seems like she was basically raised in the church. Its crazy.

Victor is also doing really good. We visited him yesterday too.

Here on the mission, for the first time in my life, I have pushed myself so hard that I have really felt my "limit". Of course my limit is always expanding, as I push myself diligently, but here on the mission, we really push ourselves to the limit. The limit of Faith, Work, and Desire. I have felt myself push up to the bumper, really feeling that I am doing all I can do. But I know that there is more that must be done. My boundaries must be expanded.

Thinking and reflecting about this last year and the next has been a very interesting experience. 2011 passed very fast. My only full year that I got to spend as a missionary. It has been an amazing year. As Elder Matthew Richardson said of his mission in General Conference, this last year truly has been the best year for my life.

I think back to where I was a year ago (in Quaraí, companions with Elder Martini still) and I think about where I will be one year from now. Just as this last year was so vitally important in my life, the year ahead will be equally important. I will have to make many important decisions in the next year. This next year is going to get split in two halves for me. Mission, and post- mission. I look forward anxiously to it all.

Boa semana para vocês

Alex

Trip to Cruz Alta

Hello family! It was wonderful to speak to you all on Christmas.

This week was a good week, but incredibly tiring.

Tuesday I got up at 4 something in the morning, and went to the bus station to go to Cruz Alta to go do a 2 day division there with the Elder Smart, one of the Zone leaders there, and then Elder Valdivia, the other one, came back here to stick with Elder Menk. The zone leaders in Cruz Alta are now in the 4th ward, when I was there, they were in the 1st ward, where I served, but then right when I left, they got switched to the other ward. It was pretty cool. Elder Smart is a good guy. We almost taught a lesson with Rafael who I baptized there, but he was travelling. He had given a reference to the Elders in the 4th ward that we were going to visit. But Patricia and the rest of the family were in town, and so we ended up eating lunch there on Wednesday because our lunch appointment fell through! That was pretty cool. It was cool to go back to Cruz Alta after having been gone from there for 7 months. It was really cool. But it ended, and then I had to wake up at 3am yesterday morning to get the bus to come back.

So yea. It was a tiring week. For that reason, and also that we spent a lot of time walking during the days. Wow, verying tiring. But it was good.

I hope you all have a good week!

Building Up Zion

1- Some of the Christmas decorations in Downtown Santa Maria. All made of painted and cut up soda bottles. Cool huh?

2- All of the baptisms of last Saturday. Elder Black is up in the corner on the left.

3- Us and Alexandre and Luciana, and Bishop Safuan

4- This is my shirt from Thursday

5-Here's the map I have of my area in the back of my planner. We work from that big street Venancio Aires to the south, and Elder Carlos works to the north. We live at the intersection of Venancio Aires and Borges de Medeiros. The chapel is in the bottom right hand corner on Appel and Tuiti. If you look at the bottom, you can see Patronato.

So on friday night was Alexandre and Luciana´s wedding. It was really good. We just had a little ceremony in the church. It was really good. I don't have pictures right now, but´i´ll get some.

Saturday was a marvelous day. During the afternoon there was a ward activity. It was a blood drive, so I donated my golden blood. Also, there was this cotton candy machine there, but the guy making the cotton candy disapeared, so I learned how to make cotton candy and made it for everyone.

Then after was the baptismal meeting. It was really good. We got our Zone together for the baptism. Ten of the five baptisms of the Zone were men. So that is really good. Quite awesome. We need more men baptisms. The church needs Priesthood.

I baptized Alexandre and Elder Menk baptized Luciana.

Afterward, in the baptismal meeting, Alexandre got up and bore his testimony. It was so good.

It was cool having the baptismal meeting with Elder Black there too. It was cool to see how we started the mission together, and now we are making a difference in the church together here in Santa Maria.

Our bishop, Bishop Safuan has been really happy with the converts in the ward latelly. He has said on many ocasions lately how the recent baptisms of the ward have all been really good people.

One really cool thing-

One of the neighborhoods (note on neighborhood, here a neighborhood (bairro) is not really what we call it there, like an area built by the same company, here neighborhood just means a certain area) of our area is called Patronato, and it has been very very little worked by missionaries in the past, because it is kind of a tough area. It is in the southern part of our area. Anyway, a few months ago, when we were having a really hard time, Elder Albrechtesn and I decided that perhaps we were having such a tough time where we were working because the Lord wanted us to work in Patronato. So we started working there from scratch. Literally from scratch. There is only one active member in the neighborhood. So yea, Alexandre and Luciana are from that neighborhood, which is awesome. And Bishop really wants us to work there too. Because we want to be able to create another ward, splitting our ward with the ward to the north of us, Salgado Filho, which is where Elder Black is. So we need to baptize people in that area. There is a lot of potential there.

On monday we had 2 really good visits.

First we visited Peterson, Jefferson, and Leda. They are a really cool family (they also live in Patronato) Leda´s brother just moved into our ward a few months ago, and he is now in the bishopric. Jefferson and Leda are interesting because they are both Deaf. Peterson, their son, is not. So we have been teaching the family, and Peterson translates for his parents, and meanwhile, we have also been learning lots of sign language from the visits, and both of us can teach a bit in Sign language. It's amazing. Peterson has been reading the Book of Mormon, and has already decided to be baptized. His dad Jefferson is really smart, Director of the School for deaf people, and we believe they will be baptized too.

Then after that, last week President Ribeiro invited Laura and Isabel to family night with his family, so we went too. It was really good. Laura already has plans to go visit salt lake next summer!

This morning (12:30am) I just got back from doing a division with the Zone Leaders in Santo Angelo. A city up in the north of the mission by Cruz Alta and Ijui. I told you a lot about this city in my last email, about how it needs to become a stake there and stuff. It was a cool division. It is a big city (80,000 people) and only has 2 branches. that is pretty weak compared to Cruz Alta (60,000 people) which has 4 wards. The area of those guys there is huge. There is tons of room to grow there. I did the division there with Elder Nunes. He arrived on the mission with me. It was cool. Though on Thursday, it was some crazy weather. In the afternoon there was this crazy wind and dust storm, and then at night it absolutely POURED. So yea, we got soaked. You can look at the picture of my shirt from that day. Good stuff.

Anyway. It has been a good week of building up Zion.

Conference after Conference after Conference

This week has been quite a crazy week for me. This week was Zone Conferences so I travelled around the whole mission with President doing trainings, it was pretty cool.

So to start out: On Sunday, Victor gave a talk in sacrament meeting! It was really good, and lots of members also commented on how good it was - pretty awesome.
Then on Sunday, Elder Hollandsworth came to Santa Maria (he was in a trio) to work with Elder Menk for the week while I travelled.
Monday, we had the Zone Conference for the 2 zones here in Santa Maria. The Zone Conference was basically this:

President gave a training and taught about (I´m not sure how you are supposed to say it in English) Eternal Life,

then I did a training about teaching The Restoration, and we all did lots of practices. Then I did an evaluation of the mission using graphs and stuff with the key indicators, and then afterward talked about a new way we are going to work on the mission, using a 4 week vision plan, looking for people to baptize 4 weeks from now always. Then lunch.

Then President gave a training about chapters 11, 12, and 13 from Preach my Gospel, finding and teaching committed investigators, truly preparing them to be baptized, and involving them well with the ward. In all the Zone conferences, President talked about Laura, and how she was like the perfect example of this, and he had me get up and talk about our experience teaching her. It was really cool. Then we did so more practices, and then President talked about the missionary manual and some mission rules, and then we ended.

Then at the end, I did a little meeting with the Zone Leaders and District leaders about how they were going to follow up with their Zones on all the stuff we learned and all that. And that is basically what we did for all the 4 Zone Conferences.

Giving the trainings was pretty cool, but a lot of responsibility. Then we got in the car, and me and Presidente went to Alegrete, that was like 2 hours, (and boy does Presidente Ribeiro drive fast, haha).

I stayed the night with the Zone leaders in Alegrete. I was like totally eaten by mosquitos and could not sleep the whole night until at 2am, I picked up my mattress, brought it to another room, and shut all the windows and door. Then it was all good.

Alegrete reminded my a lot of Quarai, a very simple town, but a lot bigger than Quarai, but still no buildings or anything like that, just a bunch of Gauchos.

In Alegrete it was Zone Alegrete, which also includes the cities of Sao Gabriel and Rosario do Sul and Zone Livramento, which also includes Quarai. Then we hit the road again to go to Uruguaiana. It was pretty cool to do this long car ride with President. I learned a lot of good stuff from him. Then we got to Uruguaiana pretty early, so I worked the evening with the Zone leaders there in Uruguaiana, in Vila Julia, the area that I passed in there. It was kinda weird going back there, but it was cool. I saw Gabriela there, who me and Elder Belnap baptized, that was cool.

The Zone Conference in Uruguaiana was just Uruguaiana. We did that, and then hit the road for Santo Angelo, way up in the North of the mission, that was a long car ride. I liked Santo Angelo a lot. I really hope that it is my next area. It is a really nice city. The Zone Conference there had Zone Missões, which is Santo Angelo, Santa Rosa, Itaqui, Sao Borja, and Sao Luiz Gonzaga and it had Zone Cruz Alta, which also has Ijui, Panambi, and Palmeidas in it. That was the biggest conference because both zones have a lot of people in it. There were like 55 missionaries there. But it was a good conference.

So here's why I really want to go to Santo Angelo. There are only 5 stakes in my mission. The last stake was created like over 15 years ago (that is really slow growth). And so The Cruz Alta stake consists of Cruz Alta (4 wards) and Ijui (3 wards) then there is District Missoes, which is Santa Rosa (2 branches) Santo Angelo (2 branches) and Sao Luiz Gonzaga (1 branch), and they are really strong branches, and so we are working really hard as a mission in these two zones to make the new stake happen. What needs to happen is to make one more ward in Cruz Alta (they are pretty close) and the Cruz Alta becomes a stake by itself, and Ijui can go with Santo Angelo and them and become a new stake! That would be awesome. So I really want to go to Santa Angelo to help make that happen. Also Santo Angelo was a really pretty city, so that was cool.

Anyway, that about sums up my week.

Tonight is the Wedding of Alexandre and Luciana, tomorrow is their baptism!