I cook

I am loving cooking. I am kind of on a health food thing right now. My pancakes have oats in them and I made granola in a frying pan. I even put a little postum (cevada) in them. Here is my homemade postum maker:)I talk to the sisters in the wards and I get tips from them. Haha if only I had more time to try things out. I learned how to make rice in a frying pan, and how to make beans (brazilian style)

Mission really is like a mini life. I am born here to my ^pai^ and I really can~t do anything. I learn from him about the missionary work and then I get to live my own life. I hope my sins with him are his fault like they were before I was 8 haha.

Do you have any ideas for sweets in one pan? I really want to make cake or cookies or something but don~t have a whole lot of options without an oven; We can get eggs, really cheaply actually. I can find almost everything here, incredients wise, that we have in the states but it might be really expensive. So give me some ideas and i~ll make substitutions and have experiments :)

My companion really likes peanut butter, they don~t have that here, and I think he would love reeses, because they don~t have them here and he loves peanut butter and chocolate.

This week was better for us. Rained less and was easier to find people in their houses. Last week we had 15 appointments fall through. It was awful. We walk everywhere so it was alot of time walking around and little time teaching. Frustrating to say the least.

I got stung by a bee... sitting in someones house felt something on my neck and swatted it.. Ouch. haha

Silvia came to church! It was amazing to see her there. We finally got an investigator to come to church. We have a new investigator named Nilo. He is a really chill guy but he commited to october 8th as a baptismal date. Pray that we can have that happen but more importantly that we can build a relationship with members so that he stays strong in the church.

THEY HAVE POSTUM IN BRASIL!!!! Its called cevada and its just ground roasted barley. You make it like coffe with a filter and everything. I made a coffee maker out of a 2 liter bottle and a coffee filter. I feel so grown up drinking it haha. Sometimes I drink it black just because it makes me feel like a cow boy.

I am drinking the water here now.. I hope i don~t die. I really can~t find a way to use the water filter bottle they give us. They want us to use it always even in the house of members. But I can~t find a way to use it without being rude and the water here is really clean.

9-12-11

Here are some pictures from this week,

Sweet hot dog (no hot dog just bun i was a little disappointed), and frisbe with my companion in a brazilian soccer field. oh and my companion with marriage rice He is a little love struck haha.

We have this big indoor drying rack that works pretty well when it is sunny but the problem is we have weeks of rain and then things are just wet. We have clothes pins so that is good thank you though. I appreciate you watching money in my account.

crazy how fast time moves. I have already been out 3 months! Weeks just seem to move by. time is really strange. So is this. Some days I think I want to go home right now and other days I think I want to do this forever. It is really a strange feeling being out here. But I absolutely love it. It is hard but the best moments are after the hardest things.

It is a lot like wrestling. You look back at a day and see moments when you could have gone harder but you still won. I am seeing moments where I could have had a better desire in my heart or where I could have had a better thought about someone. I was thinking about this and I think this is a lot like the atonement. We look back and think I could have gone harder here and here and here but Christ says it is ok. And we forgive ourselves and given the opportunity again we act differently. But sometimes we make the same mistakes the same thoughts over and over and over again and we need to be patient with ourselves. I was not being patient with myself my first 3 weeks. Now I am a lot more relaxed. I understand that mortality is really important but part of that importance is our ability to change. Our ability to change ourselves. We know that we had thoughts and personalities before this life and that we will have them after this life (alma 34 34) and so this life is a unique opportunity to change those personalities. An opportunity that we have only during mortality. How important is it. And then I think about the role of the gospel in this change and commandments and I could go on forever haha but i wont.

Ok I love cooking:) But we don~t have an oven... so do you have any easy recipes I can make with limited dairy products and no oven? Here we have milk and cream but everything is really different. haha I just need some ideas.

Dad I~ve relaxed so much this week. I really stopped worrying about rules and started to worry about people and the spirit. And guess what? I felt the spirit more this week than ever before. I realized that i am here to serve people not follow rules. And when my primary focus was following rules I lost the spirit. It is amazing to have the spirit with you.

I progressed so much this week in portuguese. It is amazing. When I have a thought now I can speak it to people because I understand what is going on. I say the thought and then the spirit leaves and I stop talking because I have no more words. Crazy how much I am growing. It is so relaxing when you have the spirit Dad. Since I started my mission I have been falling asleep thinking about a scripture or a scripture story or a thought I had during the week. I find that a lot of revelation comes at that time. And I find myself getting out of bed two or three times to go write something down.

I was thinking about how much of this experience is focused on Faith. Everything we do is focused on Faith. I was thinking about when that experience ends. And I think that probably we will walk by faith until we meet God again.

Also I was thinking about the plan of salvation and how interesting it is to be here. Eternity is now. We are experienceing eternity. This experience is part of Eternity. And God chose special people to help others. those people were prophets. Those people are people in the scriptures. Those people are missionaries. Those people are me. It is my job to find people because I made covenants before this life to help find people and teach them.

Ok my families, Danielle and Ghardell, he is a drug addict and they are really poor one room house. Wonderful people but religion isn~t really important right now. We are praying to have the spirit to show them how much this can help them.

Silvia, older lady with a smoking problem. Wants to be baptized but hasn~t come to church yet. We are working with her to help her quit smoking and join the church.

Andrei and Eliane, 22 and 20 year old couple with 2 kids. Work all the time to keep above the water. They feel differnt when we come into their home and my companion is great at talking with them giving them a friendly impression of the church.

Gustavo and Fernanda, baptized last week. Wonderful people, investigated the church for 3 or 4 years before joining. Now they are baptized and will be super strong. THey have a hard time with the prophet and his purpose but they know the church is true so we are really excited for their future.

This week was great. Our numbers were horrible but i grew so much. For Andrei and Eliane we were out working and couldn~t find anyone to teach because it was raining and no one would open the door and no one on the street would talk to us. We were cold and wet and my companion said lets go to the church and plan a lesson for them I thought this was a little Fubeca (lazy) but followed. I told him my idea for a simple lesson on Jesus Cristo that ended in a convite to read o livro de mormon.

We went in, i gave the lesson and he invited them to read the book of mormon. It was a great lesson. In a Zone conference the day following my companion bore his testimony that this was the best lesson he had ever participated in on his mission. And I was upset about planning it.

9-5-2011

My shoes are hurting. My clarks are wearing down (one elder said his only lasted 6 weeks) and my rock ports (amazing becasue they are waterproof) already have the sole separating at the front. Clothes are good. Its going to be a long two years of white shirts haha. And garmets are really tough because they never really dry.

As far as wash goes we have a machine (not really sure how it works becuase i~ve never seen it spin... haha) and no dryer everyone here air drys, not really sure why becuase the climate is a lot like seattle... so garments are moldy some times.

Money comes on cards and we just use our cards to withdraw money on the first and 15 of every month. It is really easy for us. i have 70 us dollars in my bag but don~t ahve anywhere to change it so we´ll see how that works out haha.

haha they don~t have laundry mats here haha it really is 3rd world like sometimes. Others it is like america but it is really different haha I thought it would be like america but it deffinately is not haha. But I love it. Ithink the Lord knew I needed to come here for 2 reasons. 1 humble myself while learning the langauge and 2 give me something to do for 2 years. I think this would get boring in the us after a while. This is like a new adventure everyday. haha crazy here.

Oh today or tomorrow I am going to make syrup for my pancakes. I have pancakes almost every morning becuase I am starving a lot haha.

Ok glad to hear my huskies are one and 0:) hahaha

Had my first baptism this week. Was .... interesting. Family that I told you about. I expected to feel the spirit super strong but it was kind of so-so. It is really different here. The members wear jeans and t shirts haha just a more relaxed culture. I had to baptize the wife twice which was terrible because she had a fear of water.... yeah..... haha but we survived. They will be super strong in the Gosple. They cry at sacrament meeting every week.

My companion is a really good guy. Its interesting because I see myself in Him. He is a really good teacher and knows his scriptures really well. He is really confident in himself and loves talking to people which is really hard for me because i am really objective oriented so I~m more like a fish or cut bait with investigators but he is more talk talk talk. Which stresses me out a ton!!! haha He is really in love with his fiance (they do that here get engaged and go on missions) which means that he talks about her a lot.

One thing i~m also learning is the importance of planning. When we don~t plan the night before I always know that my day will be worse the next day. I really cant do a whole lot in the planning sessions but I try.

Sometimes it is really lonely here. I can~t participate in conversations and people are kind of impatient with foreigners (kind of like I was before my mission haha oh how perspective changes) But we have a great ward and the bishop always helps us when we need it.

He Speaks

I hope all is well. I~ve really relaxed this week. I~m progressing in my ability to understand and my ability to teach in Portuguese. I have one of the best teachers in the mission and he teaching me how to teach people not lessons. This is something I need to work on. In reality I love people and love the people I get to teach but sometimes I~m too objective oriented. For example mission rules is 1 hour for lunch. In my opinion that means you get to the house, start the clock and in 1 hour you leave.

In Brasil this is what happens, you get to the house they start making lunch, you finish you share a message and you leave. Sometimes lunch is over 2 hours. (usually close to an hour this is an exaggeration) my first week I freaked out. I couldn’t say anything and I couldn’t leave so I just stressed. This week I took off my watch. Because I was looking at it all the time so I just put it in my bag. It makes life a lot easier. I can check time when we need to but in general I can just listen to people.

Missionaries and return missionaries tell me that I just need to relax. That the rules are there to help me focus and so If you~re not being lazy it is ok to break rules like be home by 9 30. But i~ve learned that the `higher law´ means understand purposes of rules as well as the rules themselves. It is a hard balance. I don~t want to be someone who doesn~t follow the rules but I also don’t want to be a Pharisee. So i~m learning, watching my companion and learning from him.

Even in English I don~t really like talking to people for a long time (he loves it) so he is teaching me how to be people oriented. It’s something I really need to work on so this is a good place for me right now. It is hard not being able to do much. Generally I just start street contacts and my companion finishes them. People here are really nice (generally) and enjoy talking (which is frustrating because I enjoy getting to the point and leaving the house. I~m learning so much.

When I study about faith and about grace and about the atonement, I think, I can do this. My God loves me and My savior knows me. To me I would rather study for 7 hours on the atonement then think for one hour on the eternities. I don~t know if that is right or not but it comforts me.

I have attatched some pictures of our cooking adventure today haha super good :)

Its crazy that after this mission i~ll be cooking for myself forever haha and someday for a wife as well. haha crazy how fast life moves. President Mgarachi talked about how fast things move. And they really do fly.