Tuesday, March 27, 2012

( wright still loves his truck...here's his instructions to someone who is borrowing it right now)

But I am assuming you got it working for now? (And is this a you break it you pay for it thing?)

I hope he knows some things
1) the electric fuel pump under the cab has a fuel filter infront of it, if you don~t change that fuel filter every month you could burn out the injection pump because the fuel pressure goes down
2) Keep checking the oil and water
3) Make sure he turns off the manual glow plug switch. You won~t burn out glow plugs but you will burn out that big relay
4) Add some fuel additive every couple tanks it will help the injection pump last longer.
5)Tell him to enjoy that bench seat, most comfortable truck I have ever ridden in.

Anyways this week,

Had that family of Kelly say they don~t want anymore. I wanted to cry. It is frustrating not becasue they said no to me but because they refused Christ. They had the spirit so strong in their house and she wants to stay Catholic.

Our new Family, Aldemar e Adianiae are progressing well and we had a lessson with Sandro this week which went really well.

We had more inactive members come to church this week which was wonderful! The work with inactives here is really strengthening the branch and the number of people frequenting the church is really growing. When I got here it was about 30-40 and now it is about 60. And all because the members decided to start working with inactive people. The members are so key. We can~t do anything without them.

I am starting to realize that as missionaries we really can~t do a whole lot. We are just supposed to teach with the spirit work hard and let God work through us and help the members do misionary work. We are pretty much cheerleaders haha. It is a good perspective to have. I have stopped worrying so much about what I will do and more about how I will accept the counsel and the help that comes from Heavenly Father. I love it.


This was a great week. Learned alot. I was thinking about how sad I felt when Kelly and Valdo rejected the gospel. And was like man I can~t wait until the mission is over so I can~t feel this anymore and then I thought about how Sandro´s daughter rejected the church and I thought this is life and then I thought about Heavenly Father and I thought this is Eternity... hahaha

We really have to respect free agency,

Love you Guys,

Elder Noel


PS Tell that guy to love that truck. I miss her. And please tell Scott Hi for me. He is a great guy and I learned a lot from him. Though I feel like I gave him a lot of problems :/ oh well

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Ok Family,

This week was a lot less exciting. Gave a flawless baptismal interview (ok well not flawless but a lot more flawless than my last one) and had a much more boring bus ride home afterward (but you better believe that this time we wore our seatbelts)

This week Kelly whose husband wants to be baptized and who has been progressing so much sat us down and told us that she doesn~t think that she will get a testimony and that she wants to go back to the Catholic church.

So we explained to her that there is only one church that teaches the path of Christ. And that there is no possible way for this Church to be a good church. either it is the church that Christ established and restored or it is a lie. We taught that to her and promessed that she would get a testimony if she read and prayed this week everyday. Thursday we go back to see how her week went.

But we Found another amazing couple! Aldemar and Adiainae. They came to church by themselves this week and liked it!! It was so good to see them come in and see the light in their eyes afterwards. The saturday before we taught about celestial marriage and this week we will teach about celestial families and how they can have a celestial family.

It is amazing here. We had another good week. We are doing divisions with the members every friday (which here in this mission is as miracle!!!) and the Elders Quroum president is doing miracles here working with family budget and home teaching. he is amazing please pray for him his name is Sandro.

Also please pray for my companion. Elder Welling (from spokane) he has been scarred by what happened early in the mission with disobedient companions and has lost some of his desire. I know him from the MTC and he has so much potential. We need to excite him again.

Love you all so much,


Elder Noel

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

2 car 1 bus Fatality accident which involved 2 elders in Florianopolis brazil

So by reading the title you can see that this week was pretty exicting.

We went to Jaragua do Sul to do a baptisimal interview. In this interview the man responded to the question with some slang. I understood the significance but not the details. As I was thinking about it later I started thinking oh my goodness maybe he has had a problem and I didn~t ask about it. He said, It was resolved (or so I thought) what he really said was I am very resolved (which means I don~t play for that team) So I had to call him and ask him the question again and ask details and it was very embarassing and stressful for me and my phone was running out of batery and he wasn~t answering the phone so i was kind of freaking out it was pretty interesting and a little rough. That was thursday,

So after I calmed down from that we got on our bus...

Friday Night we had a church activity. Because of some problems on the bus we actually didn~t make it home until Friday morning. We ended up sleeping with the Zone leaders in Joinville until friday when we caught our bus. Friday we spent the day getting the stuff ready for the activity that we planned and were organizing. That was all of friday. The activity started at 700. At seven we just had our investigator there..... So I got stressed again and kind of started freaking out again but it turned out to be a great activity and the members loved it.

Saturday we started working in our area. Because my companion and I have the same amount of time on the mission I was scared that he would be judging me for the work I do. It was an unwarranted concern but it was still something that I worried about. So saturday I got all stressed again about how we would work together and if we would be able to teach well or anything. It was a little rough. And I was stressed again. Sunday he told me he wished we could work two transfers together so I calmed down from that.

Sunday I had a talk in church. I was expecting a 15 minute talk followed by the concluding speaker. Well as I was sitting in sacrament meeting the 1st conselor announced a youth speaker. I quickly connected the fact that if there was a youth speaker that means that I am... the concluding speaker..... uh oh. So I quickly re wrote my talk and got up and basically talked by the spirit. It was amazing. I just had bullet points and things I wanted to say. And it just flowed. My portuguese was really good, from what I could tell, and I just felt calm infront of the branch. It was a good experience but stressful too.

So basically this was a really stressful week but I learned alot and am looking forward to another week in the Lord´s vineyard.

I love you all so much,

Love,

Elder Noel

PS oh yeah thursday night... so we leave the bus station. About fifteen minutes after we leave the station (we are on a huge grey hound bus) we heard what sounded like the bus hitting a car (it was infact the bus hitting a car) Then the bus swayed and we heard another similar sound (it was the bus hitting another car) then we felt what felt like the bus jumping over a 2 foot brick wall (it was infact the bus jumping over a two foot brick wall) and then it felt like we were stopped by a brick wall ( as it turns out we were stopped by a brick wall). (In all reallity it felt like the bus lost controle of the breaks and ran up and over the little wall until it was quickly stopped by the big one)

The lady who had just walked past our seats to go to the bathroom was thrown forward onto the ground but wasn~t hurt. We got up and started waiting for people to get out of the bus. Well the front door of the bus was smashed in so we were just kind of standing there. Elder wellling hestitantly grabbed the emergency hammer and started to break the window on our side. I was busy kicking glass out of the other window on the other side. ( I know heroic right) We grabbed our back packs and jumped out of the bus (Which is like 7 feet high! And a seven foot jump from a bus window onto broken glass and twisted Iron (there WAS a fence there) is a little scary) But we jumped ok. Elder Welling put a hand down and got his hand cut but it was ok. He washed his hand in the broken water main and we used our first aid kits to bandage it up (Eagle scouts:) )
I called the zone leaders and let them know and then got a call from President, remember how I had a low battery? Yeah my battery died as he was asking about us, I am sure he loved that:)

Turns out there was a car driving the wrong way on the road. The driver of the bus tried to avoid him and nicked ( and by nicked I mean destroyed) the front corner of that car. The bus then lost control. Hit another car and ran over a lady who was waiting for the city bus. (She died, or in missionary slang we gave a reference to the missionaries in the Spirit World) No one on the bus was hurt but I think that lady who was walking will be pretty sore.

But we are ok. Heavenly Father was watching over us:) Unforunately my camera didn~t have batteries so I didn~t get to take a picture. I am a little upset. If you google search this you should find it: accidente do onibus catarinese joinville 8/3/2012

Anyways happy to be alive :)

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Oi Família!

So we just spent 2:30 hours cleaning our apartment today. President said that we should do a deep clean on the first p-day of every month so our house is finally maggot free. And we have put a dent in the ant population. So today was a good day.

My companion was transfered. My new companion will be Elder Trevor Welling from Spokane Washington. He was in my MTC group so that will be fun to work together. Apparently he is having some problems so pray that I will be able to help him feel the spirit more in his life on the mission. Pray that I will have patience to help him. He is a really good Elder and I was a little surprised that Presidente told me about that so we will see if we can work together to help him.

Oh I was called as district leader two weeks ago so these last two weeks have been a little different. I will be going to do a baptisimal interview in another area this week so lets pray that I don~t mess that up;) haha I love this I am just flying by the seat of my pants a lot and love it:)

(We are serving here in São Francisco do sul mom look it up super pretty too. It is super historical and the 3rd oldest town in brazil so it is pretty neat to see the old churches and houses. We haven~t gone to the museum yet but we will try:) )

This week not alot of new things. We are just trying to help people grow in the church. A lot of less active members. This area is really catholic and the people who aren~t catholic are evangelicals so it is hard to get in doors but the doors we get in are people who really want to know about us so we don~t really waste time teaching people who aren~t interested. It is so funny to me that people respond to our invite with, No I already know it all. It is so funny that someone could think that they know everything about the Bible. It really shows that pride is the fundamental sin.

Anyways, this week we ate lunch with an investigator family. It was really nice just to sit and talk with them. Get to know them better. It was wonderful.

My companion and I had a little fight this week. I love him and we get along great but I said that he needed to work on his Pride and Charity (nicely of course) and apparently that was something that he had been working on so he felt like I was telling him he hadn~t progressed. It was an eye opening opportunity to me to see that even if I am right about something I can just keep my mouth shut or find better ways to convey my information to the people I am trying to help.

We spent 2 days up until 12 talking about our feelings (super fun!!) I actually enjoyed it becauase I felt like our companionship was way stronger afterwards. (great marriage training huh?) haha good thing that we speak the same languanges (by that I mean english and man-speak) so it went well and we are friends again.

Anyways good week,


I love you all and miss you. But this is amazing. I can~t imagine doing anything else right now. Somedays are hard but it really is a great privilege to serve and i just love it. This would be so boring in the states (sorry dad:)) but I love the challenges and adventures of Brasil. And it is good for my humility and my gratitude to know a different culture and lifestyle.

Love,

Elder Noel