Thank you so much for sending the shoes. I hope they get here. 

I am sorry but I don~t really understand the two box shoe logic. Wouldn~t it be better to get 0 shoes than 1 shoe...but the Lord works in misterious ways so I will be praying that they get here. Oh to ease your mind your second package got here. I loved the valentines. Mckaye is so funny. Her hannah comics make me laugh everytime. haha

So this week we had a huge miracle here. 

Here in Brazil they have a huge problem with unkown people. With the address system and the records system there are a lot of things that get dropped through holes. 

So as missionaries we are working with the lists of members to find people and update addresses and things. It is a great way to find people because it shows a more professional side of our work rather than just knocking doors. 

Because of this we were trying to find a woman named Mariana. We went to her house but she had moved. So we went to the new address not really knowing where she was but having a rough explanation in a foreign language. Naturally we felt comfortable enough to go looking for her. So we found the street and started walking down it knocking on doors every 100 yards and asking for Mariana. Eventually we found her. She was a little cold but she accepted a visit from us on a different day. She told us that her Dad lived 2 houses down and was also a member. (His name was not on the list) we visited him and walked into his front room (which was layed out like a church....) he told us that he was baptized 30 years ago in another city and moved her 25 years ago. At that time there was not church here and he didn~t have the money to ride the bus to Joinville so he stopped. He went to other churches but was discouraged by embezelment and lack of doctrine. He was frequenting the 4-square church and was having meetings in his house but eventually stopped. His wife told us firmly that they had decided not to go to church anymore just stay home and read the bible and pray. They had been disgusted by religion in general. That was about 2 months before we showed up. 

We, being led completely by the spirit found his home. We set up an appointment with him the next tuesday. That tuesday we gave the first lesson. Thinking that it would remind them why THIS church is different. Oh my goodness. The spirit was so strong. It was so easy to talk and the thought pattern just flowed. I usually don~t talk a lot about the priesthood and more about the Gosple of Jesus Christ but this time I felt like we should talk about the priesthood. (We had planned a different focus but it was strange because I completely forgot what it was during the lesson. Like I could n~t remember where the scriptures were and Elder Welling had the same feelings so we just didn~t teach that part) After we finished and invited them back to church the mom started crying and told us how she remembered the blessings here husband used to give her children with the priesthood. It was without doubt the most powerful moment on my mission. 

That night during planning Elder Welling and I just sat and talked about it. We just started crying because it was something that we never thought we would have. In the MTC you have all these stories and ideas and philosophies about how the mission is and you arrive in the field to find out that it is way different and that you lose some of that faith that those experiences happen. But we had one. And it wasn~t from us. It was just because the spirit was with us and he told us what to say. It was an experience unforgetable. 

He is a melquezedque (sp) holder and has 5 kids that live in the city and are married. Another with 15 years that lives with them. They got to other churches but they have positive contact with the church already. He has 17 grandchildren. He is a response to our prayers. They were never sealed so we are working with them to get to the temple. 

Heavenly Father loves us. And he is responding to our prayers. There are alot of people praying in the branch for this and we are working hard for it. He loves us. 

Love you lots,

Elder Noel

( 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

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

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 :)

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

Hello hello hello,What another amazing week. Our two families that we are teaching are progressing a lot. They one lady is trying to stop smoking and we are helping her. (I never want to smoke, it is so sad to see what is happening to her) It is interesting how the addictions I have had in my life help my to help her. Help me to be patient and to just love her. To show her that we are here to support and to hold her hand (not literally obviously, oh by the way did you know that the no hugging rule is nowhere in the missionary handbook? Funny how tradition takes over doctrine sometimes). Kelly, the ex-smoker, is trying to get a testimony. Her heart knows it is true but her head doesn~t. She always talks about the peace we bring to her house (best part of the missionary work) and she prays and thanks Heavenly Father for us. She is very attracted by the temple and the sealing power there. I have faith that we can help this family enter the temple here in a little bit :) We need to marry them which is super hard and complicated and takes about a month from when you get the papers (which takes about another month) So I hope that I am here to see them be baptized. Her husband Waldenei (valdenei) has a strong testimony and he loves the Church. He stopped drinking coffee (so did she) and they are working to get married. It is so wonderful to teach them. IT is great because we get to take our time. We can teach slowly and make sure we are making converts and building testimonies rather than just getting baptisms. I think that is one of the biggest problems with the missions of the world. The perception that we have is that baptisms are the goal. Especially here in Brazil. I hate it. Because like Nephi said baptism is just the gate. And we have to make sure that people are prepared to stay on the path after they get through the gate or the gate doesn~t mean anything. So teaching these two families is wonderful becasue we are really building testimonies and helping people progress. We are able to trust the spirit and just teach to their questions and doubts. It is amazing. Oh hey mom and dad can you guys pay some tithing for me. I got a 25 dollar credit card from gram so if you could throw a five in an envelope for me I would appreciate it. Thanks!I don~t know if I told you about the packages but I know that at least one of them got taxed for 450 reals so that one should be coming back. But I will know tommorrow about it. I love you guys so much. This work is amazing. There are discouraging days but the Lord always gives us a great day or a great lesson after the rough ones. Just one last experience,I followed some advice that Elder Aiken gave me before he left he said that I shoul get down on my knees and pray to know where to track. So we did last week. We felt like we should go to this one area and we did. We found no one. The people were not interested and they were rich. We were walking back to a nother area to teach when I felt like we should knock this house. It was a huge house a rich persons house and I did not want to knock. But I did. And this lady came to the door. She worked at the house as a cleaning lady and was an inactive member we taught her one day, got to know her and she was in church this week. God loves us:)Love you all,Elder Noel

This week was amazing again!!!

Thank you for the prayers about Kelly and Valdo!! They want to be baptized and want to be married in the temple!! We are working on the marriage papers and on the word of wisdom to get them ready to be baptized and start this journey. The spirit is so strong with them.

I love this. They are really the mativation for the work. haha When we see them I just get so excited to help other people. They told us that they can feel a difference in their home when we are there and I got so happy I wanted to just cry and scream. haha

We also went on exchanges with the Elderes quroum presidency this week to find and teach inactive members. They have so much more power than just us! They know people and have relationships with them that we don~t. And I am super excited about what this branch is doing.

The best part is that people recognize our service. They recognize our desire and will to work. It is so great to see them open up. So many missionaries think that we are better than members but when you ask them for advice and ask them for ideas they are more willing to help. And generally they know more than we do. (funny how they know more than 2 foreigners who have little to no education)

But we are doing well. I am glad Dad got a chance to talk to Coach Prentice. Bryson really loves him . I can~t believe Cody didn~t win state! It was our chance to have a state champ in the club :( oh well. haha


A few random things.

Got your package! But it is going to cost me almost 500 Reais (brazilian dollars) to get it becase of some tax or something so that should be coming back to you guys haha. I found out how to get stains out of my white shirts to they have more life now haha.

My friend Elder Robinson got sent home because of knee problems. He should call you guys he is from Spokane and he is going to try to make a visit to the west side. His name is Royce Thomas Robinson maybe he is on facebook? Anyways it would be cool if you guys could give him some support he was pretty hurt about it.

We made homemade alfredo sauce here. Soooo good! haha

I have been studying a lot about the relationship between the words the angel said to king Benjamin and the way the angel explained about the tree of life to Nephi. I am learning so much:)

I love you guys so much! Sorry this weekend was a little rough.

Wright