This week.

Well, This week has been quite the journey. Starting on Monday, there has been much happening, we have reactivated the family of 12, who are the most incredible family, but have only 1 problem, they have to get a car ride to the church because they live over 2 miles away from the church (for us is not a problem) but for them, with a multitude of little kids, doesn't go over too well. We also have the problem that there are only 5 families in the ward that have a car, let alone are disposed to offer a car ride when we ask. Well, we managed, and I had the privilege of baptising Ênya this weekend. She is the sweetest little 10-year old that I have ever met. We had 3 baptisms marked for this last weekend, but one didn't show up, he lives in another city, and the little sister of Ênya, Carla, who is 9, began to bawl when she saw the water in the font, and refused to enter. We shall see what we can do, maybe we will have to wait until the father is worthy to baptise her, which should be here shortly, but who knows. This week we had stake conference, we recieved the conference via satellite here in Erechim, and we had over 150 people show up, 9 were active investigators and a multitude of people that I have no idea who they are, most were from out of town, and so we can't teach them, but anyways it was an incredible experience, President Richard G Scott talked in Portuguese, very slowly, with about a fourth of the vocabulary in spanish, but that's alright, everybody understood what he was saying, he talked on the importance of keeping the commandments and how we may observe and learn of what we need to do in our lives through the examples of the prophets in the scriptures, what we need to dedicate to the Lord. It was swell.

 

My friend and investigator, Vilmar stopped smoking!!!!!!!!!! Woooohoooo!!!!!!! and we are hoping he will be baptized this sunday! :D :D :D :D Thats the plan at least.

 

We got a reference from a person we met in another investigator's house, that her son had received the missionaries some time in the past and had almost been baptized. We passed by his house and learned that he in fact wants to serve a mission! WHAAAAA!!!!!!!!! Well, he asked, "So elders, what does it take to get baptized?" I almost explained sober it in my own words, but then I remembered that there is a very specific verse in Doctrine and Covenants that explains this very question that Joseph Smith made...D&C 20:37, its a good one :)

 

anyways, everybody is asking me if I will have to return to the United States if the USA goes into war with Korea do Norte..... I said, well, we shall see....(I have no idea whatsoever if that is even close to happening), but for now I will focus my thoughts on Erechim.

 

Mother, Pinhão is the equivilant of a cousin of a pinecone seed. it falls from the Pineiros (pine-trees that everybody has in photos and paintings, brazilian trees that are super tall and have no branches until the vere top) they are terrible plain. They are bearable if you cook them in water. They are excelent if you roast them or cook them in water and then take off the cask and then roll them in salt. Irmã Roma put very little salt on them. Angela gave us a TON of them with a bucket of salt to dip them in. SO DELICIOUS. and mother, its not barbacue, thats very very very different, its Churrasco :)

 

anyways, thank you all for the birthday wishes, Yes mother, I got the package last month :) thanks for the music

I'll send photos :)

 

Keep your stick on the Ice.

Elder Eliason

hey

hey you, I just met you, and this is crazy, so here's the chapel- be baptized maybe?

 

yeah....we're fighting to keep a positive attitude, we had 10 investigators go to church yesterday, but neither of the investigators that we had marked a baptism with yesterday went. Vilmar, my dear friend didn't pass the baptismal interview....he passed on a conditional basis, but the fact that he didn't go to church yesterday kills me and made it impossible for him to get baptized. Geo, well, we have yet to hear his justification for not going to church...

I hate excuses. Please, just suck it up and tell us that you overslept or something. Dont blame it on the laundry, or dog, etc....

okay, now that my wrath has settled...we did have a miracle thisweek....

over the last month (without our knowing) Bispo has been searching high and low for a family that supposedly moved into our ward. He had called the bishop of their ward (out in Uruguayana) the grandpa of the family, he had a cell number that wasn't working....etc.... one month in vain. Well, we were walking down the road in a neighborhood about 2 kilometers long of our chapel, and doing contacts on the road. Well, I stopped to do a contact with a young man, and he actually told us that he was a member afastado...inactive. Well, it turns out we were in front of his house, and he invited us to come in. We entered the simple house, 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, 1 kitchen, and a family room....with a decently sized yard. well, there were kids EVERYWHERE. When I say everywhere, I mean everywhere....I asked, so, which of them are part of your family? The response? ALL OF THEM! THEY HAVE 10 KIDS!!!!!!!!! The oldest are twins, they are 17 years old.....here:

Sandro (father)

Kaita (mother)

Karin-17

Karinnie-17

Iago-16

Tiago-13

Enya-10

Carla-9

André-7

Samail-4

Dallesandro-2

Bernardo-10 months

Well.....we were overwhelmed, and asked if all of the kids (of age) were baptized...turns out that Enya and Carla have not! Well........they will be baptized here in a little bit....

It was literally a miracle that we found them that day, we returned that night to the church (we were to meet bishop there to go on splits) and we told him about the family. He got silent, and then got super giddy, super happy, so happy that he ran across the street and bought us a bag of cookies... I didn't know that they made cookies here...but he did...and then he called a taxi and we went to go visit the family. It was the family that he was looking for. 2 Young women, 2 young men, 4 in the Primary, and 2 in the nursery...nearly doubles the number of youth in the ward. I know without a doubt that it was inspiration to find them that day because after talking to the mother....turns out that they ate the last of their food that afternoon, the father was working, but the company was not paying him. (he has yet to recieve 3 months pay) well, Bispo intervened, and everything is tranquil now, but we are working with them...everybody in the ward is super excited to recieve them...and they live close to some of the other youth...so there's going to be an awesome increase in the ward.

This was basically the only thing exciting that happened this week, besides the fact that our gas went out (we buy gas by the tank) while I was making lunch last pday and so I ate frozen (already cooked) chicken.

 

We visited a man with lemon trees (they look like oranges and are green, orange and yellow,) and he gave us about 80 lemons, so we have been making a ton of fresh lemonade lately to combat the cold that has been going around. I will include an easy brasilian lemonade recipe that I made this morning:

 

5 lemons with the peel taken off (I use a knife, its easier)

1 banana

a ton of ice cubes

sugar to taste

very cold water to fill the blender.

blend it all together

pour it through a juice filter (looks like a bit of windowscreen stretched in an exterior of a magnifying glass.)

drink

very very good.

anyways Lemons, limes and oranges are in season again. its pretty good

Mother, you asked what Pinão tastes like....well, its got a pretty nuteral meaty flavor, you can prepare it salty or sweet, We had it at Irmã Roma's house salty. Tastes like chicken. yeah. tanner, name that movie. Hint, a parrot says that.

 

anyways. Have a wonderful day. Te amo, e A Igreja é verdadeira.

 

Keep your stick on the ice.

Elder Eliason

P.S. I just got informed that Neither Elder P. Souza nor I will be transfered, so I will stay in Erechim for the next 6 weeks! :)

Bahahahahahahahaha, Brittany, that is AWESOME!!!!!!

Okay, so this week has been good, better, and well, not exactly best because we didn't have a baptism (that makes 8 weeks I think? which puts us as the worst area in the mission? whatever) But...many things did happen. Yesterday, we had an awesome lesson set up for Rodrigo and Sandra, the brother and sister-in-law of irmã Claudia, wife of Irmão Tutti. They went to church (YES!) and went to eat lunch at Tutti's house. Well they forgot that we were on our way to come teach them so they left for São Valentim, a city close, but still in another municipial (county) so we were out of luck...we have 48 municipials/counties that Elder P. Souza and I take care of by the way, its kind of rediculous. Anyways, so I called Tutti to see if we were still on track to teach them and he paused and apologized and said that they just left, but to meet him in front of Irmão Jarede's house. We walked the 45 minutes to Irmão Jarede's house and arrived, and Irmão Jarede was confused and told us that Tutti wasn't there and that nothing was happening. Well, I called Tutti again and he said that he was on his way (he lives 15 minutes away) well, we decided to do contacts on the road, knock doors, etc.... so that we weren't wasting time. Well, after 10 contacts, 1 lesson and 1 hour later, Tutti arrived and said, hey Elders, we need you for a service project we are doing today....roofing and painting the interior of the house of Irmão Jarede. Well.....Being sunday we were a bit confused, but then realized, that Sunday was the only day that anybody in the ward could provide service for each other...so, in our white shirts and ties....which we quickly changed to old cothes of Jarede, we spent the rest of the day helping...he was right, it would have taken a LOT longer and have been much more difficult without us....

Saturday I called a contact that we did on the road to see if she was home and if we could pass by. Well, it turns out that she is an English teacher (basics only...) and was working, but she invited us to talk to her class in English and talk about the United States and what I am doing here in Brazil. Of course we went and helped. It was actually very difficult to talk to the Brazilians in English because to explain a word that they didn't know it is just much simpler to say it in Portuguese...I ended up speaking Portenglish for the majority of the time...and yes, all of them thought that all Americans are super-fat and that we all eat mcdonalds every day for every meal. In response to this I told them that Americans thought that Brazilians lived in grass huts and hunted their own food like indians and that in the cities, its like Carnival all year around. They laughed pretty hard, but didn't believe me. well.....ha.

We started teaching a reference from a young-woman in the ward. Her best friend is dating this guy, named Adriano. Well, when he sleeps he dreams, and his dreams are super vivid and he remembers them, he told his teacher this- his teacher is spiritualist and believes in doing whatever possible to communicate with the other side of the veil- an she has been directing him in a direction that is not beneficial for the spiritual welfare of him. We arrived at his house and turns out that he is an almost-neo-nazi, just because of how incredible of a leader Hitler was....it's true, he was an incredible leader, but I know better. His friend gave him a Book of Mormon, and so we directed him to Alma 43 to 62....a new and better more honorable leader....Capitain Moroni. We also read Moroni 10 together about gifts and that people do have gifts of visions and dreams, but they are from God through the Holy Spirit, and that they are to be used for the benefit of others, in a manner that God wants them to be used, not to communicate and try and learn about the other side, we already know what we need from the scriptures and latter day revelation. Anyways, we contacted him, began teaching, and then reported to his friend who gave us the refference, she gave us 2 more references. Another young woman heard that we were teaching him, and didn't believe us. Well, while we were talking to her, a friend of hers walked down the road on the other side. He waved to her and she waved back. Me, being me of course asked hey, does he want to learn about the gosple? She kind of laughed and said "I guess".... so we bolted across the road and talked to him and set up an appointment with him. We returned to the young woman and she was staring in unbelief. We told her that we will pass at his house thursday...etc... and she said look Elders, I was thinking of 1 or 2 references for you all, but now I have a huge list for you guys....everybody accepts the elders if they have friends with them that are testifying of the truth. It was really cool to see how it works. Now we have the young women giving us 4-5 references every week. Well, its fantastic to say the least. 

updates.....:

-Amadeus=loco demais he's a nut. and although he believes we are litterally angels sent to him to proclaim the truth, he has yet to fulfill any of our challenges for him (read the scriptures, go to church, etc...) he prays but in his evangelical fall to the ground style...very obnoxious. So we have stopped teaching him (he lives very far away from our other investigators, and if he is not fulfilling the challenges, there's no reason to keep teaching him sadly)

-Paulo and fam- no new news excpet that we were walking down the road and Paulo jr. (he is 9) called out from a sandpit -their construction site that has sand, an equivilant of a kids dream of a giant sandbox- to us that he wants to be baptized in our church. Well, atleast that removes some doubts that I had...

-Gizzelie is still psycho, but we think that she resolved the problems with her husband, and can be baptized this weekend...we hope

-Alipio found out that church starts at 8:30 normally and told us that it was too early, and that he will still be sleeping at 8:30...because it will be cold and that it is good to sleep when it is cold. well, he's 85, we can't really make him do anything, or reason with him.... besides that, he is looking to get a girlfriend....shes a girl that is taking care of her mother (also of much age) and is nice to him ...hahahahahaha...well, we shall see....

-Vilmar got a new job that travels a lot on the weekend, but he still has his baptism scheduled for this weekend also. He loves the Book of Mormon more than I have seen anybody ever.

-Carlos returned from his month-long vacation trip around the south, and has begun giving hundreds of references again. I think I figured out how he gets all of them....he has a facebook, and whoever is willing to befriend him on FB he sends the missionaries to their house. he is so funny.

anyways, my time has expired on the computer. Te amo e A Igreja é verdadeira.

Keep your stick on the Ice.

Elder Eliason

conference​time

Well, after Sarah Ayer's fantastic email,my computerhas decided thatthespace baris no longer important. No,I amnottrying to replicateher email, but it is truely annoying to slam the space bar every word. So lately I have been concentrating really hard on my Portuguese gramar and spelling, as I have been writing emails in portuguese and taking notes,etc.... but Ihavenoticed a very bad trend, my spelling ofthe English languagehas been taking a huge downfall....anyways, this week. Well, we sufferedthis week. Not interms of my legs *(which wouldbe muchmuchmore enjoyable), but in terms of investigators being slackers and the temptations ofthe devil being ever more present.

 

Our incredible elect family of 5 still hasyettobe baptized. Paulo is smoking 3 cigarettes daily, but has yet to give itup entirely. We aretrying really hard toemphasizeforhim that eternal salvation of his family isresting on his responsability. I think that he has fear of stopping smoking, because he stopped for3 weeks a coupleof years ago. cold turkey. During thosethree weeks, his body did not permit him to sleep, work, or do anything. Hebecame depressed, outraged, and felt useless. Not good for a man who on a weekly basis has to look for new work. On the other hand, his wife is almost done with 2 Nephi. They live in Viadutos, so weonly get to visit them one day every week, this week, we will have a family home Evening with themand anotherfamily,so we shall see.

 

I have decided to learn capoera when I get back, I saw a couple of guys doing it onthe streets, and I really want to learn. "super show" in portugese.... (very macho) but very very cool.

Conferencewasreally really incredible. Father wasright, it iscompletely different as a missionary. COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. Different in the fact that every talk, I sat there thinking, alright, howcan I apply this in my teachings, andhow canthe investigatorsapply this in their life. Satrudays sessions wereexcelent, we had a fantastic 10 people in thechapel and I brought a quia of chemarrao and my new garrafa termica (thermal waterbottle,thatholds 2litresof hotwater) and we drank chemarrão and listenedto the talks. Sunday morning we had Alipio (an 85 yearold man who I made friends with on the streets, wears bombachas and drinks only chemarrão, and practically yells when he talks, but is super excited about life) show up, along withthe mother of oneof ourmembers, who we havebeen teaching slowly (she doesn't pick up on a lot of stuff, so everything has tobe explained slowly and clearly multiple times, but whatever) Immediately afterwards, we went to São Valentine, a city about 30 minutes tothe west of Erechim, wherewe taught a new family, the brother of a sister in our ward, whose wife didnt believe thatthe missionaries would actually come, but was cryinging joywhen we arrived. Theyare AWESOME, we talked with the member, and she saidthat she has been trying to getthem to cometo church forthe last 4 years, but theynever have come, the missionaries never went to their house, and they felt thatthe church was a foreign thing. Well, we came to their house, talkedabout families, howto fortify them through Jesus Christ, modern day revelation, and Baptism. They need to be married, butthey definitely have means by which,so yeah! Im superexcited.

 

Anyways,elder P. Souza andI willmake hamburgers today. YEAH! woot! okay, and I willbuy a new metal strawthatwont rust (made from stainless steel)....my other metal straw/filter, called a bomba, got corroded overthelast couple of days..(superbummer)....ioh weelll..........te amo e A Igreja é verdadeira

 

Keep your stick on the Ice

ElderEliason

This week

This week has been awesome, terrible, but awesome.

1- Viadutos. We started the group out in Viadutos. Well, we arrived, and the house that we were planning to use was full of people. When we inquired as to what was happening, the response was that everybody was waiting for the new pastors to arrive *(us)* well, we had 33 people attend our little sacrament meeting. With the Rap/Funk that was playing on a boom box from a nearby neighbor, we had the most spiritual meeting that I have ever had. We went on splits with some members of the ward, so I went to Viadutos while Elder P. Souza went to Erechim.

 

2. Our incredible investigators Paulo and his family have yet to be baptized, they are waiting for him to stop smoking. Pray for them

3. The Ward has all of a sudden realized the urgency of new members in our ward, so they are bringing literally all of their friends to church and giving tons of references. It is incredible and a miracle, but we are getting run ragged running from appointment to appointment, one side of the city to another, because people in this city work a LOT. so they only have a little time each week to recieve us, so we have to be there when they are available....very complicated schedules

 

4. Tons of datas for batismo, but few are actually going to happen. When I said we invite on first lesson, yes, we already always do that, but to try and mark a baptismal date the first contact on the road is difficult, strange, but fantastic.

 

5. We had a family home evening with a family who is very against the church, their son is a member, but it almost destroyed the familywhen he told them. He actually ran away from home to be baptized...but things are getting better. We made sloppy Joes with them (build repor) and watched the Testaments with them (always brings the spirit) which was incredible. We gave them a book of mormon and the mother said that this time she will actually try and read and pray about the truthfullness of these things. I have a lot of hope for them :D

 

6. Last night we visited a reference from a member, we arrived, and the family was super happy to have us. Aparently they have tons of friends that are members and awesome examples for them. The father started out by bashing literally every church I have every heard of by all of their faults and how they are all created by man, and how. He then turned to me and told me quite literally, that he has no idea how to bash our church, well, we steered him in the right direction, and told him that there are a lot of things that people say about the church, but we have to use the spirit to discern what is true and what is not. He was fascinated that we actually teach the members of the church to pray and ask God for answers, not the pastors, and that we are to act by the whisperings and promptings of the spirit. We gave them a book of Mormon and invited them to be baptized and read and pray, they accepted, and while we were drinking chemmarrao afterwards *as is custom in their house* the son, (age 18-ish) read the entire chapter that we marked *(alma 36) and pointed out some of the verse that he liked, especially about repentance and the feeling of joy that accompanies this righteous act. I am super excited for them (they've already been to church one time, and they will come to general conference this weekend. ) YEAH!!!!!

 

Anyways, It was fantastic to hear about the trip to NYC, Enjoy life

Te amo, e A Igreja é verdadeira

Elder Eliason