November 26, 2012

I´m still a little lost on how my second Thanksgiving has already come and past on the mission, where has the time gone? This thanksgiving was a lot better than last year that is for sure. The family that made me pumpkin pie a couple months ago offered us thanksgiving dinner and it was super good. Unfortunately they didnt have turkey because here in Brasil they said its more of a Christmas thing since they dont celebrate thanksgiving here but all in all it was a great dinner. What a great holiday it is too, a day to just pig out and eat all the good food you want and then sleep. A little different on the mission since we have to keep working but at least everybody back home got to complete it all haha.

Also this week we had our interviews with President. It went pretty well, nothing big just a normal interview to see how things were going. However, during these interviews we can also ask questions about things we dont understand with the scriptures and stuff. So i asked him a couple deep doctrine questions and he answered them, it is amazing how much knowledge he has.

And now for the best news of the week. BAPTISMS!!!! Yesterday after church we had 2 baptisms! Mari and her son Gabriel. Her daughter Geovanna was baptized a couple months ago in a different ward where her dad is a member and we started teaching her mom a little after. She is super awesome and really happy to be a member of the church now. The biggest part for her was the example of her daughter and how her daughter made big changes after her baptism. We wanted to take pictures all in white but unfortunately Mari didnt want to so we just took the pictures afterwards. Elder Messias baptized Mari and i baptized her son Gabriel who´s 9 years old. He said he wants to serve a mission too! So here in 9 years he´ll be out serving as an elder too, who knows where. So awesome! We have been working so hard and we have been blessed by the Lord to be able to baptize these 2 wonderful children of God. Next week they´ll receive the gift of the Holy Ghost and be confirmed members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints!

Eu Te Amo

Elder Gleason

P.S. Helaman 7:20; 8:15; 10:4-5, 7 and Psalms 34:15, 18; 37:4-5, 16

 

 pumpkin pie Itu style

 J.R. with Mari, and Gabriel and Geovanna

With Elder Messias too

November 19, 2012

What a crazy week that we have had here in itu. It started off a little tough and in the end ended tough as well. On tuesday and wednesday we literally lost both days of work. Tuesday night we went and slept at the house in Trujilo with elder vincent and elder siddoway again (they stayed together as well). So we slept in their house and then on wednesday we had mission council in Sao Paulo and didnt get back into our area until 9 at night. It was more tiring than working that entire time because it was just bus after bus. And they arent comfortable. But it was a really good meeting with President and we learned a lot about how we can help our zone get better. And also President told us that it is no longer 15 contacts a day but now its 30. 30 new people a day that is our goal to talk with in the street everyday. And we started putting it in practice right away. It was tough but weve been able to do it everyday since. it helps us a lot more focus on the work instead of talking about other things that dont have anything to do with the mission now were always talking with people in the street so we dont even have time to talk about other stuff. Its helped us a lot. What we thought would be super difficult has actually been decently easy.

So since we lost 2 days of our week our teaching schedule was also pretty messed up and we had to move a lot of things around. But we ended up teaching a ton and what we taught in a normal week with our 7 days we taught the same amount with 2 less days in our week the Lord trully blessed us. And it was crazy because we also talked to more people in the street. We trully saw the Lords hand in what we were doing. So we worked really hard and things were going really well with all our investigators and we found 2 more couples, who are already married!!! and interested!!! So we were super happy. We were waiting for 13 people at church who promised that they would be there including all of our baptismal dates. And yesterday came around and... 1 person went. We were happy that she was there but also upset that no one else went. But the lady that went is super awesome and her and her son are going to be baptized next week after church!! So that was the huge bright spot of it all. And we´re super excited for her. We will see some of the fruits of all of our extremely hard and diligent work. Also one of the young couples that we´re teaching that just needs to get married to be baptized is still going super well. We were scared cuz they didnt go to church but we went by at night to see if they were home and they had travelled for the weekend and were trying to call us but it wasnt working. And we had had a family home evening marked with them and they were waiting for us to get there to have it. Theyre so awesome!!!! I just hope and pray that when we go to mark a marraige date in the govt building that it can be while im still here. I want to be here for the marraige and baptism!

Also lastly, our cell phone broke yesterday during church, we have no idea how it happened but it broke and still doesnt want to work. we tried everything to get it back but nothing. And last night was the night to get all the numbers from the whole zone and without cell phone it is super hard. We had to go back like the olden days and use the phone booths. But the first 4 that we went to were broken so we were running all asround trying to find one that worked. It was a battle but we finally found one and we didnt get home until about 10 pm. it stinks not having a cell phone especially when youre a zone leader. And even worse we´ll be without the cell phone until friday. awesome. so eah that was our crazy week. But next week we have 2 baptisms!!!

Eu Te Amo

Elder Gleason

P.S. Helaman 5:8-9, 12; 6:5 and Psalms 27:1; 29:11; 31:23-24; 32:10-11

 He tried calling home, but it didn't work out too well

 A huge doll type thing that Itu has, he didn't want to accept hearing their messages, J.R. wasn't too happy

 This little guy was a lot easier to talk to and they read the Book of Mormon together

 Coconut water, J.R. said it wasn't too horrible but doesn't plan on drinking it again

Sunday night getting all the "numbers" by phone booth since their cell phone broke



November 12, 2012

Well another transfer has come and past, but this time nothing changed with us here in Itu. And we didn't end up getting another dupla of Elders for our area/house. We had been told that we would receive 2 more elders and that they would be living in our house for an entire week but when the phone call came they ended up going to a different area in our zone. I cant lie I was a little frustrated because I was excited to have 2 more missionaries living with us and even worse Elder Riggin (from back in Jaçana) was the missionary that went to the other area that should have been with us. But the Lord knows what He´s doing so the other dupla was needed in that other area. But now we are the Zone Leaders of 18 missionaries which is a little unnormal here in our mission. In our mission we only have 1 other zone thats as big as ours. But so last week on Tuesday night all the missionaries that were being transferred slept in our house and it was packeddd. We didnt even have enough mattresses for everybody and a couple missionaries ended up sleeping on our 2 couches which are extremely uncomfortable haha. But things in the zone are going really well and the work is really starting to progress well.

Also, this week we started to receive the blessings of all our hard, diligent work. We had a great week this week. 2 families that we´ve been teaching for a couple weeks that arent married have decided that theyre going to get married now. The only bad part is that here in Itu to get married the process takes forever, at the minimum 1 month until you can mark to get married on paper. So theyre going to take a little longer but were super excited for them that theyve decided to get married now. Also we had some other people that we found during this week. One is the brother of a member who went to church for the 2nd time yesterday and is from a different state here in Brasil and will be going back in a couple months but hes super interested and were teaching him now. Also we are teaching the mom of a member from a different ward that is super happy with us teaching her and is seeing how it is blessing her life already. And she has a 9 year old son as well who isnt a member. With both these people that I said weve marked baptismal dates for here in a few weeks. So were going to keep working with them a lot and here in a few weeks they should be baptized. We´re super excited for another transfer here in Itu together and even more for how the work is starting to pick up now a lot more. We´re going to keep working our butts off so that these blessings dont stop coming.

Oh and the other day Elder Messias was bit by a dog in the street haha. I can laugh because it wasnt me. He was super irritated and said he was ready to kick the dog, luckily it didnt cut him or anything it just ripped his pants a tiny bit. It was the first time ive seen someone bit by a dog so far on the mission.

Eu Te Amo

Elder Gleason

P.S. Helaman 3:25-28, 35; 4:15 and Psalms 5:4; 11:5, 7; 15:1-2; 23:3-4

 Their zone last transfer

In Itu everything is bigger and this is one of them, a huge phone booth

November 5, 2012

And another transfer has gone by, tonight we find out about what will happen with us and the zone this wednesday. However we do know a little bit of information already, that our area (which is huge) will be getting 2 more missionaries. So now we will divide the area and have 2 more elders living with us in our house. It should be pretty fun and it will make things a lot easier with having to go to commitments on one side of the area to the other. And since this is happening it is extremely likely that me and elder messias will both stay here to help the new companionship get to know the area. But who knows anything can happen, and it is usually the unexpected that ends up happening so we´ll see tonight when they call us. In the beginning however it will be a little tough because right now were working in the entire city with investigators on both sides so now half the investigators will be with the new elders that get here and we´ll have less to do to start off. But we´ll work hard and we´ll have the chance to get to know other neighborhoods and areas that we havent gone to because the area is so big. The ward here is really pumped about having 2 more missionaries. I remember back in the day when our ward had like 6 or 8 elders it was crazy.

Unfortunately this week was another tough one on us and we didnt have any big results but we continue doing the best we can and we know the Lord will bless us for our efforts. Im pretty sure this last transfer with elder messias I worked more diligently and smartly than all the others and yet it had the least results. Not that i didnt work hard the other transfers nothing like that, but i never worked as hard as i did this one. In 6 full weeks we only had 5 days where we didnt do 15 or more contacts trying to find new people to teach. the goal on the mission is to do 15 contacts tuesday through saturday. And we only didnt get that goal 5 times and those 5 times we did like 10 contacts or so. So yeah we worked really hard. But the Lord knows what He´s doing and what He has prepared for us as well.

Well thats about it for this week, I've been doing a lot of stuff with my pictures so my time is already running out on here. Oh but before i forget the Bishop said somthing really great yesterday in sacrament meeting. He said that the greatest mircales are when a person changes to be better than he was. It was really great. It doesnt translate exactly from portuguese to english so if it sounds weird my bad, I'm sure you get the drift haha.

Eu Te Amo

Elder Gleason

P.S. Alma 60:13; 62:45, 49 and Job 27:4-6; 33:14; 36:5, 11

P.S.S. OHHH and I just remembered. In guapira this past saturday and the saturday before they baptized 2 people that I found and started teaching. On was Rosana, who me and elder vazquez did a contact with in front of her house, she was baptized last week. and the other me and elder vazquez found as well asking for a cup of water, his name is Marcelo and he was baptized saturday. So Awesome!!!!!

 

 on Wednesday night they made french toast with a class that a member that teaches english and J.R. talked with them quite a bit. They also get their addresses to go by another day with them

J.R. and Elder Messias had a tough day and decided to take some pictures...

October 29, 2012

Another tough week on us. We have related these past couple weeks to the story of Job in the Bible unfortunately. We had things going extremely well, and then things started going down hill. But like Job we have continued faithfull and not gotten disanimated. We know the Lord will bless us for our efforts, faith and work that we are pointing in here in Itu. We know that the blessings will come in double just like in the story of Job as well. After suffering through many things and hardships that he went through in the end the Lord blessed him with double of what he had before hand. The Lord will always be testing our faith to see just how far we´ll go and right now we´re in that stage. He´s testing our faith and we´re continuing strongly and working diligentely in His vineyard. It was pretty ironic though because this week I finished reading the book of Job as all this was happening. I have been reading the Bible for a while now and am now is Psalms. I really enjoy reading the Bible and have learned a lot from my reading. Also im almost finished with the Book of Mormon for the 3rd time on the mission and when i finish it im going to read and study it in portuguese and hopefully read it in portuguese 2 more times before the end of the mission.

Also, this week we were supposed to baptize the couple that I've talked about a couple times and everything was going great with them and we had the baptismal interview marked and everything. So on tuesday we did the division and I left with Elder Vazquez (my trainee) and the other elder went to do the interviews. Everything went great but in the time that they were filling out the information for baptism they told us they werent legally married. Boom boom boom boom. They had told us they were married and even use wedding rings and everything. But in Brasil, maybe the US too idk, there is a thing called "friendshipped" where you dont have to get married married but it shows the government that youre together. We werent too happy and it was a sad moment. But they're going to talk about marraige and we´ll see what happens when we go back this week. They say they still want to be baptized which is a good start at least.

Also yesterday we had stake conference here in Itu and we had the priviledge to have 2 seventies here in Itu along with Pres Martins. It was packeddd. They had a complete change in the stake presidency and because of the change there will also be a new bishop in itu because he was called as the 1st counselor in the stake presidency. But it was super awesome and very spiritual. Also all of our recent converts that are over 19 received the Melquesideck priesthood. I know I spelled that wrong.

Eu Te Amo

Elder Gleason

P.S. Alma 53:20-21; 56:47-48; 57:21, 26-27 and Job 8:20; 13:15-16; 19:25-26; 23:10-11

 

 J.R. made a new tie buddy for the mission. Nobody there believes that he actually made it but that he sent it to somewhere to make it. "But I sewed that sucker"

J.R. and Elder Messias with Elder Godoy and the other 70 that he had no idea how to spell

October 22, 2012

Where did this past week go? When youre working hard things really fly by. And I know I've said that so many times already but it hits me every week when I sit down at the computer again and again to send an email home about the week. How is it already the end of october?? Its almost winter in the US and I'm dying of heat down here in Itu. And a member yesterday told us that we havent seen anything yet with the heat and that it will just keep getting worse... Awesome. But it was probably like this last year when I was here for the summer as well and I just didnt realize it.

So on saturday for lunch I ate tacos. It was fantastic. 1 year and 2 months without tasting the greatness of a taco. I ate so much at that lunch haha. Elder Messias was just like is this seriosuly a normal meal in the US? I told him of course it was, I was super happy on saturday. He wasn't as impressed as I was haha. The lady that made the tacos was the daughter of the one who made me pumpkin pie a couple of weeks ago. I'm really liking the lunches from this family.

As for the week we worked our butts off yet again but didnt have the same happiness as we did last week. We worked so hard and then the weekend was just a huge downer. Its really tough to stay happy when this happens but we did our best to stay animated and continued working through the difficulties. We did quite a bit of walking this past week, the one good thing is that I'm starting to get to know the area a lot better which is pretty tough with the size of this city. But we did have some good things this week, dont think that it was just all hard times. The one couple that we found a few weeks ago are really excited to be baptized. They have received a ton of answers to their prayers. They tell us that we´re angels sent from the Lord. Its pretty cool and different to hear. But they're changing a lot for the better and their family situation is a lot better since we first talked to them. theyre even already talking about the baptism of their daughter whos 7 who will only be baptized next year. And we told the father how he would be able to baptize her when she turns 8, he was pretty excited. So its been a really huge blessing and great experience to watch their progress and think that it all came because we decided to knock the door of the house on the side of someone who wasnt home. (not sure if that all made sense, hope so). But through all the things that were going through we´re staying strong and we´ll continue working hard and we know that the Lord will continue to bless us and that we´ll find more people who want to follow Christ´s example and be baptized with His authority.

Eu Te Amo

Elder Gleason

P.S. Alma 49:5, 8-9; 50:1 (We must prepare ourselves as well for Satan´s temptations, so that he will be surprised with our defenses as well) and Job 1:21-22; 4:8, 17; 5:17