7-25-11 letter Encantando 4

This week was quite the cool week, we almost had a baptism and she should be baptized this week, we are doing all we can, working, working, and I have decided that a South American mission is completely different from one in the United States. We got to watch a show called "The District" a couple weeks ago and if we were doing here, what the missionaries were doing there, it would be really weird. The way we talk to people here is different, I don't know how to explain it but Brazil is a different beast, and a really happy, upbeat culture.

We had a crazy, cool, cultural thing at "Festa Junina". It is a big party where everybody celebrates the North and brings out their inner hick. It would be like if we in Washington had a day to celebrate the deep South, and wore overalls, and straw hats and blacked out a couple teeth, and cooked some alligator on the BBQ. Just imagine the life of "Waterboy" and make a huge festival out of it! That is what we did on Saturday and it was really fun. Yesterday we went to a huge MG (Mormon gathering), it reminded me of my old MG's at my house. There was about 40 people in a little house and we ate food and had a great time and then we found out that the reason for the party was this guy wanted to propose to his girlfriend so that was way cool. It was the first time I had every seen anything like that so it was a blast.

I am thinking about buying a harmonica and learning to play it. I would like to play music and I can't really take a piano around with me-so I am going to try this and see how it goes. Well, those were the highlights of my week, and I am just living my life and geting better. I am finally finding out what goals would be good for me, because I have been thinking about them a lot and know what I want to get out of this mission. We will see how that goes for me, I am excited to continue learning and growing out here in Brazil.

Letter July 18-encantado 3

This week has been kind of a short week for missionary work, we had interviews and district meetings and things like that, but work has been going well and this week we are going to throw a twist of sacrifice on the work, and fast a couple days and pray harder and find some service to do. We are already doing everything else we can.
This week we have a little Festa Junina, that is when people in Rio have a day when they celebrante the people in the North and wear strange clothes and make crazy food and things like that. We are having one this Saturday at church and I am way stoked because we will get to meet a lot of new people and have a party. We are currently teaching some very quality people. Quality means that people are actually interested and want to know for themselves and are willing to study and pray. All the people we have are good in this sort of way.

This P-day I invited our district missionaries to have a fun day. This is because some people just sleep on P-day and that is BORING. I invited them to come over and we will have a rummy party (the card game) and also a potluck. We are making cake and others are bringing stuff as well so it should be a blast. Last P day we had rummy night with just the people in our apartment and I dominated everybody!!!

This area is wonderful, it is small, so we get less blisters on our feet. The people are nice, and the members enjoy us, so all together we are having a good time here. As for me, I can understand pretty much everything in Portuguese, and for the most part my talking is pretty good, it is just hard to conjugate the two types of past tense, but I am learning and getting a little better each day.

I also got some sort of sickness this week, it started with a headache and moved to body pain and I got dizzy and could feel a pulse in my head and have a little fever. The next day my body hurt but not as bad, and it just kept getting better, now I am almost better. Hope all is well, keep me posted.

Encantando-July 11, 2011

I hope all is well at Dworshak! It was wet and cold this week, I bought a coat because it was too cold, who would have ever thought I would need a coat in RIO? This has been a great week. We brought 4 people to church; someones friend, a mom and daughter, and another person. I am so excited for this week because I have lots of teaching and talking Portuguese. The mom and daughter are way cool and when we go there they always make us good food. They have prayed about the church and are very receptive to everything. We are having family night with them tonight and that should be wonderful too. The ward I am in is great. There are 5 ward missionaries and 3 of them really help us out, we are looking for more people to teach and that will be good.

Our apartment is wonderful, we make breakfast every day, we make pancakes, french toast, eggs maloco (my invention), and avacado-it is way different then the ones back home, you eat it sweet and it is the size of about 3 avacados. We cook a lot in our place. We have 3 Americans and 1 Brazilian living here and it is usually the other way around. Today is P-day and we are going to play some cards, it is crazy fun. We taught the Brazilian to say the cards names in English so we can all play in either language. My comp and I are doing good together. I am good with people and being organized and in some ways creative, and he is good at everything else. We get along well and usually end up talking about history and stuff like that. It is amazing how many facts I know, I don't remember how I learned most of them, but it is good. My old comp is still living in this place too and we are like twins; we always think the same things and say the same lines, it is soooo weird! His great grandpa made all the Browning guns, so we have decided that if we have time in the future we would go and re-make the good old Browning lever action shotgun! YES that would be a fun gun. I will send some pictures soon of me and my area and I am expecting pictures from Dworshak!

Jordans letter 7/4/2011-Encantando

Hey surprise, I got transfers again and a new companion again!! We are living in the same building still but have different companions and different areas. My new comp is named Elder Clegg and he is from PG Utah and he is a little trecky/dungeons and dragonish, I am having to learn how to have a conversation with him but all is well. We should do well and we get along well. My last area Iraja was shut down again. I have no idea why but it must have been shut for a reason so who knows....

We had something crazy happen the other day-we were out teaching in what we thought was a calm favella when all of a sudden EVERYBODY starts shooting around us at the police. We were pretty much at the top of the hill and everyone below us had a gun and was shooting. The mom of the family told us to come in and we got to teach about 3 families so that was great. So many good things and we were safe, but we will be careful next time when we walk up a hill!

We are about ready to start our area over again-it is a good area and we need to find out what we need to do here to help out. We have some ideas so we will see how they work out. So, I have had 3 transfers, 3 areas, and 3 American companions (in 3 months?). That is very rare for a missionary around here but I am fine and I am going to experience all of Rio! Today it is raining and the 4th of July. The 3 Americans in our apartment sang the national anthem and did the pledge of allegiance while the 1 Brazilian got to watch!! Ha ha. He will learn!

So I am wondering which places in Rio did Uncle Marcus serve?

Jordan's letter 6/27/2011

This has been a wonderful week; the last week of the transfer so it was good for that reason-my companion and I are probably staying here but we won't know until tonight for sure-but not everyone will be staying so that will be sad. We also did some very cool things this week. I wanted to include some pictures but couldn't find my cord. We are also changing the mission office location because of getting a new mission president so you will need to update that, I will send you that address later.
This week we ordered a 70 centimeter pizza (that is over 2 feet)!!! I had to put it diagonal to get it through the door and the best part is that it was free!! Well, so far it is free. I was going to pay for it with my gringo card and everyone was giving me their part of the money-but when the guy got here he didn't have his card swiper so he just gave it to us and said he would come back a different day...he hasn't done that yet. I could only eat a quarter of it.
Yesterday I had a chance to look at my hard drive and I couldn't find any pictures of me wake boarding and was wondering if Dad left those off so I wouldn't miss it or if there was just some other mistake? I thought that Dad was going to relax and not do any projects while I was gone but it looks like he just can't stop.
Like I said, we are getting a new mission president this week and I am a bit sad and also can't wait to meet the new one. We will probably have a big mission conference this week.
Our work has finally been coming together for us-this week we baptized the two girlfriends we have been teaching. One has been coming to church for a year but didn't want to be baptized because she was afraid of her step-mom and dads opinions but she couldn't fight with the spirit she felt so she got baptized. We also baptized another girl who had been coming to church for four months and almost decided to never come back before she prayed and felt the spirit. So pretty much without the spirit none of this would have ever happened, not one thing. We were just there to say a couple things and show them the path. They were both baptized Sunday and most of the ward stayed to see it. Until this point this was the coolest thing I have ever experienced out here; the strong feelings and little details have made it even more worthwhile. The funniest part is that my companion and I both knew they were going to say yes, I told my comp to bring our district leader with us to do the interview-and we did. After she said yes, we told her we had someone to give her the interview and she didn't know how we knew because she hadn't said yes yet. We explained to her that we had faith in her and felt she would say yes, cool stuff. Time is up, I hope you could follow my stories. More next week. I am out of time!

June 20, Letter

Time in the mission is going by so fast, it is way crazy. I think I need to live in the moment a little more, I am already trying to do that but I can always do better so I will make that a goal. Tell Megan and Ty happy birthday and I will try and baptize someone for their birthday present!! This week I was talking about the movie "Yes Man" with my companion. I decided that if everyone was a yes man that my job would be easier. I can imagine asking the questions..."Will you read the Book of Mormon, will you pray for a respons to know if it is true, will you be baptized, will you endure to the end". That sounds like a Golden member to me, but then the reason people are not yes men is also what makes life so interesting! The area is going good and we are teaching about a lesson each night here. We have really made a lot of progress and we have some good investigators. One we will baptize when he gets his marriage papers-that is a problem here because it is expensive to get married. We also are teaching two girlfriends of members and they are smart about their decisions. We are also teaching the husband of a member-we taught him last night for the first time. One challange in our area is that it is so big and you can only get from one place to another so fast, especially when you are walking, so there is a problem there. Transfers are coming up and this has been the fastest 6 weeks of my life. There are so many things to do and so little time to do it. I hope the president doesn't decide to close this area again, he has in the past, but who knows, he might leave it open because there is a new Mission President coming.

The language is coming well. I can understand about everything and I can speak fine as well, I just mess up conjugations and don't have a full vocab yet. Last week the president came to our zone and gave all of us a blessing and in mine it said that I would learn the language faster than humanly possible and I believe that is already happening. Today is going to be a fun p. day, I get to go to a big field and play soccer there. Everything is so packed here so that doens't happen very much.

Something that I have been doing here is they have this Brazillian herbal tea made from a certain grass here and I make that at night. I use honey or sugar in it. It is the only tea I have tried that I like. They also make a "Mormon Coffee" around here-which is a non-coffee drink of course. It is kind of like what Uncle John makes when we go hunting. I end up cooking stuff here more often then not. So keep on keeping on...Elder Peterson

June 13 letter

This week I will give you a little lowdown of how the living conditions are here in Brazil...but it isn't complaining, just information. As of this week, the end of my 3rd week in this transfer, I have blisters all over my feet, so walking many miles-which I do each day-sucks. I am still living out of my suitcases because the apartment I am staying in is really small and there are 4 of us staying here at the moment. We don't have room to put anything away in closets and my bed is on the floor with my sweatshirt as my pillow. All the walking we do is to referrals and either they are never in their house or the address they give us doesn't exist. We would call but our phone has no credit until the 17th so we can only receive calls and call other missionaries until then.

I enjoy the work, it is very fun and I am getting better and better at the language, and we are very close to baptizing someone, so we are praying and hoping it works out. Right now I am reading the Isaiah chapters in the Book of Mormon, and I am understanding about everything because of the way I am reading. Every time the Lord is speaking I highlight all of the "I" or "me" or "Lord" or "God" and this makes it easier to understand-paying attention to who is saying what. My companion and I work hard, every day and all day, all we do is work and work, I love it. I am always doing something, when I am not I feel almost claustrophobic because everything is so close together here. Last night I was standing on a hill in Rio and I felt the openness and it was crazy I felt SO calm and I remembered how long it had been since I was that much in the open! The zone we are in right now is probably one of the most dangerous zones. We live in one dangerous zone and work in the other. It is kind of disappointing, it is not that dangerous. You hear gunshots often, sometimes daily depending on where you are, but you never see anything. The military does a good job keeping things under control. We are definitely protected because we are missionaries, and we are fine, but the members have no faith, everywhere we go they say we will die...It is ridiculous. I just go but I stay out of the really bad favellas around here, that is plain stupid to go there. The other 2 Brazilian missionaries we live with are awesome. They are way cool and full of love.

There is not too much going on here, just faith, work, and trying to baptize. That is all we really have time for, we have a lot of Family Home Evenings set up for this week so that should help everything go smoother. Love you all.