Week of June 6-12, 2016
(6): SEGUNDA
(Monday): I believe that a Leatherman
should be standard issue for all missionaries.
So, it’s cold. Our water comes
from a tank, which is full of very cold water.
Our showerhead is electric and heats the water. I went to take a shower at the end of P-day, and the part inside that heats the
water is so old that it burned up the terminal.
So, I pulled the showerhead apart, pulled out this part that heats the
water, grabbed my Leatherman, and started messing around with the wires. Long story short, I fixed it enough to get us
through one more night of a warm shower.
We had a
lesson with Vilmar today. We went and
talked for a bit, then he asked, “Alright, Elder, what message do you have for
me today?” So, we started teaching the
restoration. We got the end, and Vilmar
said, “You still haven’t answered my questions.
What is your message? This
pamphlet on the restoration, and all the others, I’ve listened to a dozen
times. I already know all of this. I want you to grab this bible, open to a
scripture, and share something new that will touch my heart.” That is a lot of pressure! But I said a little prayer, grabbed the
bible, and sat thinking for about 20 seconds.
Nothing was coming to mind, then I remembered one scripture. John 17:13.
I had a good feeling, so I opened to it.
I read it for him, and then told him that this scripture explains the
WHY. Why we do what we do. Why the church is important. Why we need to follow the commandments. It’s
all to come to know God, and his son Jesus Christ. I felt like the spirit was actually speaking
through me. Vilmar then grabbed a pen,
marked the verse, then the page, then set it aside to read again later. I know that he will be baptized, but I just don’t
know when. Today was day 335 of my
mission.
(7) TERCA (Tuesday): We had a lot of good lessons today. One of
the best was with a young girl of 15 years named Emily. She is the niece of Simara, and was in her
house whe we passed by. I’d already met her
before. Her dad, Simara’s brother, is a preacher for another church. Emily had a lot of questions about prophets,
so we answered them all, using the scriptures. She loved it, and accepted
baptism just that there is no way her dad would. Now, Emily is going to sleep over at Simara’s
house Saturday to go to church on Sunday without her dad knowing.
Then, we
went to the house of Samuel and Mateus.
I really want to see Mateus baptized, so we shared a spiritual message
with him. At the end, the spirit was
there strong, and we invited him to be baptized. He happily accepted. Then we invited him to be baptized on the
18. He thought for a little then said he
would think about it and get back to us with an answer. We then talked about the importance of prayer,
and he said he would pray about it.
Then we
went to a house of a family we found.
There were 4 people and their 20-year-old daughter and her 19-year-old
boyfriend who also lives there. It was a
very good lesson; though the old man is crazy. At the end, we went one by one,
inviting them all to pray for an answer then be baptized. When I get to the old man, I invited him to
be baptized. He looked at me, blinked, and
then said, “I’ll tell you what, today I was looking through the channels on the
TV and I found a movie about a dog." Then
he stopped talking! His whole family
started laughing, and his son-in-law said, “What’s that got to do with
anything? We are talking about baptism!”
The old man said, “No, but it shows I’m emotional because I cried the
whole movie. It’s about a dog that
looses its owner and can’t find him.
That’s an emotional thing.” My
comp then says, “Oh! I think I’ve seen
that movie.” I said, “You don’t even know which dog movie it is.” He said, “No, but he described it. The dog waiting for it’s owner.” Now I’m getting frustrated because the
spirit is leaving, comp isn’t helping, and I want to baptize! So, I said, “Every dog movie is that. The dog gets lost, spends the movie looking
for his owner, and in the end finds him.”
The old man said, “You’ve seen it, too?”
I said, “They’re all the same movie!”
Then his son-in-law says, “No, it’s true, they really are.” I wish I could say this conversation was a
joke. Today was day 336 of my mission.
(8) QUARTA
(Wednesday): Today after lunch we
get on a bus for 2 and a half hours to go to Palmeiras for an interview, then
we had to stay there until 8:45 when the bus left again to return. But look, usually, the bus stops at a bus
stop in front of the church. Every time I’ve used it, it has. But, I guess this bus doesn’t because he just
went flying passed. So, now it’s 9:00
and we don’t have a ride home. I wasn’t
going to, at any cost, call to tell the zone leaders, because if President knew
that I missed ANOTHER bus, he would probably cook me and eat me. So, we’ll just sleep in the elders house and
grab the bus at 6:00am, the next day.
We’ll get home, do our studies, all is normal. Nothing is wrong. Today was day 337 of my mission.
(9) QUINTA
(Thursday): The highlight for today
was the lesson with Eduardo. We filled
out his baptism record and planned the baptism for next Saturday. W00T
WOOT! And the ward planned a
dessert contest for after with the whole ward, so there will be a TON of
people.
Another
sweet thing today was the lesson with a man named Gerson. We met him last Saturday, and he showed a lot
of interest and wanted to go to church with us.
When we passed on Sunday, nobody answered. We passed again today. It turns out he has this thing where every
now and then he has something like a seizure, and looses control then his mind
gets like reset and during the next week or so he gains everything back.. This happened Saturday night, so he didn’t
get up to go with us. But he showed us
his computer and after we had left he had read a bunch of the Book of Mormon.
Then looked stuff up on it online. Luckily
he only found Mormon.org. He had saved a
bunch of stuff to his computer and had read a lot of the articles. He really liked it, and we talked a lot about
the Book of Mormon. He said there’s
nothing that will stop him from going to church with us this Sunday. Today was day 338 of my mission.
(10) SEXTA (Friday): Today a member, less active that we are
visiting, gave us 3 HUGE sacs FULL of oranges.
SOOO many oranges. And they are
so good. I’m going to make a bunch of
juice.
We also met
a woman today who is a prophet. She said
my companion is full of the Holy Ghost, and she said our future is full of big
blessings, that we will help people.
Ha-ha, I sure hope she is right.
We learned
today that Mateus had NOT stopped drinking coffee like we thought. He’s progressing a lot, and on the way home I
bought Cevada for him. I’ll take it to
him another day. He is so close! Then we bought a pizza. Today was day 339 of
my mission.
(11) SABADO
(Saturday): Best lesson of the day
went like this. We went to Nathaniel’s
house with Igor. Igor is preparing to go
on his mission. Nathaniel is an
investigator with 16 years. We enter,
sit down, and Igor says, “Nathaniel, it’s like this. Are you going to be baptized or not?” Nathaniel says, “I will”. Igor says, “Then Let’s just mark a day, sign
the paper, and I’ll baptize you.”
Nathaniel says, “Next week?” Then
I jump in and suggest in 2 weeks, so that he can go to church a few more
times. As we are talking, Nathaniels
cousin comes in, followed by 2 young men that always go to seminary, but aren’t
members. We’ve never taught them, so
this was the first time. 2 more of
Nathaniels friends come in. So now we have
us, Igor, and 6 more people. We talked
about repentance, and you better believe I challenged them all to baptism. We marked the baptism of Nathaniel for the
25, and then Leonardo, one of the young men who go to seminary said he wanted
to be baptized as well. So we marked a
day to go to his house, and marked the 25 for him also.
Later a
member told us about a party the church will be having on the 25, so we thought
it would be cool to do the baptism on the 23, during seminary where they have
all their friends and then do a dinner after.
It’s going to be good. Today was
day 340 of my mission.
(12) DOMINGO
(Sunday): So today, I had a talk in
church on temples. It went good, but at
one point I was talking about how Malena put on the jumpsuit backwards. In
Portuguese, the word for jumpsuit is macacao.
The word for pasta is macarrao. I
always switch the two. Everyone thought
it hilarious when I said my sister put on her pasta backwards. I quickly corrected that error. But the rest
of the talk went very, very well.
We had a
few lessons today, but the highlight was the devotional with Elder Grau of the
70. His brother is the President of the
Sao Paulo MTC. Nossa Senhora that talk
was incredible.
This week
went very, very good. We are going to
pray a lot, and if God is with us we’ll have 4 baptisms in the next 2
weeks. We’re working very hard for
this. Today was day 341 of my mission.
Week of June 13-19, 2016
(13) SEGUNDA
(Monday): We grabbed a few of the
young men today and went to the church to play basketball. They like to play, and are the first
Brazilians I’ve met that don’t like to play soccer. I DESTROYED THEM! Remember how before the mission I didn’t
really play basketball that much because I wasn’t good? Yea, well, that hasn’t
changed. We played 21, I destroyed. We played 2x2, I destroyed. They kept saying, “Yea, but he’s American.
He’s imported.” Ha-ha, at the end they
asked if they even compare with the people I sued to play with. I told them that’s hard to say, because I
didn’t’ play. I didn’t play because I’m
really not that good. Ha-ha, so there’s
that. We also played chess, which I also
cleaned up in. I actually did play chess
before the mission.
So, my
whole mission, until now, I’ve eaten this thing called Cookie pie. It’s SUPER good. They take like crackers that are sweet, and
put a layer of them, then pudding, then cracker, then pudding, etc. I love it. Yesterday, in a recent converts
house, she was dishing it up for us, and I asked her how she makes it. They wet the crackers before putting them in,
this I knew. But she says, “Oh you just
wet the crackers in coffee.” WHAT!? She has a year as a member, and MANY times I
ate this pie in her house. AND IT HAS
COFFEE!! I said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t
eat this. I didn’t know it had
coffee.” She says, No, but you can’t
even taste it, it’s just to wet the cookie.”
I didn’t eat it. Today, eating
in a restaurant in the which I’ve eaten a lot of this pie also, I grabbed some
and take a bite, and remember the coffee. I know that it’s not everyone who makes it
like that, but now I’m afraid to eat any!
But it’s so good, but I won’t eat anymore.
Eduardo
passed his baptism interview. He is
going to be baptized on Saturday! It’s
going to be great! He’s going to be a great
help to the ward and he will stay firm afterwards.
I also
bought a new watch today, which was cool.
When we walked in with our nice clothes they pulled out all the nicest
watches. Hundreds and hundreds of
dollars, which I don’t want to spend on a watch that will probably be stolen.
Today was
day 342 of my mission.
(14) TERCA (Tuesday): Today I got a call at 7:00 AM, that I will
leave my district meeting and go directly to Santa Maria to do something with
my visa. I call the zone leaders and
tell them they will have to pick up my comp to stay in Cruz Alta. I’m almost to Santa Maria, and I get another
call that on one will be here to pick me up at the bus station, but I will need
to grab another bus to go to center, then wait there. I sat there for a long while and finally
comes Elder Manaham and Elder Baker, 2 Americans who are companions, which is
rare. Now us 3 are in a trio for the
rest of the day, which is also rare. I
THEN learned I wouldn’t be doing my visa stuff until TOMORROW, which means I
will be sleeping here. I didn’t bring
anything. It’s all-good. We bought a HUGE pizza. I slept in the house of the assistants, where
these 2 American’s also live with them.
One of the assistants is Elder Wantland, who is also American. Elder Dios, the only Brazilian of us 5 didn’t
want pizza, so we ate it all. YEP. Today
was day 343 of my mission.
(15) QUARTA
(Wednesday): All went well with my
visa, and I grabbed a bus and came back to Cruz Alta. We visited Nathaniel to prepare him for his
baptism next Thursday. He has no problem
with the word of wisdom and he is super ready to be baptized, it’s just with
his mom in the hospital, his aunt needs to sign the baptism papers, and she
doesn’t want to. But after our lesson, Igor
went to his aunt with Nat and explained it all.
We still don’t know what came of it, but I’ll call him tomorrow to ask.
When we
marked the 23rd with Mateus, he had been nervous and unsure. He said to mark it, but not tell anyone yet,
incase he changes his mind. This was last
week. The moment we left his house I
called bishop, and we started telling everyone.
With my trip to Santa Maria we didn’t get to his house, but tonight I
called him. He is SUPER excited and
ready. We’re going to pass there
tomorrow to talk out all the details.
Also we
went to Gerson, who went to church on Sunday.
We taught him the Plan of Salvation, and he understood very well. He’s reading the Book of Mormon and searching
around on the church’s website. Really
progressing.
Simara and
Marcos are doing great with quitting smoking.
They are dying to be baptized, but they need to be married first. To do that, they need birth documents that
they received in the last 60 days, which they can only get in their place of
birth. Marcos was born in Cruz Alta, so
it’s easy. But Simara was born WAY on
the other side of the state, and she’s only got contact with one person there
who for 3 weeks now hasn’t replied to anything.
Simara says that she really wants to be baptized to finally be accepted
by the members. When there’s an activity
I think she wants the members to invite them and not the missionaries. We’ll start working more with the members on
this to help people feel more accepted.
They’re watching all the church movies I passed them from my pendrive,
and they love them. Simara is inviting
her friends who are passing through hard times and is really showing that she
is a true convert. She’s now smoking
only 3 cigarettes per day, and on Friday it will be cut down to 2. Little by little, she’s progressing.
Today
Simara and Marcos told us that until they are baptized they won’t take the
sacrament. T hey said they don’t feel good taking it because they are living in
sin, not being married and smoking and its purpose is to renew a covenant that they
have not yet made. They said it’s
something sacred to be taken after preparation and with thought. So, they will wait until after their baptisms
to take it again. I thought it incredible
how well they understand the purpose of the sacrament, and how much more it
will mean to them after baptism. Today
was day 344 of my mission.
(16) QUINTA
(Thursday): So, last night at 11:00, Simara called. She finally told her brother who is super strong
in another church, that she will be baptized.
She said he asked for a Book of Mormon, and that he will read it and
then he wants to debate with her. He
knows the Bible very well and he believes all sorts of lies about our church; that
the Book of Mormon is to take the place of the Bible, that Joseph Smith is our Jesus
Christ. She asked us to pass by to help
her prepare. So, today we passed by real
fast, and told her to just bare testimony.
He knows the scriptures better then her and us. She just needs to bear testimony. We left her a Book of Mormon to give him.
Also, the
aunt of Nathaniel will let him be baptized.
Igor went over and spoke with her.
He’ll be baptized on the 23rd, together with Mateus. Leonardo, we are still trying our best, and
we will pass by again tomorrow to see if he can meet with us. Today was day 345 of my mission.
(17) SEXTA (Friday): The week is going very slow, but today went
well. W e did the baptism record with Nathaniel, and his aunt signed it. Nathaniel asked how many people he can invite
to the baptism, and I replied “All of them.”
We also did a dinner with Mateus and his family. He had a complete attitude change. He’s now ready and excited for the
baptism. We grabbed him and Samuel, his
brother who will baptize him, and practiced a few times.
We also
have the baptism of Eduardo tomorrow!
Woot Woot. I am so excited! He’s going to be a great man in the
church. Today I was calling people to
plan all the talks and prayers. It will
be a super good day. A slow day for
numbers, but we will have a baptism so it’s all-good.
Today
Leonard fell through again, so he won’t be baptized on the 23rd with
Mateus and Nathaniel, unfortunately. But
he will be. God put these young men in
my path, and I’ll see them all baptized.
We also need
to hunt down some jumpsuits for the baptisms.
They always seem to disappear, but only in the hour that we need
them. Today was day 346 of my mission.
(18) SABADO
(Saturday): BAPTISM! Eduardo was baptized, and it was SUPER
good. There’s a man in the ward, who is
a member for about 30 years. He’s a
pioneer in Cruz Alta. He has 3 daughters. One, the oldest, married a non member who had
no interest for years until one day about 5 years ago he decided to be
baptized. He’s now 1st counselor
to bishop. This is a son-in-law of this
older man. Today, Eduardo, who is the
other son-in-law of this man, was baptized by the other. We took an awesome picture of the 3 of
them. Eduardo’s known the church for
years and years. I don’t know if it’s
because of the birth of Melissa, his first daughter, but now he decided to be
baptized. He’s already an active member,
he just lacked the baptism. But it was a
great baptism service.
Eduardo and his Brother in law, who baptized him.
Ward dessert party after the baptism.
So, on
Thursday we were knocking doors, because all our plans fell through. We met a girl who looked like she was about
17-18 named Estair. She was home alone,
so we didn’t go in, but we marked to pass by at 7:00 yesterday. Yesterday we got caught up at the house of
Mateus, and her house is WAY on the other side, so we didn’t end up being able
to pass. Which happens. We went there today, and she wasn’t home, but
her dad, Carlos came out. He said, “Oh,
Estair said you guys would come yesterday.
She was here waiting for you guys with us.” WHAT!! Almost a year in my mission, and this
is the first time a door contact who marked another day actually waiting for us
to come and it’s on the day we weren’t able to go! Carlos marked for Wednesday, which is when
everyone will be home. He was way cool
about it all, but said Estair and been way interested and wanting to talk to
us. And she speaks English. Hopefully we can bring the whole family to
church.
I just had
to have Elder Jesus Santos stand on my back, and I think all of the cracking
scared him. It sounded like a
firecracker, and all the pain I’d been having for the past weeks went
away. I still crack my neck every
day. After the mission, I’m going to do
the following things:
1) Go to
the temple
2) Go to
the chiropractor
3) Get a
massage
4) Sleep a
few days.
After those 4 things, I don’t really have a plan yet.
Today was day 347 of my mission.
(19) DOMINGO
(Sunday): Eduardo was confirmed a
member of the church and received the gift of the Holy Ghost today, and also
the Aaronic Priesthood. Woot Woot! That’s what I’m talking about.
Today
a whole ton of people went to church. Almost double the amount as last
week. All in all, this week went super
well. It’s always good to end a week
with a baptism. It was a slow week for
finding new people, but we found some good people to go back to. I’m super excited about the progress this
area is making and our investigators, too.
Today was day 348 of my mission.
I love you. Send hugs to everyone. Love, Elder McKee
District Meeting
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