Hey Whatsup Fam,                                                                                          June 29, 2011

Another week!  It's crazy how quick the mission passes, it feels like I just said goodbye to you guys.  Anyways, I think you guys learned your lesson about going out having fun without me.  It didn't sound like fun throwing up in Disneyland!  I know that if I were there I would have spiced things up a bit.  This past week has been a slight test of patience.  I think that the Lord is currently preparing other people than who we are contracting, so these past two weeks have been pretty slow and without too many lessons. 

You'd be surprised how much drama goes on in the mission.  Our zone leaders are being ridiculous about numbers and how we spend our P-Days.  Sometimes they forget that we're here to represent Christ for ALL people.  Never-the-less, it gives me another reminder that I also need to be developing the attributes of Christ through patience.

I found the name of that talk I was looking for the other day.  The name of the talk is "For What Purpose" by Alvin R. Dyers, If you could send me it that would be great.  The other day we contacted a guy that knew a lot about the church, except for the part about blacks (he was black).  He compared himself to the Lamanites and Nephites and said that if he was baptized his skin would be washed and he would be white…  Pretty interesting stuff.

Anyways, I'm sending a ton of pictures this time.  It's about two weeks worth of stuff.  The picture of my bed is especially good, not because it's made, but because I received my first mission blanket.  It's super comfortable.  When I received it there was a ton of rat poop all over it, so I had to wash it a ton, but it's all good now, with only a slight smell of rat.

I've started writing Kyle Wagner on his mission, it seems he's doing good, it's crazy that it's already been 19 months since I picked him up at the Salt Lake airport. 

I love you guys, keep up the prayers and if you have time every night add some scripture reading.  I read somewhere last week that family reading of the scriptures has blessings that have eternal consequences.  Good luck with the remodeling without me!

Elder Periquito Williams

P.S.  Next time that you send me a package, probably for my birthday, can you send me those white tennis shoes that I didn’t bring?  Thanks for the cereal, it's been a lifesaver.

A note from a member

telling me that my family is like her family and you can come and stay anytime!

The beautiful Brazillian countryside!

The rats loved my new Mission Blanket!

Another Great Day in the Field!

Hey family,                                                                                                                  July 25 2011

Thanks for writing on my pakage 'Alimentos Missionária'... the thing is, you called me a female missionary (missionáriO not missionáriA).  I have a feeling that Jon told you to write that.  But my companion Elder Almeida say's "muito obigado" for sending him the sport shorts.  It's awesome that Malia and Amalie are doing soccer.  Tell them that it's one of the top three best sports to play and that i'll teach them all my Brasilian tricks when i get home.  

Something funny happened the other day.  I was walking down the street and this random guy came up to me wearing an American Marines hat and started speaking to me in english "all Americans must die, all Americans must die".  Then continued saying how he is going to kill every American someday.  Then muttered stuff in Arabaic.  It was a good one.  I’ve seen him before so next time I see him and he starts muttering to me I'll tell him I'm from Germany.  It's strange, people here can't recognize where I’m from and guess that I'm either from the States or Germany, and one lady thought I was from Argentina.  On another note, we hitch-hiked the other day and this guy picked us up just so he could talk to me about how corrupt the American government is, which is in part true, but the stuff he was saying was funny.  He was saying how Bush made up Bin Laden, that he's not even a real person or a terrorist.  How Bush allowed other terrorists to blow up the twin towers so that he could receive money.  It was a good conversation.  Speaking of hitch-hiking though, our second to last hitch hike was great.  He ended being a man that lived in our area so we contacted him the other day and he's totally into being baptized.  He told us that he told his wife this, who is evangelist, and she then asked if he was going to become a Mormon.  And his response was, 'well if God wants me to do it, then I will'.  So yeah he's way good.  It's crazy how the Lord puts people like this in our path and how He prepared the heart of Raphael to accept giving us a hitch-hike.

Monday was awesome!  My companion had a meeting as a district leader so we had a division and I was with this other new guy who started his mission 4 weeks ago.  Being new and not really knowing the ropes yet he forgot to grab the key into his house.  So we were locked out and needed to go in to study and prepare for our day.  So I scaled the house of the second floor about 20 feet high and entered the deck that they have to break in.  I felt like Matt Damon, it was awesome.  It reminded me of England when I broke into a room on the third floor of a hotel.  It's crazy how much I seem to eat here.  I'm eating more than I ever have in my life, including Italy.  I eat about 4 plates of food for lunch and have the equivalent of about a pizza and whatever else I can find during the day.  Yesterday I had another division with the zone leaders and it was great until about 9 at night. One of the kids here borrowed our keys to get inside the church to open it up for soccer that night.  They got too into the game of soccer that the forgot where they placed the keys, so we spent the next hour looking in vain for our keys, we think someone stole them, but we returned at 10 at night.  (Luckily it wasn’t in my area so the keys weren’t my responsibility!)

I developed a new nickname during the transfer as periquito (parakeet).  Because I told them my full name and Peter Keith Williams and the beginning of this part 'Peter Keith W' sounds like it.  I feel pretty cool. Anyways congrats on getting the address of Graham! I hope all goes well with him.  Anyways I've got to go.  Tell dad Happy Late Father's Day!! I wish I could've been there to smash cake in his face.  Also that he's the best dad ever!  Aright I’m out of time

Love you guys!!

Elder Williams

I Got My Package and would love More Cookies!

Hey family,                                                                              June 15, 2011

Thanks for still praying for me, it's good to know.  This week has been a little bit crazy this side of the mission.  It sounds like things are sort of a race there as well.  Anyways, I think I’m learning a little bit more each day about the mission life.  I’m truly learning the importance of members.  I've always known that members are the best way to have success but I’ve never actually experienced it.  Here in my area of Guanabara I’m experiencing the negative effects of lazy members.  Our branch is fairly receptive and accepting of all the investigators that come but the young men and woman in the ward are quite the opposite, due to a lack of discipline.  We had an investigator come to church with us this last Sunday and he had to sit with us throughout all the classes because none of the young men in the ward wanted to meet him or talk to him.  So now we have an investigator that's questioning his testimony a bit.  But I suppose that this is all in the Lord's plan otherwise he wouldn’t have placed us in his path.  But it really showed me how members are necessary to help during church itself and splits and references and the like.  I feel definitely determined to help out more than I did before the mission when I get back home. 

As far as the language goes, I feel like I’m at another stand-still.  This, I’ve come to realize, is normal for me.  I struggle with Portuguese for a week and then the next I feel very comfortable.  Sometimes I struggle with with it for longer, which is the case of right now, but I’m not too worried about it.  I feel like I can teach which is really all that's important.  It's still almost impossible to socialize though, which makes it difficult in a social sense, plus the fact that the humor here is different, But on a lighter note, I’m getting along better with my companion than ever before due to the fact that I can understand him better, I just can't speak very well, but this will come with practice, and it's my goal to be able to be somewhat more comfortable at speaking by the end of this transfer.

So the other day was really cold, there was a ton of fog and it felt like it was an Oregon November.  Anyways, I busted out one of those vests I have... It's the most hairy thing I've ever worn.  It got my shirt all hairy.  So I decided to wash it to try and get the hair washed off.  The only problem was that I washed it with all my other white shirts, so all my shirts are hairy now.  Which makes me think that there’s another way that I should wash cashmere?

An elder picked up the package for me.  So I got a ton of good stuff!  Thanks by the way!  It's a good thing you sent chips as well because they don't sell tortilla chips here, and I would have had to use Lays potato chips.  While I’ve been here, I’ve really wanting cookies.  Can you send some recipes of chocolate chip, sugar, and any other “easy to make” cookies?

One thing I don't have that I want is a list of birthdays, mainly just family.  Also can you send me the address of the Wagners?

My companion was sick last Sunday (I swear that it's Satan that does it, because every Sunday one of us gets really sick for just that day, almost as though he wants us to feel too sick to go to pick up our investigators for church--of course we're never that sick though).  Anyways, I started reading 'Jesus the Christ' thoroughly.  It's an awesome book.  If anyone hasn't read it, they should.  It's hard for me to read because the apostle uses all the big words that I had to forget trying to learn Portuguese, but he gives a great account of the life of the savior and everything in-between.

I found my electrical razor the other day, the problem is I don't have my charger for it, so I’m going to keep it until I head home and maybe I can find another charger and save me 60 bucks.  Also I found my old journal, shampoo and my broken alarm clock!  It was all stuffed in one of the pockets that didn't get torn off from the plane ride.  It was definitely a tender mercy because that day was pretty tough.

Anyways, the church is true.  I love you all!  Good luck with the remodeling.

Love Elder Williams

This was an awesome week...

Hey family,                                                                                                                       June 8,2011

So I got some good news about the package and some bad news.  The good news is that it arrived.  The bad news is that I don't know when I can receive it.  It's currently stuck in the mission office so it should be safe for now but it's so big that the zone leaders can't bring it with them on the hour long bus ride.  Anyways, I got 3 hours to write so this should be a big enough email.  We had another runner for a baptism last Sunday.  This one at least stayed for the interview but didn’t show up to church and when we tried to pick him up in a car he wasn’t there.  Luckily we were able to talk with him later that day to see what was up.  Apparently he went to a party (probably to celebrate his baptism the next day) and got super wasted there.  Anyways he was throwing up and had a pretty bad hang over in that he couldn’t go to church.  So we talked to him again about the word of wisdom and how he can't do that.  It is obvious though that he is currently repenting and still has a desire to be baptized.  So we'll see what goes down this Sunday, but we're thinking it will happen.

Another cool story here that was actually a personal spiritual grower happened last Monday with an investigator, Vinícios  So several weeks back (before teaching Vinícios) we taught the dad of this investigator, Edson.  All went great.  The first lesson he said that he wants to baptized and already knows that our church is true.  He accepted the Book of Mormon and was excited to read the parts we marked and was going to pray about it.  Anyways, we returned later that week to follow-up, and it turned out that Edson was in the hospital with some disease called Derramie  (I’m not too sure if it’s called the same in English, but basically, from what I understood, it stops the function of certain parts of the body and could be very fatal).  Vinícios that told us this, and one thing led to another and we taught him the first lesson and he accepted to be baptized as well.  The following week we visited Vinícios again and his father was still the same and the whole family is very worried about him.  We talked to him about the book of Mormon and about prayer and about church.  It was towards the end after Elder Almeida bore his testimony of these things and it was my turn to speak that I felt prompted to talk to him about going to church.  During my testimony, I felt the spirit speak through me with force and I started to talk about how sometimes the spirit of the Lord tells us things to comfort, but sometimes He tells us to do things, or to say certain things.  I told him that the spirit told me to tell him something.  The spirit said that: “if you go to church this Sunday, your father will improve and that the Lord loves you and your family very much, and wants to help.”  Then we discussed that the Lord will help Vinícios if he showed faith in Him.  It was a very cool experience because the spirit was there with a ton of strength, and I know that if Vinícios goes to church this Sunday that Edson will be healed.  It’s amazing how the Lord guides us in all things.

Anyways, I was thinking about your last email last week about how some people treat sacred gospel things lightly.  It's seriously the story of my life here in my area.  I don't think anyone knows what reverence is.  Lately sacrament has been fairly good, but when I arrived some people in the branch would get up to go talk with their friends in the middle of sacrament.  Laughing and talking normally during this part of the meeting.  Things like this, but it's a lot better now.  I think that they understand the importance of the spirit in meetings.

My companion's pretty interesting.  He was one of those computer nerds before he left on his mission.  He’s totally into conspiracy theories, strange happenings and such.  He was trying to convince me of how we never actually landed on the moon.  It's pretty funny actually and I just let him believe what he was wants to believe.

This past week was my companion’s birthday, a big 21 years old.  I ate a lot cake and candy that day.  Ice cream here is awesome.  Keep up the good work with your investigator friends!  Have they already had the first lesson with missionaries?  Tell the family that they can write my emails if they want, I can write back, especially Mal and Chris so that they don’t have to wait a long time for letters.  Love you all!

Elder Williams

Anyone want to "pick up" info on the church?

He Walked 40 miles?

Hey familia,

I guess to start off is to mention that the feet in the picture were my companions, he broke them playing soccer.  And if you think they look bad just wait until you smell them.  It smells like something curled up and died in sewage every time he takes his shoes off.  It gets pretty bad too when we're sitting next to each other teaching because the smell manages to creep itself out of the shoes.  But anyways, we had transfers this week.  I’m still with my trainer Almeida, the only one that arrived in my group that's still stuck with their 'pai'(dad on the mission).  He keeps making fun of me saying that I’m going to be a trainer next transfer.  Which would make my step-father (on the mission) my son.  It would be cool and I actually think it could be possible.  Anyways, I’m still with him, so I guess there's something the Lord still wants us both to learn from each other or someone we need to teach.  It's going to be cool this transfer too because we get to go to the temple soon.  It's crazy how much I miss going to the temple after not being able to go for this long.  Make sure you guys go for me.

Last week was pretty tough in that one of our baptism candidates ran from us on his baptism interview.  This is the second person that's done this in my first transfer.  I think it's because my companion pushes them a little too hard that they get scared and run.  So anyways I talked with him and we agreed to only push the investigator if we feel like we should.  Its crazy how quick things move here.  The average time for baptism that my companion expects is two weeks.

I weighed myself the other day.  Apparently I lost 9 lbs in the six weeks of my first transfer.  I’m looking pretty sexy I think.  The crazy thing is that I’m eating 4 plates of food every lunch.  I don't know where it's all going.  Lately I’ve been having a slight pain around my hernia surgery.  I guess all this walking is making it want to pop back out again, but I think it'll hold up no problem.  Last week I must have walked 40+ miles.  It was killer!

It's been ridiculously cold here lately, this morning was 12°C or more or less 53°F and there was a ton of fog.  And every night is even colder.

I saw another dead person the other day.  That's 3 dead people since I’ve arrived here in Campinas.  You'd be surprised how many people here try and cross the street at night when cars don’t ever slow down for you in the first place!  Also, I hear that the city of São Paulo itself has at least one death per week due to motorcycles.

You should talk to Mason about the fruit packets that he was talking about.  I’m not sure what he was talking about because all I’ve seen are Tang fruit packets.  Anyways nothing else is too new.  I’m really close to getting Português down. Keep up the prayers though! 

Love, Elder Williams