Posting peter's letter while I'm in Alaska...

Hey Mom, 6-20-12 Thanks for the email!  I hope you guys are having fun in Alaska.  It's pretty cool to think that you guys are out in the cold, especially you mom!!!   Well this week was great.  We found a guy that's just the most humble guy I have ever seen.  ANYthing we say he'll believe.  He'd get baptised tonight if we asked him to, but we marked for this sunday.  Anyways, yesterday we were at his shop talking with him.  He works as a guy that fixes tvs, radios, and whatnot.  Anyways, some guy came by and tryed selling him a tv.  Our investigator, Marcos, didn't want to buy it and the guy started to get a little bit more violent.  So he gave in and bought it out of fear.  While he was looking for the 70 bucks, we decided that it was a good time to start talking with mister crazy yelling guy, to try and calm him down.  We seemed to have won his trust quickly, cuz 2 minutes later he was telling us about his whole life.  He was telling us about his life "in da hood" as a druggie, but that he's wanting to move his life around.  He said that like 3 months ago he stopped using crack, but does a lot of other stuff as well.  I told him that he needs to stop and that we were there to help him.  Then I asked him if he's got any other problems, and he kind of walked closer to me and whispered that he was armed with a revolver just as a "protection".  Im pretty sure that if Marcos denied him, this crazy guy would have killed him, and we would've had to of remarked his baptism... Anyways, we convinced crazy guy to stop using drugs and to stop hangin out with his bad influence friends.  So we'll see if he really changed or not.  The area's great really.  Anyways after that Marcos' old pastor came into the shop and tried to brainwash him again.  However, luckily we were there to get in the way a little bit.  He admitted to us later that he thinks his old pastor is fake.  But I was thinking, about how God uses us to protect others from bad influences or even dangerous moments as well.  It's a cool thought.   Anyways, this 30th we're gonna get a new president.  President Perrotti.  I hear he's cool.   Well I feel bad for Mal and Rhys getting stung by a jelly fish.  I recommend peeing on the stings.  (Maybe Chris could help!) Yeah well, I love you guys and I hope you had a good trip in Alaska! Elder WIlliams

Oh Rats! Peter's new area is scary...

Hey Mom and Family!                                                   6-13-12

     Thanks for the email.  Yeah, My companion was exactly like I was when I got here!That's basically how it was when you get here into the field; You really couldn’t speak a single thing.  I was a tough first transfer to teach, but now I’m watching it all on the other side of the spectrum, he's having some of the same problems as I had to teach, but he's a good worker and he does a ton of contacts, even if he can’t really understand what's going on. 

     I think that the Brazilian craze is coming to Oregon because of the Olympics and the world cup that coming, and cuz Brazil is just awesome. 

     Yeah so this week was fun but tough.  Sunday all of Brazil watched the dedication of the Manaus temple.  It was amazing.  It was kind of cool to see president Uchtdorf outside of general conference as well.  The moment that he started to dedicate the temple you could feel the spirit enter and you could feel just like you were inside of the actual temple.    

     So last Sunday was fun, we were getting ready to go the temple dedication when a huuuge rat comes in at like 8 in the morning and goes and hides under the fridge.  I hate rats btw.  Anyway, I started banging on the fridge to try and scare it out while my companion built a barrier so that the rat wouldn’t have anywhere else to go but outside the door.  After a while we scared it out and it went straight out.  It left some pooplets behind and I think it peed under our fridge, it’s gross; we still haven’t had time to clean underneath it. 

     Anyways, that day all of our appointments fell through.  After the day was over we went back home and we got involved into some drama that was happening with our neighbors who are members.  We decided to entertain their 11-yr old daughter while they were fighting it our (it looked like the dad got drunk).  Anyways, later on some other members came and helped us out so that we could go inside and plan.  But they told us that we shouldn’t get involved ever because the family is a drug family and they could do some crazy things.  One of which is that they probably sent their daughter over so that she could steal them something that they could sell for drugs.  It's a pretty nasty business here.  Anyway, we decided to make a goal of 8 baptisms here for this transfer (which ends on the 17th of July).  I was hoping for you guys to help us out through prayer so that we can achieve this goal.  The problem is that we still have a pretty small teaching group, so we need to find a ton more people.  Anyways, all is going well here.  I hope you guys are good!  I love you guys a ton!

Elder Williams

Peter's in a New Area!

Hey Mom and Family,                                                                            6-5-12

     Thanks for the email!  This week was way good.  Samuel didn't get baptized yet, he decided for the 3rd of July to be baptized with his niece.  But we did baptize Elisangela.  Jonatan is really enjoying the lessons and church, at least I think he is, he doesn’t really talk ever.  The baptism of Elisangela was way good.  She asked me to baptize her; it was a really powerful baptism. 

     Anyways, I got transferred.  I’m training now!  My greenie's name is Elder Leyburn from New York.  However you can't be a zone leader and train in this mission, so I got released and put in as a district leader again.  It was quite the story to get here into my area though.  It was raining, we had a good 4 bags, and my box came in, so we were both trying to walk a ton, get on the bus, and find our house before 9:00PM.  We ended up getting lost after we got off the bus, but there were some kids that helped us out carry our bags around and whatnot.  Anyways, our phone died and so we couldn’t call the guy that was giving us instructions.  Miraculously though, just 2 seconds before the phone died he told us the number of the house, we had a small idea on which street, but we ended up finding it all and getting in on time.  It was a very fun and wet experience.  My pillow is soaked, but my companion thought it was a great first day on the mission, so I guess I did my job.  Anyways, while we were sleeping some rats woke me up.  I don't think they can get in; luckily houses here are made up of rocks and cement, so they can’t chew their way in.  That didn’t mean that they didn’t try though.  There are some cracks between the door and the ground and some past elders put some random stuff in to block the hole.  So the rats were making loud noises and made the door rattle trying to get in. 

     I’m pretty stoked though, this is considered one of the poorest areas on the mission, it's got a lot of ghetto, but it baptizes a ton.  Our goal is to baptize 2 per week, after this 10th (because of the temple dedication in Manaus).  You should pray to help us out with this goal.  My companion doesn’t speak a word of Portuguese, but we're trying to help him out as much as possible.  It's funny you talk about protection though.  I can truly feel protection a lot on this mission.  Just yesterday for example, there was some idiot trying to back his car, and he nicked me in my legs with the car.  He wasn’t going too fast, but it was enough to almost knock me over.  Now that I think about it, he was going downhill so he should have been going a lot faster.  I’m not too worried on dying here on the mission though, due to the hints given in my patriarchal blessing of a life that I'll have after the mission. 

     Anyways, it's still cool to send the German Book of Mormon and dictionary.  That way I could at least learn how to read it.  Also, I made a deal with the assistants here that they should “spill the beans” and let me know some transfer information and in return I’d give them some basketball shorts.  (However I don't have any shorts, I was wondering if you could send 2 pair--medium size please—with the German books.  Thanks!) 

     Anyways, one of the members in the area (the one that gave the reference of Elisangela) taught me how to make a cheese that you can throw on a barbeque that's pretty popular here in Brazil.  And he taught me how to make homemade butter.  The only problem is that we need 10 liters of milk straight from the cow.  So it's going to be hard to find the ingredients.  Anyways, I love you!

Elder Williams