(Another Letter Sent to Dad...)

Hey Dad!                  9-24-12 

This past week was great. Super tiring but gratifying. We had a ton of divisions and a lot of spiritual moments. These past couple of weeks I have really noticed my limits and weaknesses. It's been some of the happier moments though. A lot of laughs and good times mixed in with the difficult times.  

I'm not too sure if it's the prospect of the end of the mission coming or it's because I’ve just always been like this, but I’ve noticed I have a hard time living in the moment. I'm focusing more on what will happen in the far future than in the near future or the present. I think I’ve always been like this and because of that it's been hard to truly take advantage of the “now”. Oh well, I'm getting over it. I'm getting to the point where I don't want the mission to end. I watched The Other Side of Heaven the other day ago, and when the guy finished his mission he was so sad to finish. These past couple of days I've been working soo hard so that I can have a really good ending to my mission, the only problem is that the harder I work the faster the day goes. It was probably the same thing with you towards the end of your mission as well. I guess there's always the couple mission later.

Anyway, lately I’ve been reading a lot in the New Testament, I want to finish the Bible in general before I get back home. So there's a lot of reading to do. I can see now why my patriarchal blessing talks about the necessity of reading the scriptures seriously every day. The gospel changes behavior better than any study of behavior itself. I know just what God is saying here in the blessing. I need to change myself so that I can develop Christ's attributes, daily.  

Anyways, the trip sounds legit, I’m totally down! I've never been to the Amazons. It's going to be really really, really hot though, so prepare yourself. Which reminds me: while it’s getting colder and colder there (Oregon), it’s getting hotter and hotter here! Last weekend it rained for the first time in 3 months, it was getting soooo hot these past couple of days. Anyway, I love you dad!

Elder Williams

 

Thank You for Your Prayers...

                     

Hey Mom and Family! 9-24-12

Well, I’m now fine. Apparently your guys' prayers totally worked, I’m OK, I just have a little bit of a cough and a runny nose, but the blood stopped a day or two later, and I haven’t had anything close to a headache. I completely forgot about the meds until the very end of the cold, and by that time it was too late. I guess I’ll save it for later if I get sick before I go home. They have this sinus Tylenol medicine that really helped though, so that was alright. I guess it clears out the sinus and relieves pain so it was a good combo. I gave a cough to my two companions though, but nothing too bad.

So about Elder Monteiro, we're totally fine, apparently I’m the only one in the house that likes and interacts with him. I feel kind of bad. I think all he needs is a friend. So I’m trying to play that role. It's not that I still don't think he's a little bit annoying, but I feel like I can understand him a lot better, now that my fever's gone at least. I think he's gotten a lot better now as well. We're all humbling ourselves now and he wants to change and is asking us to help him change, by having us tell him if he does anything that annoys us. It's cool to see how the gospel changes us in our lives.

Anyways, this week was tiring. We did a lot of divisions to see the needs of our zone. I did a division with the elders that live with us that also happen to be district leaders. They're working hard, but they're just not seeing results and for that they're feeling a little bit down. Anyways, while they were doing a division, Elder Duffy did another division with one of his old companions. This other kid, elder Benício has a cool story, he was an atheist like 3 years ago, but just out of nowhere felt like he should try going to church to prove if there was a God or not. He went to a Mormon church, felt something, and decided to believe and get baptized. Now he's on the mission, but is having problems with the mission in itself. He thinks that the mission is corrupted with slackers. It's tough because he's got a point of view on the work just completely different. He's more with a mind state of a missionary that's NOT Brazilian or of a South American way of thinking. The people here make decisions a lot faster and quicker than in the States. We usually find a ton of people that have interest and teach them and if they don't go to church or fulfill the things that they said that they would do and that we have invited them to do, then we move on. Sometimes we find, teach and move on all in the same day or two, depending on their "moliness” level or on how un-prepared or prepared they are. The mission idea here is to find, teach and baptize in two or three weeks if they're married and don't have an addiction. He's stuck in another idea of staying with someone and helping their faith grow by the baby steps, so that in 4-5 months the missionary finally gets to point of inviting them to get baptized, and finding out that they usually DON’T even WANT to get baptized or maybe want to get baptized further in the distant future. (Most of the time they drag their feet for a reason. They ALL want to be compliant here in Brazil.) But anyway, by this time you're already out of the area! I say to leave these investigators and let God prepare them for another missionary in the future to find them and finish the process. I suppose it all depends on faith. On believing that God is preparing someone that will be baptized two weeks from now (which is what we are all told to pray for here).

Anyways, after that division on the Thursday we had a conference with an Elder Matsagarde from the 70. It was cool. I was exhausted and it was hard to stay awake, but he talked about reverence along with many other things. He talked about a ton of deep doctrine. I don't have my notes with me so I can't really remember all that he talked about. As weird as it may sound, but he talked about chastity as well, (weird to talk about chastity with missionaries) but he said how Exaltation and Chastity mean the same thing. About how we need to live the law of chastity to the letter so that we can receive exaltation.

Anyway, yesterday for church we had a stake conference. Our mission president was there. He talked about how we as members of the church need to be a blessing for others and talked about how to do that, by talking about the gospel with others. It was an interesting talk. It's crazy to see how many church leaders have Ipads here. I don’t know about in the states, but here if you're in the stake or the 70 you have to have an Ipad. Which is crazy because they cost about 2000 Reais here! Anyway, Elder Matsagarde and a good part of the stake leaders had one yesterday and Thursday.

Anyways, these past couple of days have been great, we're still teaching Lucas and Luana. They' went to church yesterday and they seem to be progressing well. There’s this girl (Yasmin), she’s about 11 years old, and we're just waiting for her parents’ approval. Her mom (who’s less active for 16 years) said it's ok, but her dad who cheats on his wife all the time is against it. So they're having this constant fight. And then there's Lenilza and her family. Lenilza just needs to stop smoking, and her niece needs to get married. Other than that we're always on the search.

Something cool happened Saturday as well! About 2-3 weeks ago we put up these signs all across the city that are basically ads like: "Want to be baptized like Jesus Christ?" and then our number and whatnot. Anyways, this girl Maria called us Saturday and said that she wanted to get baptized. We still need to go and teach and get to know her but I hope it all goes through. Anyways, things are going great, I saw some letters from Keenan, it sounds like he's in the office now? Anyways, thanks for the prayers! I love you!

Elder Williams

                            

                                    Peter being Peter...

                        Elder Duffy holding a bird

 

 

Peter's Sick; Keep him in your Prayers...(Pictures in email!)

 

Hey Mom and Family!                      9-17-12 

               Thanks for the email!  This week was very difficult.  Our new companion's annoying.  It got to the point where I even lost my temper.  It's only been a week too.  But we had a good talk after I lost patience with him and so things are a lot better.  I couldn't really help it though, this last week since Monday I've had this cold; nothing too bad just a lot of “drainage”.  But then it started to get worse, Wednesday and Friday I had to stay at home because I had developed a fever.  And now when I blow my nose a great amount of blood comes out.  I think I cut something inside of my head for how much I've blown it.  The bloods been going on for 2 days now, I think I'm going to go to the doctors tomorrow.  Anyways on Saturday we were walking and my 3rd companion Elder Monteiro hit me in the “unmentionables” (he was trying the whole day…You go figure why…?).  It hurt but I didn't say anything, and elder Duffy told him to stop because it's not funny and next time I could get angry. Anyways, we entered into a lesson which was way good, but during the lesson my fever hit hard again.  I was pretty bad, but we had one more house to stop by before the day was over, so we started heading over, when out of nowhere he hit me again in the same place!!!  This time I lost patience and sucker punched him and called him some bad names.  I suppose I could've reacted better than I did, but I just completely lost control.  Oh well.  Now we're both better...we had a long talk.

               Anyways, on a happier note, me being sick has helped me lose some weight and I've developed a little cough that's helping my abs develop... We managed to get a lot of work done this week as well.  We managed to find a lot of new investigators and teach a lot of lessons as too.  We're starting to teach this new family.  The old ones we were teaching—Ricardo, Martinha, Carlos, and Elaine—are all weak sauce and so we've abandoned them.  We've still held on to their kids Lucas and Luana though. 

               Anyways, I'm going to probably want to start BYU in Summer Term, what day does the Spring Term start?  The http://saas.byu.edu/class schedule link doesn’t work for me. 

               Anyways, I hope you guys had a great Africa trip, I love Chris' beard.  He looked like “the man”.  Anyways, I hope all is going alright over there, thanks for the packages I can't wait!   Love you! 

Elder Williams

 

Peter and some of his Zone

Peter painted this by himself during a work project for a pre-school! (It's pretty darn good!)

Peter thinks it's funny that athey have these soccer warning signs everywhere.

How do you say "G'Day Mates" in Portuguese?

Hey Mom and Family!           9-10-12

Congrats on completing your hardcore gorilla trip Mom!  You've really grown a lot since I've left (huh?)!!      This past couples of days have been fun but really tiring.  There was an emergency "transfer".  Really it was just an emergency trade.  Our companion Elder Freitas got transfered to Varzea Paulista, and is now companions with my old companion Elder Vale, and his companion is now ours, Elder Monteiro.  I don't know him yet, the trade happened today.  It seems like we straightened out Elder Freitas, and he's just waiting to finish the transfer to become senior, and this Elder Monteiro has some huge problems with disobedience.  So the President is putting him with us because of the success we're having of straightening out companions.  It's going to be tough, because to change things like disobedience is harder than Elder Freitas' old problem.  Anyways, it's a cool feeling to be trusted by the president like this.         Tell Cheyenne that she’ll always be my great friend and is a part of our “Williams” family; I’m sure everything will work out for the best in the end.  It just goes to show the necessity of living ALL of the Gospel in our lives.  Without living ALL of it, we will never be able to make it through the difficulties in our lives.          We didn't baptize last week.  Lucimar got in the way of her sons baptism.  She has a huge lack of faith that her son will endure to the end, and for that she doesn’t want him to get baptized just yet.  Which doesn’t make sense at all, you'd think it'd be better that he get baptized and then she's help him endure than help him endure first and then help him get baptized.  Of course some waiting is needed if the baptismal candidate needs to go through some hardcore repentance, but Artur isn't having any problems at all.  So it's better that he get baptized now than later, because nobody knows what's going to happen later.  Anyways, it's frustrating.  Pray for them both.          So yeah Friday and Saturday we had a service project at a day care center.  WE basically just reformed it.  It was actually pretty fun.  We painted a lot!  As much on the outside as on the inside, I didn’t take too much pictures.  Just the cooler thing that I did which was painting a sick wall size picture of SpongeBob and Patrick.  I'll have to send you the pictures next week.  Other than that nothing really happened that was too interesting.         We went to Outback Steakhouse for lunch today.  It wasn’t as expensive as we had expected, it was nice to go out to a fancy restaurant and feel like a big deal.  Anyways, I love you!

Elder Williams

Letters From Peter While we Were in Africa...

Hey Dad and family!              9-4-12             

Thanks for the report Pahorah.  This week was sick, I told mom a good part about how it was.  My companion's not as bad as everyone was saying.  And if we play it right everything will work towards him having a great mission.  We have some plans to really get him excited.  We're planning on sending him on 'missions' to see how the other elders are doing in our zone.  We told him that because he's not their leader we can send him out and the elders will work and be and act just as they normally would be without trying to impress their leader.  Then after the division he would report to us on their difficulties so that we would know on how to further help our zone be more efficient.  And because he's got enough experience up his belt he could even give some tips on how to work more efficiently.  He got super excited at this idea.  That's the point.  He's ready to become senior, he just needs some more fire in him, some more excitement.  Plus we can take advantage of this division and train the other junior companions.  This will really help the junior get ready to become a senior.  If you have any other ideas on how to ignite the fire again in him just let me know.  Anyways, I can't wait til the boat trip.  It should be great!  We printed off some random papers to put up around the city.  Like "Do you want to get baptized just as Jesus Christ was?" or "Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where will I go after this “life?"  together with our number.  We'll see if it works.  I bet we'll get a lot of prank phone calls, but we should also get some people that really have an interest to learn or get baptized.  Anyways, I love you dad!  Have fun with the gorillas.  

 Love,   Elder Williams

Hey Mom and family!      9-4-12

So this week was good, Nothing too eventful.  Our zone had 5 baptisms last week, which is actually pretty good for the zone.  We just need to do it every week.  I think it's legit that you guys had a sick gorilla experience.  I had a cool one the other day too.  I was walking home last PDay when we saw like 5 lemurs they got really close and there was some fruit on the ground so we started feeding them.  They starting eating right out of our hand, and while they were doing that we would touch them on the back with our other.  One almost bit me.  It was cool.  We really like our 3rd companion.  He's not as bad as everyone was saying, and really he's ready to become a senior.  He just stopped doing the qualifications that he needs to complete to become one.  So we got him going on it again.  The only problem is that he's got this music box filled with this church music.  The thing is that the Brazilian woman that sings it has a terrible voice.  He loves it.  He won’t stop playing it.  We've been planning at home of how we're either going to drown it or burn it.  Anyways, remember Lucimar?  She gave us about 20 references.  So we've had quite a bit to work with.  One of them was a family and last Sunday the parents went to church.  We have an appointment with them tonight.  Their names are Ricardo and Martinha.  Also that last family from last week went again.  Except for Elaine.  She's got depression, so it's hard for her to get out of the house.  Anyways, Carlos (the dad) said that they are going every single week now.  It's cool to see.  Pray that they'll get baptized soon, and that their marriage will be quick.  This week we're planned on baptizing Artur,  Lucimar's 17 year old son.  It's cool to see how little we really play a part in this work.  Really it's all just God that does this work.  It's so true that it really just requires our desire.  Cuz even the best missionary isn't able to convert someone.  If we just desire and act, God will do His part.  Yesterday we had a meeting with president Perrotti.  He talked about the difference between us and Alma.  He used chapter 18 as an example.  He said that we use the same techniques and the same pattern as him, everything is the same, even in that time period, it was difficult just as now.  The only difference is Alma's faith.  And in the end of his 2 year mission that he made in this chapter he baptized 450 people.  Cool huh?  Anyways, P-Day moved.  They changed it to Mondays.  We're writing today because we had a meeting yesterday.  I personally think that this is way better.  Now we can just work without being interrupted during the week.  I hope you guys keep up this great missionary work that you're doing.  This work is too important to just waste time.  Plus, the quicker that this world knows about the restoration, the quicker Christ can make His second coming.  I love you!

Elder Williams

 

Hey Mom and Family,             8-29-12

Thanks for the Email, I think It's cool that you guys are in Africa right now.  Is it still on the northern hemisphere where you guys are at, or have you guys made the jump yet?  I think it's funny that Chris ran in the Serengeti...(hello…there are hyenas there!!) I’m proud of you, mom; I can't believe you're doing this, it’s really legit. Yeah so yesterday we had transfers.  It was fun.  Not a lot changed. Our zone only really had like 4 changes, and now we're in a trio. Our new companion's Elder Freitas.  He's good.  The president put him with us cuz he's passing through some problems on his mission getting along with people, I guess we're just so easy to get along with that we can maybe smooth out his rough edges.  Our internet here is ridiculously slow though, so I can't send you pictures.  It took 20 minutes just load our emails.  This last week was pretty fun.  We found a family that has a lot of potential to get baptized. It's Carlos, Elaine, Lucas, and Luana.  They went to church Sunday and they're progressing well.  A good part of the members are heading over to their houses doing random visits as well, which is great.  Anyways, they still need to marry so it might be a while to get them wet.  But pray that they can continue to progress and that they can get married and baptised quickly.  Other than that we haven’t had to much of an eventful week.  Anyways, I hope you guys have a good time playing with the gorillas.  Love you!

Elder Williams