Two Pictures This Week!

Hey Mom and family,               4-25-12

Thanks for the email.  Did you get my birthday present??  I sent one to dad as well.  I hope you guys got back home alright.  It must be even lonelier now without me.  Yep you guys probably didn't think that you guys could miss me anymore than what you've already gone through.  Well I'll send a picture of me and a part of my zone.  It's cool, we're gonna be able to Skype for mother’s day.  It'll be legit. 

So this week was pretty good.  You know how I said that we're going to the English School to use the computers right?  So one of the teachers came up to us and asked us to come to one of her classes to help teach English.  So now we've got a sweet deal where we come, we do our English classes to people of all age and then we take their addresses, we give a quickened first lesson and leave.  We're becoming really popular.  Everyone in the street is starting to wave at us and like us.  It's reminding me of when Ammon served the king.  We don't have a king, but we have many higher class people that we can serve by helping their kids and even themselves learn English.  Plus they're figuring out that we're normal, and that we do normal things.  Also the mayor of the town is LDS so we're trying to set up a deal that will allow us to talk about the church by using the media.  We scheduled lunch with his dad tomorrow, so I’m excited to see how that goes.  You guys should pray for us here that that can go through.  If it does we'll set up radio and TV stations and do interviews of us and other influential members in the town and try and have our own religious show that can play every single week. 

This past week we found “Leandro”.  He's new here and he came to work (like everyone else, our town is just a sleepy town; everybody works outside of it).  Anyways, he wants to change and be baptized but he's having some problems with smoking.  You guys could help out with some prayers there as well.  It's cool how we found him.  We were walking on the street and we were kind of in a hurry going towards the church.  Two dudes walked by us and I started feeling uneasy that I shouldn’t talk to them, so I decided to talk with every other man on the way to church.  The next guy I talked to was Leandro and I invited him to be baptized.  He accepted and started saying how God has done so much for him that he might as well as do something for Him in return and be baptized.  So he went to church and liked it a lot. 

Last week we did another in-home BBQ.  We've decided to have a BBQ every p-day night.  It's really cheap here to have one.  It's just 5 bucks per person to fill up on meat.  (Brazilian BBQs don't really eat a whole lot more than just meat.)  Sometimes they have rice and beans and maybe a salad, but usually it's just meat from the grill.  Last Sunday we did a contact with some kids that had a new toy.  Apparently they liked us, so they just gave the toys to us.  They are cool!  I call them the “Clacky Balls”  although they are really called "bate-bate" or in other words "hit-hit".  (Real original name.)  Basically it's a little plastic thing that you hold in your thumb and your index finger.  It's got a string with two balls attached at each end.  And then... you hit them together.  The point is to just make a sweet up and down motion with the balls without stopping.  They get a lot of inertia and I’m not too good at it, so my wrist and fingers are killing me for how many times these balls have hit me. 

Yesterday we went to another area to teach one of our baptisms, Vinicios.  He lives in the middle of nowhere and we had a ride to take us there.  He was getting home late so we decided to play some soccer.  We realized how bad we really are, two dumb Americans kicking around a ball.  Anyways, I ended up trying to jump a wall to get the ball that we kicked way away and I ended up not clearing it and falling.  Luckily there was a random pile of sand on the other side to catch my fall.  My hands got all sore and have some scrapes.  I guess if that sand wasn’t there it could've been worse.  It shows me the random tender mercies from God.  I guess He's always looking out for me, even though I may be a little bit stupid.  Anyways, I hope all is well there in the Oregon.  I love you guys!

Elder Williams

                                                    Peter's Zone!!

Two New Posts From Peter!

Hey Mom,                                           4-17-12

Thanks for the email!  This week was very good, every day was an effective day.  It's a cool thing to see! We could work really, really hard, but if it's not efficient, we just don't feel good.  So of course, on the days that we just futilely knock on doors, we finish feeling like we wasted our day.  Preach My Gospel, really helps in that category, it says that we should speak to everyone, but it also says that the best baptism is through member references.  So we've been trying our best to improve our relations with our members and we've gotten a lot more references.  We did our first FHE here with a member.  It was WAY good.  We watched a 20 minutes restoration video that we show to investigators.  That video is super strong.  My companion made the observation that when the restoration happened; God and Christ appeared at the same time to restore the church.  If we read the scriptures we can see times when One or the other appears, but never  BOTH of them!  It's a very bold statement that we as members of the Church state, but it's true. 

We've been trying our best to work with the less actives as well.  A good part of them have family members that they live with, that aren’t members.  If we baptize them then there’s a good chance that their family members will also be reactivated.  We met a lady the other day that become inactive together with her family here.  It's a very sad thing to see.  She admitted to us that she knew that the church was true and that she wouldn’t go to other churches.  But she started smoking again saying that she could stop easily if she went back to church.  You guessed it…She doesn’t take any effort to go back.  She's upset with the bishop, she claims she was offended by some of the members,  etc.  It's like she actively rebelled against the commandments of God without purposely meaning to.  Of course she knows what she's doing, but doesn’t want to do anything about it. 

Mom, As far as the Alma question goes (Alma 32-33…Ammon full of joy and falling unconscious), I’ve never fallen to the ground before, I think that he feels a completely different level of joy.  However, when someone ends up doing what they're supposed to, I get really happy and a good relieved feeling.  I've spent many breathless Sundays waiting to see if our investigators are up and ready to be picked up, if they'll go to church and if they'll like it when they go. 

These past days me and my companion built an old-school barbeque out of bricks and a grate we found in our oven.  Last Friday night we made a BBQ to celebrate.  Next time I’ll take pictures and show you guys.  Last week I ended falling into temptation and bought a hammock.  I tried putting it up between a bar and our clothes line and I ended up falling and hurting my elbow.  So I tried putting the hammock up on a grate on our window…as of today  it's still good, but there's a chance that our window will be falling out soon. 

Yesterday we went to another area that we're in charge of.  There’s no missionaries there and all the members are sad.  I really like it there and I’m tempted to ask the president if I could go there one time in my mission.  Anyway, we received a reference so we were teaching a girl that wanted to get baptized, but her mom won’t let her.  She's  20 yrs old, you'd think she'd be able to make her own choices by now!  This girl had a ton of deep doctrine questions.  It was cool for me to put my knowledge to the test and I was surprised to see that I actually knew quite a bit.  Maybe I don't understand it all, but it was cool to see that I could at least answer the questions. 

These past couple of days we've been working with a member that has been helping us out a lot!  He has a disability that makes him unable to walk correctly and his whole left arm is withered.  It's really cool to see him walk a ton with us and help us out, even though he may not look physically able to do it.  It makes me see that I can do a whole lot more when I get back home to help out the missionaries.

Good work to dad for surprising you guys by driving to Utah!  I’m jealous of Cassan and Sam! I can’t wait to visit them.  Currently, we're here at an English school to use the internet for free and to teach English every now and again.  There's a ton of little kids that are swarming us trying to speak English, its fun! 

Well, Love you guys!         Elder Williams

POST #2:

Hey Dad!                             4-17-12

Thanks for the email,  sorry it's been a while since I’ve written.  It seems like I've said just about everything in the last letter to mom.  It's hard for me to remember some things that happen, yesterday for example, we woke up early to get to a district meeting, but we left a little bit later than normal (my companion was combing his hair) and we ended up seeing our bus leave the bus station.  For whatever reason we thought that we could catch up to it se we started to run after it.  After about 3 minutes of the bus taking off,  then stopping at a light, then going,  then stopping to pick up some people,  we ended up missing it.  You'd think the driver would see two idiots 40 feet behind him running, waving their hands and whatnot... but he didn’t.  Anyways, this was at about 5:30 in the morning.  That day we ended getting home at 10:30, because we went to an area that was far away.  (With days like this, everything gets all mixed up in the head when I go to record them.)   Anyway, to finish the story:  We ended up taking a bus to Campinas (which was going in the opposite direction) so that we could take a bus to where we needed to go.  There weren’t any buses going directly from our area to where we needed to go.  We wasted a ton of money in doing so.  Therefore, we decided NOT to ride a bus on the way back, so we ended up going onto the highway to hitchhike our way back to the other area we needed to get to.  When got there, we were successful with the references there, then we got a ride back to our area from one of the members (which was a big sacrifice because it’s about 45 minutes one way) and he topped it off by giving us 40 bucks to spend (just completely out of the blue... which is always a good thing!).  I think he was trying to pay us off so that we would say something good to the president so that he would put missionaries back into his ward.  Never-the-less, he’ll be blessed for his sacrifice.

I’m jealous of your surprise trip to Utah, dad!  If it were me,  I probably would have done the EXACT same thing by driving all night and surprising Chris, Annie, and mom at their door in the morning! 

There are some many things I’m learning about the gospel here on the mission.  It's crazy how much clearer everything spiritual has become being here, than when I was back at home.  For instance, the commandments make much more sense out here on my mission… It's like anything else we study, we can’t study something complicated if we don't even understand the basic stuff.  I like the scripture you quoted (1 Nephi 13:37).  These past couple of weeks, I've really been trying my best to enjoy the presence of the Holy Ghost in my life.  Everything just turns out right if I do that.  I would encourage you and everyone reading this, to try it out whenever possible!  Anyways, I love you dad!

Elder Williams

The Lord Protects Those in His Employ

Hey family!                                                                                    4-4-12

"Petra's" looking cute (the new name for Lily)!  Good work on the baby annie! 

These past weeks were good.  We had another BBQ gathering today.  We tried to get some sun tanning in as well, but it was really hot so we just left early to go use the internet (P-Day). 

 Conference was so good!  I learned so much.  I loved Elder Holland's talk about Christ's Parable of the workers.  It's really true about how some people envy and get jealous about the blessings that they don't get.  There are so many people here in the mission that are just like that.  They aren't looking to do their duty as missionaries, they're here to get power over OTHER missionaries.  There's a lot more politics that happen in the mission than I thought there were.  That's why I'm liking my new companion so much more than my last one.  He's just here to serve. There's a totally different spirit in the work now.  We're here to baptize for the glory of God and not necessarily here to be made the "assistant" or the next zone leader!  Im loving the mission, but a lot of missionaries make it into something that it isn't and shouldn't be.  It's kind of sad if I think about it. 

 The mission just baptised 3 people this week.  It was an all time low on the mission.  Needless to say, the President wasn't too happy about it.  Last monday we had a miracle.  We had a meeting at the presidents house where we talk about the mission and things like that; it went fine.  Afterwards we drank some more açaí drink and waited for our bus to come.  After a while our bus came by, it was super packed, but we didn't want to wait anymore so we got on it anyway.  After a few minutes, for whatever reason, we decided that we just didn't want to stand up all the way back to our area, we felt prompted to get off.  So we got off and waited for the next bus.  Ten minutes later the next bus passed by and we got on.  About 20 minutes later and close to our area, we looked out our side window and saw that same bus that we had initially got on and had been prompted to get off,  was laying in the ditch with an ambulance carrying bodies off, and frantic people standing around.  I'm pretty sure that if we stayed on that bus we probably would have died.  We were feeling pretty blessed.  Later when we got home and I started studying for a training that I would have to do the next day.  I just happened to opened up the scriptures ironically straight to D&C 25:2, which talked about how if we're faithful and virtuous the Lord will protect our life... it was a good one.  It's so cool to see how much the Lord protects his elders.  It's a big testimony builder that Christ is the master that can really do anything, it's only through Him and for Him that we should work and baptize.  Anyways I love you all!
Elder Williams

Peter Got his Package...Your Prayers are Working!

Hey Mom and family!                                                                                    3-28-12

This week was great!  My new companion's great.  He's super chill and funny.  We've been working on following the spirit to know where we should go and work.  It's been going quite well and we found a good amount of people to throw into our teaching pool.  There's one 18-yr old kid that looks sweet.  He's super nice and receptive but he's Cathololic.  The one thing I’ve noticed is that everybody that’s a practicing catholic is always trying to develop Christlike attributes.  Everybody else from the "Evangelic" Faction are super snobby and annoying, and think that everyone else is wrong.

Cassan ‘s  idea about me going to BYU Hawaii is great!  I'd really love it, I think that's revelation!  I'd probably get nothing done again, because of the many water temptations, but I’d love it!  Then again, I hear that they have giant sharks in Hawaii, so maybe I’ll just stick with Utah.

 I got my package!  I’m loving the many cereals, etc!  It's great because my companion doesn’t like cereal, so it’s ALL mine!  The chips opened on the traveling, but they're still good stale.  Today we had another BBQ.  This time I prepared the meat and it turned out super good.  I think I want to learn how to cook, I love making food that tastes good.  Our wards getting a lot better too.  Nobody's making those stupid comments about not liking missionaries anymore.  Actually we're starting to get some divisions down and our lunches aren’t falling through as much.  Some less-actives are coming back to church as well.  It's a good feeling to reactivate people, it's very similar to a baptism.  I’m stoked for conference!  I recommend reading King Benjamins talk in Mosiah to prepare (there’s a lot to learn about conference preparation there along with this month’s Liahona). 

Well unfortunately I’m not gonna be able to write a whole lot, there were quite a bit of people that wrote today and I don't have too much time to write.  I need to catch a bus.  (The bus's are lame here in my area BTW, they never come!)  Anyways, I love you all! 

Elder Williams

PS, Good luck and congrats on the new baby Annie!

Peter Sent Pictures...and More To Come!!

Hey Family!                                                                                                                      3-20-12

Yesterday we had transfers again, but this time I stayed and my companion went away to a place called Hortolândia.  This time I got another American companion, Elder Smith.  He's pretty cool.  He was my district leader about 5 months ago, so I already knew him.  I’m pretty excited to stay here in Cosmópolis.  It's a tough area, but I’m thinking of some ideas to start in this transfer, that we didn’t do in the last one that should help out the ward here.  It's about the size of talent with some more inhabitants (everything's more spread out in the states).  Anyways, there's a ton of members here, if they were all active, we could have two wards !  Elder Anderson said that out of 40,000 people that were baptized in Brazil, less than a thousand stay active. 

Anyways, Elder Smith is from Texas and looks like he's gonna be a fun companion.  He's been teaching me on another principle as to obedience.  I've always thought that we have the mission rules to protect us physically, spiritually, and to keep us from thinking about home.  Which is true, but he was talking about how it helps us become disciplined for further responsibilities from the Lord down the road and how it plays a part of our journey towards perfection.  Cool huh?  It's something to be put into practice at home, such as TV or video games on Sundays and whatnot.  How we should follow the spirit of the law and not the letter of the law. 

Last week we found a guy that wants to be baptized this Sunday.  He already went to church and has already picked who he wants to baptize him (he was a member reference).  The only problem is that he smokes a bit and is trying to stop.  Pray for him. His name is Paulo. 

That problem I have in my throat is only bothersome when I’m walking, and it's pretty easy to alleviate.  It looks like the weather's getting pretty cold.  I’m sweating all the time still, but it's not as bad as it was.  I think winter's starting.  So here in brazil they have a ton of music that I’ve never heard of until coming here.  They have something called “funk”... It sucks sooo bad!  It's basically the same beat and then they throw in random sounds and noises, and there's some Brazilian that raps in a very non-tonic voice.  (Then there's the music genre “Forro”,  and that's pretty alright, it's got some dance feelings behind it and whatnot.)  There was a guy here that is VERY popular and (he has one of the most played songs) so they made some of his songs into different languages (there's even a version of that song in sign language, which is pretty dumb huh?).  I don’t like it, because it sounds bad.  It gets even stupider in English.  I really hope it doesn’t make it to the States. 

The mission's going so fast right now!  This past 6 weeks did not even feel likelong!  It feels like I just got here in my area.  I already know that these last 10 months will fly!  So I gotta make every minute count.  As far as writing in my journal goes... it's about as good as Omni and his sons...  I'm trying to get better at that.  Anyways, not a whole lot happened this last week.  I did a division with some guy that's ending his mission.  He went 1 out of 17 transfers as senior, and is gonna be ending his mission as junior.  He just doesn’t work!  With me he was fine (I guess I just have that intimidating effect), but I keep hearing stories from his past companions, and they aren’t good.  Anyways, I love you guys!

Love,  Elder Williams

Hey Pahoran, (AKA Dad)  Thanks for the email!                                  3-20-12

It sucks to hear that you got sick (Flu for 4 days), one thing I can truly enjoy is my lack of being sick on the mission, if I ever get sick I just keep going and it usually just clears up the next day.  There was only one time I had to stay home during the mission.  I ate a pepper that made me throw up and gave me the squirts with a fever.  Every other time, I've just got up from my sick bed and gone on.  It felt sort of like God was testing me.  Apparently I passed a mile marker, because it's been a long while since I’ve gotten very sick. 

My companion got transferred last week and I received another American one.  I've always gotten along better with the Americans, so I’m pretty excited!  Not that I don’t like the natives, it's just that there’s always that language barrier.  So a lot of their jokes are different than ours.

 I'm throwing in some pictures of “Minas Gerais” when I went there (Will be posted to blog later). Right when we got off the bus, there was some guy that polished our shoes for free.  He was a little bit crazy.  He ate a little bit of the polish to prove to us that it's toxic free.  And we were wearing some broken Oakleys ... Ahh, it was a good division. 

We're gonna be able to watch conference in our area, and I’m hoping it's going to be in English with my companion.  It should be on the same days, although because of the time different time zones it's going to be offered at various hours.  We always try our best to bring investigators to watch so that they can hear the prophet’s voice.  I’m pretty excited to watch it this next week.  Anyways, I love you dad!

Elder Williams 

Too much shredding going on!

Peter approached this guy off the street and he agreed to be baptized!

Two Letters to Read!

Hey Mom and Family!                                             3-14-12 

So this week was alright.  We didn't baptize anyone which is always disheartening.  Especially when we were trying so hard to find someone.  We've had some pretty good experiences where we just talk with someone and he gets baptized without doubting.  Some weeks back, we were sitting on the curb resting, when a guy walked by on the other side of the street and I felt something good about him.  We used a technique that we learned in this transfer, where we just whistle and call him over (using the idea of Christ sitting on the beach and calling peter).  Anyways, he heard the call and walked to us, while we were still sitting.  When he got to us we stood up and introduced ourselves.  We invited him to be baptized the next week and he accepted (this was a Saturday).  So the next day we went and picked him up at his house to go to church.  Then we went to the area of Minas Gerais for 5 days.  If 5 days goes by without someone following up on someone, it almost always goes bad, Satan tempts them really thoroughly and it's impossible to baptize him.  But we went there and he was excited for baptism, we taught him and that Sunday he was baptized.  It was cool to see the Lord help us out so much.  Anyway, we we're hoping for something close to that for this last week.  It's tough when it doesn’t work out.  Being Zone Leader is fun, but hard.  We're in our area about 3-4 days out of the week, so it's hard to develop relationships with people in this area.  So these past couple of days I’ve been thinking about the future and I’ve written some ideas for the book I’m gonna write after the mission.  I really want to put in some Brazilian culture and whatnot.  They’ve got a ton of awesome fruits here.  I’m gonna send some fruit packets to you guys, but do you guys want anything in particular from brazil?  I’m at a blank for what else I can send.  My health is fine, since I got sick about 6 months ago I’ve always had a big thing in my throat that I can’t cough out, but it's not a big deal.  The companion's fine, he likes to talk, I’ve realized how quite I am this transfer, it's ok though, it helps a lot with the work.  Anyways, I love you all!

 Elder Williams

Hey Dad!                                                                3-14-12

Thanks for the email!  It was good to hear from you.  I'll do what I can to write a little bit more like Mormon, but you gotta force yourself write to me a little bit more often too k?  Let's see, let’s start with last PDay.  We played soccer again, and we were exhausted for the next week.  We played in the burning sun and I got a hardcore burn on my neck, which made it hurt every time my shirt was on.  They have an awesome fruit here called açaí.  It's freaking addicting.  I ate a liter of it the other day, they serve it like ice cream, but it's just it's frozen juice that you can put in other fruits, chocolates, milks and other stuff.  Anyways, the area I’m in is basically flat with a slight incline which makes  it alright to walk.  It's a lot better that my last area in that aspect.  But the members here are lame.  Our ward mission leader keeps calling us to complain about how we're never there.  We keep telling him that if he wants, we'll tell the president and they can have sisters working full time.  However, he gets mad and says no (he knows that sisters are terrible), he doesn’t know what he wants I guess.  Anyways, he's pretty mad at us, cuz he thinks we don't work.  We do, but we're just never in our area.  One thing I’m learning is that as zone leader, you need to be way more efficient in your area when you’re there.  So what your average elder does in a week, we do in 3-4 days.  The Lord blesses us with help, and follows up on the investigators when we can’t.  And then there’s your average sister, which 4 days out the week, they have a "doctor’s appointment".  They're learning quickly here: within one week of a sister arriving,  she’s already called for her first doctor’s appointment.  Of course you have better ones and worse ones, but this is usual for them here.  We have two sisters here in our zone, so they're always calling about how they can’t leave because they're sick.  My companion gave them a health blessing because they had 'pain in their body', saying that they won’t have a problem if they just left their house to work.  The next day she called saying they were sick again.  But it's cool, it's their choice that they're here.  My companion's cool, he's that Argentinean guy.  He's got a terrible accent, so everyone thinks he's got a lot less time here on the mission.  So anyways, I still gotta write mom and Cassandra, but I hope that was a good start.  Today we got some districts together and we're gonna have a huge BBQ.  Love you dad.

Elder Williams

PS, I can’t send pictures yet.  I haven’t found a good enough connection.

Your Prayers Are Working!!

Hey Mom and Family!                                                                                     3-7-12

This week was great!  Our mission got 41 baptisms this WEEK, which is about half of what we had for the whole last MONTH!  If we keep this up, this will be a new record for the mission with about 230 baptisms this month! WOOHOO!

Also, Can you send me some socks?  My socks have had holes in them for half a year or so…something cheap…the ones with the gold tips on the end hold up well.   I hope Annie and Chris can get James health issues all completed so he’s ready for his new little sister, Lily!  I've been trying to send my Christmas package for the past days, but it's hard to find time to do it...I am SOO flipping busy!.  Do you guys want anything from Brazil?  Hey can you send me a list of the family’s birthdays?

 The mission is going really good.  I’m sending you a special standard’s list from this week.  We get it when we complete various mission standards.  My photo’s up there with my companion and 3 other areas from our zone; I've never seen that before on this mission!!  (At the very bottom there’s some numbers and colors with the very last one being our zone.)  Anyways, I love you all!

Elder Williams