(Another letter to Dad from Peter this week...)

Hey dad,     7-12-12

So I promised I'd write you something big so here it is.  I heard you had a crazy Shasta climb.  And that you couldn't even talk or function.  I can honestly say that I have never been that tired, not even on the mission.  You’re crazy man.  So this past week was way good, we're hoping for a baptism this Sunday.  It's truly a blessing that just came out of nowhere.  We also had to fight for one of the areas that I take care of.  They also had a baptism that came out of nowhere but their ward didn’t support it, neither did the baptisms inactive girlfriend.  To be more exact they were actively against it, trying to do all that they could to keep this 15yr old kid from getting baptized.  It's interesting to see who and how Satan tries to prevent things from happening. 

Anyways, they ended up calling the President to go down and talk to the whole ward to tell them that they don't have authority or keys to say when they should and when they shouldn't baptize.  Anyways, the baptism happened, and no one from their ward watched it.  The bishop was there but he just stayed in his office and didn't even come out to watch or support the kid.  It’s pretty prideful in my opinion.  There's still quite a bit of apostasy going on around here that we're trying to do away with.

 I got the German books the other day.  It's legit!  I actually understand a lot easier than I thought I would.  It's pretty close to English, and I suppose our trip to Germany is helping me remember a little bit of the pronunciation.  But I suppose I’m trying to just take advantage of the gift of tongues that I have, while I have it.  Anyways, these past couple of days I’ve been thinking about how I may want to get into marketing.  I'd imagine that speaking English, German and Portuguese would help quite a bit.  I would like to get into some kind of business that works through other countries like Brazil.  And Brazil has a big German influence in the south so it'd be a good third language I think.  But this is all my past thinking for whenever I have time.  These past weeks have been a little bit easier due to us being sick, and having to move a lot slower.  It's strange how much energy gets drained from you while you're sick.  You go to bed weak and wake up weak.  But now I’m a lot better, nothing of mine got stolen either which was a great blessing.  Well I hope you had a great 4th of July, I sure did!  Love you dad!

Elder Williams

Your Prayers are Working!!

Hey Mom and family,          7-12-12

     Thanks for the email!  This week was actually pretty good.  We got everything under control now.  Our neighbors have a guy reforming the house so we had him put in a new door; the mission paid for it all so it was fine.  We got the locks and the new keys with the spares as well.  Also we finally fixed our washing machine so we can now have clean clothes.  Our neighbor also kicked her druggie son out.  So now we don't have any drugged driven people to steal our stuff anymore.  Apparently they’d also stolen from a supermarket that had been known to have already killed 3 people that have stolen things in the past (they paid off the police in the past to not go to jail for killing these people).  Anyway, her son went missing with his wife the other day so she took their daughter and had the ownership papers moved to her so now she's taken complete custody over the girl, which was good for the girl.  Plus they recently bought a new dog, so we have something to play with when we get home. 

     Tonight we're having an activity in the church.  It was one of the first in a long time.  I think it'll be good to animate our ward here, because we recently bought land to start the construction of a new ward, but we just need more members to be going there.  We're going to have an American food night and make pancakes.  It should be good.  I got my package by the way.  I’m surprised how quickly I’m starting to understand German.  The gift of tongues I suppose.  The only problem I suppose is going to be the grammar and learning it by myself.  I don't need any money or anything; I have a feeling that I’m going to be transferred soon. 

     So this Sunday a miracle happened.  We have been having a pretty difficult transfer as far as  baptisms go, but last Sunday we stopped by this guys house that we had found, and when we got there, he’d already read the pamphlet we left with him and he felt “way good” about it, so we left the first lesson with him, he's seriously one of the spiritually smartest investigators that I’ve taught, anyway he was so excited about being baptized that when I was going to mark his baptism (I figured the 15th, which would mean just one visit at church before his baptism) he accepted without a problem and was super excited.  So I suppose that the Lord is blessing us for our hard work these 6 weeks.  Anyway, yesterday there's a guy in our ward called Moisés, which would be Moses in English, and he decided to give us a random 5 min training.  Anyway, he said something interesting about something in D&C 75, in verse 19.  He said that those blessings can also be priesthood blessings and that every time we enter into someone’s house and they receive us and accept baptism, we need to use our priesthood and specifically ask that the Lord can send two angels to come and stay at their side to protect them, and their house.  He said that if we do this, then Satan won’t have any way to tempt them against the church by having someone come to say bad things to them.  Satan uses anyone and anything to distract and break people down, so it's best to have a couple of angels to protect them.  I think that's what I was lacking with that last guy I was telling you about (Marcos).  Anyway, Moisés was a pioneer in the church in this area and served a mission just 4 months into the church.  He went and opened a part of a mission with 5 other missionaries and in just 3 weeks they baptized 1500 people or so.  Soo, he's kind of a big deal.  Anyways, all is going well here; just keep praying for Marcos and now Luiz Felipe.  I think Marcos has a chance now and Luiz Felipe is going strong.  Thanks for the prayers; I can feel the protection and everything.  I love you!            

Elder Williams

Keep Praying that Peter gets healthy and doesn't get robbed...

Hey mom and family,              7-4-12

This week was good!  It was a little bit tough due to the fact it's hard to increase our teaching group, but these past couple of days we've had some good opportunities to teach.  The sinus infection went away, I think I have something that feels like a mild version of strep throat though, it only hurts to swallow and to lie down, but it's starting to go away.  I read on the label of that medicine and it said to use it for strep throats and sinus infections.  It got rid of one thing, so it should be right.  I couldn't pull money out cuz we don't have a bank in our area, but it's ok, we didn’t starve.  We always had just enough money.  It's cool to see how much the Lord cares for us by giving us just enough.  The couch is still outside, but we know a guy that can maybe shove it in through a door by removing some things so that it can fit.  Well, by the looks of the pictures, it seems that Alaska was pretty cool.  I don't know what you guys were expecting though, Alaska's known for its cold, dreariness.  Jon Lawson wrote me.  He said that you guys are going to have a huge BBQ soon.  It seems pretty fun.  I hear Vinnys in Florida, but I agree that kid needs to go on a mission.  I've been writing him a little bit and he said that he's still planning on going on one, he just needs to "clear some stuff up", whatever that means.  My head's super busy all the time, the time's passing by so quickly, I can't believe that it's already been 5 weeks in this area training.  Anyways, we have a new president now, President Perrotti.  I hear he's pretty cool; I haven’t really gotten to know him nor see him yet.  President Tanner called me on Saturday to say goodbye, it was a pretty cool thing.  I felt special.  The other day we found a guy named Flávio.  He's just gotten here; he's only been in the city for about 2 weeks now.  Anyways, he moved here with nothing.  He's living above a Pentecostal church, so we've been teaching him inside of another church.  Anyways, we found him a job and he seems to really like us and the church.  Yesterday we challenged him again to get baptized, he said he'll pray and see what God wants of him.  You should pray for him.  We're hoping to have him baptize this Sunday.  The other day we found out that our druggy neighbors stole my companion’s camera.  It seems that they stuck their hands through the window and started digging their hands threw his dirty clothes basket, where he keeps his camera.  Anyways, we haven’t confronted him yet, but his daughter suspiciously has a brand new skateboard to play with.  Yesterday my companion was playing dumb, and broke our house key, so we had to pay 25 bucks to have a key maker come in and break in to our house.  So now we're even more scared that our neighbors will come in and steal some more stuff for drugs.  Anyways, I can feel my testimony of the restoration growing these days.  It just all makes soo much sense.  It’s made it so much easier to explain.  Anyways, I think we're all going to have a BBQ and play soccer to celebrate 4th of July.  Happy 4th of July btw!  Love you!

Elder Williams

Peter Needs Your Prayers...

Hey Mom and Family,         6-26-12

Thanks for finding time in your cold adventure to email!  This week was one of the hardest I've had.  It started out really good but then it just got harder and harder.  Wednesday when Pday had ended we went to Marcos' house to confirm his baptism, but he was in a ton of doubt and stuff about baptisms for the dead.  I think he may have read about it in the pamphlet, and I mentioned it just a little bit before hand.  Anyways, his testimony had been highly damaged by the time we had gotten there and he had forgotten his answer that he had received about the restoration and the book of Mormon.  He was in a lot of doubt over that point in the plan of salvation.  Towards the end of the message he was understanding, but his wife had completely closed her heart to us and what we were saying.  That was when things started getting really complicated.  He had his wife around to always be saying crap about the church to him, all of his friends are from his church, and his pastor is stopping by his house and his store every single day to check up on him.  Everyone was saying bad stuff about the church to him.  The good thing is that he still remembers his answer and knew it came from God, but there was just so much pressure against it.  Anyways we kept trying to keep the visits going, even having some elders show up to interview him, but in the end he fell through. 

Then on Thursday it was raining a ton and I left my umbrella at home on accident.  So it got my pretty sick.  I think I have a sinus infection and a really bad cough, so I’m taking some sinus infection medicine that dad gave me.  This is great, cuz I don’t have any money to buy stuff til Friday.  It's my fault though.  Last Saturday I bought a really cheap couch to put into the house.  The only problem though is that we live behind another house, and we don't have any way to fit it into our house (cuz everything here in Brazil is super tiny).  So we're going to need to do some brainstorming to see how we can get it in. 

However it looks like last week was just a trial of faith, cuz things are starting to come through and God is showing us where to go, and our teaching pool is starting to grow for the first time here.  Thanks for the prayers.  There are a ton of people in the street to talk to.  The members are starting to get pretty excited to do missionary work.  There are some members that are starting to help that have never offered to help with past missionaries.

 My companion's doing good, he could teach the whole first lesson by himself now if he wanted to.  He would just have to talk though.  He doesn’t understand Portuguese too well yet.  Anyways, I hope all is going well up and over there!  Love you!

Elder Williams

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