February 28, 2011 - Letter Home

Fourth Lap!


Hey Family!
  
Pday has come early because of transfers but, happy day, I'm not being transferred! I don't get no Trans-fer-ac-shuuun...
I'm excited to stay here in Esteio for another month and a half with my awesome companion, Elder Carroll. I'm psyched, because, well, I love Elder Carroll. We're like the same person honestly. 

Et-ing

He's a twin, I'm a twin, we both lived in California and North Carolina, we both are gonna do Computer Science, we both went to the same mission, we both like the same movies and shows and games and jokes. He's my best friend! I'm so happy to stay here because I got people to baptize! There's stuff to change! I'm not done yet! I'm psyched. Many more adventures to have yet!

Well the best news (other than the fact that I'm staying here in Esteio) of this week is our success in getting Josias and Andrielli and Yasim and Fadua in church. 
Dude, Yasim's family is GOLDEN. They are so awesome. They feel like family already. We found them after a long bout of door knocking, and if everything goes right they'll be the first family I baptize knocking doors. They've got baptism dates for march 19th, prayers! 
Josias and Andrieli are also AWESOME, but will need to be married and I hope that all goes smoothly. Can I baptize them this transfer? I will try. 
We have other investigators that have potential. Let's go!

Something fun we did Friday was go do our District Meeting on the top of Sapucaia Mountain, which I will send photos of. It was a cool climb, and we could see all the way to Porto Alegre from the top! So awesome. We listened to a conference talk by Uchtdorf titled, We are doing a great work and cannot come down, which is a great talk and tied into our duty as missionaries and the mountain theme. We gave our testimonies as we looked down on the areas which we were building up for the Lord. It is at these times that I like to remember that anciently the Lord used mountains as His temples. I can feel like it was somewhat like that. Very cool. I can't wait until general conference next month!!!!


VIDEO! When we hitchhiked away from sapucaia mountain!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivYg3TvPLxI 

Forest Road

The Hill 

Toppadawerld

Saturday Night we had an activity at church which we directed, an auction where members use points they earned over the last 6 months to buy American foods and gifts that Elder Andersen (the missionary who was here before me) left behind for them. It was really fun, because in the middle I mixed it up and did things like give extra points to members who bidded for packs of friendship cards to give to their friends, and give extra points to whoever did a funny dance in the front of everyone, who bared their testimony, who volunteered to closing prayer, ect. Was cool. It got a little heated when we brought out a pair of Nike shorts, but other than that it was a hit.


As always, I'm guuud. Don't need nuffin. I'm livin in the jungle out here. Need to be manly. But thanks for asking. Anything you guys send I will enjoy thoroughly, dontcha worry. :)

I will send photos and videos today! Sorry, I was getting lazy.

GauchoCon (See last week's letter for details)

Temple Trip (See last week's letter for details)

Anyways... I love you all so much. I love my mission so much and am happy to be here serving the Lord. I am so thankful that the Lord has been with me in all of my trials and difficulties, and that he has made me strong. I love Him and know we can truly be happy when we choose to believe, when we choose to do what the Lord wants from us. Everyone needs to look for the Lord until they find Him, so that they can do His will and receive His blessings. That's why we're here. 

I am so thankful I'm here on my mission right now. I love my mission so much!!! :D 

It's so awesome I get to do this. Some weeks it's hard to recognize that, I know, for me and for you guys from reading my e-mails. There's been a lot of times I've been passing through dark mists with just a couple of fingers keeping me on the rod, and I couldn't see the great wonderful Tree of Life that was before me. I am so thankful that I kept on holding on. I'm so thankful that I could pass through those things so that later on, when I'm in the mists again, I can remember that those things will pass as well. I'm so thankful for the strength I've found I've had, and I could only figure that out going through the difficulties I've gone through. Truly, the plan of God is great. It shows His great love for us, that he is willing to test us like this, to make us better. I love Heavenly Father, I love my Savior Jesus Christ. I am SO thankful to be able to realize this and to help others here realize this as well. It is such a big thing. I love you my sweet little family, and I will run this race and give it my best on the last lap so that I can come home to you guys as the missionary and person I always wanted to come home as. I love everyone and hope we can all keep doing this great work. Have a good week gente!

Just a little longer now...

Have a good week, keep livin it up! 

Love love love,

Amor amor amor,

Elder Con

February 22, 2011 - Letter Home

Goin Goin Goin...


Wassup everyone!

Another week here in Esteio, Rio Grande do Sul. Right now I'm in Porto Alegre with a TON of other missionaries that I haven't seen for a long time, because we all planned to go to the temple on the same weekend. I'm excited! It'll be my fourth session in the Porto Alegre temple. It'll be a lot more meaningful with all my buddies here with me.

This week was pretty basic. The district war went off all right, and got me and Elder Carroll to go all out and just knock doors all week! It worked! Our district had the most new investigators in the battle with the other districts. We found some pretty cool people, with varying degrees of potencial. 
One very special family, Nilda, Yasim, and Fadua, accepted us in their house, listened attently, and we felt inspired to just go for it and invite them to be baptised, and they all accepted. That doesn't happen that much here. Very cool. They are actually descendants of Arabians that emigrated here, which is pretty interesting. The grandma reads Arabic and has a super old bible she reads in Sanskrit. 
Kaitlin might like that. :). 
Yasim has a pretty bad case of epilepsy and me and Carroll felt inspired to give him a blessing that turned out being... well... awesome. Hard to describe these kind of things. I'm completely convinced he won't have any more attacks. I'll let you know how that goes. I love being a missionary. :)

What interesting things happened? This old lady with diabetes named Julia keeps asking us to do service projects. And we don't know if she's taking advantage or what we should do. Like, service projects like waking up at 5:00 AM, running to her house, and walking with her to the hospital because she's afraid of having an attack in the middle of the night. So we've done that. That was different. Gotta serve and have a smile on the whole time, even when you're half asleep. :)

Members here are awesome. Some members ordered us cheeseburgers without us knowing in the middle of the night. I liked that :). Some other members also gave me and Elder Carroll like, sets of really expensive Gaucho clothes. Awesome! It's just missing a belt and a knife and I'll be totally gaucho. Awesome.

Not that much different here. All the same. :) Man, it's getting hard not to think about home. When I started my mission I thought my seniors were just being slackers and too focused on the world, but now that I'm in those shoes I'm realizing it's like a battle not to get trunky. Not a very easy thing. But I'm winning the battle for now. Let's see how it goes.

So cool thinking of Nick in the CTM now. Man, I love the CTM SO MUCH!!!! I hope he lives it up. I don't have time to write him this week but I will next week. So cool to think of the beginning of the mission: everything new and exciting and foreign, so much stuff to learn and to master. It's a good time.

So cool thinking of... you guys, in LA. Going to the awesome LA temple that looks like a castle in the clouds. So cool thinking of Mom having another birthday, Happy Fourty Third Mom! Last Birthday I'll have to miss. That Kiwi Cake looks tasty. I like seeing my artist sister Lyns too. I love you guys, love seeing you in photos. I have your 'blue' photo on my desk; helps me remember I got someone at home that cares. That's important. I hope you all have a good week, sorry for writing a little less.

Keep yo smiles on! Love love love,

Your Con

February 15, 2011 - Letter Home

Greater Growth


Hey Family!

This week has gone a lot better than last! It's been raining pretty constantly here, but today opened up with clear skies and a light breeze and it's definitely getting pretty autumny here. Good!

We finished with our house destruction project FINALLY last Pday after my last e-mail. 
Negative things first: 
1. Because of constant rain and lack of cover, the people who were going to buy all the wood we made out of an old house REFUSED to buy our wood, saying that we had lied that it was good enough to use in construction! It's their fault they waited 3 more days to come by to get the wood, leaving it all in the rain. Shoot! 
2. The lady we were helping had promised to go to church and even accepted the invite to be baptized in two weeks, but she didn't answer the door when we stopped by Sunday morning to go to church! Shoot! 


Positive things: 
1. The wood has a little bit of value to be sold as firewood. 
2. Solid hard work in the rain is good for you. We got something DONE! It's a manly well-being booster. 
3. We did our best to help someone, and that's all that matters. We'll see if she changes her mind. We did our part.

We had a division, me with Elder Diego, an awesome Elder from Manaus that's in MY district. It was raining but we managed to go out and knock doors in the rain because everything else had fallen through. We found some cool people! The harder it is, the greater the reward. It was his one year mark on the mission so we decided to do the tradition of burning an old shirt that was laying around the apartment. We didn't have any matches or a lighter. There's this thing here (might be illegal in the states, I never remember seeing one there) the warms up water called a Rabo Quente (hot tail) which is a wire that you plug into an outlet, but to complete the circuit the wire ends in a spring. You put the spring in the water. The electricity can completely the circuit faster by jumping through water molecules, so it pretty much shocks the water to make it heat up. Cool huh? So to make my shirt-burning fire, I dumped a bottle of alcohol into a pitcher, and put the rabo quente into to start it on fire. So I think I used too much alcohol, because when I went to plug in the rabo quente, it EXPLODED THE ENTIRE PITCHER IN MY HANDS! The alcohol splashed over my entire lower body giving me crazy burns!!!! Elder Diego tried to put it out but it was just too much alcohol!! It was horrible!!!!

Haha, just kidding. Nothing exploded. Hehe. Good thing huh? Apparently alcohol can burn but doesnt conduct electricity, so the rabo quente didn't have any affect. Were you worried? Aren't you glad that didn't happen? ;D ;D ;D :P :] :/  Heh heh.


(Kay Lea here ---- remind me to beat him -after I hug him - when he gets home!)

We went and asked our neighbors for a match and we were able to light the shirt on fire. We were going to let it burn in the air, avoiding contact with anything that might get burnt, but the flames got too big and we let it drop on the floor. Not wanting to clean it up, we decided we wanted to scare Elder Carroll when he came back from the division, we left it their and put some candles around it to make him think something weird happened.

But what happens next morning!!!! PRESIDENT comes and gives us a surprise visit, and there in the middle of the floor is a burnt mess in the middle of our living room! Well, in the end, we were burnt after all by President, who after some scolding about how we could have burnt the house down, patted us on the back and said he knew what it was like to be 19. (But I'm 20 so I don't have that big of an excuse)

He also sat down with me and gave me a lot of encouraging words that I was needing. It was awesome. A lot of what he said were direct answers to prayers and questions which I have had in the last couple weeks, where I thought that if I prayed hard enough or excersized enough faith, those answers and feelings would HAVE to enter into my mind at that moment. But at the moment, I felt a quiet, peaceful silence, which left me a bit frustrated. But President was inspired to show up a couple weeks later and say exactly what I had asked for. Isn't that cool? God responded my prayers in a way that ended up being better and wiser than how I had wanted it to be. This is God's Church, and he does answer our prayers. He has a very effective system of answering our prayers and giving us not what we want, but what we truly need. This system is one that usually doesn't spoon-feed you all you ask for, but in the end that's all for our greater growth. Very cool.

So with a boost of motivation. I started a little game in our zone. It's pretty much like the movie "You Got Served", but instead of handsome street hoodlums it's even more handsome missionaries and instead of beatin out grooves it's teaching lessons. 
Our gang name is the Sharks, and we got up all in everybodies face to challenge the other districts to beat us in our numbers. We are going up against the Tiger Giants, the Tsunamis, and the American Bald Eagles, and it's not gonna be easy but I'm pretty sure we're gonna get out on top and win against the other districts and beat 'em down. Obviously it wouldn't be a good game if everybody took it too seriously, and I hope everybody can play it in good spirits, but it's motivating to get someone calling you from another district saying "You Sharks are going down, we just entered into a daycare and taught 30 new investigators that are excited to see our next Book of Mormon sing along game. CAN YOU DEAL WITH THAT?!?!" 
And then here I call up the rest of our peeps and tell 'em to stop in their tracks and find a daycare or retirement home to bust into. That's what it's all about.


hahaha

I'm a bit scared that I might come home just completely crazy. But maybe that's just me.

We had a crazy lesson last night - could I say Bible bash? - that lasted like 3 hours from these Evangelical ladies. One of them was a missionary for her church and at first just came out with these ridiculous questions and kept interrupting when we would try to answer. But we managed to answer all of their questions and explain the message to them, and in the end they all just stood there quietly as we testified to them of the 1st vision, and as we asked to say a prayer and leave, I gave the missionary lady the Book of Mormon. After the prayer she said really quickly, "Thank you for the visit. I'm not going to sleep tonight. I'll call you when I finish reading your book." And then someone sheepishly let us go. I really feel like the Spirit testified to her even though she was resisting it alot. I'm waiting for that call! But the Spirit definitely helped us proclaim the gospel to them. We did it!

Some investigator's are progressing and maybe we'll have a baptism here in a couple weeks. Your prayers are definitely helping alot. Thank you all so much. :)

Have a good week everyone, sorry I can't go into details about more little funny stuff, but be sure that I'm having fun and living it up and loving the gospel and making it fun by making a lot of Will Ferrell movie references in the middle of contacts just to see if Elder Carroll will keep his bacon and not blank out in the middle of his conversations. Contacting skills aren't real until they are tried. I just do it to help.
;)

Love love love forever! Thinking of all of you a lot still! You are with us here in Brazil,

See you later,

Elder Con

February 8, 2011 - Letter Home

Hey Family!

Wow, it's Febuary. I share the thoughts of Brendon when he says it's getting harder to look back and remember what you did each week. P-days are coming and going SO FAST! It's crazy!

This week was marked by a million service projects. Mostly it's just us trying to get that same house torn down (*from last week's letter) and all the wood ready to be sold. It's a way bigger project than we anticipated, and after last P-day the other people helping have dropped out, and it's pretty much just up to us to finish it. 


It's also been raining ALOT (like today) and that's been really making things harder. Speaking of rain, a river here overflowed leaving a bunch of houses under the water, and we helped some members and other people evacuate their things. So, actually, this week, I would say we've done more physical work than outright missionary work. But it's good. I've come to really like physical work. Will this continue after the mission? I don't know. 


But it is nice to be able to take a sofa and put it out onto the street to get out of the water - the sofa won't complain or question why it's being taken out of the flooding, and while you're going to get more furniture, it won't ignore what you did and go jump right back into the water. The house we're taking down won't have second thoughts and build itself up again while we're gone... 
Hmm, I'm afraid that was a bit too pessimistic, so I'll just add in this note that while people are a lot harder to move out of the rising floodwaters they're living in, those who stay in the dry give obviously much more satisfaction and joy to me than does a sofa.

We had zone conference this week. I liked it. I saw a lot of good friends. It was a holiday so instead of going out to eat, President ordered 100 boxes of food delivered by (the only place open) an Arabic restaurant. It was great! Kaitlin would have loved it! Although, I would have traded all the falafel in the world for a box or letter from my family... :( (But don't worry, your e-mails were so good that that doesn't even matter now :) )

It's so cool to think Nick is in the MTC and starting his adventures right now! I want to receive his e-mails home. So awesome. I'm so proud of that guy!

Anyway, I'm here and I'm trying to do the best I can to make the most of the time I have here. I'm happy, but these last couple weeks have frankly been a little difficult, it seems like we're doing what we should be, but I'm not seeing a lot of results from our work. It's been a little bit like driving on ice. People's free agency gets me a little frustrated some times. It helps me to think I'm not the only one frustrated by that, Heavenly Father definitely feels that more than I ever will. 
I'll echo Brendon's thoughts too, in that I'm battling constant thoughts of home and also an increasing tiredness. I think it's right that some of the reality of the mission be saved to be related after we get home, but I just wanted to share a little bit of what I'm going through with you guys. It's definitely getting harder. The curtains of illusion are lifting a little bit more every day, and the reality of a battle between good and evil becomes ever more obvious. It gets a bit scary, but I know that the scarier reality gets, the grander and greater and more glorious is the fact that this battle was already won. Evil will not survive. Jesus Christ has already succeeded. Just that for some reason, people are deciding which side to join still. It's an increasing frustration in my mind but an increasing calmness in my spirit. It's like 2 Nephi 4:15-35 (click the link to read this scripture; it is wonderful!). There are many things to be done, and we are capable to do them. There words to be said, people to lift, testimonies to forge even stronger, more to be done, more for us to be. May we all accept the challenge and allow Christ to make us a little better each day. We know in Whom we have trusted. And that's a good thing. :)

I love each one of you so much, and I love all the photos. Thank you! Don't worry because a bunch of huge Connor hugs are coming to you all in August. That's a promise.

Have a good week everyone! Do what is right! Love you!

Elder Con

February 1, 2011 - Letter Home

Hey Fam!

It's so late, have you given up yet on my e-mail home?  Why am I so late? Because I destroyed a house today. Luckily this time it wasn't because of stomach problems, yes, someone actually WANTED their house destroyed.

Jokes aside. This woman is a friend of an inactive member we're trying to reactivate who's son has slowly and steadily stolen EVERYTHING she has to keep his drug habit going, causing her husband to abandon her. Way sad story, and a proof of how crazy and how horrible these substances are. Man, drugs don't destroy just people, they destroy families and homes. So we tore down a wooden house she had in the front of her other concrete house so that her son wouldn't be able to break in and have a place to stay with his buddies. She's also going to sell the wood and tile from the roof to keep food on the table while she looks for work (which may be hard because she was just a normal stay-at-home mom and has no work experience). Man... such a poor lady and such a great opportunity to serve her. She's going to go to church this Sunday, is reading the Book of Mormon, and since we've been there, she is already starting to talk and smile and look forward to the future. 
Poor people...

This week has actually been a hard first week for Elder Carroll, who's from North Carolina and has 6 months on the mish. His second day here we spent the hold day helping a family move across the city, which included a couple of large and unwieldy furniture peices, just me and my comp and 2 other guys, and we were rushing because the moving guy was charging by the hour and the family didn't have enough to pay him for more than an hour. Speed moving! It should be a sport! Good thing I got experience... :) But Jorge and Julia are now living comfortably in a new little home with a lot of big furniture. They really appreciated the help.

Elder Carroll is so awesome. So nice to have someone who sees onto my level and is willing to share the burden of the work. Maybe it's not that: Someone who gets and enjoys my jokes really is a big deal. Getting movie references is also a big plus. I'm happy he's here.

Remember Josias, the firefighter who fell off a roof and broke his head and we gave him a blessing? He miraculously healed, and puzzled all the doctors. His skull was broken in two places, and his eye came out of his socket, but he came home two weeks ago walking and talking and completely normal. He came to Sacrament Meeting two sundays ago and told the story to everyone and thanked us in front of everyone. How awesome is that! It made me so happy, but it is also a strange situation to be in. I reminded everyone that it wasn't the missionaries that healed him, but God. But the ward was needing a miracle to help everyone be renewed in their testimonies, and this really shook stuff up. 
So awesome!

Sister Nadir and Pamela visited me this Sunday from Elizabeth, and we went on a walk around Esteio and ate pastels with them afterwards. So cool. I love them so much, even though it's hard to see them because it's hard to leave them (they always cry when I leave :) ). I actually teared up when I saw them leave too. Here is my home.

I LOVE you my family so much. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for so many photos and the sweet words from home every single week. They mean so much to me! Have a good week, trust in the Lord to give you directions on what to do and how to do it, and trust Him that everything will go out right in the end as you follow through those directions. That really works! Let us do what it takes now so that we can all get to our celestial home together! That's where I want to be, and who I want to be with there, even if I have to stay away from my earthly home for many more years yet! It is all very worth it. Let us remember that. :)

Love you so much! Have a good week, my sweet family!

Elder Connor