February 25, 2013

FAMILY!!!!  How the heck are you all??  This week was a great one, and a really busy one!!  I really love Itajai and the people here are so cool.  Me and Elder Hunt have met some awesome people.  The transfer is next Monday or Tuesday, but I dono yet if I will be transfered or if I get to stay.

So this week we met with this less active family.  It has 6 members of the family that havent been to church in a long time.  We met them twice this week and shared messages with them, and we invited them to come back to church.  Sunday rolled around, and almost all of them came back to church for the first time in a long time.  One girl brought her boyfriend who isnt a member, and I think he had a good experience.  They are a great family!  We have a family night with them tonight and we are really excited about it.

We are also meeting with Peter and Rafaela.  They have two cute little daughters.  Peter is a less active member, and Rafaela isnt a member, but they have been coming back to church lately.  We met with them yesterday and taught them the Plan of Salvation.  It was awesome!  Rafaela told us she is ready to be baptized.  They arent married, so we are gonna help them get married, and then after, she will be baptized.  In Brasil, the process takes 40 days for the marriage paperwork.  It kinda sucks.  I hope that I am still here for her baptism.

Last night we went to meet with this guy named Luis.  We got to his house and clapped at the door (cuz you dont knock on doors in Brasil) and he wasnt there, but his neighbor came outside.  We started to talk to him about what we do as missionaries and asked if we could leave him a message.  His name is Miranda and is a great guy.  I liked this experience, cuz even though our appointment with Luis fell through, the Lord still put someone else in our way to teach.

This week was a great one and we have another busy week ahead of us!!  I hope that I will be able to stay here more time, but we will have to see.  Also, my package came!!!!  Thank you all so much!!!  Me, Hunt and Eddy's family, all loved eating the chocolate :)  I love you all and I hope you have a good week!!!  AUSTIN, good luck at tryouts!  Kill it out there!!!  Tell Morgan that I love her too.

Elder Howard

February 18, 2013

FAMILY!!!!  How are you all doing??  I hope that you all had a great week!!!  It sounds like you guys had some fun in Vegas!!!

This week was a great week!!!  On Saturday, we had the baptism of Leonardo and Adriana!  It was such an amazing experience.  I got to be the one who baptized Leonardo, and a member of our ward baptized Adriana.  It was really cool to be able to help them come unto Christ.  Also, Adriana's boyfriend was a former bishop, and we are trying to help in re-activating him too.  It is pretty cool to be able to help them out.  After I performed the baptismal ordinance with Leonardo, I felt the Spirit so strong and it was an awesome feeling.  Then someone asked him who will confirm him in church on Sunday, and without hesitation, he said, "Elder Howard."  That made me feel great!  Sunday rolled around and I got to confirm him a member of the church and give him the holy ghost.  It was a great experience for me.  I was definitely nervous the whole time cuz it was a blessing all in Portuguese in front of the whole ward! haha but it went great!  It felt so good to have this baptism and to be able to help them come closer to Christ.

Also, we taught a lot of lessons this week.  I really like being companions with Elder Hunt.  We work hard together and have a lot of fun.  In English class this week, we taught the class how to do the "Stanky Leg" while learning the Alphabet song! haha it was a funny experience.

We taught a guy named Joao Paulo this week.  He works at the restaurant Kebabztao with our friend Fabio.  Joao told us that he was interested in learning more about the BOM.  He said he has been through some crazy things in his life with drugs, and he wants to make a change.  He was really open with us.  We taught him the first lesson, and we will follow up with him this week.

We also taught Christiano and Dilaini from our English class.  They made us some french fries last night and we taught them the first lesson.  It went really well.  They both have a strong faith in God, we just need to help them gain a testimony of the BOM.  We gave them a BOM with a part to read, and invited them to pray to know if it is true.  We will follow up with them this week.

Eu sei que Jesus Cristo é nosso Salvador.  Ele nós ama muito.  Ele sofreu por cada um de nós.  Eu sei que O Livro de Mórmon é verdadeiro e Joseph Smith é um profeta de Deus.  Eu sou grato pela oportunidade para ser missionario e pregar o evangelho de Cristo.

Eu amo vocês muito!!!  Have a fantastic week!  Tell Morgan that I love her too!

Elder Howard

February 11, 2013

FAMILY!!!!  How are you all doin??  I am glad that you all had a good week!!  My week here was really good!  We met with Adriana and Leonardo and got everything taken care of for preparing their baptism.  The baptism is planned for this Saturday, so I am hopin that it goes through.  I feel like they are both ready, there as just some drama to take care of.  Leonardo is 12 years old, and I ill baptize him, and a member from the ward will baptize Adrianna.  Pray that everything will work out for the baptism to be on Saturday.  I am really excited for it!!!  They have both been reading the book of mormon a lot and they are excited to be baptized.  We will meet with them again this week to make sure everything is ready for them.

So Eddy got called as the leader over the missionary work in the ward, and we are super excited about it!  We met with him a couple times this week and we have a lot of ideas plannd to find new people to teach.  That is the toughest thing for us right now is finding new people to teach, because everyone is working during the afternoons, so door to door isnt always the most effective thing to do.  We printed off 500 invites for English clas and we are gonna pass those out this week.  We always leave a message in English class, so we are hopin that this will bring us more people to tteach.

We also met with Marcelo and his girlfriend Cilmara and their 2 year old daughter.  Marcelo is a member, but his girlfriend isnt.  We are trying to get them to come to church, and they are also working on getting married.  Marriages take a long time to do in Brasil cuz of all the paper work, but we are gonna help them with all that they do.

This week was good, but a little tough not being able to find many people who care to hear about the gospel.  But with our new ideas, the work here will start to get better.  Eu sou grato pela oportunidade ser missionário por O Senhor. Eu sei que esta igreja é verdadeira.  Eu sei que O Livro de Mórmon é verdadeiro também.  Eu sei que Jesus Cristo é Nosso Salvador e Ele sofreu por cada um de nós para que nós possamos mudar nossas vidas!  I love you all and I hope you have a great week!!!  Tell Morg that I love her too!

Elder Howard

February 4, 2013

Family!!!!  I miss you guys like crazy!!!  I hope it is starting to get warmer there, cuz I am definitely sweating more than I have ever sweat in my life! haha it is incredibly hot here!  I am glad that the sickness is going away too!  It sounds like you all had a great week too.  That is awesome that Morg and BB stopped by for a little while!!  I know how much you guys love them and how much they love all you guys!  Tell them I love them both!!!

So this week, Elder Val got transfered, and on Wednesday, my new companion Elder Hunt got here.  He is such an awesome kid!  He is from Texas and went to BYU for a year!  We joke around a lot, and I feel like we will become great friends!!  I found out this weekend that I wont be transfered anymore!  So I will get to stay in Itajai for 5 or so more weeks :)  I am super excited about that cuz I love the people that I have met here.

So Thursday, I went to the doctor cuz, not gonna lie, I have had diarrea for a little while now! hahaha so I decided to go get it checked.  The doctor's office is so slow here, and we were there for 5 and a half hours.  It was terrible.  I finally got in and got checked and they said I had an Intestinal Infection.  They gave me some medicine and now I am back to 100%.  So dont worry, my sickness is completely gone!!!

On Friday, I showed the area to Elder Hunt a lot.  We didnt meet with too many people, cuz he needs to learn where everything is and where the people live.  This next week we have plans to meet with Adrianna and Leonardo.  There is a sticky situation with them right now, so if we dont get them baptized on Saturday, we will baptize them on the 16th hopefully.  We will also meet with Marcelo, and we have some new investigators to meet with.  I am excited to work with Elder Hunt.  I feel like we will be able to do some good work together.

So funny story:  On Saturday in English class, it was this guy Christiano's birthday.  We decided to write the lyrics on the board for the Happy Birthday song and to teach it to the class and to sing to him.  But you know me, I like to joke around a lot and mess with people a little bit, and Elder Hunt is down for it too! haha so we told the class that in the states, we dont just sing Happy Birthday, but we dance to it too.  We told them that it is different in every state.  So Elder Hunt taught the class the "Happy Birthday Dance" that they do in Texas, and I taught them the one we do in Utah. haha we made up these fake dance moves on the spot and half the class did the "Texas Happy Birthday Dance" and the other half did the "Utah Happy Birthday Dance" while we sang to Christiano! hahaha it turned out to be so funny!  I sent the video of it, so put it on FB and explain the story.  I hope it makes sense.  Afterwards we told them it was a joke, but they thought it was hilarious!

Well, I love you all and I am excited for this first full week with Elder Hunt!  I am doing great, I am happy, I am eating a lot and meeting lots of new people!!!  I love you all and tell Morg that I love her too!!  I will talk to you in a week!

Elder Howard