Week 3 in Brazil "Show me in the Bible"

September 16, 2013

Dear family,

This week was really fun.  My Portuguese abilities have increased dramatically.  I think the main reason is because we started making lots of street contacts.  That basically means that we stop people in the street and ask them if they are interested in hearing a message about Jesus Chris.  I have a couple kind of rehearsed approaches for people.  The main one is "oi! tudo bem? Eu sou Elder Marsh. Qual é seu nome? Somos missionarios da igreja de Jesus Cristo dos Santos dos Ultimos Dias.  Nós compartilhamos uma mensagem sobre Jesus Cristo e oração.  Podemos pasar sua casa uma otra dia?"  After that I summon all my mental strength to try to understand them.  It’s usually best if they just say "Pode." That mean yes.  It's really fun though!  It helps me understand different accents of people.  Portuguese is much different than I was expecting it to be.  The way that people say my name here is Ma-this scrapy sound that you make with your throat-sh.  Lots of people can’t say the "rrrr" sound so they use that instead.  It's rad.

I'm learning a lot about the Bible and how to connect scriptures from the Bible to the Book of Mormon.  Everyone here believes in the Bible already and we hear the sentence "show me in the Bible" a lot.  It's awesome when we can share a scripture and then elaborate with the Book of Mormon.  The Book of Mormon has so much power!  Seriously, all questions can be answered through the Book of Mormon. 

We are using the members a lot to find new people to teach.  Lessons are so much more affective when the people have a member friend there.  Yesterday we went with a couple in the ward and taught the wife’s sister's family.  It was way good.  The member told them how much the gospel had blessed her family and how she wants her sister to have to same thing in her life.  There were about six women in the room and every one of them was crying.  It was a really spiritual experience for everyone there. 

We have an investigator named Marcelo.  He is the perfect example of how members are a huge influence on the people around them!  He was going through some rough times and realized that he needed to change some things in his life.  He noticed that one of his co-workers was always happy and didn’t drink coffee.  I don’t know how he made that connection, but he asked the co-worker a few questions and found out he is a member of the church.  Now Marcelo doesn’t drink coffee or alcohol, and only smokes 2 cigarettes a day.  He goes to church every week and should be baptized within the month.

I asked my companion to teach me how to make some Brazilian dishes.  this morning he taught me how to make jello...Not what I had in mind since Brazilian jello is the exact same as American jello haha. 

Another cool thing about Brazil is that you can always know the score to soccer games anywhere you.  Well here in Belo Horizonte the teams are Cruzeiro and Atletico.  Whenever one of those teams scores a goal people throw these giant fire crackers in the street that sound like gun shots, so even during lessons and church you know the score.

I love all of you,

Elder Marsh

Week 2 in Brazil-- Rice and Beans YUM!

September 9, 2013

Dear Family,

All mail (that is not emailed) should go to the mission home and I’ll get it during our district meetings or whenever.

Good week. I’ve never had such good food in my life.  They like to keep it simple here--rice beans, a meat, and sometimes a salad. (A salad consists mostly of shredded lettuce with olive oil and salt all over it...good and healthy sort of).  I seriously eat to my full capacity every day.  There is really only one meal in Brazil called Almoço or lunch in English, so I have to eat 24 hours’ worth of food in like 30 minutes.  Don’t worry I don’t think I’ll gain too much weight because we walk like crazy everywhere we go. Belo Horizonte has the craziest steep hills I’ve ever seen.  There are seriously places where I have no idea how they got the concrete to stick to the side of mountain.  I’m building some pretty nice calves and quads because of it!  Our area is huge.  I’m not sure ofcthe square mileage, but we are located right in the middle, and it took us 35 minutes on a bus to get to the bishop’s house on Saturday.  The whole area is just houses too.  I have no idea how we are going to cover everything!!  But it also means that we have plenty of people to find and teach.

Cool experience at church this Sunday.  In Sunday school the teacher asked how many of the people there had been born into the church.  I was the only one!  In a class of about 20 people, 19 had been baptized by missionaries.  I thought it was pretty cool and got kind of pumped up to do work after that.  I love church because it’s the only place where people like to speak English with me. It’s nice every once in a while not to be the one who has to use all of their brain power to understand a conversation. 

We met a family last week who is interested in the church.  The cool thing about almost everyone here is they have faith in Jesus Christ and are willing to hear from us.  They have a son who has come to church 3 times now and is reading the Book of Mormon.  I think it’s just a matter of time before he finds out that it’s true. People are so open to listening to the gospel that we have awesome spiritual experiences everyday helping people gain more of a testimony of Christ.  I love being here. 

Congratulations Anna for scoring a goal in field hockey!! That’s so sick! 

I love you,

Elder Marsh

First week in Brazil

September 2, 2013

Dear Everyone,

This has been the craziest week of my life.  I left for Brazil on Monday morning of last week at 5 am and then didn't get to the mission home until Tuesday at around 3pm.  Monday and Tuesday felt like one long day of constantly wearing a suit.

President Fortunato and his wife are really cool.  President Fortunato has a strong spirit about him.  Even when he was speaking Portuguese and I couldn’t understand what he was saying.  I could feel that he was like a powerful guy.  I’m excited to get to know him more.

That night we stayed in a hotel in Belo Horizonte.  The city is seriously nuts.  Its huge!! People are everywhere.  Ok something different about Brazil and maybe the rest of the world is that people who are crossing the street don't have the right of way and cars do not slow down at all for people! It’s like playing real life Frogger. Drivers are crazy but still really good.  Cars and busses drive as fast as they can wherever they go because there are no speed limits and then there are motorcycles that are weaving between the cars and in-between busses. The motorcyclist put Jesus Christ stickers on their bikes to keep them safe. I’ve only seen one accident since I’ve been here though so it must be working.

My companions name is Elder R. Souza.  There are so many Souzas in Brazil that they use his first initial for his tag also.  He is from Belem Brazil and doesn’t speak any English or when he does I can’t understand him because of his accent. That must be how he feels with me all the time.  We live in a cool apartment in the Vale da Jatoba.  It’s a suburb of Belo Horizonte. There’s a picture of the view from our window attached. You can see that it’s seriously just houses everywhere.  Most stores are run out of the garage of people’s homes. The first 3 days here were the hardest of my life.  I thought that I knew Portuguese pretty well but when I actually started talking to people my thoughts changed.  Every sentence in Portuguese sounded like one really long Chinese word.  I honestly felt like I was going crazy because I was so lost. When people saw that I didn’t understand they would try to use the little English they knew but that basically sounded like jibberish so then we both felt like crazy people haha.  It’s ok though because I’m learning pretty quickly out of necessity.  Now I can separate all the words in the sentence, which helps a lot, and usually communicate fairly well.  It’s rough but it’s better than nothing. The only person I can’t understand is my companion because he has this accent and talks so fast!

We had a baptism this Saturday!  Yeah I seriously hit the jackpot! Gabriela was baptized by her brother Matteus who was baptized only 2 months ago it was awesome.  People are great here--so humble and willing to give you anything you want or don’t want. haha They just give you stuff. 

That other picture of my face that looks like I have bad acne...those are mosquito bites. They ate me alive one night. Everyone laughs at me and says “they must like American blood”   haha whatever.

I love you and my companion is standing over my shoulder waiting so I better go!

Elder Marsh



He has arrived!

First Saturday in Brazil.  Baptism of Gabriela by her brother Matteus.

Mosquito bite acne

Brazilian feathered friend!



View from apartment window in Vale de Jatoba

August 26, 2013 On his way to Brazil

Family and friends,

We were able to speak with Jordan Monday during his stop over on the way to Belo.  He left Monday morning from Pocatello to SLC to Minneapolis to Detroit to São Paulo to Belo Horizonte arriving some time Tuesday afternoon. I won't complain about my one stopover any more. He was in great spirits and although he loved his time in Pocatello, was excited to get to his mission. He had a moment of pride (righteous) when he told us how he and Elder Vigill came into a newly opened area to begin building the teaching pool - during just the last week they taught 33 discussions.  Elder Vigill was an excellent trainer and hard worker, we know that training will benefit Jordan throughout his mission.

There were about eight missionaries traveling down to Brazil by the time he arrived in Detroit and he was reunited with his MTC companion there!

His mission has a facebook page where several pictures were posted of the new arrivals.  I have attached a couple, but if you are interested, the facebook page is: 

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Miss%C3%A3o-Brasil-Belo-Horizonte/264306523678497

We are not sure when we will hear from him next but we wanted to give you a short update.

Thank you for your love and prayers.

Getting to the airport with all the other Missionaries who received their visas.

All of us with President and Sister Fortunato

Elder Lutz and Elder Bravo from the Provo MTC

First time trying some Brazilian snacks

Training time

Amazing meal! Sister Fortunato is a great cook.

A very warm welcome

August 19, 2013 Blessed for obedience

 

Hey thanks for all the letters. It sounds like everyone is doing great!  When is the next marathon mom and dad?  You are working hard it sounds like!  All your missionary work is awesome, mom! That's the kind of members missionaries love! We have a ton of returned missionaries that are always wanting to come on splits with us and they're super helpful.  

 

This week is going to be interesting.  ISU starts school on the 26th so one of the wards is about to explode! I can't wait for all the new potential investigators to move in.

 

Crazy thing happened on Tuesday.  Elder Vigil and I were sitting on our bikes in Old Town Pocatello checking our planners when this lady just busts out her front door and starts screaming, "I don't have sticky fingers!  I didn't steal the ring!"  She went on about this stuff for like 3 minutes and Elder Vigil and I were just starring at her shocked.  After she was done she ran back inside and slammed the door.  We laughed so hard afterwards.  

 

I went on splits for the first time this week.  I had some cool experiences with the other missionaries. We met a guy named Kenny who is a recovering drug addict.  When we walked in, he had no shirt on and neither did his two kids running around the house.  He doesn't have a job and his wife works everyday for about 10 hours to care for the family.  They have a rough situation.  They didn't have any chairs, so we sat on upside down 5 gallon buckets.  He told us that he had a rough childhood too. That when he was a baby teething, his parents would rub vodka on his gums to stop his crying.  He really wants to have a good life for his kids but he seems lost.  I hope the other missionaries can bring him to the church so that his family can be strengthened.

 

Later that day we met a lady named Becky who is trying to come back to activity.  A couple months ago she finally got a new job, but it made her work on Sundays.  She continued to read the scriptures and pray everyday for help and she eventually was blessed for her continued obedience.  This week she got a promotion after just a couple months and now she's the one who sets her schedule so she can attend church every Sunday like she wanted.  The Lord is so loving of his children.  

 

We found 5 new investigators this week.  Two of them have a baptismal date!  I haven't even met them yet though because Elder Vigil and Elder Arrowches found them on exchanges...I'm psyched to meet them tonight though!

 

This week we find out about exchanges so maybe I'll here about my visa who knows?  

 

I love you guys,

 

Elder Marsh

 

August 12, 2013 Rappers in Idaho?

Dear Family,

Good week here in IPM (Idaho Pocatello Mission).  So first things first.  We set a baptismal date with Victor.  He's still not very sure if he wants to be baptized yet but we told him that if he set a date, he would get an answer to his prayers by that time.  I said, "How about you prepare for baptism on September 21 (which just happens to be a Saturday about a month away which gives him enough time to come to church 3 or more times;)"  His response was, "I don't know, how about I prepare for December 1?"  We were thinking "haha what?That's not good enough, that's hardly a baptismal date it's so far away!"  Eventually we talked him down to September 28 so that's a little better. 

We got to go tracking for the first time this week.  I love it.  It's super inefficient as far as finding goes, but we met some good people.  We met this new group of rappers called Flight 208.  208 is the area code of south east Idaho, so basically they're probably the only rappers ever to come out of south east Idaho.  There's like 7 of them living in a 2 bedroom apartment, but they're living their dream I guess.  They rapped for us and then told us to come back any time to teach them. Rad, they could probably use the gospel in their life.

We moved out of the Assistants basement on Wednesday.  It's so sad to come home at night to an empty house!  We all got pretty close and it was fun to hear the inside information about the mission.  We have a good apartment though with everything we need.  The first like 3 days there was no shower curtain so we had to take baths.  Bath tubs are not made for people over 5 feet tall. 

This past Sunday we gave talks in sacrament meeting which was actually kind of fun.  I gave mine on faith and used bridge jumping into water as a way to explain taking a leap of faith.  I said that after someone jumps off the bridge they always look up and the next person standing on the edge and yell, "Jump! It's fun!" I asked the members of the ward to do the same when it comes to missionary work.  They have taken a leap of faith and are members of the church and told them they should encourage they're friends and family to do the same!  Analogies are fun when teaching lessons.  We try to use different analogies for different personalities that we teach.  For example, my favorite analogy is for Harry Potter fans.  The Deathly Hallows consists of the invisibility cloak, resurrection stone, and elder wand.  Any wizard that has all three is invincible against all things.  This is the same as reading the scriptures, praying, and going to church.  If you do these things, your faith will grow enough that you will be able to withstand all trials and temptations that come in life. 

I love you!

Elder Marsh

 

August 5, 2013 Wake Forest Connection

Dear Family,

Answers:

Yes, I got the side bag, it's great I love it.

I get an hour on the computer.

No word about the visa...I know you're not supposed to but can you find something out or just check everything is fine? Don't tell them I asked you to please haha.

Here are a couple pictures of beautiful Pocatello.

That's a door that we found. We wanted to get the first hobbit baptism. Nobody was home, so we'll stop by later.

 

That's my companion Elder Vigil who's from Kansas but definitely somewhere over the rainbow!  

This week went well. Way cool thing happened on Tuesday. We had gotten out of an appointment later than we planned, so we were racing to our other area so we wouldn't be late to our next one. We stopped for a second and realized that it didn't actually start for another hour so we turned around to visit someone who lived nearby. When we started in the other direction I saw a car that had a Wake Forest University sticker on it, and I made Elder Vigil stop so we could knock on the door. A girl answered who wasn't as excited as I was to see someone else from Winston-Salem. I asked her, "Are you a member of the church? I mean our church?" Kinda awkward because you forget that not everyone is a Mormon in Idaho sometimes. So we just shared a quick message of the restoration. She seemed really curios, and we left her a Book of Mormon. Maybe something will come of that...who knows?

On Thursday, we went to teach a member a short lesson, but we ended up inviting their nonmember roommate to sit in and taught the whole restoration and gave him a Book of Mormon. He's super interested. We ended up teaching him three days in a row and have another lesson tomorrow. He's reading every day and praying, so hopefully he gets an answer soon. I know he will. That's Moroni's promise!

My companion just destroys bikes. I have no idea how he does it! Earlier this week we were just riding and his rear derailer somehow got jammed into the spokes which just wrecked the chain, the derailer, the spokes and somehow bent the wheel too. We borrowed another missionary’s bike and the kicked stand kept falling down, so he got off and started kicking the bike until it broke off. It was super funny to watch. Later that day, both his tires popped! I think we just need to get him a razor scooter.

My time is up, I love you,

Elder Marsh