Cat for dinner (3 months in Brazil)

November 25, 2013

We walked a lot this week.  We keep receiving strange referrals from the church headquarters asking for Books of Mormons and other videos.  Referrals are awesome but everyone we´ve contacted doesn’t remember asking for a visit and thinks it’s strange that we have their name and address haha.  Who knows, it’s weird but we´re trying to contact them all, and they live in the randomest places, so we´ve been busy. 

One of the contacts led us to a beco not too far away.  A beco is just a really small street.  The contact wasn’t home so we tried to teach their neighbor, Antonio, instead.  We talked about his religious background and we asked him, "Why is God important to you?"  His response was awesome.  He said:

One day I was working construction on a house nearby, and my wife brought me beans, rice, and salad for lunch. My co-worker asked me if I wanted him to heat up my lunch and I said yes of course.  But when he gave me my plate back, there was some sort of meat on it. I asked him,

"What kind of meat is this?"

"Eat it and maybe you'll find out." 

I was scared to eat this mystery meat, so I prayed to God and asked him to help me know what it was.  After, I had a vision of a giant black cat.  God had given me an answer.  I told my co-worker, 

"I know what this meat is! It's cat!"

"How'd you find out?!"

"God told me!"

Then I ate it anyways.  But now I know that God cares about me. 

I was laughing so hard that it was hard to keep talking about the lesson after that.  It was good though.  Experiences like that help you to be happy and excited about the work.  Some days are super hard.  Sometimes we plan well, work really hard, and then...no one's home that day.  It’s a bummer, but it’s super important to stay excited because no one wants to hear how to be more happy from two sad looking missionaries haha. 

Sorry this email was so short. 

Elder Marsh

Eventful Week

Eventful week.

We had transfers a week early because lots of missionaries finished up there two years of service and went home.  I stayed here in the Vale do Jatobá but I got a new companion named Elder Lopes da Silva.  His name barely fits on the name tag ha.  Cool thing dad, he’s from Curitiba! I like him a lot and I think we´ll work well together. 

Grecia was really firm all week, but then Friday morning at 6:45 am we got a message that she didn’t want to get baptized because she was having doubts.  That was probably the worst text message of my life!  We got dressed really fast and went to a pay phone to try to talk with her.  Quick side note...here in Brazil, they don’t have like cell phone plans, so you pay by the minute and it’s super expensive.  We get a 100 minutes every 21st of the month.  Usually we run out about two weeks before that so we use pay phones A LOT.  We could not get a hold of her after like five dropped calls so we just got on the bus and headed to her house.  Grecia was sleeping so we waited at the gate and talked with her sister.  She started asking us about living in the dessert with lots of wives...problem targeted ha.  After Grecia got up we talked with the family and resolved most of the concerns and Grecia was reanimated and ready to go for baptism again.

The baptism was really cool.  Her boyfriend’s dad baptized her and her boyfriend’s mom gave a short talk.   Small problem...I forgot to turn off the water to the baptismal font. Yikes.  There was like an inch of water in the bathrooms and it was starting into the hallways!  That was a mess.  It took a while to clean up afterwards.  I will absolutely never forget about that again. 

Also, along the same lines, we didn’t close our window yesterday because it was hot and sunny when we left the house.  It poured for like 45 minutes.  When we got home,  Elder Lopes´s bed was soaking wet and there was a ton of water on the floor throughout the apartment.  The good thing about Brazil is that every building and house just has tile on the floor.  I haven’t seen carpet in almost three months now.  That minimizes water damage I think. 

Church was really good too.  Lots of less active members were there and brought friends or spouses with them.  It’s cool to see people get excited about the gospel all over again!

I love you,

Elder Marsh

So Good!

November 11, 2013

This week was seriously incredible.  I learned so much.  We had exchanges with the Zone Leaders on Wednesday and the whole time he just tried to show me how to discern the intentions and the needs of the investigators.  Almost everyone here will listen to a message about Jesus Christ but not everyone is open to accepting the message of the restoration. We are working on finding those that are ready by telling them our purpose as a missionary right from the first contact.  Our purpose is to share the message of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ through a prophet and to help people make covenants like baptism.  A lot less people want to hear about that, but when they do...you know they´re good!

The first picture is of the missionaries that serve here in the Vale do Jatoba and the next area, Barreiro.  It goes Elder Oaks (an American from Colorado), me, Elder Carnauba (our district leader), Cristian (a new member), and Elder R. Souza (my companion). 

Cristian was baptized yesterday.  It was such a cool experience.  He is married to Idice, an all-star member in our ward.  She has been bringing Cristian to church for a very long time and taught him all the principles of the gospel.  He was basically a member in every aspect except for the baptism part.  We have been teaching him for almost a month now and set a date for yesterday.  When we went to their house on Saturday though, he was still unsure if he wanted to go through with it all.  We went over all the baptismal interview questions with him.  He knew it was all true but still was uneasy.  I kept hearing the spirit say, "just pray, pray, pray."  Elder Souza was hearing the same thing and asked Cristian to offer a prayer and ask for guidance.  All four of us knelt down and he prayed.  It was maybe the most sincere prayer I’ve ever heard, and the spirit was so strong. After, he said, "I think I'll accept the Elders' invitation."  It was so cool.  At the baptism, Idice gave a short message and bore her testimony.  She bore her testimony of the church and then thanked Cristian for making this decision so that they could have the priesthood in their home.

We also have an awesome new investigator.  The girl in the second picture is Grecia.  She was a referral from a member in the ward, and she is so elect!  We shared the restoration with her on Friday and tried to answer all of her questions (she had a lot). On Sunday she came up to us at church and said, "Elders, I already received an answer. What do I need to do to prepare for baptism?"  What?! I didn’t even know what to say. Also, she is dating a returned missionary who is less active.  She told us that she wanted to reactivate him and has already brought him back to church once.  This morning, at 8 o’clock, we had a lesson with her and taught the Plan of Salvation, the Word of Wisdom, and keeping the Sabbath Day Holy.  She just kept asking questions!

This is so fun. 

I love you,

Elder Marsh

 

Speaking in tongues?

November 4, 2013

This week was inspirational.  We had an awesome zone conference.  Our president is so powerful and bold.  We learned about how to go from just hard working and diligent missionaries to missionaries that baptize.  He gave us three words: Ânimo, Ousado, and Dedicação, which pretty much means excitement, boldness, and dedication.  People can see when you not happy.  No one wants to join the church if the missionaries aren’t excited about what they’re teaching.  Get excited!  Being bold is something that I’ve been working on my entire mission.  This week I made a goal of talking to at least one person every time we get on the bus.  Let me tell you, it’s not as easy as it sounds.  Most of the people on the bus have head phones on or are sleeping and just don’t want to talk to a stranger. Also it’s super loud and hard to understand what they are saying.  It’s all part of the game!  My contacts on the bus are generally different than street contacts.  I usually try to start a conversation with the people and work the gospel in naturally. After talking for a while most everyone wants to know what I’m doing here. So far I have 16 bus rides strait that I’ve talked with someone.  Dedication is so important. Whenever I’m tired, hungry, disappointed, or just really sweaty, I just think to myself: Just keep going! I don’t have time to waste! It’s only two years!

President Fortunato also talked about how to work in ward council meetings.  We had one last Saturday.  It was great. The bishop only talked about missionary work.  Every quorum or auxiliary has a goal of reactivating 3 members by Christmas.  It’s going to be an awesome time to work here.  I saw our ward numbers this week.  We have almost 800 members in the ward but only about 100 at church every Sunday.  Our goa,l along with the bishop, is to reactivate and baptize enough people that we can have a church building of our own. 

Meriele, the girl that read all of 1 Nephi in one day, is now almost completely finished with the Book of Mormon.  She was at church yesterday and really liked it.  That was awesome.  The members are helping us so much now. We have so many new referrals.  There were 8 investigators at church and 5 of them were brought by their member friends.  So solid! 

Funny experience this week too.  We visited a referral this week that was kind of sick.  I gave her a blessing and then after she asked me if I was speaking in tongues....nope...I thought I was speaking in Portuguese haha.

I love you,

Elder Marsh

Delicious BBQ

Steepest hills

Sizing up our dinner

 Contagem Zone with President and Sister

Focus on the less actives

October 28, 2013

We had a good week in Brazil. 

So last week we found a family of ten people in between appointments.  Usually we try to focus on referrals from members, but we were not about to pass up the opportunity to teach 10 people at once!  We stopped by the house on Tuesday.  You wouldn’t believe that the entire family could possibly live there.  7 kids and one of their spouses share one room.  We taught the message of the restoration, and they seemed very interested, so we left a Book of Mormon and asked them to read 2 Nephi 31.  The next day we returned to see how the reading went and teach the plan of salvation.  We were a little surprised to hear that only one of the family members read the Book of Mormon.  When we asked why, they told us that their 14 year old girl kept it to herself the entire time.  It turns out that she read the chapter and then wanted to understand the entire book so she started from the beginning and read all 22 chapters of 1 Nephi. That was pretty cool.  She told us that she could feel her relationship with her Heavenly Father growing as she read.

We really tried to focus on teaching less active families this week.  Our mission president promised that we would have baptisms if we started reactivating families.  The bishop and his councilors gave us a list of 10 less actives that they wanted us to visit.  It’s a bit of a sacrifice to try to visit all of them because our area is crazy huge.  It takes about 45 minutes by bus to visit some of the people.  So far though, the blessings have been much greater than the sacrifice.  All of the families have been very receptive.  They have promised to return to church and they still totally have a testimony of the church.  It seems like all we really had to do is show up on their door step and invite them back.

There is one family we taught on Saturday that was extremely active a few years ago but for some reason just slipped away.  When we stopped by we asked their 19 year old daughter to read Ether 12:27 which talks about humbling yourself and then Christ can make your weaknesses become strengths.  She started to cry and told us how she had always loved that scripture and that she remembered reading it often when she was having a hard time.  Everyone in the room could feel the spirit and we promised them that they would feel the same thing if they returned to church.  They will be there on Sunday!

Also, I'm getting way better at soccer.

I love you and hope everything is well,

Elder Marsh

(He also sent photos, but he didn’t label them.)

Our district! With Elder Carnauba as district leader

Home made pizzas with our Portuguese neighbors!

 Rose who loves to help the missionaries out.

Week--who really knows?

October 21, 2013 

Awesome awesome week!  

This week was pretty great. So on Sunday I heard that we would be doing exchanges this past Tuesday with the district leader, Elder Carnauba, and his companion, Elder Oaks, who is also American and has been in Brazil less time than I have.  I just kind of assumed that I would be on the exchange with Elder Carnauba so I wasn’t too worried. I found out on Monday that that was not the case and that I would be in the other area with Elder Oaks.  I was pretty stressed and was praying like crazy. 

When I got to their area, Elder Carnauba gave me the phone and told me some things (all in Portuguese) about the lessons they had planned and then left me with Elder Oaks.  It´s a little scarier being in Brazil without a native by your side.  Two Americans in white shirts and ties really stand out.  The day went pretty great though.  We ended up teaching ELEVEN lessons!  We taught 10 lessons to investigators and 1 to a less active member. We also got 6 new investigators, which means they said they’d read the pamphlet of the restoration, pray about it, and be baptized if they got an answer. So sick! It was probably the best day yet of my mission.  There were two lessons that were particularly good. 

We were looking for a girl that Elders Oaks and Carnauba had contacted in the street a few days earlier and ended up finding her dad, José.  He is pretty old and had a hard time understanding our Portuguese, so we just slowed things down and taught as simply as we could.  The spirit was super strong and we promised him that with the principals of the gospel, his home could be a place of peace where his family could feel true happiness.  We gave him a Book of Mormon and said a closing prayer.  After the prayer, he was holding the book against his chest and told us that we were like angels.  Super cool! We left that house smiling.

The other lesson was with Rachael.  She is less active and hasn’t been to church in years.  She lives alone so we just taught her outside the house.  Elder Oaks gave an awesome short message about persevering to the end and to Christ.  That was a little miracle because his Portuguese is kind of awful right now and she totally understood everything he said.  After, I asked her what she needed to do to persevere to the end.  She said, “Probably go to church and read the scriptures, but I feel shameful returning to church after not going for so long.” We promised her she would feel the spirit there and no one would judge her....She was totally at church yesterday!  With her son!  I was so excited.

Another cool thing.  We taught Magno and his family this week twice. It was really fun because I got to teach in English.  It’s so nice to be able to just say what you need to without thinking of words in Portuguese.  He is a great guy and has been reading.

Marcelo, the man who has a member friend at work, quit smoking this week and was baptized on Saturday.  He was so pumped.  He’s going to be a great member.   

I love you guys,

Elder Marsh

Week 7--Crazy 2 year old

October 14, 2013

Ok really good week.

I want to start with how interesting of a day yesterday was though.  Church was awesome.  We had 5 investigators there.  During fast and testimony meeting a member got up and started bearing his testimony about how in his first life he was Noah and could have married any woman he wanted but was too busy building an ark.  It just got weirder from there.  Oh well!  The investigators didn’t seem to be bothered by it, and the rest of the meeting was great.  Then we went to our almoço at Leodetes’ home.  He is our ward mission leader. His wife brought 2 non-member families and both said they’d go to church with Leodetes’ family next week.  So awesome.  There were like 3 two year old kids running around the house the whole time--which made things really fun to watch.  But while I was eating I felt something like water dripping on my shoes so I looked under the table and there was a kid there peeing on me!! Everyone seriously just laughed and laughed.  Super funny.  I cleaned my shoes up and everything is good now.  After almoço it was different than any other day yet.  Cruzerio and Atletico played each other yesterday afternoon.  The streets were empty. Not a soul in sight.  Walking in the street was like walking in a mine field because no one was out and then every couple of minutes there would be a huge explosion!  People just randomly throw firecrackers the size of dynamite sticks in the road and then when a team scores...its nuts.  

Elder R. Souza has been having a tough time walking around this week.  He has an ingrown toenail...it’s hard to be patient with someone when they can’t walk because their toe hurts, but I’m trying.   We were still able to teach some new people and do some really good work. 

Apparently, our mission is really good at getting people to church but not so good at setting dates for baptism.  So now we have a new rule from the president.   If a street contact says yes to an appointment, we are to then invite them to be baptized right then!  It’s kind of scary, but I like it.  So far the reactions have been way good. 

I met an awesome guy this week.  His name is Magno.  He moved here a year and a half ago after living 8 years in Connecticut.  He speaks English really well so that’s fun.  He has had a tough time here.  He lost his job in the USA and can’t find good work here.  He isn’t married but has a 2 year old and his girlfriend was supposed to have another son yesterday!  He told us he needed direction so we are trying to teach him about how the gospel can bless his life, and we talked to a member who might be able to get him a job in a hotel where he´ll be able to put his English to good use. 

I had a really good personal study on Tuesday.  I was studying the section on faith--the Gospel of Jesus Christ lesson in Preach My Gospel.  I found an awesome scripture. 1 Nephi 7:12 It talks about how anything is possible if we EXERCISE our faith and are faithful to Christ. This really hit me.  There’s a big difference between having faith in Christ and being faithful to Christ.  It’s not so easy to be faithful and follow all the commandments of our Heavenly Father, but when we do, that’s when the blessings come.

Te Amo 

Elder Marsh

 12 Yea, and how is it that ye have forgotten that the Lord is able to do all ^athings according to his will, for the children of men, if it so be that they exercise ^bfaith in him? Wherefore, let us be faithful to him.  1 Nephi 7:12