Monday, August 26, 2013

August 26, 2013

Hello family!

This week we had another baptism!!!1 Wooooo!!!!!! Tadeu Henrique was baptized on Saturday morning (it's really weird having a baptism in the morning...) and confirmed on Sunday! We called him through the week a couple of times to see how he was doing and all, and it was interesting how everything unfolded. Henrique was actually hit by a car on Thursday morning... Satan really didn't want him to be baptized. But he went to the hospital, got all bandaged up, and then Saturday came to São João and was baptized anyways! Take that, Satan!
We also had transfers this week. Or rather, we have them tomorrow. Aaaaaaaaaaaaand I was transferred. Where to? I still don't know. But I should know in a bit. I'll let you guys know in a week what happened. I'm feeling Piracicaba. But that's just me.

And the other big news is about when I'm coming home..... And I feel bad telling all of you, so I'll go ahead and write it in Portuguese and pretend that you guys don't have translators. It makes me feel better thinking that you guys won't understand what I'm saying.
 
Bom. Essa quinta-feira eu recebi uma ligação dos secretário executivos da missão. Na verdade, foi o Elder Black. Ele é bem legal. Ele falou para mim que tem duas datas de embarque da missão no final do ano. Uma será no dia 12 de novembro, e a outra no dia 2 de janeiro... E então ele perguntou se eu tenho qualquer compromisso em casa no final do ano, até janeiro. E falei que não, porque realmente não tenho. Só que eu gostaria de estar em casa para o natal. Mas aquilo não é compromisso. Elder Black falou que provavelmente eu vou embora no dia 2 de janeiro... então... Eu não vou estar em casa para natal, nem o ano novo. 
Tudo isso é um pouco triste, mas saibam que o Senhor tem um propósito por tudo. Com certeza Ele tem planos para tudo isso e lembra que o homem não pode compreender todas as coisas que o Senhor compreende! 

Well, enough Portuguese. I'll send a couple pictures this week of random junk. One is a house that has two addresses... Not sure how that works. The other picture is with the Bishop from the ward here, Bispo Lucien, and his wife and kid, Suellen and Luan. Then I'll try to send pictures of the baptism this week as well. But those will come later.



 

I love you all! Have a great week!

-Elder Hopper #1

Monday, August 19, 2013

August 19, 2013

Hello família!!!

This week was great! We had two baptisms! I know that we had said there would be three, but something happened and he wasn't baptized. But he will be next week! So this week Claudineia and Hugo were baptized on Saturday and confirmed on Sunday. It was a pretty great week.

What happened with the other guy... His name is Henrique. I don't know if I said that last week or not. Well, we called his girlfriend who is a member of our ward, and asked her how we would schedule the interview and baptism and all that this week, but when we did that, she said that Henrique knew nothing about the baptism! So we got Henrique's number and called and talked to him a bit. Turns out that when we said that 17th, he thought we meant the 17th of next month! (Which is September, by the way. That came really fast.) So we talked to him a bit, and he agreed to the 24th of this month, which is this Saturday. It'll be the first baptism in the morning that I've ever taken part in. It'll be at 10:30AM Saturday morning. Weird. But it'll be great!
 
Not much else happened this week, wee spent a lot of our time in divisions with other areas because of various problems and interviews and such. But It was a good week.
 
I'm super tired right now because we just went up the mountain in Poços again (yes, for a third time), and this time we basically ran up, sat up there for an hour or two, then ran down. And it had rained the night before, so the trail was reeeeaaaaalllly slippery. So I fell. Only once, though. It didn't hurt too much. Plus I got a monkey to climb on my shoulder! He was nice and fluffy. It'd be cool to have a pet monkey.



Anyways, I hope you all have a great week! I'll try to send some pictures if my companion gets them to me quick. 

I love you all!

 

-Elder Hopper #1

Monday, August 12, 2013

August 12, 2013

Hello family!

One thing that I have noticed lately is that time is flying by really fast. Like so fast that I don't even know what to update you guys on this week. 

Most of this week was sacrificed in favor of the other areas. We had interviews in Poços de Caldas and Espírito Santo do Pinhal, two other cities, so we traveled quite a bit. But we were still able to see a bit of success in our area. We are teaching a family that is a mom and two kids (one of which is 11 years old, the other 7), and it's going really well. The mom's name is Claudineia, and the kids are Hugo and Mayara. They went to church last week and loved it. This Sunday they weren't able to go because of problems with their dad and the fact that it's Father's Day here (Happy Father's Day again, Dad!). We marked their baptisms for this Saturday and they're pretty excited about it! The only problem is that Claudineia drinks coffee still. But I don't think that'll be much of a problem because after we taught them about the Word of Wisdom, the kids started being really quite... annoying about the coffee and won't let her drink anymore. 

Well that was weird. There's a key right under the delete key on this keyboard that turns the computer off. Learned that one the hard way.

We are also working with a guy named Henrique who is the boyfriend of a member here. He's a really cool guy and always has searched for a place like the church of Jesus Christ. The only problem is that he's only here on the weekends and lives in a city called São Sebastião da Grama. Which is about 45 minutes away from our city. He's already gone to church 3 or 4 times now, and really likes it. So we finally were able to teach him on Saturday, and he accepted everything. He says that he feels like God is calling him to be a part of the Church of Jesus Christ. So he'll be baptized on Saturday, too! We had to teach almost everything to him Saturday and Sunday, since he'll only be back here next Saturday (the day of the baptism), but it went well!

Also, I'm emailing a little bit early this week because we had to come to a different city so that my companion could have a medical exam. The bus left our city at 6:30AM. So we had to wake up at 4:30AM. Plus we ended up getting to sleep late last night because of some... difficulties that we had. But we resolved everything and now it's okay! We got something like 4-5 hours of sleep last night. So today we get to spend our P-Day in Pirassununga, a city where we know nothing and nobody! Woooo!!

Have a great week! Next week I'll try to send pictures to you all! I love you all!

-Elder Hopper #1



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Wednesday, August 7, 2013

August 6, 2013


Hello family. And everyone else.

 

I'm tired. But faz parte, right? As many of you might have noticed, this email is coming a day late. That is because on Sunday afternoon, right after lunch, we we our area to go to Piracicaba. And we just got back into São João da Boa Vista, being 16:00 on Tuesday. That was a tiring trip. But it was good. We had a meeting with President Canuto and the other zone leaders in the mission. We got to see all the other missionaries after they did the transfer where they integrated the two missions. It was interesting to hear about the difficulties of all the zones, as well as all the success that everyone is having now. In our own zone we had more baptisms this last month that they have in the past 6! The mission has some pretty bold goals for this next month, but I believe was can reach them!

 

This last week wasn't too exciting, but we did have 3 investigators in church this week! That's a record for this area! It's really hard to get investigators to church here because of the chapel and it being so far away, but we were able to coordinate with some members to get them to bring our investigators. We're going to talk to two of them this week as well about baptism! The third one lives in some city far away and comes here to visit his girlfriend, who is a member, on the weekends. But he's liking the church a lot and we're going to teach him this Saturday! Should be cool!

 

I got a couple of pictures! 

In the States, we have F350 trucks which are pretty cool, right? Well here, they've got F11000. That's how cool they are.

Also, I'm unsure of the price of Furbys

in the States, but here they are a little over-priced. R$400. That's about $200 USD. Waaaaaaay too much.

 

Have a great week! I love you all!

-Elder Hopper #1