February 17, 2014

Dear Family!

We started teaching the older son, and it has been pretty good,  she has been so worried about him, and sunday, we were close to her house, but we had planned to pass by later, but just went their then instead of later, and when she opened the door she was crying her eyes out :(  she had a fight with her older son and he left the house, and she doesnt know where he went, and so that was really tough for her, she has been praying and hoping for a change in his life, but maybe he has to experience something to make him change, i hope its not something to terrible. but we talked with her for a bit and shared some scripts and things, and then a member that lives close to her that we have been asking to visit shirley showed up!  perfect timing, so we left with a prayer and left those two to talk.    The Spirit really guides us without us knowing.  we were guided their and the member was inspired to pass by.  its amazing how the Lord works.  Even with things as simple as a purse.

Oh we started teaching a young women and she has friends in the church and she is prgoressing really well.  It was kinda funny, my comp usually is quiet and sometimes i have to talk to people and start lessons, but with her, he lit up and wouldnt shut up! haha. funny kid, i was trying not to laugh!

Dang i miss the snow! i heard somehting about the winterr olympics and i was hoping it was true but i guess it is :( i love the winter olympics!!! dang it...

 

Thats so cool that Elder mexican dude was there for conference and talked about missionary work! people need it!  Idk if i told you but last week i gave a talk about every member a missionary and again this week, a young women in our ward who is going to serve in florianapolis in april gave a talk about the same thing.  This is sooooo important!!!  

I did a fast this week, and it helped so much! imediately after wards, i was able to have more patience and love.  Immediately after! its so cool to see these blessings.  i really need it, i studied it today and i am trying to apply these things with my comp...and other people. ha

Thank you for the advice!  Ive really been praying for guidance to know when to lead and when to shut up and follow.

I think i got my package i think the leaders of the zone have it and i will  get it tomorrow at the meeting.

uma coisa legal, i bought my freakin third umbrella cause its been raining like crazy, and it broke so fast, so i went to the dude, and he said sorry and he couldnt do anything, but i bardered with him and got a free umbrella :)  i was pretty proud about that, 

Sorry the email is so short i emailed the ottons this week, 

Gotta go!

LOVE YOU GUYS! MISS YOU A TON!

-Elder Grondel III

"Shirley, Dafine and Dener, the most elect people I have ever met!!!"

Dear Family!

This week was pretty good! We had the Baptism of Shirley and Dener! And their "Bella" was their too, her name is Dafine.  haha she is complety insane! haha.  It was sooo cool to watch them porgress as fast as they did! They were confrimed sunday. I made a freakin bomb cake for after the baptism.  it was a cake of Coconut and it was really good...not to brag or anything,  But we talked to her sunday and she said the night after the baptism was tough, her odlest son, gean, he has 19 years. she said he was crying all night and she didnt know why and it was really tough for her, she started crying. weve tried to teach him before but he never wants to stay, but i felt like maybe he hit rock bottom or that point in our life when we feel like we have to change.  So we finally taught him last night and it was awesome!  we will teach him again tuesday.

Also durin sacrament, bishop had dener stand and announced that he had interviewed him for the preisthood. and after church he recieved the preisthood! wow! that was fast! i didnt even know he had done that.  But it was really cool to see.

The doctor said it was an arbovirus or something. idk. ha. Im so jelous of the snow!!! it looks so fun!  Sounds like things are good with you guys! thats good yáll are staying busy!

A few people have talked about the super bowlç here and it killllllllsssss me! haha

Thanks for the scripts, i always like a little scripture or thought or something to read when i get back to the house on pday to help me and motivate me.

The ottons emailed me and i really wanna email them! but i didnt have time today! they wanna know where my blog is as well.  Tell them i love and miss them and im grateful for their email.  It really is nice!

Well i love you guys!!! I pray for you guys.  im so glad i have an awesome family!

Chow!

-Elder Grondel III


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February 3, 2014

Dear Family! 

I have been feeling tons better. But when i was sick i honsetly thought i was gonna die. It was a head ache i thought my head was gonna explode. no joke. i couldnt move my neck my stomch hurt sooo bad.my muscles were so weak. it was awful!!! i had diarea i puked. but i took some drugs they gave me and i feel tons better now. i lost some weight. im down to 94.55 kilos.   But the woman, Shirley and her son Denner are doing awesome!!! and their little Bella is continuing to drive everyone insane! ha.  Denner really wants to serve a mission and will be attending seminary. He loves going to church, he wokee up at 6 in the morning to get ready and to wake up his mom. haha. their are great! Its so refreshing to find someone with a true desire to search for the truth and to ask God what is right and to follow. Its been so awesome watching them learn about the gospel and have all their questions answered by the gospel. 

My new comp is Elder Cassiano he is from forteleza brasil.  He is pretty cool... :)  Im really trying to follow him, but its hard for people who come into an area they dont know and immediately lead. He is 26 a recent convert with an awesome desire to share this message!

Thats really frustrating to hear.  Their isnt a ton of young women here but the ones here are so few compared to the number of non members so they really have to be examples, and they really are, to some of them its the only important thing! its relly cool to see, they wanna leave for the mission right now!  Amanda, the girl we baptized last month has already started personal prgoress and loves it! 

I wish i could put my knowledge in peoples heads about the gospel.  You reall see how lost the world is when your on the mission. when your complete focus is the work, you realize whats really important, and you realize how confused the world is about whats really important. Its so sad to see!!!

 

The desire is really something people need to find out for themselves, i just hope not everyone has to suffer a ton to before figuring it out!  why cant every one be like shirley!  sincerely looking for happiness for thier family and gospel truths, she realizes whats important, and all her questions show this desire. all her questions were exactly what us as missionaries are prepared to answer. The work is hastening like crazy! they had a big conference in brasil this past sunday and the president of the area of brazil spoke and it was all about missionary work and preparing people to serve missions!  i didnt get to see it but i looked at it on the site before email for a minute or two. they really are trying to get everyone prepared and out in the field!  We are here to find the people that are elect, and not waste time with people that arent ready.  When i first got here and my trainer said that i thought it was kinda messed up. I thought everyone deserves a chance, and our whole effort, and they do! but we cant waste time teaching a ton of lessons and wasting time and energy on someone that wont progress.  They are stressing the baptismal invitiaton in the first visit. it really interesting watching how fast they want us to work.  The Lords work is awesome! 

Yesterday we were walking to our next visit and i had a feeling to go a different way, idk why, its not any longer but we started walking that way and a guy called out elders! ha. he joke with us for a bit, but turns out he served a mission and is a member and was visiting family, they were having a big get together making pamonhia!  Its this corn thing really popular here and its pretty good, we ate a ton and i got a chance to learn how to make one. and he introduced us to his aunt and uncle that live their and arent members. so we will pass by there soon! idk if its anything special but it was kinda cool!

SEATTLE WON THE SUPERBOWL?!?!?!?!  GOOO HAWKKSS!!!   ha of course the freakin year im on my mission.  BYU willl win the natl champ next year. i already know. haha

well i love you guys and miss you a ton! 

Chow!

-Elder Grondel III 

January 27, 2014

Hey Family!

That sounds like its pretty exciting with the  seahawks playing in the super bowl. i bet everyone is nuts about that!

This week was alright, 2 days i was sick and we couldnt work. so that sucked. but they are takin good care of me, (Sister Kuceki and my comp)  so its all good, you dont have to call them or anything.

My comp is being transferred again!!!! Transfer meeting is wednesday and so i will know then who my new comp is. Maybe im just such an annoying butt that noone can deal with me for more than one transfer. ha.  He was great and i learned alot from him!

We have been working with this woman and her son and they are awesome! She is so ready for the gospel she is already in ch 12 of the 1 nephi and lovin it.  They both want to get baptized! im really excited for them!

Our bishop here is awesome! both elder Blake and Elder Cunha said that he is the best that i will have on my mission.  He does so much missionary work.  Saturday afternoon he asked me to give a talk  on sunday. HA. so i prepared a talk and was really excited but when it was my turn he called me over and siad its pushed until two more weeks.  The topic is Every member a missionary! perfect! ive been using the talk by the byu football guy from the last general conference about this and it has alot of good stuff.  Any other suggestions to fire up this ward for missionary work???

Bella! i miss you, but i can only imagine how insane you would make the missionaries if they tried to teach our family. hahaha.  Stay Beautiful Princess.

Is landon still living? or did he die fighting in ww2?

Thats awesome you guys had one of the 70 there! i bet it was really cool. thanks for the scripts, i always love looking them up afterwards.

Heres my adress i will be living in for at least six more weeks, you cant mail anything there but you can look it up on google maps and check out the city im working in!

Avenida Goias, N 1819 casa 2

Sector Centro

Anápolis GO Brasil.

Thanks for the prayers! i can really feel it!  

Amo Voces!

-Elder Grondel III

January 20, 2014

Dear Family!

I love the subject opf the email!   is this for real??!?

We found an amazing woman this week who has the most sincere desire ive ever seen!!! in my life. she has threee kids.  one is bella..  aghhh. impossible to teach sometimes and for her to enjoy church.

WE had a zone meetin and learned some cool things and started applying them and we have had alot of success. we are helping to complete a family here as well. and its very exciting! but we walked sooo freakin much this!!! ha. but it was totall worth it, weve found some great people we are wroking with. We started contacting refferalls close to where we have lunch and afterwards go to our area that we are mainly working in, this is something they taught in the zone conference. And we did this and found this lady.  She is soo elect. We met her in the center park type deal of the city and she lived suuuper far away. but we had lunch there one day and contacted her and she is awesome! She went to church on her own without us passing her house, all the people we passed in the morning becofre church didnt go, i was p´retty upset but we got to the church and she was waiting there wih her little"bella" ha. she wants to get baptized but wants to marry her boyfriend husband guy in mrach but they dont live together so maybe we can baptize them sooner!  

Ive had to learn so much humility.  its never been this hard, usually i love correction and learning how ot be good, but for some reason when my trainers area training me i think i know everything, im so glad Elder Cunha has soooo much patience.  He has taught me alot and really helps me with my teaching, i can feel myslef getting better sometimes.  He has only been a member for 3ish years and he said he was a thug and he was telling me about how he always fought people if they were annoying because he had no patience before.  He has so much knowledge of the gospel!  its insane! hes really cool.  its funny, he shows me how he used to walk around the streets in sao paulo before he was a member. its soooo funnny.

The language is coming, i cant understand everything, and people cant understand me sometimes, i hate when my comp has to repeat to the people what im trying to say. I need to work a lot harder on the language.

Ha im sick of the sun! ha.   i never thought id say this...but I LOVE THE RAIN!  i love when it storms here, its so cool.

Amo Vocês!

-Elder Grondel III

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January 13, 2014

Dear Family that doesnt like to write their missionary, but only send pictures of the awesome new things at home,   :)

Well this week was pretty cool!  We had a baptism, we went and taught one of the families of one of thie girls weve been teaching and the family is really receptive but they arent married.  Thats okay tho.  After wards the mom gave us her signautre so we could baptize the daughter.  we baptised her saturday and it was really cool.  Their happened to be a mutual activity so we waited till after wards and everyone that was their went and watched the baptism. It was really cool because i thought their was only gonna be like 5 people there.  We had a family night at her(Amanda) house about baptism with her family.  It was really cool, the 3 girls are always together and talk about serving a mission one day. Its really cool to see!

We found two families that are neighbors,  we have been teaching them. They are really fun and like to joke and stuff. They understand  what we are teaching them but satan is working so hard on them.  We passed by saturday night and taught taught two lessons in which we felt the spirit so strong and i know they did too. But as soon as we leave, Satan attcks and its so frustrating to see!  My comp told me that gods plans cannot be frustrated.  and that is so true. its just a testimony to me that this is true when these things happen, i wish people could understand that.  We are excited to work with them and help them change their lives!   

We had a zone meeting and it was really awesome! they are really focusing on less actives right now, so we have been searching them out, alot of wrong addresses and things, but we have managed to find a couple.  The ward is really focusing on this too, we had a meeting and the bishop wrote on the board, Resuing people and preparing for the second coming.  Its really cool to think of it in that perspective, that we really are preparing for the second coming, their is so much work to do! 

I recieved my passport and got my money! :)  Muito Obrigado!   perfect timing because we ran out of money and now i have an opportuity to help my comp with money like elder blake helped me! ha.  We had to wake up super early today and go to goiania to return it. that kinda sucked but they never do anything like this, so that was really nice of them.

I am so grateful for the atonement.  The enabling power is real, i have been focusing so much on this because i have so many things i need to improve and change to be efective.  I am really negative and get annoyed with people really easily, im trying to be nicer and have more patience with people, like my comp, he has soooo much patience, especially with me. I need a lot more humility as well. 
but  Yesterday, i was sooo tired, we arrived at an appt and i couldve put my head back and passed out, i didnt know how i was gonna make it through.  I prayed soooo hard, it was the thrid lesson and ive been practicing that alot.  But the lord truly helped me to say things and teach and he gave me energy and the power to continue. This happens all the time, he strengthens us to continue on, like you guys talked about in the letter last week when you went to the temple.  Its real, and i need it! i have so much to learn!

I read a talk about the atonement by elder scott i think it was from the last conference and it is perfect for Alexis! its about how satan wil try and attck our weaknesses that hes exploited before and how we can use the atonement to overcome this.

Hope all is well!

Amo Voces!

-Elder Grondel III

January 6, 2014

Dear Family!

This week was good.  We had a really cool experience.  So the two girls called us and said the baptism couldnt happen that day so we moved it to friday, but we still had to get the moms to authorize the baptism, one of the girls said the mom would leave at 145.  And so we had to get there before then.  So went to the chapel first to prepare the font and bake the cake. I made the cake and my comp started on the font.  The drain doesnt work so usually we just scoop out the bugs and fill it up the rest and call it good.  But he started scooping out all the water that was in there with little buckets, and I was like Bro! we dont have enough time we still gotta walk to lunch then get to the girls house!  But he insisted so I helped scoop out all the water,...then we cleaned it and refiled it. That was kinda frsutrating but we finished pretty quickl and it was alot nicer.  That was kinda humbling because we finsished with just barely enough time.  We left there, and went to lunch and ate really quick and still had to walk quite aways to the bus stop and wait for the bus.  So we hurried to the bust stop, and the first bus that came their right after we got there was the only bus that would get us there in time!!!  Very rare! I was thinking, wow this is meant to happen!  So we got to there Bairro, or neighborhood, and my comp and i ran a bit and we arrived at the house a little after 145...and her mom was there.  I was so relieved!  She came out to leave for work and we asked her to sign it...and she said NO she didnt have time, but we explained its just a signature!!! and she said she was already late and had ot hurry to the bus stop.  So i told her we could walk with her their....we had just spent our whole morning running around to get there in time, I was going to fight for that signature.  So we walked there and asked her and explained and finally she told us that she didnt think her daughtrer was ready! but when we got to the bus stop she started talking to an other lady until the bus came just to BS her way out of it.  I had the pen in my hand and my comp had the papers and we watched her get on the bus and our hopes and dreams drive away.   Wow. I threw my pen down, and we just stood there in shock for a bit.   We walked back to talk to the girls and I was soooo confused!  It didnt make sense to me! The lord made it possible for us to get their just in time, we barely left the chapel in time, lunch, the first bus was perfect.  I kept saying. This doesnt make sense! I was wondering, what is His plan for this one, cause I cannot figure it out!  Turned out the other girls mom wasnt even their either.  So we couldnt have either baptism. this was 2 hours before it was sppposed to happen. So we tried to brush it off and use the extra time we had. We were able to work in that area and find some new people that are really good.   My comp told me, maybe this is why we werent supposed to have the baptism,  BOOM. it then hit me.  two weeks ago or so when we were on the comp, we have one hour of free time on the lds sites on pday that we like never have time to use, but this one time i had a feeling to watch a video about Elder Holland and how him and his dad were at a fork in the road and they had a strong impression to go right and they did, and after a little bit it was a dead end , and they wondered why they had that feeling, but it was so that they could know for sure that it wasnt the right way and travel in ease knowing what was the right way afterwards.  At the time, i thought, well that was kinda stupid, why did i need to watch that. Ha  But when my comp and i were working and he told me that maybe those people were the reason, I was hit with all these thoughts!  The reason He made it perfect that we got there in the nick of time was so that we could know for sure that it wouldnt happen, he couldve let us been latet and the baptism wouldnt have happened either, but if that happened we wouldve been so mad that we were late we wouldve been searching for ways to make the baptism happen i wouldve been mad at him for cleaning the whole font and we wouldnt have been able to focus. but because we knew for sure that it couldnt happen, we were able to focus and find these great investigators!  

But we will baptize one this saturday. And we are still working with Sergio(the dad) he wants to change so bad, i love helping him. 

I gained 2 kilos this week!     its been pretty hot and sunny here apparently itll be like this for a while, i was wrong about the rain.  But i did a fast and lunch on sunday as soon as i started drinking i started sweating like crazy, it was the funniest thing. the lady had ot get me some paper towels.  The more i drank the more i sweat. haha. it was the weirdest thing.

THANK YOU FOR THE PACKAGE!!!!!!!   I  have been working out more and using the protien!  i get to read the letters when i get back today.

So in my next package i would like a cd with sweet songs, another song i love is savior redeemer.  I know you guys dont know how to do this but maybe bryson or lex could hook me up :)  love you guys. oh and i would like food, american candy and stuff, the people here always ask me for american chocolate.  and you can add all the brazilians on my fb too :)  

ALEXIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   Get it together man!

I love you guys, this week should be awesome! we have alot of great plans, my comp is helping me with the language.

My knee....ahhh.  Im not supposed to talk about sickness and stuff, so dont tell the mission people. but it still hurts quite a bit and feels reall weird, it hyper extends really easily. but im careful.  its not like always bothering me, but when i think about it i notice it.  Its hard sometimes, cause i need my knee to fulfill my dreams, I know the lord has a plan but I love Football. Missionary Work and Football is why I live.  Im trusting in the lord, but sometimes i get scared that maybe football isnt his plan for me.  But im gonna do everything i can to stay in shape and healthy.

That pic of me and alexis makes me trunky de mais!!! ah!  

AMO VOCES!

-Elder Grondel III