One Month in the field!

Oi gente, eu espero que todo bem com vocês,
(Hi guys, I hope all is well with you,)

This last week has been amazing. Although we didn’t get to have a baptism on Sunday, we are making up for it with at least 2 this week. We have a goal to baptize every week and so far we’ve been doing well.

We have two investigators that we just met this week - Afránio and Eduardo - who are getting baptized. Afránio is 20 and has already been to church 4 times before receiving the missionaries. He is a freaking stud. He bore his testimony last Sunday and isn´t even a member of the church! (YET) We shared the first 2 lessons with him and he nearly cried for the strength of the Spirit. We also shared the Word of Wisdom, and he instantly took the earring out of his ear and it hasn’t been there since. He also instantly committed to quitting coffee, something that prevents many, MANY people from getting baptized. He is going to serve a mission and bring many to the Gospel.

Eduardo and his family are a little different. Eduardo is extremely excited to get baptized and already chose to have me baptize him. This is pretty awesome and we are thrilled. The only problem is that the rest of his family is not active but all baptized. We have two goals with this family: baptism and retention. It Will happen! We taught the Word of Wisdom to them as well and it was a little more difficult than with Afránio; the mom, Jociane, smokes and drinks coffee. The daughter, Luciane, also smokes, drinks, and drinks alcohol. We had a challenge, but challenges are very do-able, something I have learned here. We worked with them in their house about these things for almost an hour and, finally, they gave us their coffee and cigarettes and we threw them in the trash. It was pretty cool to watch their faith turn into action through the influence of the Spirit.

We also taught another family – Teresinha, Jackeline, Claudecir, and Diane – about the Word of Wisdom (Palavra de Sabedoria) and had a similar lesson with a similar Spirit. We just have to check on them and see how they did, because they weren’t home when we checked on them yesterday.

We have already taught 12 lessons this week (a Record for us) with 8 of those with a member. Woohoo!! This Will translate to a lot of Baptisms.

Another cool experience: to adhere to the Standards of Excellence (Padrões de Excelência) we need have at least 15 contacts in the street every Day with 5 addresses recorded. While this may seem easy, in reality it takes some time and effort, and sometimes becomes very easy to lose track of. This sometimes results in miracles having to happen on Sunday, the last Day of the week. This last week, we were short on contacts because of trainings and my companion got a little sick and we had to go home to rest. We had to do over 100 contacts with over 40 addresses on Sunday, a Day when very few people are on the street (sober, that is). We did 113 contacts with over 50 addresses! Obviously, it is much better to do 15 a Day, maybe 16 or 17, and call it good. But it is Nice to know that miracles Will and can happen IF we let them and IF we have faith in Heavenly Father.

As I think I’ve already Said, I get to sing several solos in the choir for the Mission Conference. This is both a little nerve-wracking and extremely exciting. I get to sing Acalma-te o Alma Afligida (Be Still my Soul) and O Noite Santa (O Holy Night). O Holy Night is a VERY hard song to sing, and especially sing well as it is so darn high (I get to sing a high G sharp full voice...whew), but I know that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon through the Power of God and that the Savior walked on water during a storm, so I´ll be Just fine. The choir sounds really good and the conference Will be awesome.

List of investigators: Afránio, família do Eduardo (Mateus, Jociane, Luciane, and the old grumpy grandma),família da Jackeline (Teresinha, Claudecir, Diane), família do Denilson (Tatiana, Luna), família da Jéssica (Wéllington, Elizabeth), família do João (Janete, João Carlos), família do Edson (Sirlane, Denilo, Henrique, Sylvia), Clésio, Liliane and Edineia, Matilde, Inês e Jair, Marcos e Sonja. There might be more but I can’t remember.

I Love you all sôo much. I AM working my buns off here and it feels great on the back. I AM gaining a stronger testimony daily of this Gospel and of Jesus Christ. I know that He lives and loves us more than we can possibly imagine. I know the Book of Mormon cannot possibly be false, no way. And I know I Love all of you, so much.

Elder Brown

Another week bites the dust

Oi gente! Todo bem?

It´s been another boring week here in Brazil. We aren´t working at all, everyone speaks English, and I´m eating all the candy and lollipops I want. Also I get to play basketball every second. Haha. Wouldn´t that be more like a mission of another religion…whoops, didn´t say that. Life has been busily excellent, as I like to put it, here in Curitiba. We had another Baptism (Alan, 9 years old) and Jéssica was confirmed a member of the church. It´s amazing how differently you see everything in sacrament meeting when you feel like your head will explode because of all the things you still have to do – where is so and so? Where are the papers for the baptism? Why is the chorister insane? All these things. But, again, the church is true and Heavenly Father only lets us become so crazy before helping us out of the hole. That´s always a healthy reassurance.
Português is coming pretty quickly, something I know isn´t possible without the help of Heavenly Father and His Holy Ghost. The gift of Tongues is most certainly real! A lot of members keep commenting that it sounds good and that I don´t have an enormous Texan or Utahn accent going on, which was a major goal of mine. My other goal is for the only thing that will give me away for being American is my blonde hair – the Portuguese will be fluent and my arms and neck will be tan. Won´t that be the day.

Also I´ve been really blessed with my companion, Elder Duarte. First of all, he´s Brazilian, so Portuguese is a must for conversation – even though he understands English well. Second, he´s a hard worker and not a fubeca, which is good because if he wasn´t he would have road rash on his pants from me dragging him everywhere. But ´tis not so, all is well. Third, he is very funny and is a good missionary. I have some roommates that are, um, interesting, and they seem to be more interested in pizza than their missions. But, we will help them daily and all be edified together. The only problem that I have right now with my comp. is that he doesn´t seem to mind if we´re late, something that is very irksome to me. I don´t like to get ready, be on time, and then have to wait and arrive late at our meeting because of that. I will just continue to be on time, though, and I´m sure it´ll get better.

Studying here has been absolutely awesome. I´ve already read How to be an Extraordinary Missionary, The Day of Defense, Our Search for Happiness, Our Heritage, and I´m almost through with Jesus the Christ. There´s honestly not much else to do than read when you have any down time (which is obviously very limited), but it´s very enjoyable and relaxing and I´m learning a lot.

Also I´ve developed a new way of marking my scriptures, and it´s very thoroughly detailed. I think that if others wanted to read them they would need the Urim and Thummim, there´s a lot going on. I organize things into history (black), doctrine (red), principles – if, then, etc. (teal), scripture mastery or miracles of God (blue), people (dark green), places and times (light green), definitions (purple), and things I like a lot (pink). It works well for me and I encourage everyone to do the same, it´ll help you pull a lot more out of the scriptures. A few days ago my companion was pretty sick so we stayed home, and hence I had a lot of time. I am really starting to understand what it means to “hunger and thirst” for the truth; once I see something I like or that I haven´t noticed before it´s exciting! I encourage everyone to read 1st and 2nd Nephi again, thoroughly. You will learn a LOT.

As far as teaching, it´s been amazing. Obviously my teaching right now is limited because I´m not fluent in Português yet, and that´s sometimes a little frustrating because I know exactly what I want to say, but not how to say it. It´ll come, though. It´s been cool to learn from my companion and see how he teaches, and also be thinking later about how I might´ve done things differently. It´s sometimes a little frustrating when our lessons tend to be the same way every time, but I will continue to learn this language until every person has their own unique experience with the lesson, and I won´t feel like a vain repititioner.
I´ve also noticed something else: it is incredibly depressing to watch someone feel the Spirit and to testify of it to them, and then have them not want to learn any more. Also it´s difficult when the tiniest excuses get in people´s way of hearing our message, being baptized, coming to church, continuing to smoke, not getting married, etc. It´s tough, but such is the mission field, as I am beginning to learn. For every experience that makes you want to give up we will always be provided with another experience, equally or more powerful, for the good. That´s been reassuring, and I´m learning to find the good in the day even though it really is the same thing for 2 years. The good news is that it´s the best thing that I can be doing: bringing people to the Gospel! We have a goal to have a baptism every week, and we´ve had one the last 2 weeks. Let´s keep this train rolling! I hope Thanksgiving was good! It was definitely a little difficult for me to think about turkey and crown jewel (I´m sure it was excellent, Mom), and being with the family. One thing I´ve learned to do is every time I think of family or something back home, I let that motivate me to continue. I think, “what if they could see me right now? Would they be happy or disappointed?” So far I can honestly say that I have worked every day, my best. Obviously there are things I can improve on daily, but that´s what the 2 years is for. At the end of our missions we should be our best missionaries, and then Heavenly Father sends us home to preach there. That´ll be good, and I hope that all of you are taking missionary work more seriously now. Bring people to church! Talk to them about how happy you feel and why! Ask them if they want those blessings too! They will, usually. Then bear testimony and let the Spirit convert them.

Irmãs e Irmãos, eu sei que Jesus Cristo realmente vive. Eu sei que O Livro de Mormon é mais do que verdadeiro, é real e as coisas que O livro fala sobre realmente vai acontecer. Eu tenho um grande testemunho sobre O Evangelho de Jesus Cristo. A missão è uma lugar muito especial, porque eu posso sentir o Espirito sempre. Eu espero que vocês podem também.

I Love you all! Work hard, pray hard, and smile throughout!
Elder Brown, Curitiba Brazil, Santa Felicidade.

And Yes, mom, I´m ok. Shoes, comp, everything. Ask Lala for the address to the mission home, she has it.


Italian immigrants started arriving in Brazil in 1875 and in Curitiba in 1878. They came mostly from the Veneto and Trento regions, in Northern Italy and settled mostly in the Santa Felicidade neighborhood, still today the center of the large Italian community of Curitiba.[23]

Week 3!

Oi Everyone!

This will assuredly be short, but housekeeping had to happen at some point. First of all, I love and pray for all of you.

My first baptism of the mission field was on Sunday!!! Her name is Jessica Porciuncula Cavalcanti (9 years old) and she was excited to be baptized. Her parents are also receiving the missionaries and with a little more work they´ll be baptized too.

A lot of people here have a problem of not being married, and that makes some situations difficult. Not too difficult for the Lord and His missionaries, though  Anyway, we had the baptism and, of course, it seemed like everything was going wrong at first but it finally all came together. We got in our white clothes and took a picture and it was great (I´ll try and attach pictures, but can´t make any promises yet).When we actually got into the font, I was anxiously repeating first her name (which was hard to memorize) and the ordinance in Portuguese. It happened, though! She was a little nervous entering the water (because it was about 40 degrees, Faranheit. Not warm, but ok for baptism). So that was great, and we have 4 set up for this Sunday!!! It´ll be a weekly record!!

Also, I have been learning how fast time goes when you´re doing the things the Lord wants, you stay obedient, and you work your guts out every single day. I feel like I just arrived at the MTC, and here I am with almost a month in the field. It´s been great to be put under the Spiritual microscope like this.

I will also be singing a few solos in the Christmas fireside, which is a little daunting but also very exciting. I will be singing O Holy Night, Be Still my Soul, and a song called Guard Him, Joseph with a Sister from Ponta Grossa. It should be great.

Also, questions to be answered for Mom:
I don´t have the address with me but will do so next week. Check on the website of the mission. Shoes = perfect. Couldn´t have asked for better. Language = improving daily. I can understand just about everything people say, though speaking is a little more difficult. Also my companion is awesome, and we are working hard.

I love you all, and I have a strong testimony of missionary work. All of you can help!! Let´s baptize everyone!

Elder Brown

Week 2 in the field!!

Dear family and friends, So happy to be here in Curitiba! There are so many things that I´ve been learning every single day. To give a brief update on how I´m doing, I´ll make a list of what has happened in this last week:

Bitten by a dog (just on the pants, I didn´t bleed that much)(didn´t bleed, don´t freak out please),

walked more in one week than in 2 months at the CTM, taught 1st, 2nd, 3rd lessons and commandments, invited people to be baptized and had them accept, at least 15 contacts in the street daily, wake up bright and early every morning at 6:30, watched as a little kid peed on the floor in the middle of our lesson, getting stuffed with food at member´s homes for lunch, having the Português firehose set to destroy the brain, but yet understanding more and more of what people are saying, trying to communicate and watching people´s faces contort in confusion as I talk in real good Portogeez, having a great companion (Elder Duarte) and learning a lot every day and also working our bottoms off, getting a severe watch tan line in the first few days, and having my nose and ears peel off (Don´t worry mom, I learned), going to the Policia Federál and meeting up with my buddies from the CTM….the list goes on and on and on. Basically, I have been thrown off a cliff with a little kit that tells me how to put together a parachute, and right now I´m in the screaming and worrying phase. This week, however, will hopefully be more of settling down and reading the instructions, and taking away a little more of the stress. Yesterday I had a great opportunity to go on splits..with the LZ Elder Nascimento. Since Elder Duarte is the LD, we´re going to have these a lot, and I was more than a little nervous to go to another area and work with an Elder who is way more experienced and qualified. I soon learned, though, that through hard work and smiling, every missionary can be any position. Like a leader in the church said, the greatest secret to missionary work is WORK, and that´s exactly what we´ve been doing. Every day has been a grind, but it´s the best kind of work that we can possibly be doing. Sometimes it gets a little frustrating, but then, at the end of the day, on the last street, with the last person, who has the dogs from Heck, you get a person that is ready and willing to hear the Gospel. It´s those little moments that make this whole ordeal worth it. We are teaching several families right now, and like Dad said, many people just don´t think being married is important. There are 2 great families, Edson and Sirlane and also Marcos and Sonja, that are about ready to be baptized and have been for quite some time, but are still unmarried. It´s difficult, but they are trying to get the money and stuff ready, and HF will bless them and us for their efforts. We are also continuing to try and find people – one of the hardest things to do. A frustrating thing here has been that in the Area Book, some of the Elders were maybe a little less than what I like to call organized, and the book is kind of a mess. Also, when I first arrived here, our house was comparable to an explosion. The lights wouldn´t work because there was a storm nearby, clothes everywhere, and the like. That was a scary day, the first day. It´s tough to be excited when you don´t know what people are saying, but again, it´s those little moments that really push us to keep on going. Dad was right – the first few weeks at the beginning (and the end) are the hardest, but I know it won´t always be this way. After a while, it´ll start to come together and get easier. I do have one goal, however; never to get “comfortable” with where I am. Constant improvement. One awesome thing that happened at the end of our CTM time was our district got together, made a circle, and took turns telling each person what we learned from them. This was a great opportunity to recognize that people really do notice the little things we do. We had an awesome, AWESOME district. The main thing that brought us together was our desire to serve and become the best missionaries that we possibly could be. Because of this, I know that Elders Hardy, Beckstrand, Brown, Lott, Landeen, Carter, Martin, and McClure, and Sisters Schneider, Lindenlaub, Ward, and Armstrong will always have a special bond. This love was amazing to watch grow and blossom as we grew in the CTM, and I already feel like I´m being stretched and growing even more out here in Curitiba. It really is a testimony to me about how much our Heavenly Father loves us and wants us to find in ourselves our true potential, for He already knows – we just have to discover it for ourselves. To all that read this letter, know this: I KNOW that Jesus is the Christ. I know that He came here for us as individuals. I know that as I continue to Preach His Gospel here that people will see my testimony of Him and be converted through His Spirit. I know that we can all work miracles with Faith and works, as well as through sincere and mighty prayer. I am learning here how to become a missionary, how to become a man, and how best to represent all of you and, most importantly, our Savior Jesus Christ. Again, I KNOW He lives. Love you all more than words can say (well, they can say how much, but I only have an hour here…you get it) Ciao, Elder Jacob Brown, Brazil Curitiba

short

I just had a huge long email deleted, so sorry that this won´t be long

Curitiba bound!

Week 9...holy cow, this is fast

11-4-10
Oi todas as pessoas,

Doing very well here in Brazil. Today is my last Pday in the CTM so I have to do a lot of stuff in order to get all ready. Beyond excited, nervous, and ready/unprepared all rolled into one.

We went to the temple in São Paulo for the last time on our mission so it was especially nice today. I´ve had all the parts memorized for the temple for a while, and that´s been really nice. It´s wonderful to be able to go the temple with a specific purpose and be able to receive specific and direct answers - the last several times the answers to various questions I have had have all been the same: love one another. At first it was a little frustrating because I wanted something a little more, or something like that, but I´ve learned to be grateful for whatever response comes (because the Lord knows us waay better than we think we do).

One more week...crazy. We´ve gone through all the required material already, so this is basically review and perfect week. Português is going well - my ears are helping me yet again. I´m getting to the point where I can hear all the words people say. Speaking is a little more difficult, and some of the grammar is a little tricky, but it´s only been 2 months and we´ve got a long way to go yet - it´ll all come together.

Last Friday was proselyting in São Paulo!!! In short, it was this: crazy. There were so many drunk/high/homeless/crazy people that it was kind of hard to find someone/thing sober enough to hear our message. We did, however, have some very good contacts. Our first one, a man named Alex, was amazing. So much faith and hope! We talked with him about the Nephites and how they came from Jerusalem, and he accepted that really well. The main thing he wanted to know was what the difference was between our church and the others (haha sucka - RESTORATION!!!) so we hit him with the Joseph Smith stick pretty hard and he actually really accepted that well . We gave him a Livro de Mormon, testified of its truth and translation through JS through the power of God, and said bye.

It´ll be great to be able to do things like that in Curitiba and then be able to follow-up to see how they did - sooo excited for that! Our other contacts were not quite so golden - one man, whom I will refer to as Hobo João, was maybe a little crazy but just wanted someone to talk to about God. A little frustrating; we started to talk to him and he started to take command of the situation quickly - every time we wanted to say something he would keep on going, and we ended up sitting next to him for about an hour. Seemed like 4. He told us that he believed that God loves all people differently and not much would change his mind. He was a nice enough guy, though, and he accepted a LM. He also gave me a flashlight and a ring with a missing diamond, which both smell strongly of urine and mint. Not a good combo. We talked to a lady who was baptized but went inactive because of other people, a few more hobos, a guy named Benjamin who accepted an LM, another guy from the Assembly of God who seemed a little annoyed with us but received a book anyway. Other Elders in our district were talking to people that wanted to trade some home-cooked fresh Mary Jane joints for the Book of Mormon. As appealing as that was, they politely declined and ran away. All in all, a very crazy experience. I´m actually pretty glad that we´re going to Curitiba; it´ll be a little tamer, I think, and not as insane.

I´ve used my musical abilites about as much as they could have been used - directed the Choir twice, accompanied the choir 3 times, played in Sacrment, played for other meetings, sang a duet last Sunday for the CTM conference (In the Hollow of Thy Hand) and have been overall very busy. It´s been immensely worth it, though, and I know that my efforts have not been wasted.

I had another meeting with the same guy who told me that I was a bad DL - basically he said he was very impressed with my efforts and commended me on the improvement. It was very welcome to hear that, especially from him. I feel like people genuinely love you here, even if you have a more difficult time loving yourself. One of our Brazilian roommates, Elder Almeida, acts just like me and shakes my hand every time he sees me (I even taught him how to sing opera, and now he sings with me in the shower). Another Brazilian waves his arms like a conductor every time he sees me, and lots of other funny things with other Brazilians. One Elder really, REALLY wanted a pair of my basketball shorts, and though I said no at first, I decided that it would be best. He even gave me 30 Reals for them, so I´ll use that to pay for supplies today.

I love you all so much. I know that this church is true, real, and progressing in it´s message. I know that Jesus is the Christ. I love the Book of Mormon and it´s surety, truth, and converting power. I know He lives.

Elder Brown