9.26.11 Answers to questions

Hey family!


I am gonna just answer mom´s questions first so I don´t forget...


Q1. Is the Brazil Postal service on strike? I heard that on Missionary moms.
A1. I haven´t heard anything about that. I am pretty sure that it is still goin...


Q2. Who cuts your hair?
A2. There is a guy down the street that cuts my hair for 2 reais. It is really cheep and he does a good job.


Q 3. Will you be able to watch conference via satelitte at the church?
A3. We will watch conference via internet in the house chapel.


Q4. How are your shoes? I know I keep asking, but there seems to be a lot of talk on Missionary moms about shoes wearing out.
A4 My shoes are great. I don´t have any problems with them. You can send me new insoles though. They got holes in them and that is the only problem...


Q5. Do you ever have scary stuff happen to you that you don't tell us because you don't want us to worry?
A5... If i tell you will you worry???


Q6. Are you ever sorry that you didnt' take your Ipod? That seems to be a popular request for moms to send to their missionaries. Although I though it was against the rules. (They do send small speakers too since earbuds are off limits).
A6.. No. I miss music, but I have that USB thing you sent me and I have some church music on it that I downloaded from the church website. And i bought a little speaker thing that reads USB drives...


Q7. It seems like the visa problem is still going on..are you hearing of new American missionaries coming to the Teresina Mission?
A7. I haven´t heard anything. I don´t ask though. I think the visa problem will always be a problem.


And yes I know Elder Ashton. I have heard of Crittenten, but I haven´t ever met him. Elder Cook is going to be going home at the same time too. He is from Shelly. He has been my zone leader in parnaiba and tinagua. he is a good guy.


So, now this was a good week. We had another baptism. 7 weeks in a row!!! His name is Pablo. His dad is a member but his mom isn´t. He always planned to baptize his son, but I guess forgot when he was 8, and he is 9 now. So we got to teach him just too see if he knew everything. So he was baptized on Saturday and confirmed on Sunday. It was good. he was very excited. It reminded me of my baptism.


Things are going really really great here in Tianguá. I love this area. The members are a little weird and I think they don´t know what they are doing... I don´t really know what to do about that. Every sunday I leave the church mad because the members are kind of apostate... I don´t know if i can keep blaming it on that most of the people are pretty new in the church because they have the manuals and stuff, but don´t follow them... it is frustrating. But I love this area and the people in Tianguá are just ready to hear the gospel. It is amazing to see.


I am sad that the baby isn´t born yet! I really wanted to see him! Now I will have to wait another week.... I am glad that everything is going well though in these last weeks with him and Bailey. I am very excited for your family!!!


I hope you all have a great week! Have a great trip to Philly Mom and Paige and Leslie! Remember to send pictures of the little guy to me!


i love you all so much! Thank you Mom and Dad for being such a great example and for raising me in the church. It is such a great blessing. Thank you for everything. I love you both!!!


Love Isaac

9.19.11 email and pictures

Hey everyone!

This week was a good one. We had another baptism. Her name is Natalia and she is Hébert´s aunt. We started to teach her after Hébert got baptized because she felt the spirit very strongly at his baptism and wanted to learn more. She is not way smart, haha, but she is humble and I it made me happy to see her get baptized. We are working on Hébert´s parents now. His mom should be baptized soon. She is ready and goes to church every week, the only problem is that her ´husband´ doesn´t want to get married. I think she will have to separate from him :(... but that is better to do than to continue breaking the commandments. Elder Godoy said once that it is better to feel the pain for a couple of months than for eternity. We will see what happens.

So the baptism was supposed to be on Saturday. The other Elders went to the church in the morning to turn on the water to the font so it would be already for the baptism. (they had one too). But after a little the relief society went to clean the church and turned off the water to the font. We went to check on the water at noon to see how things were going and the relief society presdident told us she turned the water off to clean the church because apparently the only place water was leaving waas from the font. So she cleaned a little and then the water in Tianguá shut off for some reason. The font wasn´t even close to being full. So we had to wait at the church all day to know when the baptism was going to be (depending if the water came back on) It came back on at 7ish which didn´t give any time to fill the font. So elder cunha and I went back to the church at 1130 at night to fill the font during the night to do the baptism in the morning before church. We called the bishop in the morning if he could be there or one of his councelors and he told us to wait until after church to do the baptism. Some times it seems like the members don´t like to have baptisms here haha.

But anyway, things are going really great down here. We are having a lot of sucess right now. Miracles happen when both the missionsaries in the companionship want to work. my comp and I get a long pretty well. He still gets really mad really easy and it is still really funny. Elder Cunha and I like to push his buttons. But we do really good work together and I am havin a great time in Tianguá.

Dad, when I was getting close to serving a mission all of the scriptures seemed to talk about missionary work for me too. It is way cool to see how the scriptures take on different meanings in different situations. Right now all of the stories and scriptures seem to always have an answer to a problem of an investigator. It is really cool to get answers from the scriptures and then share that with an investigator to help them out.

Mom, it sounds like your school year is getting off to a good start. Do you think that that spanish class you took will help you with the little Mexican boy? I hope so. I hope that he gets up to speed in his learning. I am sure you are the perfect teacher for him. I am glad to hear that the student teacher is working out well. She will be a great teacher for sure. She is being trained by one of the best!

I also liked what you said about being a young womens leader. I agree it is very important to have a good relationship with those you lead. Some of my leaders here like to use their calling as a way to boss us around and do things their way. I do what they say, but I would be a lot happier doing it they showed they actually cared about the people they are leading. What you say and teach will have more meaning if you have a good relationship with them.

I was hoping Bailey´s baby would be born by now. I want to see him! He better be here next week. Bailey, try to have him before next Monday so I can see him. OK?

I hope that you all have a great week! I love you all so much! you are the best family in the world. I am blessed to be a part of it!

Love Isaac

Me and my big knife with Captain Moroni

Painting for a service project

Service Project

Alexandra's baptism

Natalia's baptism

Cool Spider I found

Elder Robertson with Tiangua in the background

9.12.11

Good morning family!

This was a good week. We had another baptism. Alexandra is her name. Her older sister was baptized 16 years ago and they were living in Fortaleza and moved here a month ago. Her older sister took her to church and we started to teach her. She already wanted to be baptized and she is a really smart girl so she understood everything we taught way fast. She was just ready to be baptized I guess haha. I am way happy for her.

Wednesday was a holiday here. It was Independence Day. It was nothing like the 4th of July there in the states... Haha. I think I was more patriotic than all of the Brazilians, and it is their holiday. There isn´t much patriotism here. I think maybe it is just because they got independence from Portugal really easily. From what people tell me is people came here, and the Portuguese didn´t have any problem with that. So they started Brasil. The way people celebrate Independence Day is just like any other holiday. Don´t go to work, and drink away.haha.

We did a service project on Wednesday for a member here. We painted his house for him. It was a job. and really really messy. The paint he used is a powder, and you mix it with water and in the end it is really really watery. I was covered in it. But, it comes out of clothes really easily because when it dries it turns back into powder. It looks really bad on walls too, but I guess it is cheap so whatever. I was glad to help him out. We painted his house in 4 hours. I will send pictures next week. (I forgot my cord from the camera to the computer in our apartment.)

I gave a talk in church yesterday. I talked about Prayer. I only had to talk for 7 minutes so that was really easy. I guess it went well. No one said anything after, so they either didn´t understand me or they didn´t like it haha.

I got some letters this week! I got the one from Paige, that had a picture of Leslie in it. And I got the FHE activity you guys did. My companion liked guessing too. haha.. He didn´t do too well.. haha. And I got the letters from Grandma from the family reunion. You can post on Myfamily that I say thanks a lot and that I love you all! Also, thanks to Paige for the letter and picture. I wrote back already and I will get it in the mail. I will wirte some more letters to everyone, but I haven´t had time yet to get them all written.

It sounds like the honey harvest went well! I liked the pictures. It looks really good. The honey here in Brazil doesn´t have a very strong flavor. They have bees here, but there are two types of honey here. From bees, and from sugar cane I guess. It isn´t honey, but it is really similar I guess.

Thanks, Mom, for sharing your thoughts from Sacrament meeting. I liked the definition of joy. I can testify that that is true. I am finding some of the greatest joy in my life out here. I love it so much. Sometimes I don´t want to think about going home haha. It is really good to be a missionary.

To answer your questions. The new areas are Caixias, and Araguaína, both in Maranhão. The furthest south is I think Araguaína now. It is clear on the western edge of the mission kinda in the corner. I am still in Tianguá. I don´t think there were any transferrs last week. I think he did them all two weeks ago.

Oh, and I went to the fair once just to walk around with my friends when I was in college. It wasn´t that cool I thought haha.

Dad, good luck on the new semester and ward! I am sure you will love it. What apartments are in your ward again?

I love you all! I hope you have a great week!

Love Isaac

9.5.11 Pictures and Fast Week letter

Bruno, Neto, and i forgot the other kids name... oops... and me... But Neto was my first baptism and I found him in Sobral still active!

Leila´s baptism. don´t worry, she really is happy to be baptized. sometimes Brazilians don´t like to smile..

me and denis. I was so happy that he was baptized. he changed his life COMPLETLY!

Bom dia meus amados!

This week went by REALLY fast. it seems like yesterday that I was emailing you last time... But it was a great week. here is how it went...

We went and visited Denis everyday to help him get prepared for saturday´s baptism. He is the man. haha. He always has a funny story for us.. I will tell you one that he told us. So he was riding his bike down his street and he was coming up to a parked car. He saw an old man on the sidewalk walking the same direction that he was riding. But as he was coming up to the parked car he knew that another car was driving in his same direction and he looked back to see if he could make it around the parked car before the moving car caught up to him. As he looked back in front of him the old man had moved off of the sidewalk right in front of Denis on his bike! haha. Denis nailed him. There wasn´t any time for him to react and both Denis and the old man went flying haha. Denis thought that he killed the guy, but then realized that if the old guy was talking, then he wasn´t dead haha. Both of them were OK and the old man was just a little scratched up haha. But I laughed pretty hard visualizing how that all happened ha.

Anyway, Denis was baptized on Saturday night and confirmed Sunday. I was able to baptize him and confirm him. It was the first time I have ever confirmed anyone, and I was nervous, but it was good.

Oh, I wasn´t transferred yet.. if you couldn´t tell...

So this week we focused more on our recent converts because we had kind of been forgetting them. They are all doing great so far. Chagas is going to help us out and his friend, by introducing us. Ebert is the only one that is struggling... He hasn´t been confirmed yet and is up and down if he really wants to be a member of the church. He knows its true, but he just is in a tough situation with his family. But his mom is listening to us and she wants to be baptized as soon as her lazy boyfriend will get married to her. He just wants to keep having ´fun´ for a couple more years without commitment. It is annoying.

It sounds like your week was good. I am sad to have missed the party at Grandma and Grandpa´s house. Let them know I love them.

I am excited to see how the honey turns out... You are expecting 75 pounds?? That is a lot of honey. Will you sell it at the farmers market or something? Are you allowed to send some to me?? ha. I hope dad doesn´t get stung. Tell him to use gloves..

Well, maybe today there will be more transferres today. President opened the 2 areas last week so I won´t go there. That is alright, I kind of wanted to open up an area, but there are a lot better qualified elders that have more experience than me. I am really happy here in Tianguá though. I kind of want to be transferred, and kind of don´t at the same time. I guess I will just be happy with whatever happens ha.

I will attach pictures in another email because it isn´t working on this email.. But I hope you have a great week! I love you all very much! I hoping Bailey has her baby soon! I want to see pictures of him. Thank you all so much for all you do!!!

Love Isaac