Monday, January 28, 2013

Welcome to Vila Galvão Elder Heiner

Dear Family,
This week I received my new companion Elder Heiner. He is from Mesa, Arizona and has a little more than a year on the mission. He is awesome! He´s a really hard worker and his portuguese is really good. I think we will do well together and we both have high hopes for this transfer. Elder Heiner likes to speak portuguese so usually when we are outside of the apartment we just speak portuguese to each other. It´s a lot different, with Elder Bangerter we hardly ever spoke portuguese. It was a little sad to be leaving Elder Bangerter at the mission office and it does seem a little strange to be working in Vila Galvão with a missionary that isn´t Elder Bangerter. But it is a good change and I have already learned a lot from Elder Heiner and I´m sure I have a lot more to learn. This week we had the baptism of a girl named Camila. She is 22 years old and both her brother and mom are recent converts in the church. It is kind of interesting because her mother was baptized by Elder Bangerter before I got here, and her brother was baptized by Elder Cleveland (Elder Bangerter´s trainer) when he was serving in Vila Galvão. But anyways we met here a couple of weeks ago when we had lunch at this family´s house and we asked her why she had never been to church. She said she had never gone because no one had ever invited her. So we fixed that pretty quick and then taught her a lesson. She went to church last Sunday and watched Rodinei´s baptism afterwards. This past week we taught her all the remaining lessons and yesterday she was baptized. It was a great baptism. It just goes to show that sometimes people aren´t members of the church because of simple things like never being invited to church. Other than that there´s not a whole lot to report this week. I am always learning more stuff about Brazil and Brazilian culture. It´s weird how we all live on the same planet but our cultures are so different.

Hope all is well with you back home! Thanks so much for you letters and support!
 
-Elder Caleb Anderson

Friday, January 25, 2013

Last Week With Elder Bangerter

Dear Family,
This week was a memorable last week with my trainer Elder Bangerter. We worked hard this last week and got a lot of new investigators. We had a great baptism on Sunday of a man named Rodinei (31). Even after the first lesson with Rodinei we knew that he was an elect. He has been ´´searching for God´´ for 3 years now since his son was born. He has been reading the bible and going to different church and service activities. His wife left him soon after his son was born and since then he has desperately been searching and serving God. We made a contact with him and he relized that God was rewarding him for his three years of hard work by showing him the true church. He was a great investigator and on Sunday was baptized. The baptism was great and the spirit was very strong. After the baptism everyone in the ward congratulated him and said their goodbyes to Elder Bangerter. Also since Friday we have been in a Trio because Elder McKeon is here with us until tomorrow when he gets a new companion. Elder McKeon is from another ward in our zone and his companion got sent away on an emergency transfer so he has been with us since Friday. It has been interesting to be in a trio and kind of fun. This past week we found a ton of new investigators at the ward talent show on Saturday night. The talent show brought in a lot of non members. I participated twice, my first performance was juggling mangos, and my second performance was in the hot dog eating competition. The competitors in the hot dog eating competition were me, Elder McKeon, Elder Bangerter, and our Bishop. It was a huge hit and Elder McKeon ended up winning the competition. Actually Elder McKeon ended up winning in all ways because the next day Elder Bangerter and I both got super sick and Elder McKeon was fine. Last night a family in the ward had us over to give Elder Bangerter a going away party and the lady made us a ton of food but neither Elder Bangerter or I could eat any of it because of how sick we were. So Elder McKeon was the only one that could eat the food!! I felt pretty bad for the lady but she sent us home with a bunch of fruit and a lot of medicine too. I think something was wrong with the hot dogs that we ate. Anyways the talent show was really fun and we found some really great new investigators for this week. Tonight we will get the transfer call telling us where we will be going and who we will be with. President Ferrin already told Elder Bangerter that he´s going to be training again in a different area. So that means I will be staying in Vila Galvão. The only question is who my companion will be. It´s going to be weird to be working here in Vila Galvão without Elder Bangerter but this ward is so awesome that I´m sure the work will continue on. Well that´s all I´ve got for this week!
 
Sorry I don´t have time to write more to you guys! Things are kind of crazy today and I am trying to send a bunch of pictures.
 
Love,
 
Elder Caleb Anderson
 
A few minutes later...
 
We just got the call with the transfer news! I am going to stay here in Vila Galvão with Elder Heiner. Elder Bangerter is going to a different zone on the beach and going to be a district leader and trainer. Crazy!






Monday, January 14, 2013

Back to the Grind

Dear Family,
This week went very well. The highlight of the week was yesterday when we baptized Lucas (16 years old). We found Lucas when we passed by the store of a member in our ward named Jardiel. Lucas worked at the store as on of Jardiel´s employees and so we talked to him for a while and he was really interested in our church. However we made this contact about 3 months ago and every time that we tried to schedule an appointment with him it didn´t work out. Until about 3 weeks ago when we finally got to teach him. The lesson went really well and he was a very fast learner. He went to church and the ward welcomed him really well. He made a lot of friends really quickly and yesterday he was baptized. The baptism was great and the spirit was really strong. Also this week we found several new people to teach and we are always receiving references from the members which is good. One piece of sad news is that next Tuesday is transfer day...so next monday night we will receive a phone call from the district leader telling us where we will both be going. I think last transfer our chances of staying together we slim and this transfer they are 0. I expect Elder Bangerter will leave the area and go train another Elder. And I expect I will stay in Vila Galvão and maybe receive a Brazilian companion. But we´ll see. I am excited to see what happens next transfer. One fun thing that happened yesterday was that we went to two Churrasco´s (bar-b-ques)!! We had our normal lunch appointment with a woman in the ward who lives just with her three daughters. We showed up to the lunch appiontment and she gave us a ton of steak, sausage, and chicken, charcoal, and rubbing alcohol and asked us if we could do a bar-b-que for her and her daughters hahaha. I felt pretty comfortable from all the practice that I had at home until the rain hit...The rain made it a little tough but everything still turned out really good and it was fun to be grilling stuff again. So we went to that Churrasco right after church and then also Lucas´s mom (who is also investigating the church and was in tears at the baptism of her son) invited us to a churrasco at her house at 6. So we went there too and ate a ton of meat. It was so awesome although Elder Bangerter and I both woke up this morning feeling a little sick haha. Things are going well here, the work is progressing and the Lord is always putting new elects in our path for us to teach. A Igreja é verdadeira!!!!!

That´s all for this week!

Love,
Elder Caleb Anderson


Monday, January 7, 2013

New Years Celebrations

Dear Family,
This week was fine, although I am really glad that New Year´s is over and our investigators are returning from their holidays. New Years Eve was good. We went to a members house with 6 other missionaries and watched The Other Side of Heaven. Then we spent the night at the other missionaries´ house in the Palmeiras ward. At midnight there were a ton of fireworks and loud music and stuff. It was kind of cool but made for a short night of sleep. On New Years Eve and New Years Day EVERYTHING was closed. All the stores were shut down and the streets were empty. I think New Years here was just as big as Christmas was, maybe bigger.
We are starting to receive more member references and are finding people on the streets to teach so our teaching pool is expanding. This is a good thing because it means we can teach more lessons and I really like to teach lessons. Elder Bangerter and I are working hard and with the transfers coming up in a few weeks we hope to get some baptisms in before the transfers. This week was spent trying to find new people and teaching a lot of first lessons. However this week I did attend my first funeral here in Brazil. There is a young man in our ward named Marcos who is 18 and working on his mission papers. He is one of our ward missionaries and has helped us out a lot by giving us references of his friends. Anyways for over a year his mom has been battling cancer and she did on January 1. On January 2 there was a viewing in the church and Marcos asked us to come. The viewing went on for about 3 hours and then and the end a couple speakers shared their thoughts. We went for the last part of the viewing and heard the speakers. It was sad story all the way around. She was baptized a little less than a year ago and had really wanted to go through the temple but was waiting. However both of her children are active members so I think the temple work will be done quickly. It kind of made me realize how important temples are and how I should talk more about them during the lessons we give. It could really help a lot of people to know that their parents/ancestors have a way to live with God again just like we do. Other than that there is not much to report this week.

Love you all!
Elder Caleb Anderson


Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Two Weeks Worth of Email

Querida Família,
So last week I didn´t have a time to send an email because of the Christmas Eve rush. It was a crazy day and I ended up going to the mission offices to get the packages for the whole zone! I ended up going there on a division with Elder Herculano. He is an Elder in our zone who has some serious problems and I was giving his companion a little rest. Anyways we ended up getting to the mission office and there were 7 huge christmas packages waiting for our zone whenever we had only expected 3 or 4! Anyways the journey back was interesting seeing as it was my first time being in charge and trying to navigate through the subway/city bus stations while carrying a ton of heavy packages was crazy. The trip took us a long time and was not very enjoyable but was worth it once me, and Elder Bangerter got our Christmas packages. We had planned on putting our packages under the tree and opening them on Christmas morning but we couldn´t waith and so we opened them on Christmas Eve. It was so great to get American candy and snacks! Plus the photos of Ariel´s wedding were awesome to finally see. We went to bed on Christmas eve around 10:30 and when we got up the next morning Elder Bangerter and I opened our gifts that we had given each other. I gave Elder Bangerter a nice tie that I signed on the back, and a pair of basketball shorts. And I received a basketball pump and a signed tie. Afterwards at about 11 we went over to Marcelo´s house (our portuguese tutor). He had a churrasco (bar-b-q) at his house and he gave us each Brazil soccer jerseys which are sweet!! Then at about 2 we went over to Ana-Lucia´s house and did skype. It was so great to see the family again and for a little while I felt like I was back in the United States. It was great to talk to the family and get added motivation to continue working hard. Afterwards we went to sleep feeling a little bit trunkie but in the morning it was back to work! We are working hard however are running into some difficulties. When I first got to Vila Galvão we got a lot of references from the members but now we have pretty much baptized them all! Which is a good thing except we were left with no one to teach hahaha. So now we are once again focusing our efforts on finding people to teach and building up our teaching pool again. I think Elder Bangerter and I probably only have three more weeks together so we are going to try and make the most of them and find/teach/baptize as many people as possible. A lot more has happened in the last two weeks but I don´t really have time to write about it all. However I will say that the last two weeks were awesome and even though being a way for Christmas was kind of hard it was by far the most spiritual Christmas of my life and I am so grateful to be here on a mission preaching about Jesus Christ
 
That´s all for this week!
Love,
Elder Caleb Anderson