January 25, 2016 - Ipatinga

I see a belo horizonte

We realized something this week. It´s hard to get people to let you into their house to teach a lesson. We also realized that if we simply start teaching the first lesson during they initial contact things go a lot better. It´s pretty much:

"How are you?"

"Call me elder."

"What´s your name?"

"We are missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints and we have a message for you. It is simple and easy to comprehend....(entire First lesson)"

This has worked way better than our old system as it allows a person to feel the spirit and generally people accept the invitation to learn more.

We have also been trying to excite the ward and get the ball rolling. It´s the reason that we are giving an English class. The weird thing is this is probably my most nervous time of the week. You know, speaking in English. Personally, I don´t think that I will grow up to be an English teacher, but it is a good experience. Some of the people there have better grammar than an American. People think how we ask someone´s age is funny, 'how old are you?'(como velho você está). Here they ask; 'how many years do you have?'

We have succeeded in gaining one member´s trust and he has given us a few referrals. He even goes out to visit them with us. We usually drop by his house to walk with him and it is fun to be in his house as he has 4 kittens, their parents and 4 puppy's and their parents all running around together. We have a noite Familiar planned in their house today (I´ll try to remember my camera).

Randoms:

* I had someone ask me how many kids I had 

* People don´t believe that I am only 19. When will I actually look my age? I hope not to look 45 when I´m 30.

Elder Quain

English Class

January 18, 2016 - Ipatinga

I see a belo horizonte.

This week it started to rain. It hasn´t stopped for about 3 days now. It´s real nice because it cools things down for us. I actually had two nights where I didn´t have to use a fan the entire night. Unfortunately, one of those day I was woken us at 5 in the morning by someone blasting Brasilian rap. I might be a little biased due to how tired I was, but I don´t like Brasilian rap.

Right now we are searching for different ways to introduce people to the gospel. The first idea was to start up soccer with the members and have them invite friend. I was fine with this. The second was to teach an English class. I had a little more fear about this one, but it turned out well. Next time I hope we have more than two members show up.

Highlight of the week. We had a family home evening with a part member family. I´ve actually been working with them for almost my entire mission and the dad always leaves the room, or sometimes the house when we have a gospel message. Elder Gonçalves turned to me right before we started and told me that I would give the message. I was left there just thinking about what I should say and only had the time of a hymn to think about it. I finally just thought, start with Christ. I did, which lead to the atonement and the power it gives to each of us. The most amazing thing was that the father stayed and listened. After, when we were having refreshments he even started joking around with me.

Randoms:

* There was a humming bird that thought my tie could be a flower, so it hovered a foot in front of me for awhile.

* I ate a lot of fried chicken fillet and feijão tropeiro this week.

* We were walking to an appointment and stopped to talk to a member. He said he needed help to give homebound sacrament. It was my first time in 6 months and my first time in Portuguese.

Elder Quain

January 11, 2016 - Ipatinga

I can see a belo horizonte.

So, this week was pretty slow for the work around here, but it has been picking up a little bit. The real key here is working with the members. Without the members we just stall a little, but when they work with us we are able to gain real traction.

We also had a zone meeting this week and it was pretty good. Learned a lot and got to see some familiar faces. We talked a little in English too. My language skills in Portuguese are greatly improved. the only bad part about this is my English is worse now. I might have to start looking over my emails to make sure that I didn´t throw any Portuguese in it.

I´ve noticed transfers are a lot like groundhog day. Not getting a call is like seeing the shadow. It means that you have six more weeks in the area. This week I am going to start my 4th transfer here in Ipatinga. I am nowhere near what our zone leader was, he had one year in here, I think he was happy to get a call and get to go to a new location.

Randoms:

* We are trying to start up an English class right now.

* Hope I don´t teach it wrong.

* I really like the song "I understand Why I am Here" by David Archulleta in Portuguese and Spanish. The Other Brazilian Missionaries are surprised that I can already use my knowledge of Portuguese to understand a lot of Spanish.

Elder Quain

January 4, 2016 - Ipatinga

I see  belo horizonte.

They celebrate Christmas and New Years very calmly here. Apparently there was a bunch of fireworks and screaming at midnight, but I slept through the whole thing. My companion took a video of it, but to me it didn´t seem like they did anything more than they do when their futebol team wins a game.

We got some rain this week which was badly needed. Before a heavy rain here it always gets really windy. It was so dry this time that there was a giant dirt cloud in the air. Luckily, we were teaching a lesson during the worst of it. We heard a window shatter and quite a few trees fell down, but nothing horrible.

The church members generally had family over or were visiting their family. The nice thing is that those that were visiting came to church. Most were already members, but not all. This Sunday wasn´t quite as hot as normal. which was a blessing as the power was out from the rain. The first time the power went out here I though, oh, we don´t have lights. Now I think, we don´t have any fans, oh no we are in trouble.

When you are searching for people to teach here you don´t look for the most intelligent, rich, or poor, but the person with the most humble heart and the desire to learn more. Many times you want to continue to teach someone, but have to stop because they refuse to pray, or read the book of Mormon. We actually have people that are scared of it. They think that if they read it they will be deceived into believing it. My response to this is that we always invite you to ask God through prayer if this is true. Do you think that God will lie to you?

Randoms:

* I tried chicken heart this week. It´s pretty good.

* There was a car that drove by and I could have sworn that they stole it from Autotopia.

* We were given a gift from some members this week. It was soap and foot deodorant. I think we got the message.

Elder Quain