February 1, 2016 - Ipatinga

I see a belo horizonte

This week was interesting. It was really good and we were able to have a bunch of lessons.

P-day I didn´t feel like playing soccer so we did a split and just stayed in the apartment with my district leader Elder Campelo. It was nice, we just sat, talked and ate jelly bellies.

This week heated up again, but it still wasn't as hot as before, which is awesome. Something I still haven´t quite adapted to here is the eating pattern, they have a giant lunch which tries to put me to sleep the moment I sit down for the next appointment. This week has been especially difficult and we have been more busy and running around more than normal. It is the best tired feeling ever. You feel really accomplished knowing that you are helping people come to know their Savior better.

My companion was thirsty suddenly and wanted a drink, so we knock a door, turns out the person that lived there had already had the missionaries there and a testimony of the Book of Mormon. We are now trying to help her understand the importance of this knowledge. Moral of the story, follow the promptings of the spirit.

We are missionaries which means we are protected, it doesn´t mean we don´t feel fear. We were making visits with a member in their car way up on a super steep hill. The car wasn´t going to make it up the last part and me and my companion felt that we should just park it on the flat area and walk the rest. The member decided to try a different way. While we were going up, the car ran out of gas, so they just stopped the car and got out. Here´s the part where my companion and I are stupid. We get out and stand down hill from the car which starts to roll down the hill. We held it for a second, realized it was way to heavy for us and jumped out of the way. We are fine, but the car is a little beat up. Moral of the story, follow the promptings of the spirit.(Theme of the week)

Randoms:

* One of the members has a singing bird

Elder Quain

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

December 28, 2015 - Ipatinga

I see a belo horizonte,
 

Well, so this is Christmas, at least on a mission. It was good, but a little weird to wake up Christmas morning with just me and my companion. We turned to each other and decided we still had to do studies.
 

But, I´m way out of order. the first thing that happened this week was a noiter familiar. It was really good and we even ad a few investigators there. People need to feel comfortable with the other people in the ward. They can feel that the church is true, but if they feel uncomfortable there they won´t attend. NF is a great way to help with this.
 

That night I got really sick, which caused me not to be able to eat red meat, dairy, or candies for 3 days including Christmas. I am recovered now, but the timing was horrible.
 

Christmas day I was able to skype the family. That is the real gift of Christmas for missionaries. It was fun to talk with the family and simply to talk in English. It just felt really natural and really quick. It was a little weird when I had difficulty saying the word difficult in English.
 

This week we made a contact that wouldn´t give us his address. So, we didn´t think too much about it. The ward was having a baptism this Saturday and he was walking by and decided to walk in. He was able to watch part of it and then came to church the next day with his daughter. That was our miracle for the week.
 

Randoms:

*They don´t have Mexican food for Christmas eve here.

*My companion talked in Creole for his call home.

*I can understand parts of Creole.

*To say you in Creole you say boo, so they call everyone their boo.
 

Elder Quain

Elder Quain & Elder Goncalves skying :)

December 21, 2015 - Ipatinga

I see a Belo Horizonte. (I noticed I never explained what it means, it´s Beautiful Horizon)

Well this week we had a Conferencia de Natal. It was really fun. We left mid day on p-day in a van with the whole district. That meant there were 3 other English speakers. We had a half Portuguese mostly English conversation. I felt kind of bad that the others couldn´t understand, but I guess that´s pay back for the first three months of my mission. It was a five hour drive, but it felt a lot shorter. We then got to stay in a hotel overnight. I love a good shower and air conditioning. 

The next day we had a continental breakfast, on a different continent and headed to the conference. There were some good talks and it was fun to talk with Elders Karren, Hollingshouas and Nelson from the MTC again. They gave us a big lunch and packages. Then we watched meet the Mormons in Portuguese. I ate a lot of candy from one of my packages during the movie. After that we headed home. This time the ride was a long 5 hours as I had a headache and the roads are rather bumpy. We ended up getting to bed about 12:30.

Nothing else really happened until my Birthday. I bought myself an orange cake that I had for breakfast and the ward had a party. Really it was for Christmas, but it was on my birthday, so it´s kind of like a birthday party. The food was good and they invited us to sing in the choir, which was fun.

Yes, the packages came. Thanks a ton. The only bad part was that I had to give one stocking to Elder Gonçalves. Very tempting to keep it! Both my past companions were jealous, and the guys thought I should split it up in between the MTC district. Thanks for the music. Right now we have a dvd player. It doesn´t work on it, but I looked on the computer and it´s there, so I´ll buy a different speaker to play it.

Randoms:

* I think I ate too much candy this week

* People here adore peanut butter

* One pair of shoes died this week

* I wonder if the mission president will let us watch Star Wars?

Thanks a Bunch, lots of love,

Elder Quain

Elder Quain - Elder Goncalves - & coconuts

Merry Christmas!

 Can you find Elder Quain? He's 2nd row from the top just off center from the Christmas tree.