March 21, 2016 - Sete Lagoas

Eu vejo um belo horizonte

(I think you can guess what that says in English)

This week was an exciting and tiring week to say the least.

Monday: P-day, the only relaxing day that I had this week, but I still had to exercise a great amount of faith as I let my companion cut my hair. It tuned out well and he didn´t give me any bald spots.

Tuesday: We had what we call a mission tour. It´s where a leader in the church comes and visits us and gives talks with our president. The leader that came was Elder Zwick. He is a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy, was a mission president in two Hispanic countries and the area authority of Brasil. It was really inspiring and you could just feel the spirit. He also gave us a promise. It is, "Esta Missão, Missão Brasil Belo Horizonte, será a nº1 no MUNDO, se tivermos fé suficiente para mudar um pouco só." And, for all of you that can´t read Português it says, this mission, Brasil Belo Horizonte, will be the number one mission in the WORLD, if we have faith sufficient to change just a little bit. He also promised that if this happens we will have a temple here in Minas Gerais.

Wednesday: Went well, had weekly planning, did some visits and came back to Elder Buchanan with a twisted ankle. He´s not my companion. So, you probably wouldn’t think that this affected my week much, but it did. We can´t just let their investigators fall through. So, we have been doing splits with them at the end of every day. Working two areas is a little tiring.

Thursday: We went to lunch and they made pizza!!! One for each person. It was really good and way better than what you can buy here. After that, we tried to visit a referral, but it didn´t work out. L. Silva said that he didn´t feel too good and had to return to the house. He had a 24 hour bug. So W. Santos and I went out to visit people in both areas.

 Friday: We had a reference from a member and went to visit him. He is a 38 year old guy and really wants to change his life. We were giving him the lesson about the restoration and he accepted everything. He even accepted a baptismal date. It turns out that his mom had been listening behind us and started asking questions too. She also accepted a baptismal date. After that we had to run back to the house to do a split with the other companionship. I went out with W. Santos and we had a good and productive evening.

Saturday: Elder Buchanan and I worked at Fisk (the English school) in the morning. Was interesting and they had us help a class with younger kids. They have a lot of energy. We ended up playing hangman in English and I had to be careful not to use any words too difficult.

Sunday: We had Stake conference. It went really well and we had a seventy there, but my favorite talks were by President and Sister Fernandes. I might be a little biased as they talked about missionaries and the work that we can all do to help it proceed. A Sister gave a great testimony and called all the missionaries bonitinho. President bore a powerful testimony and a story I want to share.

When he was serving his mission in Portugal he was placed as a group leader, this is where you act almost like a bishop, and he always tried to be the first person there to set everything up; but, there was an elderly lady that was always there first. He, as a missionary wanted to know how she came to know the gospel. He found out that she was not baptized. He asked her why and she responded that God was her friend and would save her any way. President tried to help her see the need to get baptized, but he heard some time later that she had passed away and was never baptized. President then turned to the congregation. Brothers and Sisters, Jesus Christ was God´s best friend, and even he had to be baptized.

I would also like to leave my personal testimony that God is our father and Loves us in such a way that he gave us his Son to be a Savoir and a REDEEMER. Our sins have already been payed for. The price was precious. We cannot return to live with God without accepting the Son. For no one can know the Son without knowing the Father, or the Father without the Son. And none can return to the Father unless they accept the sacrifice of his Son through baptism by authority. Christ is the way, the truth, and the light.

Elder Quain

Elder Zwick and I (We look like we could be related)😁

Zone Conference with Elder and Sister Zwick

Elder Silva and I with Dirley

 My District

March 14, 2016 - Sete Lagoas

I see a belo horizonte

Monday: p-day. We had 2 extra missionaries in our house and we went out to play soccer in the rain. It was pretty fun, even if I wasn´t so good. Afterwards I went with one of the other elders on a split in our area, got a little lost, but we were still able to teach one lesson.

Tuesday: We had a district meeting. Our´s was normal, but there is another district that meets in the same building and they all came in different color pants. They reminded everyone of the power rangers.We went to lunch with Elders H. Santos and Kassió, then they went to the doctor. The rest of our day was fairly normal.

Wednesday: I went on a split with Elder Buchanan. It was a headache. We were in his area and I didn´t have to plan, but while I was talking with him I forgot to look in front of me and ran my head right into a pole. It was in front of our supermarket and the pole rattled so loud that everyone turned and stared. We went back to the house to ice and a little rest. Only 20 minutes, because we had an appointment with Dirley. He is a guy that is dating a girl in the ward and is taking the lessons. After that we had a meet and greet in an English school. They pretty much just asked us a bunch of questions and we talked about the U.S., the church and a mission. It was pretty fun and in the end there were people wanting to take pictures with us. Americans can´t even go to the book store without making the front page.

Thursday: My companion had to go to the doctor to get a camera put up his nose, he showed us the film after, but I didn´t really want to go as the hospital is 2 hours away, so I stayed and worked with Buchanan again and his companion went to BH with mine.

Friday: We walked a lot and had a lot of appointments fall through, but the bright spot was that my companion interviewed Dirley for baptism. Dirley did come a little late, but this gave me time to play around on the piano.

Saturday: Saturday we were able to do some visits with the Bishop´s son. We ended up visiting an inactive, part-member family. It went really well and I don´t remember why, but my companion mentioned that I play guitar. The boy was about 14 and was learning to play guitar and ran to grab his. He asked me to play a little and I played 'Blackbird.' After that we switched smoothly to a lesson and the boy was really open. He even returned to church on Sunday. After that the other Elders that we live with had Dirley´s baptism. I don´t know who was more excited, Dirley or Elder W. Santos, as it was his first baptism. It all went well and after we went to the birthday celebration of Louis. We ate some food, talked and came back with a new investigator. 

Sunday: I was very tired. I was nearly falling asleep during sacrament meeting but still got a laugh during one of the talks. A man in our ward was giving a talk and was quoting an apostle. He said that luckily the name was easy to say 'hobertchy day alice.' After thinking for awhile I realized that he was trying to say Robert D. Hales. My companion had to hide his face as he was laughing.

Elder Quain

March 7, 2016 - Sete Lagoas

I see a belo horizonte

What happened this week?

I´m getting to know the members better as I spent an hour just sitting in one of their houses. The reason for that was that my companion got stuck in the bathroom. He wasn´t too happy about it, but what do you do? To finally get him out they basically broke the door down.

This week we ate a food I´m pretty sure few Americans have had, it was fried cod and mandioca cakes (bolinhos frito de bacalhau e mandioca). They were really good and even better with pimenta (hot sauce). We had the four missionaries from our house there in the house of Louis and Rosa. They have a son on a mission and give us dinner at times. The conversation turned to, what is different here? and our response was milk. Here it is super diluted. They had some milk that they bought fresh from the farm and asked us if we wanted some. The response from Elder Buchanan was, "Eu tem saudade para leite de uma vaca." more or less, I really miss milk from cows. 

Also, Elder W. Santos cannot eat pimenta. We were all just sitting there and he turned to us and says my throat is itchy. This scared Rosa half to death, but he drank a little milk and everything was fine.

It had been raining pretty hard that entire day, but when we arrived back in the apartment it started to pour. It ended up filling the road about a foot high in front of our house. We went out and Buchanan went in the water to demonstrate for a video. As he was leaving the water he ended up losing a sandal. It was gone in about one second. We caught that part on camera also.

Random:

* We ate açai again

* We had an investigator bear testimony that she felt the spirit and Jesus was there during fast and testimony meeting.

Elder Quain   

Eating acai with Elder Silva

Acai

Before the rain & the street flooding

February 29, 2016 - Sete Lagoas

I see a belo horizonte and sete lagoas.

Well, so far my new area seem great.

We live in a house with 4 elders. This means that it can get dirty a little bit faster, but it does make things a little more interesting. We have more people to talk to and joke around during our free time. They are a lot more focused on exercises here, which is good, as I need to gain a little more muscle. The only down side is that we only have one shower and one washing machine. Our house has 2 Americans and to Brasileiros, giving us an even mix. We had one night of hamburgers and one night we bought açaí. I sent some pictures of the hamburgers and will try to remember to bring my camera next time we buy açaí.

My new companion is Elder L. Silva. He is from São Paulo, the district leader and is ready to work. The only problem is that he got sick. Even with being sick and stuck in the house two days we had quite a bit of success.

My new ward is bigger and our chapel is way better. We have air conditioning!! There are three wards that meet in the same chapel so our meeting isn´t until 4 in the afternoon. When we leave it´s already dark.

Randoms:

* There are a lot of lagoons here.

* We went running one day.

* I saw wild monkeys this week, my companion said we can feed them some other time.

Elder Quain

New Companion - Elder L. Silva

Elder Buchanan-maker of hamburgers

Yum!

February 22, 2016 - Ipatinga

I can see a Belo Horizonte

This week was a week of miracles.

The first miracle of the week was that we had a reference given to us that was a contact made by another missionary. When we went to visit him he wasn´t there, but his wife was and she received the message amazingly and said we could return the next day when her husband would be home from work. When we came the next time we found out that her husband had lost his job and gone missing. The wife informed us that he had a drug problem and she was really worried for him. At the end of the lesson we prayed that someone would find him safe. She showed us his picture, but we didn´t think much of it. After walking for about 15 minutes we were stopped by a man that we didn´t recognize. It turned out to be the husband. He wasn´t doing too good, but he was safe. He didn´t let us bring him home and we can´t force him, but we were able to give a little information to the wife, who was very grateful.

The second miracle was how many investigators we had in church this week. It was literally the most I´ve had for the entire mission and the man who gave up coffee and wine was there too. His progress is a witness that the gospel can literally change the life of a person that is willing to accept it in almost no time at all.

So, Elder Gonçalves reached one year and needed to renew his visa. This meant that they told us we needed to travel to Belo Horizonte. We bought the train tickets and were all ready, until they called us and told me that I was being transferred. This gave me about 30 minuets to pack (my shirts are going to be really wrinkly. I am excited to try a new area and I´ve heard that it is a lot more cool there. They´ve told me that my new companion will be Elder L. Silva. he was in my zone when I arrived in Ipatinga, but I haven´t talked with him much. The new area is Recanto da Sierra in Sete Lagoas (7 lagoons). 

Elder Quain

February 15, 2016 - Ipatinga

I see a belo horizonte.

This week was pretty good. It had two highlights.

The first being that we had a zone conference. For people that don´t know, a zone is a group of missionaries. Ours is really small, only 16-18 people. It is the smallest in the mission. President Fernandes came and spoke with us and basically talked about ways that we could improve our missionary efforts and have more success. As always, there are many ways that I can improve and am already beginning top do so. President took us all out to an all-you-can-eat restaurant and gave us ice cream after. Everybody likes ice cream. To top it all off this is when they give us cards, so thank you to all the people that send me cards, they are much appreciated.

The other highlight was one of our investigators. We have only been working with him for about 10 days, but he had a problem with drinking wine and coffee, a lot of coffee. We decided to challenge him to just stop. It took a little convincing, but he said he would. Right now he has gone 3 days without any coffee and says he can already feel the difference.

Oh, and my English class has finally born fruit. We had made a contact with an about 20 year old guy that was interested about 2 weeks ago, but he wouldn´t give us his address. He ended up coming to the English class and we showed him parts of the chapel after. Then, he even came to church. I really hope that he continues to progress.

Randoms:

* Our member meal dropped so I had oatmeal , milk, and chocolate powder cooked in the microwave.

* I am definitely going to buy fruit today.

* One of the things that I miss the most is going to the Muir Woods area and beach with family and friends. Just the clean crisp, cool air, redwoods and the beach.

* Oh, in Ipatinga carnival involves everything closing, and people leaving to celebrate somewhere else.

Elder Quain

                                 Zone Conference                                

Z

 English Class

February 8, 2016 - Ipatinga **6 months!**

I see a belo horizonte

I´ve now been out for 6 months! (I burned a tie)

This week we had a split and went to João Monlevade. It´s about 2 and a half hour train ride away. It was nice because this time it was with 4 elders and a guy from the other companionship's ward. I am actually able to keep up and add to the conversation now and sometime I just forget that I am speaking in another language.

We had a good day of proselyting and I bought a new pair of shoes(for about $14US) and learned from each other. I was paired with Elder Voloso who is even newer than me. We walked a lot and taught a good group of people. One of the senhors that we taught was very Catholic. He didn´t agree with our view of there being an apostasy (loss of the authority of Christ) with the death of the apostles. We asked him who had it after them, that seemed to get his interest. With every question that was asked he went and grabbed a new bible. It was kind of comical. I don´t know if he had real interest or just wanted to argue with us more, but he set another time for the other missionaries to return.

We went and visited a part member family and as we were getting ready to leave we asked one of the members to pray. He said that his brother (not a member) should be the one to say the pray, because " a prayer is from the heart and my heart is an idiot." The member is actually really smart as this got his brother to pray.

I can say that the book 'Preach my Gospel' is an inspired book for missionaries and implore all that plan to serve a mission, or that want to know how to better share the gospel, read this book as part of their study of the scriptures. Any problem that we have had in the work has disappeared when we have studied and followed the guidance in the book given to us be modern day prophets.

Randoms:

* The member who´s car tried to roll over us bore her testimony about it.

* I bore my testimony in front of the congregation. Very nerve-racking.

* We had 2 surprise investigators come to sacrament meeting.

* We have a barber just down the street that cuts our hair about once a month. They use goat milk in your hair and use a razor for the lines in your hair.

* I finished reading the entire Book of Mormon in Portuguese!!

Elder Quain

Elder Campelo - Brother Magalhães - Sister Basilio - Elder Gonclaves