January 16, 2017 - Ribeirão das Neves

I see a Belo Horizonte.

Well another week came and went....it was a rather eventful week.

Well the funniest event is that Elder Andrade and I were walking to our next visit when we were stopped by a lady that told us she wanted to go to the Church of Christ. We talked with her rather excitedly and marked a visit. While talking with her we found out that she is a Gypsy. It's the first time that I have taught a Gypsy and it is a little different, but she is progressing really well and even came to church.

I did a split with Elder Marques. It went well and we were able to teach a few lessons, but the highlight of the day was eating açaí. I don´t know what I will do when I go home and can´t find any local açaí stand, haha

Right now we are teaching a group of young men that call us the Normans. Everybody calls us by the nickname of the church, but they still say it wrong. I think the worst was when we were called muggles. I have no idea how they came up with that name.

Elder Quain

January 9, 2017 - Ribeirão das Neves

I see a belo horizonte,

January 3rd, Tuesday: This week started off with weekly planning and doing visits with a member called Claudinei. We started doing missionary minute at the start of priesthood and we are able to mark a lot more visits with adults. Claudinie is the Elders quorum president and we visited some unknown addresses and a family where not everyone is a member with Claudinei. The best part is that we hardly had to walk that day as he gave us a ride in his car.

Wednesday: We had to wake up early to catch a bus and do a split with the Zone leaders. I was paired up with Elder Searle. He was in the MTC at the same time as me, but we were in different districts. It was nice to talk with him and see a different way to do the work. For lunch we went to a member's house. The member works making pizzas for parties. He made 6 pizzas for 4 elders. I was able to eat just a little bit more than one pizza. I was really full, but I decided that I could eat one more slice when he brought out the chocolate pizza.

Thursday:We got to wake up early again and catch another bus to get back to our area. When we were heading out to lunch we passed a man on the road that stopped us and wanted a Book of Mormon. He seemed a little strange, but we marked a visit with him for after lunch. We returned and talked with him a little and we discovered that he was an inactive member that had just been released from a recovery clinic. We marked a return visit to talk with him and his family. We returned and visited his family with a member called Amiro. The visit went well and they even accepted an invitation to come to church.

Friday: We accompanied a lot of our investigators and quite a few people offered us food. My favorite was the natural guava juice.

Saturday:We ran around like crazy people inviting everybody to church. We also spent about an hour trying to find a road. But, at least it gave us a great excuse to talk with  lot of people on the road.

Sunday: We went to church and had quite a few investigators and less-actives show up. Many of the less actives were a complete surprise and I was really happy about a fuller sacrament meeting.

Monday: We went out and played volleyball and we had a lot more people there. We even had some of our investigators there. It was a lot better than last time, but I can still say that Brazilians are not very good at Volleyball. By the end all the YM were asking to play soccer next week.

Elder Quain

January 2, 2017 - Ribeirão das Neves

I see a belo horizonte

Happy New Years!!

This new years we had a member give us food to take home for dinner. She just said, 'this should be a little meat for you all.' We got home, opened it up and found an entire chicken inside. Us four elders got really excited and we all started talking about it being giant. By the time we went to bed I think there was only one wing left.

During the week we had a ward activity (with only youth) and we watched the church film,"Only a Stonecutter." In this film a man brakes his leg and had to have one cut off. He makes a peg leg and during this time he is working as a stone cutter for the Salt Lake Temple and he continued to work. Everyone started to joke around asking me why I was in the video. Afterward, we played a game where the goal was to make the other person laugh first. Everybody was wanting to play against me as  hadn´t broken. Finally, one of the YM was able to last longer than me and was super happy, yelling that he finally beat me.

This Sunday had really good talks about goals and about the importance of making them. The talk afterwords asked a really good question, 'What are You willing to sacrifice to achieve your goals?'

Randoms:

* We are also teaching the guy who gave me a ride when the rock hit my leg.

Elder Quain

December 25, 2016 - Ribeirão das Neves

I see a Belo Horizonte

This week was rather good and we were able to work quite a bit.

First off, My leg is doing better and I don´t need to use crutches any more. I don´t know if this trail was harder for me or elder Andrade as he had to get used to walking quite a bit slower than normal. He´s getting to learn a different kind of patience now.

We are teaching a Seventh-day Adventist couple that was preparing to get married and we got to go to their wedding. It was a different event and they all started singing "their hymns." Some of the old ladies were shocked when I started to sing along without a hymn book, some of them were disappointed too, as they thought they were the only group that knew these hymns. They sang 'How Great Thou Art' and 'Love at Home'. It was a little different as they repeated the frase "sabado santo"or sacred Saturday a lot.

For Christmas eve we had a dinner with an investigators family and he made a traditional Brasilian dinner with Pão de queijo(Cheese bread), a bunch of food, ice cream and cake. It´s good to have investigators that like you.

On Christmas eve and Christmas we mostly just caroled. We visited one retirement home and some of our investigators and members. I was a little timid to sing at first, but soon we were doing rather well. Just imagine two sweaty young adults with strange accents singing Christmas songs for you.

On Sunday we went to church and we were able to talk to family. It was good to see them and talk a little, but the time they give us passes by rather fast. But, the time on the mission passes by fast too. In no time at all I will be calling them again and going home. Just a reminder to use my time to the fullest.

Elder Quain

December 19, 2016 - Ribeirão das Neves

I see a Belo Horizonte

Well this week started out with a bang....it was rather loud.

This Tuesday my companion and I had headed out to do a visit in the morning and we were heading to lunch, when we stopped to let a bus pass to cross the road. All the roads here are made of rocks, and one of the rocks had broken loose. When the bus passed it picked up the rock and threw it at my knee(that was the bang), it hurt a lot. We were given a ride to the hospital by a friendly neighbor and I took an x- ray to see if anything broke. Nothing broke, but I stayed in bed one day and I am using crutches right now.

The next day was zone conference. So, this means that we had to go to Belo Horizonte. We tried to catch the bus, but the highway closed off due to a 15 meter hole that opened up. We decided to try catching a different route and we were spotted by a member that gave us a ride to the station. We were able to get there, but we came a little late and missed a talk by Sister Fernandes. We had panetone for breakfast and a few other talks and practice. We then had pizza and açaí for lunch. I also got to talk with a lot of missionaries from my old district and even two old companions. It feels funny knowing so many people. I remember when I came to the mission and knew almost nobody.

This is Christmas week. I hope that everyone is having a good time, is with family, and remembering the birth and life of our savior Jesus Christ.

Elder Quain

December 12, 2016 - Ribeirão das Neves

I see a Belo Horizonte

Well this week started out traveling to BH and picking up the new companion. Everybody that was training received a short training session and lunch at a restaurant that was pretty good. I ate a lot of french fries. After that we were told to make contact while we waited for the newbies. I paired up with Elder Karren and Bustamante (two elders that started the mission with me) and we made quite a few contacts, until we passed by an açaí shop and all bought smoothies. After that, we met our new companions. My new companion is Elder Andrade. He is from Fortaleza, Ceara. He is actually from the same stake as the Elder that trained me and that Elder is married now!!

We caught the bus home and started working. He is really excited and ready to work. A lot of the time he has more energy then me and it is really good. We work well together and I just want to make sure that I prepare him well for the mission and to be able to overcome the difficulties that he will encounter.

We had the special opportunity to hear from Elder Holland this Sunday. There was a special conference for Brasil and he talked to us about a lot of different topics, but what caught my attention the most was when he talked about the importance of having a living prophet to be a special testimony of Christ. Almost all the speakers tried to speak Portuguese at some point and there was normal Portuguese, Portuguese with an American accent and Portuguese with a Spanish accent.

Random:

 * This week we had a Christmas party and some Americans were visiting from Idaho. It was funny as I now hear how those who talk in English  have a really strong accent.

Elder Quain

December 5, 2016 - Ribeirão das Neves

I see a belo horizonte

So sadly, this was my last week with Elder Sabino. He was a really good companion and I am grateful to have served with him. But, I have an exiting new adventure ahead of me. I have now been called to train a new missionary. I will find out who it is tomorrow. I am excited for this new opportunity to learn and grow. Wish me luck!

For some reason I am always the person in charge of the active parts of the activities now, during the ward activities and family home evenings. I´m running out of games to play, so pretty soon I will have to start to repeat the games. But, that´s good, because it means we are doing a lot of activities.

Last night we were shutting the chapel after an activity, when out of the rain an elderly lady entered, apparently lost. She kept asking for her son and asking for a ride. We don´t have a car, so a ride was out of the question. After that she just kept repeating an address. By this time we notices that she had a memory problem and she couldn´t remember her way home. Unfortunately, the address she was saying was at the end of our area. But, we decided that we couldn´t just leave her there and started walking her home. When we finally got her back to her house the family was shocked and the first question they asked was, why she was there? It turns out that she had escaped from here care home. They told us that she would jump the gate at times, she was 70 years old and jumping fences! We tried to talk about the church, but they weren´t interested, so this goes down as just one of those weird things that only happens in the mission.

Elder Quain

Elder Andrade, Elder Quain's new trainee :)

All the new missionaries with their trainers and President Fernandes