November 20, 2014 SO TIRED....

Rio Das Ostras
November 20, 2014

Dear Family and Friends, 

I want to know how someone can catch a cold when it's sooo dang hot outside. I think this is my body telling me that it wants a break. I'm stuffed up and got a runny nose, but i'm surviving for now.

This week was good. We have some awesome news! On the 29th we are going to have 5 baptisms! We've been working with Simone and her kids so that they can prepare to be baptized, and they have been coming to church for more than a month now, and we were able to remark their baptism for this saturday. I'm super excited because I know that baptism and becoming members of the church are going to help this family in all the ways that they are needing. They are a very humble, but a very loving and united family.

We are also going to baptize the 9 year old son of a woman that we reactivated last transfer. And on top of that we have other baptisms for the following weeks of the transfer too.

Saturday we went to Alcântara, Elder Luque's old area, so that he could baptize an investigator there. It took all day to get there and come back. Alcântara is where I met Elder Braun for the first time, I had already been there several times about a year ago for exchanges and activities. It was crazy to be back in a place that I haven't seen for a year and to think about all that has happened since. I got to talk with a family there that I got to know pretty well back when I was in Maricá. It was good. But it really hurt my wallet. Which after all the times that I've had to go back and forth in between Rio and here I sit here left with 90 cents. I'm waiting for a lot of money in reimbursements from the office, but I'll probably have to go until Friday without money.

Elder Siebers is in alcântara!

Not much else happened this week. But we are going to have a lot more happening the next couple. I'm going to be in Rio for another 2 days on December 2 and 3, we have mission counsel and a mission tour with Elder Aidukaitis from the area presidency of Brasil. It should be interesting. And more baptisms! I'm going to try to get better quick. But our water ran out again today and I don't have anything to relieve the symptoms of a full sinus. It's all part of life.

Until next week, 

Elder Evans

S- and Family

Kittens are cool~

November 18, 2014 New Companion for Elder Evans

Rio Das Ostras
November 18, 2014

Dear Family and Friends, 

Only 5 more transfers until I step through those pearly white doors of the airplane!  It's sneaking up on me. I'm getting close to my last 6 months. 

We had transfers yesterday, that's why I am writing today. I stayed here in my area Rio das Ostras, but sadly Elder Call was transferred. I really really enjoyed being his comp. We were bummed that it ended after all the awesome work that we did together here in this area. But my new companion is Elder Luque from Ecuador! Landon, you had a companion from Ecuador too didn't you? He is really cool too! He is super excited and funny and full of energy, which is good because I'm tired like all the time. I'm old. He is 18 and this is only his 4th transfer. We´re still zone leaders here in the Cabo Frio zone.

Last week was a good week! On Monday we got to see some sights and I got to buy some presents for everyone. The next step and obstacle will be getting it in the mail to everyone. But I'll figure it out. I took pictures of Rio and have some pictures to send home today. I'm doing well.

This last week we also had a baptism! L- was baptized after a good time of waiting. He is a friend of a young man in the ward and he has been coming to seminary for months and come to the church several times too. He was supposed to be baptized before I even got here, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to do it. But we challenged him again and he felt that it was right this time. He was super happy after the baptism and confirmation. His mom came to the church to watch it all too and we are going to work with her to be baptized too. Even young men can do missionary work. They are both Ethan´s age. 

I've been most of this week in the bus making the trip to Rio and back. We had mission counsel on Tuesday and we had to come back Wednesday and then on Sunday night we got the bus again for transfers and came back yesterday. It's a 4 ish hour trip each time. It's been rough. But I'm getting rested and I'm excited for all the baptisms that we are going to have before Christmas! 

I love all of you and hope you all have a good week!

Elder Call and I in front of the Arcos da Lapa

Baptism of L- (Left). E-baptized him (right)

 District 221 at transfers. Sister Tingey is going home tomorrow for school. We are starting to die. 

Me on the escadaria de selaron

November 10, 2014 Happy one year in Brazil to me!

Rio Das Ostras
November 10, 2014

Dear Family and Friends, 

The weeks are going by faster and faster, and the end is drawing near. This week right now will mark exactly one year that I have been in Brasil. November 12th. It feels like I've been here for a lot longer already, but at the same time I remember getting here just like it was last week. On the 10th I make one year and 4 months and then I have exactly 7 months left to go. I found out recently that it's confirmed, I'm going home on June 10th. But there is still a ton of work for me to do here.

This last week was a great week. We really were able to get our zone to feel the spirit of missionary work. The Lord is accelerating His work and we have to keep up. Every area in our zone was going after baptisms and reactivation's like never before. At the start of the week the zone started with no one to be baptized this Saturday. We were able to get three. Which is alright for the 6 area zone that we have. We were actually ranked number one in number of baptisms in the mission for the month of October. Elder Call and I are happy about that. We are working nonstop to get things going.

In our area we were having some difficulties with some people, but after a lot of prayer and fasting everything just kind of seemed to resolve itself and almost all of our investigators are progressing really well. We both really want to stay together in our area for the next transfer. It will be transfer of Christmas, we are going to have several baptisms in the next month too. Transfers are next Monday, so I'm hoping we get to stay. It would be the best present that President could give us. I want to help the people in this area.

I have a request for everyone! I've got a special Book of Mormon that I'm marking up right now and I want to know everyone's favorite scripture in the Book of Mormon. Send it to me as quick as you can! Mine is in 2 Nephi 4:16 to the end. I want to hear yours!

I don't have too much more time. I'm downtown in Rio today for p-day because of a meeting we are going to have, so I've got to go see the sights and buy some things! I hope everyone is doing well. 

Elder Evans

November 2, 2014 Sick Halloween!

Rio Das Ostras
November 2, 2014

Dear Family and Friends, 

We had a sick halloween here in our zone! The best thing that happened this past week was on Friday and Saturday and Sunday. Friday we had interviews with President. They showed up super late from another zone's interviews and Pres was only able to do 3 areas. We were in Cabo Frio for the day. when president showed up he told all of us to pull out our planners so that he could see what we had planned for that night. He looked and said, "I want all of you to cancel everything for tonight because we are going to have a barbecue at the elders' house in Cabo Frio after some interviews." It was awesome!  Our whole zone, plus the assistents and secretaries and President all slept in that house in Cabo Frio that night. We got to have the very first official churrasco of the Rio de Janeiro mission. What was better was to see President Cabral come out of the house at 10 PM to the driveway where we were grilling the meat in shorts and a soccer jersey and then just sit down on the ground and we all talked until almost midnight. It was a really cool experience and really fun. President slept outside in a hammock that night and the other 18 missionaries had to sleep on the 4 beds and the floor. That was a good way to celebrate Halloween here in Brasil. Because nothing else happened here.

Saturday I got to go back to Araruama for another Zone activity that we did there. I did an exchange with Elder Neu, an Elder from my MTC district if you remember, who has been one of the assistents for 2 transfers now. It was cool to see how different we are now compared to July of 2013.

Sunday was a great day to end the week. We had 8 investigators at church. Including a referral from God. A man that walked up to the gate of the church at 9 and told us that he just felt impelled to visit the church today and see how it is. He even bore a testimony in Sacrament meeting cool huh?

I'm doing really well lately. I'm happy and ready to work. We are being the examples for our zone in the work and how we interact with our investigators and others. And we are trying our best to help them do better too.

Elder Evans

October 27, 2014 Its been an AWESOME WEEK!!

Rio Das Ostras
Octoiber 27, 2014

Dear Family and Friends, 

You know those Sunday nights when you lay down in your bed watching the lightning and rain outside and you think back on the whole week that you just had and you are just happy because of how everything just seemed to work out in the end? That was my night last night, and my week last week. Elder Call and I are rockin it together. We are doing everything that we can to improve our area and get our baptisms confirmed and strong for these next 3 weeks. We are already in November and half way through our transfer, but this last week was a turning point in our area. Not that things were bad, or that we had nothing to do before, but this last week we went non-stop everyday and we managed to hit all of our goals for the week, except for the baptism that we were going to find somehow. We noticed how well we were really doing on Saturday, when everything that we had planned to do and teach happened on the times that we planned to do them (A miracle in itself). We had several opportunities to teach investigators with members present and help them come closer unto Christ by reading the Book of Mormon, and accepting baptismal dates, and going to church.

I am getting more and more excited every day to be a missionary, and to get out of my junky bed and go walk on the streets and invite people to be baptized. It's been on my head for months now. Invite everyone that you talk to to be baptized. Why not? It's what we elders want to do anyways. Why not invite them? Anyways, we now have about 7 people preparing to be baptized within the next 3 weeks. And you can bet that Elder Call and I are going to be there with them every moment to help them feel the truthfulness and to really help them with what they need.

Most of these 7 is an awesome family that we started teaching this week. S- and her 4 kids. S- and 3 of the kids are some of our students in our weekly english class that we teach on Wednesday nights at the Church. Two weeks ago I had finished the class and reminded all the students that as missionaries we would like to visit them in their homes and share the message of the Restored Gospel with their families. This Wednesday S- came to us after the class and expressed that she wanted us to visit her and her family and share our message. We taught them on Saturday for the first time. They live in a very humble house. The walls are just brick, with holes all over, the floor is just dirt and concrete, they dont have running water, just a well and a cistern outside. And surely not enough beds for the six of them that live there. But they are all intelligent and great people. S- has had some challenges.  In Brasil there is no such thing as child support. Finishing up, they loved the message, they went to church yesterday, we visited again and taught a very powerful lesson of the Plan of Salvation, and are going to be baptized on the 8th. 

God is there to help us. He loves us. His plan is perfect. I know that what He really wants is to see us happy, living with Him for eternity. That's why I'm here.

Love

Elder Evans

Me and my new Official Grêmio soccer jersey that a less active member just decided to give to me at our lunch with them. It's legit. And expensive here in Brasil. I'm honored.

They decided that it was a good idea to build their house around the tree. Sweet. 

The best type of Godam Juice. Straight up Passion Fruit.

My breakfast on Saturday. It's called a "dream". It's way too good to be real.

The view of the Rio farm land in front of Simone's house.

Me and Elder A. Santos. One of our DLs. on an exchange.

October 13, 2014 When the well runs dry.....

Rio Das Ostras
October 13, 2014

Dear Family and Friends, 

How are all of you!? I'm great here in Rio Das Ostras, or in english, River of the oysters. Elder Call and I are doing good here and we do a really good job working together. I'm excited to work with him for as long as we are together.
We even have a few people to baptize this transfer, and a couple others who are in the process of getting legally married so that we can baptize them too! I like this area a lot, besides the fact that everything is still really expensive here because it's a turist beach city. I can't imagine how full it gets during carnaval. 

This week we had a fun story. The whole week we didn't have running water in our house. Because of the pretty weak infrastructure that Brasil has, we can't have water if it doesn't rain. So it hasn't rained in a while, and we stopped getting water pumped into our cistern to be used in our house. Luckily nobody lives in the house underneath us, so we hopped the wall everymorning and took showers on their driveway with the outdoor showerhead. We also had to steal buckets of water to flush the toilet and clean other things in the house. It was an experience for sure. The water was pretty chilly outside at 7AM. 

This week was a lot of planning and a lot of organizing our area and work and also our zone. We are doing what we can to get baptisms and reactivations and hit our mission standard of excellence. We as zone leaders are doing our best to be the example for our zone. We've got a lot of work to do this coming week, especially since we will be out of our area for 2 whole days. Friday I'll be in Rio for a leadership training, and Saturday I'll be in Araruama again for another giant missionary activity. Lots of time on the bus for me! And money...

That's about it for this week. I love all of you and was happy to hear about everything going on. Happy late Birthday to Landon! 

Elder Evans

Borrowing water from neighbors

Sad, sad, shoes

Working in Araruama

October 7, 2014 Better Late Than Never

Rio Das Ostras
October 7, 2014

Dear Family and Friends,

Well as you can tell, I didn't have a chance to email yesterday because of transfers. I was transferred again. I'm sad and happy at the same time, but way excited overall. 

So in this region I started off as DL trainer in Cabo Frio, was then moved to Araruama to open the branch there, and now I was moved within the same region again to the other ward that is going to join with Cabo Frio to create this stake. I am currently in Rio Das Ostras. And I was also made to be Zone Leader this transfer. Zone Leader of the Cabo Frio zone. haha. I think it's awesome that God put me here. I really had and still have a strong desire to help these wards split and turn into the stake that it needs to be. Really my prayers have been answered ever since I've gotten to Cabo Frio to be able to stay here and do my best to help this stake. 

What's fun is that while I've stayed here, I've also been transferred a few different times within the same zone and wards. President made me the zone leader leader without any zone leader experience before too. I don't know why, but I'm excited to learn with my new companion, Elder G. Call from Loveland, Colorado. Elder Call was my zone leader in Nova Iguaçu, and he was also serving in Araruama these last 2 transfers with me. And now we are comps! He has one more transfer than me on the mission.

Well, this last week we saw miracles happen at General Conference! The missionaries in my district baptized a family of 5 and another man. All because of the spirit that they felt at conference.

Testifico que temos profetas hoje em dia, e eles são homens inspirados por Deus para ajudar todos nós. Eu amo esta Igreja, pois é a Igreja de Cristo, a única verdadeira. 

Conference was awesome and I'm happy to be here on my mission. I know for sure that God answers our prayers and that I am in the place that I need to be and doing exactly what I need to be doing.

Have a good week. Go Royals.

Elder Evans