May 18- Short and Sweet

May, 18, 2015
Rio Das Ostras

Dear Family and Friends,

How are yall? I'm doing well. We are working to turn this area around and really have some more success these last 2 weeks I have. This week we found a few really cool people to teach and people who were really prepared to hear the message of the gospel.

I am just continuing the mission and preparing myself to finish. Prepping to get back home and be a different person and get back into the world. I'm excited to get to rest a little bit and then get back to school. I can't wait to start portuguese classes at BYU. I'm already going to miss speaking this language.

I don't have a whole lot to say. My thoughts are all over the place, but I'm grateful that I had this opportunity to serve and I am incredibly grateful that I was called to serve here in Rio de Janeiro. It may have it's problems, but it's the best city in the entire world. And the Cabo Frio zone will always be the best, I spent so much time here that it just has to be. Can't wait to be able to some day get on the beaches here. 

We're coming to a close. Only 2 more weeks. Get ready.

Love,

 

Elder Evans

May 11, 2015 T - 3 weeks and counting.

May 4, 2015
Rio Das Ostras

Dear Famiily and Friends

 

I am getting so close! It still doesn't even feel real! At least some times it doesn't. After Skyping yesterday for Mother's day I feel a little bit closer to being home than before. It's a weird feeling to be finishing the mission.

 

Today is one of my last pdays on my mission and it just seems like yesterday that I was getting to Brasil and didn't understand a single thing in Portuguese, but now I have difficulty speaking english. It's all so confusing, but that's mission life for ya.

 
This week was a little low on results. We are re-opening this area because it was white washed. We tried the whole week to get in contact to be able to find and teach the investigators that the previous missionaries were teaching, we had a lot of hard times trying to get a hold of all of them. But it was also Mother's Day yesterday, so almost nobody went to church. A cool thing was that I got to see most of my recent converts from the first time that I was in this area.

 

We have plans to do a lot of work this week. I want to baptize and bring tons of people to church. I'm going to have to go to Rio tonight for meetings tomorrow, and I'll probably get back here late tomorrow night. I'm not too happy and  I'm tired of doing this trip back and forth. I spend a lot of money and waste a lot of time on the bus. But President commands, we obey.

 

I don't have much to say this week, most was spoken yesterday. It was good to be able to see ya'll and know that things are normal.

 

Keep planning my parade and homecoming festival haha. Until next week!

Love,
Elder Evans

May 8, 2015 Dreams DO Come True!

May 8, 2015
Rio das Ostras

Dear Family and Friends,

Today is the first day of the last transfer of my mission. I was transferred from Anil. I guess I was destined to travel all over this mission. I got transferred like every transfer. But things are all good. The place of my death (missionary term for where I will finish my mission) is..........

Rio Das Ostras!!! I came back to the same area! Well, I'm in the other side of the area now, but I always dreamed of coming back to this area. It was the area that I liked the most out of all, and I got to come back to visit and work for another 4 weeks.

 

It is a strange feeling to be starting my last transfer. To know that in exactly one month from today I will be getting on an airplane and flying home, leaving all of this behind. The thought is actually making me sad, sometimes I don't feel like I'm ready for my mission to end. There is still a lot left to do.

 

Mom asked me to give a low down on what I expect to complete these last 4 weeks that I have. I expect to make every second count. To have the best transfer of my mission. I still have more personal goals to complete and work on. I want to baptize every week, and I want to be able to get onto the bus my last day here leaving this area and going to the office with a smile on my face and knowing that I did what God sent me here to do. I have a special love for this city, for the people here. I always knew and felt that the Cabo Frio zone was where I was meant to be.

 

It was sad to leave Anil too. I was there for a short time only, but it was enough to make friends and to help several people. 

 

Last night I was able to surprise J, the man that I baptized here the week of Christmas. He almost died from a heart attack when he saw me. He is super strong in the Gospel! He has an incredible testimony and he is just awesome! Him and his wife were super happy that I was able to come back and see them before I finish. I was able to feel why I'm here doing this work.

 

The happiness that comes from seeing how much people can change just because of the gospel and a few lessons learned, is too great. I love my mission, and I'm determined to finish happy and strong. And excited to see all of you again to start the next chapter of life.

 

Elder Evans

April 27, 2015 This week was INSANE!

April 27, 2015
Anil, Jacarepaguá

Dear Family and Friends,

This week was INSANE

Not much out of the normal happened this week. The biggest news is that my comp and I have started to do Insanity, the exercise program. We are now on our second week. It is going great. I'm sore and my muscles are tired, but it is getting me excited and making me feel great. We'll see what kind of miracles it will cause in the next 40 days.

This week was really just a normal week of teaching and trying to help people. I felt a little unorganized this week. It seemed like most of what we were planning on doing didn't ever happen. It left me feeling frustrated with our plans and with some of the people that set lessons, or lunch, or visits with us and then just never show up. These things happened a few times this week.

 

Church on Sunday was also pretty hard again. There is something wrong in our ward, at least that what it seems like. The attendance has been pretty low for the past 3 weeks. Nobody knows what is going on. I am wanting to see this ward grow. We have the largest chapel in the state of Rio, and our ward had only 55 people at church. We fit in less than half of the sacrament room.  This week we are going to see what we can do to bring more people back to church.

I found out that our mission baptized 108 people in April. This is our record so far in the last 2 years. March and April were the first two months that Rio has baptized more than 100 since before I was here. Everyone is excited about the dramastic changes that our mission has made in the last few months.

Next monday is the start of my last transfer! There is still a chance that I get transferred to another area for my last 4 weeks. I'll find out this weekend what is going to happen to me. Ilet you all know next week! And I'll let you know about mothers day when I know where I'm going to be next week!

 

Have a good week and keep the commandments!

 

Elder Evans

Monkies are everywhere!

 

Two Elders Going Home!

April 13, 2015 Quem é? (Who is it?)

April 13, 2015
Anil, Jacarepaguá

Dear Family and Friends,

This week was a mix of great and bad, but for me it balanced out towards great. It seemed like there was some kind of curse over everyone in our area this week. Everyone was tired and depressed and sad and nobody wanted to do anything. It even was starting to get at us, but we powered through with faith and we were able to complete some of our goals for the week.

The best part was we had another baptism! We are now 4 weeks straight in our area. We are doing our best to keep them coming. It is our mission goal to baptize weekly, and I'm finally being able to reach this goal. It's good to baptize. This week was C. We have created a young mens organization in this ward. 3 months ago there was 1 active young man in the whole ward. Now we have about 9 that come and 5 baptized. The bishop told us that this was what he needed us to do, so we are teaching about 20 youth per week, and we are teaching most of their families too.

Sunday was a hard day in our ward, but also something super cool happened! First off, there was about half of the normal attendance at church today. Nobody knows what happened or why nobody was at church. We were waiting for some more investigators to show up when we saw from the second floor window a woman who we didn't recognize, and that didn't look very brasilian, enter the front gate. We went downstairs to greet her and I could hear her speaking english. When I we got downstairs she turned to us and I immediately recognized who it was. Lindsay Stirling! She just happened to show up for our sacrament meeting. How cool is that?! I spoke with her a little before and after the meeting and took a picture with her. She is pretty legit. She had a show here in Rio on Saturday as a part of a South American Tour that she is doing. It was funny because almost no one else knew who she was.

I am doing well. Hope yall are prepping yourselves for my homecoming party here in a few weeks! 

Love,

Elder Evans

 

Lindsay Sterling and Elder Evans

Rubix Cube Boss!

C's Baptism

April 6 Happy Conference and Happy Easter

March 30, 2015
Anil, Jacarepaguá

Dear Family and Friends,

I hope everyone had a great Easter Sunday and was able to ponder the plan of salvation and the atoning sacrifice of the Savior! I know that I really enjoyed this week. I caught a small cold from my companion, but I forgave him, and am getting better now. I learned a lot at conference and hope that you all did too.

 

I'm thankful to be a member of the true church of Christ and to have the more complete knowledge of His plan for us. Something that I really have been thinking about lately is how the knowledge of Where we come from, why we are here, and where we are going to go after this life has really helped me in my life to make all the choices that I make. I know that choices have eternal consequences and significance, and I know that all of us will ressurrect someday to be judged and be rewarded according to our thoughts, actions, and desires.

 

This week we had another baptism. I am now three weeks straight. Proving President Cabral right that yes, all missionaries can and should baptize weekly. I'm trying to finish my mission strong to do all I can to help my area and baptize everyone that is waiting to receive this sacred and saving ordenance.

 

That's all I got this week. We are working with a teaching pool of about 20 young men and women to baptize them in this month. Pray for us to be able to help them take this decision. 

Love,
Elder Evans

March 30 Transferrrrrrred!

March 30, 2015
Anil, Jacarepaguá

Dear Family and Friends,

Well, during the week I was transferred after all. I was in the office on Wednesday morning for a training meeting, and I was told there that I was going to be transferred that day. How dumb huh? But I'm actually alright with it now. I really did want to stay in the Vila for the rest of my mission, we were seeing some real success and progress like never before in the ward, but "I'll go where you want me to go."

 

I'm now in a new area with a new comp,  and happily am no longer a zone leader. Well, at least it's nice to be able to focus more on my area and my own progress. I had been kind of hoping to be released as zl for a little while now to be able to really focus on working hard as just a missionary for the end of my mission. I'm now in the area, don't laugh because it's pronounced differently in portuguese than you are going to read it, Anil. I got here on Wednesday night, and this week we had another 2 baptisms here. I-  was a man that felt that he should go to church last week and I taught him on Thursday for the first time and we invited him to be baptized Saturday and he accepted and was baptized. He is super elect. Golden. We also baptized on Sunday a young man J who the Elders had already marked the date with before I got here. My comp is now Elder J. Silva. He was trained by Elder Siebers. Cool! He has been here in the area for 2 transfers already.

I'm getting to know the members here and all of our investigators still, but so far I'm loving the area. I think that it is the smallest area in the mission too. Going to save my feet from more wear and tear. 

 Tomorrow we already hooked a birthday party for me in the chapel, which is the biggest and nicest chapel in Rio too. Look it up on Google maps! I live on Rua Tirol 188 in a nice apartment in the back of the condominium.

 Well, I'm going to have a great birthday tomorrow and I'll take plenty of pics. I don't have pics to send today because I forgot the cable at home. I'll have a member send them to you this week.

 

Love,

Elder Evans



Birthdays in the Zone

When you give me authorization like that....

March 23, 2015
Vila São Luis
Dear Family and Friends,

This week was one of the best I've had on my mission. A lot of things happened to us this week. A lot. 

Monday and Tuesday morning I wasn't feeling too good. I don't know why or what, but I didn't feel like even working. But on Tuesday morning I asked for a blessing from my companion and from that moment onward, only miracles have happened in our area. Tuesday I left our house feeling great. As we walked past a street, I felt an impression that I had to go on that street because somebody was waiting for us. We had appointments so we went to our first lesson, but our second one fell through.

 

We went back to that street and we walked and the whole time I was just looking out for the person that was waiting for us. We did some contacts and knocked a door or two, but it just wasn't it. We then passed by a corner and there was an eternal investigator of ours sitting there, and she had boughten us lunch that same day too. We kept on not thinking much, but then we both just stopped and decided to go back and thank her for our lunch. While thanking her we asked her for a referral and she told us to pass by her sister's house who lives underneath her. That was it! We couldn't go that same day, or on Wednesday because my comp started to throw up.

 

Thursday comes around I get a call from one of the assistents asking about how many baptisms my zone is going to have this week and I told him that I was trying to get one for me at least. He then gave me a special authorization that I could baptize people who had never even gone to church, as long as they still passed the interview and such, obviously. When he said that we caught fire. We quickly planned our day to go and invite all of our investigators to be baptized on that Saturday.

 

The first place that we were led to was this referral. After some more things happened, we got into her house, we taught her the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and invited her to be baptized Saturday and she accepted without a single doubt or hesitation. We explained more about the baptism and the interview and gave her some things to study for that day and we went back on Friday to resume all the lessons and interview her and in the end we baptized G and her 8 year old daughter L Saturday night. She was soooo ready to receive the gospel. She was just waiting for this moment. That goes in my record book of fastest baptism. I met her, taught her for just 15 minutes, and in 2 days she was baptized and Sunday was confirmed. And they had never been to church. I feel like one of those missionaries from back in the day who just baptized people on the spot.

 

Definitely a week to remember.

Besides them we have an amazing new family that we are teaching. We met them on Friday, they are also a referral from member, and they came to church on Sunday asking to be baptized. The two parents, M and C, will have to wait because they aren't married legally yet, but the two kids, S and T, are going to be baptized ASAP. T asked me at church when his baptism was going to be, I told him that we are going to do everything possible for it to be this Saturday. Showzão.

Church was full. We had 9 investigators there. Things are definitely getting better for us. Good week.

Sounds like yall had fun in Vegas. Keep enjoying life!

 Love,

Elder Evans