January 6, 2014 Water and Carpet

In my next package I would like to get an air conditioner, ice, and American Milk. It's -13 degrees there in Kansas right now, and you want to know how hot it got up to here in the great state of Rio last Friday? 50 degrees Celsius, which is 122 degrees fahrenheit. Rest assured that the pounds are just melting off me here in Brasil. Which by the way, I've dropped under 200 pounds again. I'm pretty sure. The last time I checked I was 90 Quilos (Kilograms). Walking everywhere is so tiring, I've never been so exhausted in my life. Plus it's incredibly hard to sleep in a house that is hotter inside than it is outside. So sleep this week has been pretty frustrating to be honest, we've both woken up at 2 and 4 every morning and had to go outside on our balcony and try to cool down a little. But despite all of the heat and the stinkin sun, everything is picking up and getting going down here this week.

Like I said the week before was a bit of a struggle for us with health issues, Christmas and everyone being at the beach 24/7, and my comp almost going home, but this past week we set some good goals for ourselves and pushed ourselves to work harder and do more, and we've begun to the blessings of the Lord here in Maricá. It's actually been pretty funny because ever since I've been here, nobody has recognized us as mormon missionaries because the church presence here in Maricá is sooooo small, and missionaries haven't been here for years, but this week at least once a day somebody has stopped us on the street or called out "hey its the mormons, come over here I want to learn more about your church!", so we've had a lot of good street contacts this week where we were the ones being contacted and not the other way around. But also this week we've found a couple very solid investigators. One family that is friends with the presidente do soc. soc. here (Relief Society) is moving here this week, and we started to teach them and help them move a little bit. The best part is that they are married legally!!!!!!! So we don't have to figure out how to marry them and then baptize them, like a bunch of our other awesome investigators who aren't married legally. They weren't able to come to church yesterday because they went back to their old house on Saturday to finish packing up stuff, but we're working with them and I'm sure they'll be there next week.

The next most awesome story of the week is the other really cool investigator that we found. We were finishing our required 30 street contacts a day out on the plaza on wednesday. It was about 8:30 at night and my comp had one more to do, and he saw this guy walking across the sidewalk listening to music. He went over there to find out that the man harldy spoke Portuguese, and wasn't actually from Brasil. His name is Junior, he is 25 and from Haiti. He moved here with his cousin a year and 3 months ago, but he still barely speaks any portchy. He is way nice, though, and a good guy. He speaks French and Creole, and a little bit of English. But after we met him on that contact, we taught him the restoration on Friday and he came to church with us yesterday, and already you can see the progress that he is making in his portuguese and outlook on life. He lives alone, works in a meat factory that doesn't pay much and makes him work a lot of hours, and he basically goes from work to home and from home to work without much interaction with people outside of work. We promised him that if he would learn about the restored gospel and continue to come to church with us and read the book of mormon and pray for help  from his heavenly father that he would begin to see the blessings that are available to him. We are helping him with his language skills and learning about the Gospel and everything looks bright for him. It's awesome to see the help of the Lord in the lives of people you are serving.

Besides that this week has been a lot of walking in the sun and sweating some more. Everything is good. Just wish we had AC and water that we could drink. Oh yeah, everyone who lives in the United States needs to be thankful that they can just drink water at their houses. Here we have to buy all of our drinking water, and it runs out sooo fast. It's just way more inconvenient for everyone. Count your blessings. even the simple things like water and carpet. Those are some of the things I miss most!

Love

Elder Evans

Photos from Marica, Brazil

This is a 3 month old missionary shoe!

The streets of Marica

Elder Evans' Apartment(2nd Floor)

Hot and Humid...

Elder Evans with Elder Silva(from Brazil)

At the mission office

Friends on the streets..

Alex' First Baptism in Brazil

Festivities in downtown Marica

Fishing Village

Artsy Photo

Baptism this weekend

Front of the Church Building

One Month in Brazil

iai família,

I'm doing pretty good still. We've had another long hot week here in Brazil. It was over 110 degrees here on Thursday or something. It's killer to be walking around in that kind of heat and sweat in slacks and a shirt and tie. All my clothes are now yellow instead of white. It's pretty narsty.

 I don't really remember what happened this week, or what I did. It is all a blur of exhaustion and diarrhea. Holy crap, so much toilet time. I could count the number of times that I've taken a solid poop here in Brazil on one hand.

 More questions from Mom

1. the monkeys are anywhere. There are usually in the more wooded neighborhoods, but I've seen them at the plaza before too.

 2. Pday we didn't end up climbing the mountain, mainly because of poor Brazilian planning. Which is nothing new.

 3. My feet hurt. I've had blisters since I got here. The big blister on my right foot is a now a big blood blister too, so that's exciting, but my feet are getting rough and calloused, it hurts less and less each day.

 4. I haven't looked yet for shoelaces or insoles. I took one of the shoelaces off of my other pair of shoes and laced em onto my johnston and murphys for a short term fix.

 5. We don't have a scale, but they are all over at drugstores and farmacies, and I've been monitoring my weight loss. So when i got here I weighed 220 right? Right now I weigh more or less 204 lbs. The best weight loss program I've ever tried- move to Brasil, eat beans and rice everyday, walk for miles and sweat. 

Our transfer is dec 17th, next week. This transfer is only 5 weeks because of Christmas. I hope I get to stay here. And yes I can Skype with you, assuming that if I get moved somewhere else there is a member that I can do it at. So you guys need to make me a skype account please, and send me the login and password info because Christmas is in like 2 weeks.

 Typically I think that President Lima likes to keep missionaries in areas for at least a couple transfers, but lately there have been a lot of moving around. Since I'm not really getting trained, there is a possibility of me training another missionary soon too.

 Oh and mark down another baptism. Yesterday we had a baptism for a 9 yr old girl who always comes to church with her 3 cousins who are members of our branch. None of their parents are members, or want to be members, but all the kids are now, so that's fun.

 Like I said, not much out of the usual happened this week, just working and giving people the opportunity to receive exaltation in the celestial kingdom with their families for eternity. No biggie, right?

Sounds like you all had a good week. Proud of Sporting KC! I miss you all and hope you have a good week!

 Love Elder Evans

A week in the life.....

October 28th, 2013
THE Mission

This week has been just the same old same old. Finding, teaching, and trying to baptize. Our zone had been really struggling this transfer with finding new investigators to teach, and so has our district and companionship, so the swift trio (us) decided to do more finding this week. And we got our goal of 3! Our mission standard of excellence is simply called 3 3 3. Each week, every companionship should get at least 3 member present lessons, 3 progressing investigators, and 3 new investigators. We shot for it, and we got 4 mp's, 3 new investigators, but only 1 progressing by last night. But this week it should be fairly easy to accomplish our 3 3 3. We've got at least one wicked solid baptism for november 23rd. I would like to be here for it, but I really hope I'm not.

 

I hope that the consulate hurries and fixes the error that they made on my VISA! My file should have been on the top of the list to get through and finished!

Most of this week was alright, but kind of a blur. I have my up and my down days in terms of being stressed out of my mind and doing normal and running around. We had an awesome experience happen to us this week while we were biking! So on thursday evening we were having a super successful day, I think that we taught 6 lessons and had a new investigator and we flying between appointments. So Thursday is when we have the Hour of Power, from 6 to 7 pm we tract because the prophet and apostles go to the temple and pray for missionary work, and all the members in THE Mission pray for us to find new people to teach in that one hour. It's incredible the numbers that our mission generates from that one hour each week, but back to the story. We were biking up and down a street called N Tram rd. Look it up!  So we were down south on the road near Evangeline dr. or the highway 1132, and had to go all the way north in 5 minutes to a recent converts house to teach them the Hour of Power lesson, a 15 minute lesson on faith before we actually go knock doors, so we were peddling as fast as we could up the road in a line and a bunch of cars were passing us, more than usual. We were in a line and I was in the back of all 3 of us, and E Satele was right in front of me. A line of cars pass us by and this orange van drives by and throws this small piece of paper out of the window in between Jones and Satele and lands right on the edge of the road where we were biking. I wasn't paying attention, so I didn't see it until it hit the ground, I looked up to see Satele staring at it as he rode over it, so it caught my eye and right when I rode past it all of a sudden it exploded! I freakin had a heart attack. It was a firecracker taped to a piece of paper for some reason and it blew up right under my foot! Don't worry mom! It didn't hurt or anything, only scared the crap out of me, and made for an awesome mission experience and journal entry! 

We went on exchanges on Friday with the fourth ward elders, and we had some awesome lessons with them too!

The only other thing is that I'm sick. My chest is super tight and all of my joints are killing me. And I have a headache. I woke up at 2 this morning and watched church movies until 5 when I was able to fall asleep again. It was not pleasant, but I do feel better today. 

Hey I got your package, and I got Gmas and Gpas. Just another reminder, It's 5200 n main. NOT 5020. Repeat, 5200 n main.

Well

October 21, 2013
THEM
 
Well...

Well, this week was pretty good. I hope it was good for y'all too. The best part of the week was definitely this weekend. On Friday we had almost the whole day off basically. There was a parade for homecoming that started in the afternoon after our district meeting. We went with the Chandler and Horton families to sit on the side of the 105 highway (main street) in the center of town to watch the floats and cars drive by. Basically all that it was was a bunch of girls sitting on top of their dad's corvette in a big dress and a guy with a shirt and tie on next to her for everything imaginable. They are the Sweethearts and Beaus of every single club in the school, every sport, and like ten just for seniors, juniors, sophomores, and freshman etc..  But literally every Vidorian was watching and freaking out about it.Then later after we got our baptismal program all finalized we went to VHS to the homecoming football game. (They don't actually have homecoming dances here. You ask a girl to go to the game with you and you buy her a ridiculously large corsage thing and massive ribbons and bows to wear all over her body. Again, strange)  They were playing the Central high school of Beaumont, They held their own, though, and only lost by 4. The half time show was pretty cool. Their band is really good at marching in the dark, and the schools down here have cheerleaders, a drill team, and twirlers who twirl batons and such. The twirler girls spun flaming batons at the beginning of the show and it was pretty sick. I got my picture taken with the pirate mascot from the stands. We were on the front row at half field, so we couldn't see a whole lot of the game, so we had fun just being there. It was good.

Saturday was fun too. I've officially got two more baptisms under my belt and marked down on the front page of my Preach My Gospel. It's exciting because K was the first person on my mission to be baptized that I was the one who started teaching and "found". There is a funny story about their baptism though. The font here in the Vidor Williamson Chapel takes a loooong time to fill up, so we biked to it at 2 PM to start for the service at 5. We turned it on and it was blasting like normal for about 5 seconds, and then it just died down to like a weak stream that would come from a sink faucet, not a font. We freaked out because it was taking so long, we went around the whole building to check out all the sinks and bathrooms and fountains, and they were all broken. The water pressure system and heater that had just recently been put in broke, and there wasn't any pressure in the building. We had to leave and get ready and do other things. So we got back at like 4:30 and the font was barely a foot and a half high. We left it on until the actual baptisms, and they both had to kneel down to go under all the way. Glad I didn't have to baptize anyone because it was freezing! haha

Yesterday was their confirmations, and K asked me to confirm her. So I did. It was my first confirmation, and I was nervous to give a blessing in front of a whole congregation, but it went very well and either way they both received the gift of the Holy Ghost and are now members of the Kingdom of God on the earth today. They both have strong testimonies of the restored gospel because of the different trials and hardships that they have had to go through earlier in life. BH has a really cool story. He has had the biggest change of heart that I have ever seen in any person ever.

I see that you got all the pictures of us from Sister Moore. She and the whole Moore family are awesome! I love them so much, and I can't wait to come back and visit Vidor when I get home from my mission. Even if it is to just finally be able to swim in the Moore's pool! We walk past it to get into the Taj everyday!

I'll send some pics. 

Love yall

Elder Evans

 

Last week in pictures- October 2013

 A family in Vidor 3rd Ward

 Leaving my mark at the Taj Mahal

 Kids that like to play!

Waiting out the rain at an abandoned gas station-2 hours, gone!

October 14. 2013
Another Week in Texas, I wish somebody had a Viola I could play...

This week has been a little off. Elder Jones has been really sick with the Flu and we have had to not do anything since like Wednesday. It was a lot of resting and sitting around, but it felt kinda weird to not be doing anything. That extra news from yall about my VISA is super happy. Not. So they legit messed up my VISA? I'm never going to Brazil. But whatever.

About the baptism, it got rescheduled to this Saturday. The man getting baptized is related through marriage to a family in second ward and they could all only make it if it was on the 19th. Also, it will be a joint baptism with a girlfriend to one of the sons. The girl getting baptized will be the first investigator of my mission  I started teaching. Elders Wright, Memea, and I started teaching this girl, K~, and taught her the first 2 lessons then when I got moved out the Sisters picked her up. So I taught both of the investigators getting baptized this week. Pretty sweet! I'm going to count it as mine anyways :P

Also on Saturday is the Vidor Pirates High School homecoming football game, and all the Vidor missionaries get to go to it! I've literally been told about this game since the very first day that I was in Vidor, no joke. If you came here and asked someone about the Vidor Pirates you'd think they were an NFL team or something, and the homecoming blackout game is bigger than the superbowl here. The baton girls have flaming batons and then there is fire everywhere while the lights are out. I'll take a video for yall. But that is just because every single person that lives in Vidor grew up in Vidor and went to Vidor High and is crazy about the High School for the rest of their lives. With some people it goes incredibly far. The best part of it is to me, though, is that I am pretty sure that even Olathe East could spank em in foosball.  I haven't been in even a remotely diverse city since before my mission. From Provo, to the city that founded the KKK, and has a troubled past, but also one full of Mormons.

So you guys watched that video of Satele and I singing? Oh gosh, how bad was it?? We were on our way back from church yesterday with the Moore's that we live with and they were telling us that we had to sing a song for them. So it was just basically "Hey sing for us now" kind of thing. I then played a bunch hymns on one of their violins for like an hour last night too. I am pretty good at the violin. But I wish somebody had a Viola that I could play...

Not much else is going on. I guess I might as well get used to the fact that I'll be permanently reassigned to Vidor, Texas. But oh well, everything will be fine and maybe I'll get to Brazil.

Thanks for all the emails this week and everything. My new address here is 

5020 N Main ST

Vidor, TX  77662

If you are going to send me a letter or package do it quick. I don't think that I really need anything. Money is always fine. Ties are awesome. Treats and candy is good too.

Love yall

Elder Evans