September 8, 2014 Araruama is a Gold Mine

Zona Cabo Frio

Araruama
September 8, 2015

Dear Family and Friends,

Well, we had another baptism this last Saturday.  I'm frankly amazied at what is happening in this city.  It's a GOLD MINE!.  And we are finding and mining the golden investigators.  But in reality, they are finding us.  In the past 2 weeks I have had 3 people ask me if they can be baptized in the church.  It's exciting to take part.  I get excited just to walk on the streets of my area because people contact us an dask us if they can go to church.  I don't know what to do anymore because its so different than ever before. 

For example, last Thursday, we were walking to our lunch apointment.  We were pretty stressed out so we were walking fast and looking kinda down  (it was an incredibly stressful week).  We heard a woman calling us from the other side of the street.  She ran over and asked, " The Church is in Araruama?!  I thought the closest church was all the way in Cabo Frio?!  Where is the address and what are the meeting times and I'll be there!"  We talked for a few minutes about how she knw the church and go her info so we could call and pass her the church address (because we don't know the actual address of the church). 

Saturday after the baptism of L-, I talked to a member there to see if he could pass the address to P- the woman we met on the street.  He called her, and offered her a ride to church.  While she was at church yesterday she asked, " Can I be baptized, too?"  YES YOU CAN, HOW ABOUT THE 20TH??? It was a cool experience.  P- used to live in Rio and had investigated the church there.  But when she moved here, and wanted to go to church, it was too far to get to Cabo Frio. 

So that is the miracle of the week!  We are establishing Zion and the Kingdom of God here in Araruama.  We'll be having even more baptisms these next few weeks. My area is every Elder's dream!

I'm doing well.  I've been stressed, but I'm getting through it.  I'm excited to get another package.  I was happy to see all the pictures this week back at home and hope that everyone is doing fine and being happy. 

Love,
Elder Evans  

 

L and her Mom

 

September 1st...MIRACLES

September 1, 2014
Araruama

Dear Family and Friends, 

We had a really cool story this week. You ready to hear about the first week of the new area?

Well we started off pretty good. It's a little hard because we don't have a map of our area yet, so that complicates things a little bit, but we are learning quickly. We are working hard with the members to create this branch. Exciting news, President Cabral has been talking with me about the possibility of opening a mission branch here first. One of us might have to be a branch president haha. That would be a lot of responsibility. But continuing. We also inherited a few of the previous missionaries investigators. The miracle story is a little complicated to explain, so I'll do my best, just hang in there.

We were given an investigator with a baptismal date for Saturday, an 11 yr old girl. But we still had to do the interview and prep everything for the baptism. Since I'm DL the ZLs have to the interview. Friday afternoon the Zone Leaders showed up in my area earlier than expected for the interview so we had to quickly think of people to visit with them and we did an exchange. 

As I was walking with the ZL trying to think of someone to teach with him (We don't have much options yet, with 3 days in the area) but I decided that we would pass by a woman who had already been going to church and had been taught once by the other elders and confirm that she was going to church this week with her daughter. We got to her house and she was already outside waiting for us. (I didn't tell her that we were coming). We made some small talk and from nowhere she said "There's going to be a baptism tomorrow for that other girl, right? Me and my daughter and I are going to be baptized too." MIRACLES. She had told us 2 days earlier that she wanted to wait for awhile before getting dunked, but the spirit was working hard with her and us. She had been reading the book of Mormon everyday and she knew that she needed to be baptized. So after a bunch of stressful last second planning and re-planning and re planning again, D and Y were baptized. Show de bola!

We are just still getting used to our new area. But we are finding people who have desire to be baptized and really, that's 90% of the battle here in the field.

I'm loving being a missionary, and I love Brasil. 

I saw that video of all of the missionaries from our stake opening their calls and thought it was amazing how many of us are doing this work. Imagine all the good that each one of us is doing in literally every part of the world. Pretty amazing, huh?

BATIZAR, REATIVAR, RETER, e CONSTRUIR UM TEMPLO EM RIO DE JANEIRO!!

Elder Evans

August 26, 2014 CHANGES!

August 26, 2014
Cabo Frio

Dear Family and Friends,

Every week there's something new going on here in Rio. This time it was transfers!

 

Let me explain what happened. So I was serving in Cabo Frio. The ward in Cabo Frio has 4 sets of missionaries that work in it's boundaries (because it's masssssssive). There were 2 sets in Cabo Frio, 1 set in the city São Pedro da Aldeia, and 1 in Araruama. We are working in this ward to create a stake out of our ward and one other ward here. By December, if we have the progress that we need, we could start all of this process by splitting the stake and turning Cabo Frio into a district. It's a little complicated with all the numbers and stuff, but it's all very exciting to be taking a part of. Like I said, I was in Cabo Frio, but we had transfers yesterday.

 

Me and my companion were both transferred... To a different area in the same ward. haha. We are now a second set of missionaries in Araruama. Within the next 3 months Araruama will be turning into a branch. There is a group of people that meet together for a sacrament meeting there, but it's not an official church unit yet. President Cabral sent us two along with other 2 elders to go and start a branch here. Lot's of responsability!  We have to baptize and reactivate a bunch of people. And we are going to do it. I'm still training my comp and I'm still District Leader here. 

It was fun because I had to bring my suitcases 4 hours from here on 2 different buses to get to the transfer meeting, and come back the same way to literally the same place. I moved houses though, I am currently living in São Pedro in a sweet apartment, until we find a house to live in in Araruama. There are 6 elders living in the same house. We only have 1 bathroom too. We need to find that other house.

I'm excited to continue the work here. And I'm really glad that I didn't get transferred out of this region and ward because I love it here. Almost all of my time here in Brasil has been spent on this side of the state and it's so much better. My new area in Araruama borders my first area here in Brasil, Maricá. I guess I was destined to serve near the beach. No complaints!!

 

I hope all of you are doing well.

Tchau,

Elder Evans

August 18, Last week of transfer

August 18, 2014
Cabo Frio

Dear Family and Friends,

I don't have much time to add onto this week It was a good week and we worked hard. I have interviews with president today here in an hour or so, so I need to get going. This week is the last week of the this transfer. I hope that I get to stay here in Cabo Frio and finish the training of my second son. But,  if the Lord needs me somewhere else, I'll go.

 

Thanks for all of the help and support. Continue praying and I'll do the same. I know that our Savior Jesus Christ lives and loves us. I hope that we are all trying to come closer unto him and learn more about what he did for us.

 

Have a great week!

 

Elder Evans

Extras...from Aug 4, 2014

Cabo Frio
August 4, 2014

So the ward's area is massive. There are over 600 people on the ward list, but 160ish are active. But the ward has 2 "groups" that meet in other cities for sacrament meeting as well.

 

One in Araruama, which missionaries are opening right now, which will be a branch here in a few months.

The other is a smaller group in a city called Búzios to the north of cabo frio, it's a rich touristy town.

 

Church starts at 3 PM here. It's the latest that I've ever had church, but as a missionary it's nice. If I was a normal person I would not like to have church so late on Sunday. 

Love,
Alex

August 11, 2014 Cape Cold

August 11, 2014
Cape Cold (Cabo Frio)

Dear Family and Friends,

Big changes again in the mission this week! We had a zone meeting and several things were changed up for us, and I'm excited about the changes that were made in our key-indicators and our work here.

 

First off, NO MORE REQUIRED 210 STREET CONTACTS PER WEEK!! It's not that we won't be doing more street contacts here in Rio, but we won't have a quota of how many to do. Because finally President realized that when you order and make such a big deal about having to do 30 contacts a day, we as missionaries end up stressed out and we do contacts with the intent of being able to say that we did 30 contacts and not the real purpose which is to teach a lesson to every single one of our contacts if possible.

 

We are focusing hard on teaching more and marking more baptismal dates. To get the picture we now have a standard of excellence of 15 lessons with member present, 15 other lessons, and 20 new investigators per week. Every companionship has to baptize. Something different that I am going to be doing this week is inviting everyone that I talk to to be baptized on the 30th of August which is the soonest that someone can go to church twice and be baptized. It'll for sure be something cool and we'll see if we get some success out of it. 

We had another tough week this week. It seemed as if we were stuck in a rut. We got a little disappointed that things weren't working out for us, but we talked and figured out that we need to rely a lot more on the Lord to help us know what to do during our days. We are feeling the Spirit more and having more help too. As we continue to be obedient and work hard, the blessings and baptisms will come in the Lord's time. 

 

This week we are going to work in a cool part of our area. Arrail do Cabo. Look it up!

 

Thanks for all the emails and prayers, love you all,

 

Elder Evans

 

This is my town!

 

Is it just me, or is it getting HOTTER?

August 4, 2014
Cabo Frio, Brazil

Howdy!

All is good here in Cape Cold. Except that I feel like the "cold" is starting to be a lie. The sun out here on the coast is unbearable at times. Here you can get sunburnt through anything. Even a winter coat. I'm starting to turn red again. But all's well.

We had a hard week, to be completely honest and optimistic. It was rough! It seems like nothing was going well for us. None of the contacts that we did went anywhere, all of the doors that we knocked got shut on us, and most of the appointments with investigators and members alike fell through. It is hard to not get discouraged and stressed out about how things turn out sometimes, but we kept working the whole week until the end and at least we feel better for having done so. It's hard to be a missionary. Things don't work out how you want them too. You do all the things that you should, and try all the different ideas that you can think of, and at the end of the week, it seems like nothing was done at all. But I feel like it's those weeks that are the ones that count. They're the occasional tests that God sees fit to give us. Blessings come after the tests. 

We had a hard week, but we had fun. We are teaching an English Class every Saturday here at the church, the ward is getting super involved in the work here, and I'm playing violin at church too. Violin is definitely not as good as Viola, but I miss music so I endure. 

What else is there to update? I still haven't gotten the package. I'll get it at interviews, which were supposed to be last week, then today, but got rescheduled for a third time and we don't know now when. I'm dying for the new shoes and candy!

I'm going to be putting together a package to send home to you guys here in a the next few weeks. I'll send home some things that I don't need to be carrying around with me here and if you want a present, let me know what I can buy for you!

Love you all, the church is true, the book is blue,

Elder Evans

My district. We are all serving in the same ward. Our ward mission leader and Bishop are in this pic too.

My second Son. Elder de Medeiros

Nun chucks that we found in the house. Weird, since sisters lived here before us...

A bar that I passed the other day. I had to get a picture. #BombaFC haha

Americans on United States Street.