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

September 29, 2014 Araruama week 5. 1 more to go.

Araruama
September 29, 2015

Dear Family and Friends,

We are officially on the last week of this transfer. It feels like it flew by. This week was a very different week. We had zone conferences and we did an activity in my area with the whole zone, President and Sister Cabral, the APs and secretaries too. I'll get into that later.

The week started off slow for us. We honestly had very little time in our area to work. It was hard to start and we were having problems planning and working with the members. beyond that it was a busy week for me because my district is balling it up and baptizing everyone, so I have to take time out to do baptismal interviews and help the other elders with these baptisms. This ward has had baptisms weekly for the past 6 weeks, and it is going to continue that way. One of the baptisms that happened Saturday was of D-, a young man 21 years old that Elder de Medeiros and I found and started to teach while we were still in Cabo Frio. That made me happy because I had the chance to be there for almost all of it to help him make the huge changes in his life that he made. I played violin at his baptism too haha.

Zone conference was awesome. We learned a lot and it's always good to hear from President Cabral. He has got this fire inside of him that is just crazy. He jumps around and he bangs his hand on the pulpit and he yells, but with everything he says you can feel what he is saying.

The activity was awesome. We had 11 sets of missionaries to visit every single less active member on the ward list in Araruama. Also to find new investigators and teach everyone. I think I hit a personal record when we found 26 new investigators in one day. We have a busy week ahead of us to follow up with all of these people, but the work is moving along.

General conference is this week and I hope that everyone is going to watch it. It is my favorite weekend on the mission because I get the chance to renew my testimony and receive revelation from God through his authorized prophet and apostles here on Earth in these days.

I got my package, thanks for all that was in it!

Elder Evans

September 22, 2014 Milagres no Rio

Araruama
September 22, 2014

Dear Family and Friends,

Rio de Janeiro is starting to heat up a bit, and not just because summer is rolling in. Miracles in our mission are happening like crazy right now. This month we are having success here that I have never seen since I've been in this mission. We are really focused on going out and doing work. Finding, Inviting, and Baptizing. President Cabral said something like Michael Scott in the mission counsel, "There's no secret to baptize, it's all very simple." I remembered K.I.S.S. Keep it simple stupid.

With that said, we are having success here in my district as well. We have been baptizing every week here in the Cabo Frio ward, and what's cool is that the Elders in Cabo Frio are going to baptize a guy that I found and started teaching while I was there, and the other elders in Araruama are going to baptize another man that I found and passed to them. I seem to always find baptisms for other missionaries. But it's all good. We were sent a family yesterday to reactivate and complete. We were walking in the rain yesterday after lunch going to try to teach an investigator that we have been having trouble getting in contact with, and as we were going, a guy and his girlfriend stopped us on the sidewalk and he asked, "are you the missionaries from the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?? There are elders in Araruama!?" He set a visit with us with his family who is all member except his stepdad, and who are less active for 3 years because they moved here from Manaus and there wasn't a group here yet. It's going to be awesome to meet the rest of the family, I'm excited to teach and help them come back to the church and teach the rest of the family and friends.

I finished reading the Book of Mormon all the way through in Portuguese again this Wednesday. I had been reading for the past 2 months or so during parts of my personal study and bus rides and things. What's funny is that it's a book that once you finish reading it, you just get the urge to start reading it all again and again. I know that it's true, and I know that if you read it, there is no chance that you will not know that it is true. It's so powerful and perfect. I encourage all to read it, and read it again and again. Everyday.

Congrats to Bradley and Carly on the marriage! Looks like everyone had a good time on the small vacation and I hope all went/goes well on the travels home.

Love,

Elder Evans

P.S.

I know I haven't been sending pictures. But it's because I haven't taken any pictures for a few weeks... Work.

Getting tanner though. Check out the difference in the skin tone of my arm and the little bit of leg you can see. Madi, I think that I'm going to win this 2 year "tan off".

 

September 15, 2014 Arar-youwannagetbaptized?

Araruama
September 15, 2014

Hey family and friends!

I hope that you are all doing great still. It sounds like everyone is excited to go on vacation. Lucky. I get 8 hours off once a week. Pday is like a vacation. Except for busy ones like today where I have to get a haircut and wait at the post office for an hour to send a letter, and afterwards go home to lay on the floor in hunger because I don't have money to buy food, or anything. We have to spend at least 8 reais a day on the bus just to get to and from our area. besides that I have to do exchanges with everyone and pay a lot more money. And we are only getting 120 reais for 15 days. It'll be interesting to see how that works out because just on the bus rides we'll have to pay about 130 these next two weeks...

This week was good for the ward. My area this week was left a little untended though. I had to do exchanges with our ZLs in Rio das Ostras and it is far from Araruama. 2 hours on a bus that costs 20 reais. It's ridiculous. We lost a lot of time to work and it hurt us a little in the end. But we are going to recover quickly. But our ward with the 4 sets of missionaries brought plenty of people to church. And there are going to be several baptisms in the next two saturdays. It's really busy. A lot of baptismal interviews for me to do.

One cool thing that I've learned how to do really well here in Brasil is walk. Walk all day, walk everywhere, walk, walk, walk. We have an investigator preparing to be baptized and we had the challenge this past week to try to find her house without a map, car, or cell phone that works. We had the street name and a house number, and the name of the neighborhood. Doesn't sound like it would be "that" hard to do. And then you remember that you are in a rural area of Brasil where streets don't have signs, and houses don't have numbers, and noone knows the name of any other street besides the one they live on. It took 3 hours of walking on dirt roads completely lost to find the house. It was hot too. But on the up side, I don't think my calves have ever been so toned haha.

The changing of the seasons are coming on here. I'm preparing to lose another winter of my life, and prepping to start sweating a lot. It's only spring here and I'm already afraid of the sun.

Have fun on vacation! Enjoy life! Give a referral to the missionaries in your area!

Elder Evans