January 20, 2014 Update from Brazil

Elder Evans with French copy of Book of Mormon

Froot Loops and Tang - All is right with the world

Elder Evans and Elder Silva with Junior

Chalkboard full of things that Elder Evans misses from Kansas

So is anyone updating my blog or posting a link to my letters on my facebook? I want more of my friends to email or write me.

First off. Holy Crap, Madison Margaret Evans is turning 18 this week??????????????????? Just yesterday you were my little sister in kindergarten and now you are 18? And going to graduate high school and going to college? Não acredito. I don't believe it. Happy birthday Madi, hope you get that pony and the lifesize barbie doll and the furby that you've always wanted ;)

Well, this week we had a miracle. Mark one more baptism and confirmation for the church here in Maricá. Junior the haitian was baptized and confirmed Saturday and then Sunday this week. It was really awesome. So if you don't remember, Junior moved here to Brasil a little over a year ago with his cousin. He started to work at a meat production factory here in Maricá and that's basically it. We found him one night at about 8:40 PM doing our mandatory street contacts on the plaza. He was alone listening to music when Elder Silva contacted him and since then we've taught him everything, his portuguese has improved and he has definitely felt the spirit speaking to him. He speaks portuguese at about the level I did my first day of the MTC, after a year of living in Brasil, so we really became some of his only friends here. He's come to church the past three sundays and he has been Reading the french book of mórmon that we got for him.

So what I've learned through this week is that even when a week is rough, or a month, or a transfer, there's nothing better than the joy that you get when you get the chance to participate in bringing a soul unto Christ. It all becomes Worth it in the end.

A quick update on everything. I hope I get my package tomorrow. We have President interviews tomorrow and if it's there, I'll get it. Did you guys send it to the Rua Dois de Dezembro address? because that is the right one to send it to.

My health is doing good. Only about once a day do I get the squirts, so we are improving, and that also means I don't have any major parasites yet. woo!

My companion is doing fine too. 

I hope all is good for you guys, I enjoyed the updates from Mom and Dad. Congrats on being announced Regional Manager Pops. I guess we can just call you Michael Scott now.

Love you all, say hi to my friends for me and tell them to write me,

Elder Evans

January 13, 2014 Things in Marica

Yo yo yo família e amigos! Hope all is going great with y'all! Everything is crazy here, but I'm happy and looking upward. This week was a bit of a challenge for us here in Maricá. Both monday and tuesday we had to go to Niterói, the nearest big city. It's the one right on the other side of the bay and the sugarloaf mountain, or pão de açúcar. Because my comp needed to get a tomografia, which I believe is an cat scan or mri on his brain to figure out what has been giving him this headache that he has been talking about since november. He is always complaining about it and every word out of his mouth is a complaint about how something hurts. It reminds of me of Madi, "I don't feel good, I can't go to school today, or the rest of the year." ;) jk but really I think he's just stressed and won't admit it to anybody because he's a tough guy, so there's a lot of time that we can't do anything because he needs to rest his head.Wednesday we went to Arsenal, the stake center, for Zone meeting. It was supposed to start at 2pm but our zls didn't show up until 4:30. So we we didn't get back to Maricá until 8:45. Thursday was a more normal day. We walked, contacted, clapped at peoples gates, taught lessons and got more sunburnt.

The rest of the week was normal until sunday. We had the first ward council meeting ever here in the smallest branch of the church in the world, and it just showed us exactly how disorganized this branch is and this area is, and basically the branch leaders don't want to hear what our mission president has to say about how we work and where we should work, they just made it super frustrating for us missionaries and we got a bunch of stuff dumped on us to do for the branch that is contrary to the counsel that we got from pres lima. So we are just figuring everything out here.

This area is great. I love the members and the city and everything, but it is one of the most strange places to do missionary work. It's like a bermuda triangle. You put a lot of work into it, you try different things all the time to try to get results, you fight and fight, and you kinda just have to get lucky to make it out, or blessed. There have been a couple RMs that had served in Maricá several years ago that visited and they talked with us and were like, this area is the strangest area ever, I got here near the end of my mission and the whole time I was here, I was just lost on how to work here. Every where else we could figure it out, but here was just too different.

We're working on figuring it out. 

Also, my package hasn't arrived yet. We have interviews on the 21st so maybe I'll get it then. But I did get the letter from Grandma and Grandpa and a letter from the relief society. Thanks!

Love yall,

Elder Evans

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