Elder Hilton's Mailing Address

Letter mailing address:
Elder Mckay Manser Hilton
Brazil Salvador South Mission
Av. Lucaia, 295, Sala 202/203
Ed. Empresarial Lucaia
Horto Florestal
40295-130 Salvador- BA

Package Mailing address:
Elder Mckay Manser Hilton
Brazil Salvador South Mission
Av. Lucaia, 295, Sala 202/203
Ed. Empresarial Lucaia, Horto Florestal
Horto Florestal
40295-130 Salvador- BA

Saturday, February 17, 2018

Week 87: Unexpected trip

HAPPY VALENTINE´S !!! This is the last week of this transfer! It went by so fast! It was also the official week of Carnival. Our area is located close to where some of the main events of carnival take place so this were pretty difficult concerning working. We work more in Alta do Ondina and all the big Carnavil stuff happened just around the bend in Ondina and Barra. Literally all our investigators said to come back only after carnival. Bummer, but now it is over and things are going better. People are ready to repent and learn more of Jesus Christ. hahaha. So Tuesday was the official carnival day. We didn´t get much results in our area. We just did some door knocking and contacts. Wednesday was Valentine´s day! It was also our last district meeting. We had it at home. It was really good. I gave a training on some things that President has taught me last week at council meeting on taking investigators to church.

Being a missionary IS NOT DIFFICULT! It can be a challenge, but it is nothing unbearable. In fact - Nowadays we have everything to help us - resources, materials, plans, members and more! It's a fun job - blessed and guided. We just need to work - and in the process we develop great talents.  This requires skill in organizing and pondering - and we have learned how to do it - IT IS NOT DIFFICULT. We simply need to do the basic and fundamental things - and the Spirit does the rest! Imagine the growth! The mission provides all this!

I am GRATEFUL this week for the privilege of being a missionary. The Holy Spirit guides the true servants of Christ - the missionaries here in the Salvador South mission. Our new goal is to stop by some houses on Sunday morning and bring them to church. This will require diligence and lots of faith. I plan on putting this in practice... starting next transfer. Why next transfer and not NOW?? This is where that unexpected trip comes into picture. Let me explain

On Friday I decided to take care of a problem that has been irritating me for a few weeks. That is my right foot. My big toe has had an ingrown nail for a while, and I had tried to take care of it myself. Soaking it in water, applying cream, etc. After a few weeks and no results I decided to go to the doctor to get it fixed. Also since it was swollen and purple, i thought i should go in.  So Friday morning Elder Cantuário, Elder Prince, and I went to the Aliança Hospital and I was treated. The Doctor, Doctor Marcos Porto was really nice. He has been to the United States twice and has studied english for fun and for work, so he spoke quite a bit of English. He spoke lots of English with me and it was pretty funny. I felt strange speaking in English, so i would direct our conversations back to Portuguese and he would always go back to English. Anyway he numbed up my toe real well and then cut off a part of my nail on my right big toe. The worst part was the needle to get numb. After that, I felt absolutely nothing! hahaha. He showed me the huge part of my nail he cut out and let me keep it! hahaha, gross i know! He cleaned up my foot then wrapped up my big toe really well. It is HUGE! Then he hooked me up with some special soap to clean it daily, gauze, tape, and a wrap. He told me the numbness should go away in about 2 hours. He printed out some papers and I was out!  Eddy Carlos took us straight to lunch and from there I stayed with Mike in the office. Around 5:30 Elder Prince and Elder Cantuário arrived in the office and will stay with me here, because Mike had to leave.





Today is Saturday. For p-day, I will just email because I can´t leave to do anything because of my foot. Today President is going to meet with the assistants to figure out transfers. I might find out where I´m going today! I will definitely know my Sunday. I hope everyone has a great week! thanks for all the love and support!

-Elder McKay Hilton

Sunday, February 11, 2018

Week 86: 3 LEFT

What would you do with something that you loved so much, but only had a limited time to do it. What if you only had 3 more months to do that thing you love so much. Every moment would be precious. That is how I feel. This week I hit my 1 year and 9 month mark. I only have 3 more months in my mission here in Bahia, Brazil. Every moment matters, every person I teach, testimony I bear, and step I take. I realize that I will have a lot of time (decades) to think about how I spent this short time on my mission. I think when any missionary sees their mission in this perspective, their mission becomes more sacred and special. All we do as representatives of Christ matters. Everything counts and in the end we want to look back on this time and be proud of who we were and how we served.

This week wasn´t the most interesting one, but it was a bit different. On Monday, We woke up early and got Elder Palma from the bus station. Him and I went to the office and got an Uber for the other guys. I prepared some things for Elder Prince to renew Elder Palma´s VISA and they went to the Shopping Sumaré and the airport without me. A while later I got a call saying that they were missing an important document (RNE). I had to take an Uber all the way to the airport to give them the document. They renewed Elder Palma´s and Elder Kilidjian´s VISA and we ate Bob´s Burgers afterwards. Back at the office there were lots of people. Some sisters came by along with other missionaries to grab some things. We spent Tuesday preparing for the mission council meeting. Everyone was a little anxious for this months council meeting for a few reasons. The biggest was because there were few baptisms in January. Next was because President didn´t invite any sisters to participate. Only zone leader elders.   It was very good and spiritual.  That night I took Elder Dos Santos to the hospital to have him do his check up from his surgery. He is doing well. In about 15 more days, he should be able to do his normal missionary work.

February 8th is the official day that carnaval starts here in Bahia. I will explain more later. In the morning I got a call from President Bangerter and he told me that Elder Dos Santos would be my companion temporarily until the end of the transfer. He explained how it would be and what we should do. The only problem is that our area is only hills and stairs and Elder Dos Santos is not supposed to do that. Wednesday we just did some simple secretary work; prepare IMOS picture cards, scan documents, send some emails, and take phonecalls, etc. At night I didn´t leave with Elder Dos Santos because I didn´t want to risk anything. Carnaval can be dangerous here! Next Tuesday will be the real Carnaval  with more cultural carnaval like stuff. Feb. 8th is just more partying, alcohol, loud music, etc.

On Friday, I had a good personal study and companion study. Afterwards we picked up my shoes that I had fixed and we found a store that Elder Dos Santos wanted to find to buy new shoes. It was closed! Then we had lunch at Bro. Cely´s house. LASAGNA!! We worked all day in our area until 6:30. Around 7:00 we returned to the office to have him rest. For p-day on saturday we did the normal, email family and eat subway because our lunch fell through. I got a call tonight from President telling me that Elder Dos Santos will go back to his area (Lauro de Freitas) tonight. So much for that plan he had set with us. We will send him in an Uber to his area tonight.

This next week will be the last week of the transfer. I asked president if he knows where I will be transferred to. He told me that he has thought a bit about it, but still doesn´t know. He will let me know later in the week. He told me he will but me where I am needed. He said that he needs more missionaries like me and expressed how me really trusts me. He said he will put me with someone that needs my good example so i can show them how to work. I am really excited to give it my all these last 2 transfers of my mission. I can´t wait to know where I will go to finish my mission! hahaha. That´s a wrap! How was your week?? tell me about it! :)

Until next week!

-Elder McKay Hilton

Saturday, February 3, 2018

Week 85: Festa de Iemanjá!

Hey everyone! How are things going? Here is great. This week we have had some interesting experiences. An Elder from Lauro de Freitas had a hernia surgery and is staying at our house. He can´t do anything and just needs to rest. So we Elder Prince, Elder Cantuário, and I have been taking turns staying at home (or the office) with him. One stays with him and the other two work in our area. Things are pretty slow in our area because Carnaval is arriving and people are already beginning to party or travel.  So this week was pretty normal. We did what was possible in our area. We are still having a hard time finding people to teach; new people who are interested. I did a contact with a woman who seemed to be really interested, but she lives in a different area.

On Monday Elder Prince and I had a family night with Romilda. It was supposed to be with a friend of hers but she never showed up, so we just had it with Romilda´s family.
Tuesday was a normal day of work. Wednesday was pretty cool and funny. We had district meeting in the morning. I was just finishing up my training and President Bangerter showed up out of nowhere and got up and gave another 30 min training on exactly what I had just trained. It was pretty funny. The scripture cases and bags came in too and we got that all organized. Thursday was my day to stay with Elder Dos Santos, so nothing super productive happened. I just did a little project for President Bangerter that he asked me to do, print out lots of paper cards, and cut them out for his stake conference meetings.

I was so excited for Friday to come around. Here in Bahia, every year on February 2nd  there is a faith/culture/tradition of a different religion. It is actually a tradition from two different religions mixed together, Catholic and Candomblê. It started out with only 25 fisherman, but now it is one of the biggest traditions / parties other than Carnaval. In the morning everyone dresses in white and goes to Rio Vermelho (a part of our area). They put various "offerings/presents" in the water for the Ocean queen / water goddess. It is generally flowers that they put in the water. Then at night there are CROWDS of people in Rio Vermelho for parties and music in the street.

So this was our day. You ready?? We changed our day to work in our area all day without going to the office from Wednesday to Friday. Since we are taking care of Elder Dos Santos who had the hernia surgery, it was Elder Cantuário´s turn to stay home. So Elder Prince and I left to work. We had TERRIBLE luck. At 10 am we walked through the crowds to get to our area. It took 40 minutes to get there. Everyone was putting their flowers in the water. As we got to our area Elder Cantuário called and needed us to go back to the office to open it up. He did not have the keys. We had only done a few contacts and hadn´t even taught a single lesson, but we walked back and opened the office so he could pay some rental bills and other bills that needed to be send to president for their approval to be paid. Elder Cantuário paid and then left.  Then after a bit, we went to lunch. We walked all the way to the other Elder´s area for lunch. We were towards the end of Vale das Pedrinhas and guess who called? Elder Cantuário. Now we got frustrated. Elder Cantuário needed us to go back to the office to resend and email to some missionaries concerning light bills. So we turned around and walked back to where we just were at. We missed our lunch appointment so we stopped at Subway on the way to the office. We did that favor for Elder Cantuário and had the Elders that made it to the lunch appointment bring us lunch that we missed in tupperwares. While we were waiting for them to arrive President showed up in the office o grab some material (awkward... because we weren´t supposed to be there). We explained why we were there on the day we weren´t supposed to go to the office. More bad news.... He told us that he forgot to approve the payments on IMOS so nothing was paid for. So all we did was in vain. All that running around and losing time to work in our area for nothing. After we ate, we went back to our area. Everything fell through. No one was home that we marked with. Luana´s friends that we were going to visit with her were not home. So we knocked a few doors and we were able to teach 2 new people. Then we had dinner at Romilda´s house and left a message. It was about 8:45 pm when we left.

Here was the interesting part of Friday. HOLY SMOKES. There were so many people on the coast in Rio Vermelho!! It was NUTS!!! I have never seen so many concentrated crowds of people in one area. It was pretty much like carnaval. Tons of people, loud live music, dancing, and drinking. The crowds came in waves.
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To get through / enter the main part with the most people (which also happened to be how we walk home every night) we had to pass through a gate where the police scanned down every person with a metal detector like thing. We passed through and we were in! SO MANY PEOPLE. I wanted to record it, but i didn´t even take my camera out because it was too crazy. The glass tattoo shop was turned into a club and we had to hop down off the borders of the sidewalks onto the grass next to the beach just to get through some parts that were so full of people that it was all stopped. We finally made it through the worst part and headed to the Praça de Maraquita. It was PACKED!


We were getting through and one guy with a pretty woman at his side stopped us and asked Elder Prince in English, "Where are you from?" He responded, the United States. Then the dude told Elder Prince that he is pretty and asked him for a kiss. We just looked away and took off. hahaha. We quickly walked home. We were the only people walking the opposite direction away from the party in Rio Vermelho. Everyone was flocking towards the party there. It was only 9:15 pm when we got home. Imagine that place at 11:00 pm or after midnight. Must be pretty crazy. It was quite the experience that I won´t forget. There is more to come just in a week with Carnaval just around the corner.

For P-Day today, I am staying in the office to email my family and plan a few things. I want to say congratulations to my little brother for getting his Eagle Scout award. I am so proud of him and everyone that sacrificed time and effort in helping him. That is a huge achievement that requires lots of dedication. I also want to say congratulations to Anderson Reded. This young man is incredible. I had the privelege to meet him, teach, and baptize him one year ago. Since then, he ha been active in the church and qualified to enter the holy temple. He went for his first time this week. Nice job Anderson!!

Thanks to everyone who reads these emails and supports me. I appreciate your prayers for the missionaries and your love. I know that Christ loves us and is our greatest advocate. I am grateful for everything that he has done for us and everything he still does. He is our greatest example! I love you all!

-Elder Hilton