Week 20: Pictures from last week and this week!

Last Monday:
We cleaned the house, went to the centro with the sisters, looked at house supplies to buy, took pictures at ´´Praia Do Cristo´´(beach of Christ), and went to a mission farewell celebration of a young man in our ward.

Tuesday:
Our lunch fell through but an inactive member who was at the mission farewell party yesterday told us she would happily cook us lunch. She lives in Pontal so it was a long walk. Her name is Dirse, she is 79 years old, and quit going to church 5 years ago. After we went to Cristina´s house to accompany her and see how she is doing. She wants to talk to the bishop to see if she can get baptized this Sat. and no have to wait until the following Sat. We also stopped at Gloria´s house(big diabetic inactive lady) the first time this transfer.

Wednesday:
We had a district meeting in our church building here in Nelson Costa. The sisters joined us for a great lunch at Sandra and Bruno´s house. Then we went home quickly for Elder Andrade to change his clothes and take a shower because after district meeting he dived into the baptismal font to pull the plug. Afterwards I went on divisions with E. Loureiro while E. Andrade and E. Ohling went to do the baptismal interview of Carlos at his house.

Thursday
We had a pretty weak planning session then had lunch that went way too long because E. Andrade likes to converse a lot. We went to Cristina´s house and she said she wants to be baptized the coming Saturday. We marked an interview for her tomorrow

Friday
We went on divisions. I was with Mateus and E. Andrade was with Samuel. I found Dilson home so i shared a message and extended challenges, invited him to Carlos´ baptism, to church for the confirmation, etc. After we went to the church and waited for E. Gomez da Silva with E. Ohling. E Ohling and I went to Cristina´s house and E. Ohling interviewed her. She didnt pass due to smoking problems(she had smoked that morning), but he set goals with her to be baptized next saturday. Today during my time spent with E. Ohling was very nice. He is an American and our Zone Leader. He´s also a great missionary and a good example. He really lifted my spirits and helped me a lot even though he didnt do much. He gave me some good advice and encouragement.

Saturday
CARLOS´ BAPTISM!!! Before lunch we stopped at the church. E.Andrade cleaned the font while i got the room all set up and clean. Then we walked to LiLi´s house way out in N.S.V. After we returned to the church filled the font and waited for the sisters to arrive. they made a cake for the baptism! Carlos´s family came, which was awesome. i actually got to play a little ping pong with Carlos´s dad before the baptism because he arrived early. We showed Carlos´ family around the church and explained what goes on during our meetings, etc. Carlos (15 years old) was baptized by his 16 yr old friend.  After the baptism and cake we went to Cida´s house(inactive) then to Sis. Ione´s house, then to Cristina to follow up with her. She was doing terrible. Cristina said she hated the interview with Elder Ohling and doesnt want to keep investigating the church. She through a big pity-party and wanted to give up. E. Andrade shared some insightful things and tried to help her,but  she just wanted to take all her various medicines and go to bed. I found another gecko at the head of my bed today too. i shooed it out of the house. haha

Sunday
Today as less productive than i would have liked it to be. Church was great. Jamile drove us to pick up investigators in N.S.V. we had 8 people in one small pickup truck. The first hour was a primary program that consisted of 14 children;they did a great job. After church jamile drove us, our investigators, and some youth to their bairro in N.S.V. there were 12 of us in the truck! Lunch was great. it was super yummy and well prepared: the best one i´ve had this transfer! We did two verifications and tried to teach an inactive family that lived on the same road as lunch. It didnt go very smoothly. Then we stopped at Carlos´ house for him to fill out some missing parts of his baptism forms. His mom gave us some fruit and Geladinhos. Then we walked to the church to watch Junior open his mission call. he got called to São Paulo East. Then we had family night at Joaquims house

Monday (P-day!!)
Today we went to the centro with the sisters and took more photos. we took photos in some really cool places with awesome views of the city.

I love this work even though its hard at times. Stay strong and stay firm. share your testimony with someone today!


-Elder Hilton

Last P-day...Praia do Cristo (Beach of Christ)

 

mission farewell party for Marlon

 

lunch at Sandra and Bruno´s house with the sisters

 

Week 19: ´´Broken Bed and Peace to my Head´´

 last Monday(oct. 17th)-
 we got a lot of the house cleaned up, which was really nice. Elder Andrade was pretty sick and he wanted to take a nap so i cleaned the house and got organized while he slept. my first week with Elder Andrade has been hard adjusting. he is from Cape Verde, islands part of the continent Africa.

Tuesday
During personal study i read ´´Canaries with Gray on Their wings´´ by Thomas S. Monson in the June, 2010 Liahona. It was really good. i suggest everyone read it because it is uplifting. We had lunch way out in Roberto Luiz Santos´s house. Its a looonng walk. he is a single man, who lives in a tiny humble home. Pres. Bangerter called and got our location to pick us up and spend the day with us. Pres. B drove us to the church and had interviews with us. The interview/conversation with pres. was great.. i cried when i told him how overwhelmed and alone i have been feeling. he began to talk about his mission and he cried when he told me about his experience serving in an island in Portugal, feeling alone, difficulties, etc. i said sometimes my emotions make me feel like i want to go home, but i know that wont solve anything. if i were to come home early it wouldn't benefit anything. what keeps me going is the thought of returning after 2 years of fighting battles and returning home spiritually stronger and happier. after interviews he drove us to two of our investigators houses and helped us a lot. he preached incredibly powerful and helped a lot. it was really nice to talk to him and explain what i have been experiencing, my difficulties, my happiness's, my disappointments. He brought me lots of peace. After meeting with us individually he met with us together and gave us some quick helpful advice and then we went out to visit some of our investigators. First was Cristina. President B. alone taught the Word of wisdom extremely powerfully and addressed her problems, made goals, and had her pray. She gave a great prayer and after she handed over her smoking stuff.  Next we drove back to the church for Pres. B to meet with the Bishop. We found Carlos (15 yr old youth) and told him we need to talk to his mom and dad tonight. After Pres. B was finished with Bishop  we drove to Carlos´s house, following Carlos on his bike. There we found his mom, his grandmother, his siblings, and another friend of his mom. Unfortunately Carlos´ dad was sleeping, but president bangerter still taught and preached very powerfully the first lesson the Carlos´s family.  at Carlos´s house we met his family and gained his family´s trust and set a date to get the signature from carlos´s parents to be baptized. his baptism is going to be this coming Saturday, October 29! President is a great man. a very proactive, lets-solve-this-problem kind of guy. after our meeting with carlos´s family it was already a little past 10 pm. we drove back to Nelson Costa and looked for a place to buy gum,candies,mints for cristina to help her stop smoking. every place was closed, so we drove way out close to the centro to find a place that was open. he found a drugstore/pharmacy, ran in bought various goodies for us to drop off at cristina´s house the next day, then he walked the a pizza place next door and bought us pizza and  2 liters of Guaraná  ! what a nice guy!  He drove us home and went we arrived a drunk man riding a bike ran into our car. it was kind of funny. Both president bangerter and elder andrade haven't been feeling good and needed priesthood blessings. Pres. gave Elder andrade a blessing then turned around and asked me to give him a blessing. I GAVE MY 1st PRIESTHOOD BLESSING IN MY LIFE TO MY VERY OWN MISSION PRESIDENT!  It was such a privilege.

Wednesday
we had district meeting in the church in the centro. president arrived and gave us some training which was great. In the evening we stopped at cristina´s house to see how she was doing and we were surprised to open the door to a birthday party  with a few friends of cristinas. we made some really cool contacts today and met some people that i am excited to teach.

friday
Lunch fell through, Cristina wasn't home, and we were disappointed when we stopped at Cristina´s house. She took a while to answer the door which is unusual because her house is super tiny. I walked in and found one of Cristina´s friends that was at the birthday party with only tiny underwear on. As he scrambled to put clothes on he hurriedly sat down on the bed,  broke it, and fell to the ground.  and pretty much lets just say that we arrived at cristinas house and found a practically naked old dude in her room, scrambling to get dressed, BROKE THE BED in his attempt, and his excuse for not having any clothes on was ´´its really hot today´´ i was thinking, ´´hmmmm, its hot everyday here, nice excuse buddy´´  so now I think  she has another problem other than smoking and we need to re-teach the lessons on the commandments. She told us she smoked today After we went to Carlos´s house and talked to his family, this time his dad was there. His dad liked us a lot and bought cake and Guaraná for us. we got his signature so now carlos is all set to be baptized Oct. 29th.

Saturday
we had a big activity were lots of missionaries and youth met at the church in the centro and we split up and did divisions with youth. we made tons of contacts and new investigators, then returned to the church in the centro for lunch.  other elders from a different area like almost 2 hours away baptized in our building´s baptismal font because their´s had problems. like no water or something. my companion and i went to the church and cleaned the bathrooms, the font and the room at 3 pm. the other elders were supposed to arrive around 3:30pm but they were super late and didn't arrive until 7 ish. we didn't stay for the baptism because we had lots of people to invited to church the next day.

Sunday
We thought for sure we would have lots of investigators in church because we invited lots and lots and some really sounded like they would come. Other than Carlos, none of our investigators showed up, even the ones that confidently said they would.  Today was Mateus´ brother´s mission farewell talk. we had a meeting with the ward council. when i was getting ready for bed just about to turn out the lights i saw a good sized gecko quickly crawl along the wall at the head of my bed. i didn't know where it went and as i was trying to fall asleep i was hoping it wouldn't  crawl into my bed. haha

Today Monday
Today i got some really nice supportive emails from my family. i want to especially thank my grandma Susan for her email. THANK YOU GRANDMA SUE! also today, my younger sister, Roz, emailed me an awesome analogy that i want to share. she quoted Edene Christensen: ´´the difference of contributing, and committing. are you contributing on your mission, or are you committed. think of the difference between a chicken and a pig. A chicken just gives eggs, while a pig gives its whole life. what do you want to be mckay? Choose now. and keep it in you mind always. chicken or pig?´´
 i want to be a pig! and give it my all. i want to give my life for 2 years to serve here. i wont give just a few eggs now and then, like a chicken, but i want to focus all my efforts, energy,etc in the service of the master chef (God).
Today we went to the centro with the sister missionaries to look at supplies to buy for our house. then we went to places around the city to take photos. funny story: as we were walking we came across the same man that we found in Cristina´s house who was without clothes and broke the bed. We said hi to him and invited him to Carlos´ baptism. it was a little awkward, but all is well.

A little about my area.  there are people who make sacrifices. our ward boundaries are humungus and not everyone has cars and sometimes it can be a really long walk for some people. lots of people have bikes tho. for us to walk to the church from our house is about 20-25 minutes. my area has well over 1,000 people that were baptized and our ward frequency is only roughly a little over 100. our goal is 150. there is a lot of work to do here. Lots of inactives, and lots of investigators. Sometimes its overwhelming, thinking of all the work to do, but we are taking it one bite at a time.

 

my new companion Elder Andrade

Week 17: Algeria & Diarrhea

To start off i will translate the title of my email. Alegria is portuguese for joy/happiness. and i believe everyone knows what diarrhea is. This week a lot of things happened that brought me joy and a few other things happened that didnt bring joy, to my stomach.

General conference was great even though i listened to it in portuguese. afterwards i downloaded it in english to listen to at home. i learned a lot from conferece and i cant wait until i get this ensign to study the words of our prophet and apostles more.  This week we watched the movie´´Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration´´ with an investigator. It was really good and he said he really liked it, that he will download it himself and watch it again. I felt the Spirit testify to me that this is all true. that Joseph Smith was a prophet and he really translated the Book of Mormon throught the power of God. All that he went through testifies of the truth of this gospel. If any of you havent seen this movie, i encourage you to watch it. it is only 1 hour and 1 minute and worth it.

This week our lunch fell through on multiple days, leaving us to cook for ourselves. i made the mistake of buying a frozen pizza and eating that one day for lunch. the other days i just made spaghetti, french fries, apples and peanut butter. that was better, but i think the pizza made me sick.
Other than that my week was great. we have been having a hard time getting our investigators to progress

Cristina is still smoking her tobacco and we need to get permission from Carlos´s parents for him to be baptized. they think it is too early for him to be baptized. but we know he is ready.

I love this work and i know that the Savior loves every one and is there with open arms ready for them to accept Him. I know we all have the opportunity to repent and start new with what ever we need to. i love this gospel and love seeing it change people´s lives!

Have a great week everyone :)

-Elder Hilton

Let the ping pong battle begin!!!

Elder Sousa and I

Packages from home!!!

Good times

Pretty beaches

Go Brasil!

Dinner

Make shift rain ponchos

Week 15: Speedy week

This week literally flew by. i feel like it was just pday 2 days ago! i guess that is a good thing :)

MONDAY: was a normal pday. we emailed  and visited Gloria and Mateus, then planned for tuesday. we didnt do anything fun or special. hopefully next pday is better.

TUESDAY:We had lunch with Genilds today. It was really good as usual. After we picked up Ananda and Daniel to work with us today. We stopped at Cristina´s but she wasnt home, but that one old guy who is always sitting outside in front of his place was there so we talked to him. His name is Ternolino. We tryed to teach him the Restoration but it didnt go so well. He would always interrupt us and wouldnt stop talking. He still believes that Christ didnt die on the cross. he also said lots of other funny things such as ´´God wrote the scriptures and only the poor people are saved in heaven. He was funny but pretty annoying because he wouldnt let us teach. he just wanted to argue. We eventually gave up and my companion said, ´´maybe some day some other elders will pass by and finish this lesson´´ After that we did street contacting and made some new investigators.

WEDNESDAY: We had an amazing lunch today! it was a longer walk but 100 % worth it. The member wasnt even there, we ate with her brother who is from Salvador. We took lots of pictures inside and outside the house because it was a super nice place! i was shocked and wanted really badly to jump in their pool. haha

THURSDAY: We worked with Emillie and Samuel. Samuel had some friends over when we picked him up so they tagged along with us. There was 6 of us total, and we split up´and made lots of contacts. it was lots of fun and a lot more enjoyable with all of us. After we dropped everyone off we went to the church to teach Carlos.

FRIDAY: Elder J. Sousa recieved an unexpected phonecall that changed our plans for the day. he had to go to a different part of the city for some baptismal interviews and i stayed back and worked with Samuel and Gabriel (two youth from our ward). it was lots of fun. we walked to a bumch of people´s houses to try and find them and set up dates to return and teach but no one was in their homes. At 7:00 my companion returned and we taught Carlos again at the church. he is very close to baptism and has a date for the 8th of next month to be baptized.

SATURDAY: It turned out to be a pretty unproductive day. no body was home and no one was answering our calls. We taught Cristina the Book of Mormon and invited her to church. her response was ´´i will see if i can make it´´ she realy sounded like she would come.

SUNDAY: We have 5 investigators in church! and one of them was Cristina!! that was surprising because the last 2 times we had invited her she said that she would come with certainty but never came. and this week when we invited her yesterday she sounded like she wouldnt come, but she came! and she liked it a lot. she said she loved that she was recieved so warmly and lots of people talked to her. we met with her after church in the evening. She told us she got an answer to her prayers and she was feeling really good. She told us for the first time in a long time she didnt take all her various medicines because she was feeling so good, and she didnt feel as depressed, etc. We taught the word of wisdom and i took her coffee and tobacco and threw it away after we left. She committed to being baptized the 8th of October, the same day as Carlos. We are going to have 2 baptisms in one week!!! Woohoo! miracles happened this week. Also today at church i met an awesome couple who are traveling the world together. they showed me a map on their cellphone of the world and it had points of everywhere they have been. i was blown away with how many countries they have been to. they have their own youtube channel that you can check out. its,  youtube.com/jonandeva   Jonathan Mahdney and Eva Mahdney. Jonathan is from Canada and did a study abroad type thing through BYU and studyed in Moscow Russia where he met his wife on a train. 

we saw them walk out of the house below ours and we were suprised and thought possibly they were americans.  that was a few days ago. but then yesterday they were at church so i talked to them and then since they were leaving the next morning i talked to them for about an hour that night. they are really cool! He served his mission in the Ukraine

For a spiritual thought, i would like to share a quote from Robert D. Hales. 

´´The fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ brings great comfort in stressful times of mortality. It brings light where there is darkness and a calming influence where there is turmoil. It gives eternal hope when there is mortal despair. It is more than just beautiful doctrine. It is a reality in our lives that if we can be obedient and obtain the eternal rewards that God grants us, if we will draw nigh unto Him and embrace the eternal doctrine, we will be blessed.´´ and Thomas S. Monson once said, ´´ There is no fog so dense, no night so dark, no gale so strong, no mariner so lost but what the lighthouse of the Lord can rescue. It beckons through the storms of life.´´ 

    And we should always remember to find joy in the journey. We should remember that even with such a solemn mission given to him, the Savior found delight in living; he enjoyed people and told his disciples to ´´be of good cheer´´, He said that we should be as thrilled with the Gospel as one who had found a shiny pearl of great price, right on their own doorstep. I know this gospel is true and it really blesses families.

Have a great week everyone! :)

An awesome lunch!!!!!!!!!!!!  This house was sooooo nice!

Coconut yummm!!!

the bugs here at night love my american blood. You should see my arms, and other leg! 

My companion went to a different part of the city for a baptismal interview. I worked all day with some awesome youth!

We walked past a beautiful beach... there is a "resort" with tennis courts!!!!  I was freaking out hahaha