First Week in Vinhedo

Alô!!

Thank you so much for the package! Man, I've missed peanut butter so much! I'm really excited to try the awesome brownies you sent me. Right now I'm boarding with 3 Brasileiros missionaries, and there gonna love the brownies. I'm also gonna try to trade the T-shirts you included.

Vinhedo, São Paulo

So I've been assigned to serve in the town of Vinhedo in the Vinhedo ward [Portuguese for vineyard], which is considered the rich area in the mission. Well, actually it was the rich area until the Novo Vinhedo area was recently opened. Also Elder Mazzagardi from the church Area Presidency lives here. He lives in the Novo Vinhedo ward. The other Elders went to have lunch with his son's family today (his son is the bishop). This last Sunday he came to church and we shook his hand and everything. He doesn't attend the ward here often because of travel.

Me and Elder Alencar

My companion is Elder Alencar, from Petrolina, Pernambuco in Brazil. Meu primeiro companheiro brasileiro! [My first Brazilian companion!] I'm already learning a lot more Portuguese and getting a better accent (or, losing my accent I should say). He's been just 3 months in the mission field.

So our pesquisadores! [the people we're teaching]. There's Bento, who is awesome. He understands the lessons pretty well and asks a lot of questions. He's excited to be baptized but has to stop smoking first. He used to smoke 10 cigarettes per day but this last week he got down to 2-3 per day, but now he's going back up to 4-5 per day. So today after P-day we're going to really give him a lot of encouragement (what will be that encouragement, I don't know because we've been working with him for some time now). We also have two families that are really progressing right now. One is Eurico and Simone, who have already been taught everything, already love the church, already received a testimony but they have to get married. That's the only thing preventing them from getting baptized. But were going to pass by their place tonight as well and see if they've received the documents they asked for so we can go to the cartório [registry or notary] and mark their wedding!! They are a super cool couple and have a daughter who is 12 years old who reminds me of Ellie.

The other family is Rafael and Fabiana. They are a little more hesitant to get married. Unfortunately, Rafael works Sundays so that makes things a little difficult. Please include these children of God in your prayers so that they can feel the Spirit prompting them to make the right choices.

So, I'm still learning my way around being the senior companion. I'm trying really hard to reach 100%...meaning, giving 100% effort for a whole day. I was reading the email from Elder (Addison) Reeves that you sent me, and he said that in that week he gave 100%. Not 99%, but 100%. And even though not everyone went to church, not everything went perfectly, he still felt good, he felt like he did his part. I'm jealous. I want to feel that way. I want to give 100%! It seems like I'm giving a good 85% or 90% and if I try to go further there comes the obstacles: stress, companion telling me to relax, mis-communication, my perfectionism, etc. Even though I don't feel like I'm giving 100%, I can see the development that I'm passing through. I was thinking one day as we were walking to lunch, that really the Atonement can be applied instantly in my life. It can be applied every second. Or it can be applied only every Sunday when I go to take to sacrament. When I apply the atonement I don't have to worry or be preoccupied about my past mistakes or what I was like in the past, I just decide what I need to do and from that moment try my best to do it. If I made a mistake in a lesson, I don't have to be thinking about it the whole rest of the day, instead I can repent, correct the problem, and move forward, seeking to do better next time. I decide whether I want to carry that burden of guilt with me the rest of the day, or whether I want to lay it at the feet of Christ and keep going. I turn myself into a new person every time apply the Atonement. People talk about some great experience that changed their life and we think that it's only those kind of things that can change our life. But in reality we can change our life every day, every second, just by refusing to stay stuck in our previous habits or mistakes. Our life doesn't change until we change it. And it will change as fast as we change it. Those were some of my thoughts that I thought about this last week, and actually this last month. I hope you can make some sense of them :).

Okay, só isso mesmo para esta semana. Eu amo vocês! Tenham uma ótima semana! [that's it for this week. I love you! Have a great week!]

Elder Breu Forte

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The view from our front door.

Some pics of Jundiaí, while we were passing through there for a zone meeting [note the Burger King near the bottom]

 I think this was from Carnival (last week). 

Final Week in Limeira

ALÔ MEUS QUERIDOS,

So both myself and Elder Mora are being transferred to a new area! Yeah! Right now I'm having a bit of stress because we have to update the Livro de Área [book about the area] and get everything organized so that when the new Elders come in they won't be lost without any idea what to do. Also, we both have to pack! So I have very little time to write today. I don't know where I'm off to yet, nor Elder Mora.

Let me just respond to your perguntas [questions]. I think the change in the style of teaching for the Sunday School for youth is awesome. I remember vividly some teachers who just followed through the manual during the lesson, and others who actually taught and focused on our spiritual growth, and what a difference it makes! I paid much more attention to those who tried to teach the gospel like the Savior taught. I think it's also good with the new program it will be impossible to teach without having prepared before, which will help the teacher and students learn together.

Also, Elder Mora says hi. He wants to say "ustedes crearon un excelente hijo!" [Spanish: you created a great son!] No, that's what he said, I didn't make it up. What, are you to doubt your own son!?!?!

[Responding to a question about attending baptisms after a transfer] I think on occasion the Mission President would let missionaries attend baptisms in other areas, but I don't think I've ever heard of this actually happening, so I don't know. I've heard that he lets missionaries attend marriage sealings of families they have taught.

Also, I did receive the letter in the mail with the signatures of the members in Harmony ward. Tá joia então. Eu vou começar escrever uma cartinha para a ala de harmonia! [Yeah, a gem. I'll start writing a short letter back to Harmony Ward!]

Okay, that's all I have time to write! Hopefully I'll have a bunch of stuff to write to you next week! Tchau Tchau! EU VOS AMO MUITO!! [Bye, bye! I love you a lot!]

Elder Bradford

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Today we ate at a member's house (José e Cláudia), homemade pizza! It was awesome.

Zona Rio Claro! [Missionaries in the Rio Claro zone...being serious as usual for a photo]

Bus terminal in Limeira

Graffitti around Limeira

February 4th letter

Hello my family!

Baptism of Bárbara

So everything worked out with Bárbara! She was baptized yesterday. It was a very special baptism. Especially since we've been working with her for more than 3 months. Like I said in the last email, it's quite a miracle that she was baptized. A little after the first day that Elder Mora and Elder Oliveira Souza met her while tracting, she went and visited the temple in Campinas. She had a spiritual experience there, and it was so powerful that she declared in that moment to the missionaries that she would be baptized in this church - even after 80 years in the Catholic church. And for 3 months we've helped her learn about the Gospel and the Plan of Salvation. At one point about a month ago she told us that we didn't need to pass by anymore because she was going to stay in her church. We got real discouraged but felt like we needed to pass by, seeing how she was doing, talking with her, and mentioning baptism if she was ready. I'm so thankful that she decided to put her faith in God and take this step. Bárbara chose Elder Mora to baptize her, and he was like super excited, super pumped during the whole day. I was happy, but I tend to get really stressed out during baptism Sunday, making sure everything is ready for the baptism and that the members know what to do. But it all turned out good.

Thank you for the comments...I liked reading about a bit of your experience on your mission Dad. It's actually comforting to know that even you weren't a perfect missionary! :D I've figured out something recently. I still get on my own case a LOT when I make a mistake or it seems to me like I'm not doing my best, not giving 100%. I think its because 1) I'm still a perfectionist and 2) over my 19 years as a prospective missionary I was pretty much like, I'm going to serve a mission and I'm going to be a perfect servant of the Lord, giving my all, 100% of the time. But then I get here and I learn that it's harder than I thought and I feel disappointed and discouraged that I'm not that perfect missionary I always intended to be. But it's a great thing that we have the Atonement, and we don't have to be perfect to make God proud. This is what I'm still learning.

Responding to your questions - Our mission hasn't really been affected by the lower-age requirement for missionaries...yet. We'll have our transfer this coming week and perhaps we'll get more Sisters from the MTC. Actually, we have very few Sisters now that I think about it. In the past every single Zone except for Botucatu had at least one pair of Sisters, but in our last zone with Botucatu, Piracicaba and Rio Claro there were no Sisters.

Ok thats all I have time to write!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Uma ótima semana para vocês! [have a great week]
Elder Bradford

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Another example of Pannettone. This one we got was pretty much half bread and half chocolate cream.

Ursinho Puff [Winnie the Pooh]

January 28th (birthday) letter

Alô família,

Yeah, now I'm 20! I can't believe it. It didn't really hit me until Dad mentioned "no more teenage years" in his letter. I felt like, holy smokes - that part of my life is already gone. Já era! [roughly translates to 'It's gone/It's over']. It's all serious business from here on out, right?

Well, this week was also tough. We had our reunião de distrito [district meeting] again, and yet another week we happily reported that we would have miracles in the coming week (code for 'we have no one to baptize'). After the reunião I was like, it's my birthday this Sunday! We need to baptize someone this Sunday! So we went through our area book, made a list of people who've been previously taught and had already gone to church, but for some reason the missionaries stopped teaching them. We passed by each one, and some we couldn't find at home, the rest didn't have any interest. We did talk to this lady named B, who Elder Mora and Elder Oliveira Souza had taught. We've been teaching her for a while, but in terms of baptism she was always kind of eeeeeehhhh não sei [I don't know]. She's Catholic and after 80 years she's understandably having difficulty letting go of some things from her life in the church - it's a miracle she's even considering changing religion. There are a lot of old folk in Brasil with the attitude 'I was born Catholic, and I'll die Catholic.' But B is quite different. She agreed to be baptized this next Sunday! So here's hoping that next week I can send you a picture of her baptism!

So, we were working hard this week, nothing was happening, we spent 5 hours with a member making visits on Saturday, we only entered in 2 homes, pretty much all of our planned visits fell through. On Sunday we had no pesquisador [people we're teaching] at church. I was like, wow this birthday stunk. I was feeling pretty down on myself. Then later that day we went with some church members to visit those we haven't seen for some time. No one was home. Finally, I looked in my planner and remembered about a reference we got from the other missionaries in Limeira; a lady whose house was in the same neighborhood we were in. So, we get there and the lady wasn't there.  Her husband answered the door and he had no interest, but we were with this member who is really good with words and somehow we got invited into his house. We began to talk about family and he told us that he has had some deaths in the family. We were able to bear testimony that families can be together forever. In the meantime, their son had gone to look for his mom (the lady we were trying to meet with) and call her home so she could hear our message.  They returned and we talked with her, and she indicated she'd been going to our church many years ago when she lived in another part of Limeira.  Since she moved she didn't know of a church building that was close by. While going to church those years ago, she never talked with the missionaries, but she had a testimony about the church and everything. She received a Livro de Mórmon [Book of Mormon] but had given it to her brother and never saw it again. So she was pretty prepared to hear our message! We taught about eternal families and linked it with authority from God and linked that with Joseph Smith and the Restauração [gospel restoration]. We have the entire family scheduled for baptism on the 9th of February! That means they'd be baptized and confirmed before the next missionary area transfers! God gave us a present - a family who's waiting for us to teach them the gospel and show them the way to eternal life.*

Afterwards, I was like, maybe this was a good birthday after all. I said this to Elder Mora and he told me that he had prayed that morning for a miracle. He asked God that he could give us a miracle so that I could have a good birthday. That meant a lot to me. I felt like hugging him, but it wasn't really that kind of brotherly love moment, so I just thanked him. Today we did pancakes with a church member, but everyone was kind of running around doing their own thing so it didn't really work out to take pictures. But it turned out pretty good.

About Limeira, yeah it's just us four missionaries here. They're thinking about creating another church branch, but it's not official yet. If so, we might get another pair of missionaries in the city, which I think would be really cool. Limeira's pretty modernized - like most of the cities here close to São Paulo. It also depends if you live near downtown or out in the boonies (unlike the US, the neighborhoods close to downtown are where some of the richer people live. The ghettos are the neighborhoods farthest from the downtown usually)

Anyway, time to go - take care.
Elder Bradford

*[We continued teaching this family until I left. The only hold up for the woman (Fernanda) was her addiction to smoking. We made goals with her but she didn't quit. She was so ashamed of it that on our last day in the area when we went to her house to say good-bye before we moved to another city, she was smoking at the moment was taken by surprise with our visit, and she actually hid behind a car when we got to her house. Her son was like, 'She's right over there behind the car.' Then she hurried off and sped around the corner. We tried to follow her but we lost her. We only walked because I thought it would have been strange to run after her, but now I regret that. A lot. Fortunately the other missionaries who came the next day eventually found her. I thought we had left absolutely nothing out of the Area Book (record of all the people we teach) but the other missionaries later told me that Fernanda wasn't there! They only found out about her because one of the members that had gone with us to her house had asked them about her, and of course they had no idea who she was. So he took them to her house. Her husband continued uninterested, however Fernanda ended up getting baptized a few weeks later! -AJ]

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On Sunday night some church members did a little surprise party for my birthday (and the birthday of a Irmã [Sister] in the ward, whose birthday is the same day!). Yeah, cake with M&Ms! In front there's little sweets called brigadeiro (the dark ones) and beijinho (the white ones).

The sister in the ward, who has the same birthday as me, helps blow out the candle. I asked her how old she was turning and she said "No Brasil, você não faz essa pergunta" [In Brazil, you don't ask that question!]

January 21st letter

Alô familiazinha! [Hello family]

So I can't believe that I'm almost 20 years old already! I have grown a lot this last year for sure. But I still have a lot to change and I've identified what I need to change too. It seems like forever ago that I turned 12 years old. I don't even remember a lot about being a deacon.

I'm not sure yet what I want to do for my birthday. I probably won't do anything different on Sunday [AJ's birthday is the 27th]. Since Monday is Preparation day, I was thinking about doing a pancake breakfast at this members house who lives real close to us and already helped out with a few home maintenance things. That will be cool.

So this last week we worked a lot. But we had very few results. I've been asking God in my prayers to make me a little more humble, and well, he's doing his part! We had the lowest number of lessons I've ever had in my mission. By this I've learned what we need to do to work better. I made a suggestion to Elder Mora about what we should do, and he was like, yeah that's what I told you from the beginning. And I asked, why haven't you done it then? And he said, because I'm following you since you're the senior companion. Later that night I felt like I should ask him "Do you feel like I listen to you?". And he immediately responded, no. We got to talking and resolved some of our differences. He has no fear in giving criticism and I have a tendency to defend myself when people criticize me. So there you have a bad combination. Like I told my District Leader, I got to thinking, wow this guy likes to pick at every mistake I make. And he got to thinking, wow this guy doesn't listen to a word I say. But we've talked it over several times, and I think we're finally understanding each other better as a companionship.

We had a Multi-Zone Conference this last week. Our Zone Leaders led a discussion about resolving problems in our companionships. We all read from 1 Nephi when it talks about Nephi breaking his bow. It's interesting to note that everything is fine and dandy, Laman and Lemuel are even humbled before the Lord, UNTIL the difficulty came and then everyone got angry. President Perrotti made a comment, he said that sometimes companions observe a mistake that the other companion makes and they think "Seu arco quebrou, problema seu!" [Your bow broke, your problem]. This is a problem that I had (and still have sometimes). As a junior companion I would observe mistakes that WE made and I'd think, well he's the senior, I don't have a part in this. But everything has to work if we're to be united. It's from this that we'll gain the power that we need to have results in our work.

So nothing's progressed with João. We could tell that he (and his family) didn't want us to pass by to teach anymore. It's really saddening. But like you guys said, we did our part, we presented the gospel and our teachings, and its up to them to decide. The work is going a bit slow. We only have a few people that have interest in what we're teaching them. We found this guy who's pretty much changing his life from black to white from what he's told us. He also lives super close to the church building! Unfortunately, it didn't work out for him to go to church this last week, but we'll pass by this week and teach some more.

Have an awesome week!
Elder Bradford

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Planejamento [planner] before and after a missionary area transfer

Our church building in Limeira

Limeira!!!!

The missionaries serving in Área Limeira

So we had a rat in our house, and then we used poison, and then it died!!!!!