Final week in Paulínia (18-month mark)

Hi family,

Holy cow dad, that is so cool that you met Elder Dube while serving your mission!! [AJ is referring to his dad meeting a young Eddie Dube in the town of Kwekwe, Zimbabwe in 1986. Edward Dube, a church leader in the 1st Quorum of the Seventy since April, addressed church members during the Saturday morning session of general conference]. I've never even thought about the fact that someone that I've met here could end up being in the general leadership of the church or someone of importance. Wow that blew my mind!! I showed this to my companion and he told me his favorite talk of the whole conference was of Elder Dube. Man I'm going to print the photo you sent and show it to people...hey my dad met this guy on his mission!

About being the new 'Presidente da Soc Soc' [AJ responds to his mom being called as the new Relief Society president in our church ward], as a missionary I can suggest that you work closely with the Elders. Meaning: check up with them every once in a while to see if the dinners are going okay (the Elders will (probably) never call you to say the dinners aren't happening, they won't want to bother you). Well, actually I don't even know if in the US the Relief Society has a part in the meals with missionaries...here our lunches are run by the RS. Tell the women of the ward that the Elders are awesome and every once in a while have someone drop off a snack at their apartment. Encourage the women to preach the gospel with their friends and family. Make sure the RS does their part of the Ward Mission Plan. Make sure that the women do their Visiting Teaching visits. Hehehehe, so you'll already have a lot on your plate besides all of this, but some things to consider!!!

HEY! I almost forgot! I was transferred! I don't know where! I will know tomorrow! Yeah this week was groovy and conference was cool! I love you guys!!! Thanks for the emails, love and prayers! Thank you also for sending the packages!!!

Elder Bradford

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Our zone of missionaries at Pres. Martin's house (stake president)

The missionaries in my mission zone

September 30th letter

Hello family,

So today we're at the house of the Martins again [pics are with August 19th letter], so that means I'm using this iPad that keeps turning my English into Portuguese...it's very hard to write. This week was unproductive. Tiago, someone that we've been teaching, decided against being baptized. This mission zone is kinda dead right now. I'm not sure what exactly to do, but we're going to work hard and have a good mission district meeting tomorrow.

Yeah...about my smile in recent pictures, hahahahaha. I'm still happy, I assure you. My only worries right now are that I learn all that I need to in my remaining 6 months and help improve the work in our zone. But I'm still happy. I think you guys said this because those last few photos were not very good. Yes, I'm getting tired...mentally and physically. But I'm not saying this to say, "whoa, I've worked soooooo hard look at me".  I still have a lot to do and learn. I'm still excited and happy and stuff, but the work is still super tough. But thank you for noticing and worrying about me!

Thank you for your prayers! Have a good week full of learning!
Elder Bradford

September 23rd letter

Hello family,

Today I don't have a lot of time to write because the internet here is really bad.

Ward mission leader, Elder Henriques, Maikon, and AJ

This rapaz [young man] named Maikon was baptized yesterday. He was actually baptized four months ago, but he was never confirmed and after that he stopped going to church and started going to parties and stuff and using drugs, but he stopped now and he's doing fine. We were actually planning to baptize Christians' brother Tiago (Christian was baptized last week) on Sunday morning (the Bishop likes to baptize before church in order to do the confirmation on the same day). We filled the baptismal font and everything and were heating the water when Tiago's mom called us saying that he didn't want to get baptized at this time, so we were pretty disappointed. However, we knew that Maikon could still get baptized - two weeks ago he had come to church, but there wasn't time to fill the font and do his baptism. He was out of town last week and he had told us he would be baptized yesterday, so we left the font full of water and went with our Ward mission leader to his house. He was sitting at the bus stop with his brother (who is a member) and we picked them up and brought them to church. We brought Maikon to the baptismal font and said "look, it's already full...let's get baptized then?" The Ward mission leader already volunteered to do the baptism and Elder Henriques was there and had a baptismal suit about Maikon's size, so he was like okay fine. He changed clothing, we did the interview and got the President's permission (everything by the book) and baptized him. We did it during Sunday School and pulled in the Gospel Principles class with this huge family of 9 that we are teaching, and almost all of them watched the baptism so it was pretty cool.

I was thinking about three things that any person needs to do related to missionary work. I see that I need to develop these three things to be a better missionary: Charity, Testimony, and Courage. Let's suppose that I know Joe. If I have Charity, I will desire the best for Joe. If I have Testimony, I will desire that Joe can live the gospel and be a member, because I know this will be the best for him. If I have Courage/Faith, I will do things so that he can come to embrace the gospel and be a member, because I have Courage/Faith that through my actions, he can come to be a member and live the gospel, thereby entering in the pathway best for his eternal life.

So how do we gain these three things? Mormon teaches us that we need to pray and ask God for Charity with all the energy of our heart. Moroni teaches us that to gain a testimony we need to pray and ask God for responses to our questions. I'm not sure who taught this, but we also know that Faith is a gift from God that is acquired through prayer. Interesting huh? maybe you guys have some more insights on this...

Sorry for such a short email, but unfortunately my repentance in this is incomplete because my email next week will probably be much shorter. Thank you for the prayers and e-mails. I pray for you guys every day. I love you all very much!

Elder Bradford

September 16th letter

AJ, Christian, and  Elder Henriques

OKAY, so this week we had a baptism! It was a kid named Christian, who has been going to church for a long time but didn't want to be baptized until two weeks ago. We got in contact with him this last week, and he was baptized!

So there's really not a lot to write this week. I'm doing fine. Elder Henriques and I did a church fireside yesterday about missionary work, and about 30 members came. We did practices with them about how to share the church materials with their friends. The fireside was OK, but it could have been better. The ward mission leader is good, but he spent about an hour talking and the projector didn't work so everyone had to watch the videos we prepared on the little laptop he brought. But it wasn't horrible.

This week we met with a lot of members and all of a sudden they are passing along to us references of people to teach. I don't know if God is blessing our ward or if we did something that made the members want to give references, but whatever happened I'm very grateful. I've learned the best way to get references from members is to gain their trust and be an obedient, spiritual missionary, as well as be a cool, social person. No member will send boring or annoying missionaries to teach the gospel to their best friends.

OKAY have a grrrrrrrreat week!!!
Elder Bradford

A picture of me and Elder Riquerme on Da Alegria road [translates to 'Joy' road]

September 9th letter

Hey people!

Me and Elder Henriques

So today I got assigned a new missionary companion! I'm now with Elder Henriques (pronounced ang-HEE-kees) from Paraíba in Brazil. He's cool.

I don't have a lot of time to write today because I'm going to make a printout for our zone meeting tomorrow. Also, we're going to play Frisbee at this park - it's going to be sweet.  About sending frisbees, I'm wanting one and two other Brasilian missionaries also want one because frisbees here in Brazil are expensive and hard to find.

Haha, I liked the comic strip you included in your email, Dad! [see below] I can't remember this has ever happened to me. It could be that I am ugly. Or I think because many Brasilians know that we speak and understand Portuguese. Many times I've heard people talking about us but it's always kind of secret like as if we weren't able to hear. Usually when this has happened it's people making fun of our accent or complaining about how we (or the Jehovah's Witnesses or Seventh-day Adventists, because we're often confused for them) are annoying or have weird beliefs.

So I'm doing fine. I'm starting to jump rope every morning and night, because I don't generally do exercises in the morning and I need to start doing them! I'm still a lil chubby! Okay that's all for this week!! Tchau!! I love you guys. Keep those prayers going! Please pray that I can know how to help our zone have more success and baptisms!!

Elder Bradford

Comic included in email to AJ this past week