January 13th letter

Hi family,

Well, this week was fair. I'm still liking Elder Papenfuss a lot. His name is German by the way.

So, the situation here is that I am zone leader with Elder Miranda who is in Ouro Verde (another ward that shares the same chapel, and we share the same house). It's a little easier because we are in the same house. I am just now starting to understand the whole responsibility of being a mission zone leader. I think the hardest part of it all is knowing exactly what it is that the zone needs. Like, in what do they need to be trained? It's hard because we can't spend all day, every day in their areas. Which got me thinking...how is it that our Prophet determines what needs to be taught in general conference? I'm curious if any church leaders have made comments about this.

Thank you for looking up my previous questions and please keep me in your prayers! Unfortunately, my time has already ran out on the computer...I spent a bit of time making a ward list. We're gonna visit all the ward member's houses and see about getting some folks back to church! Thank you also for telling me how everyone is doing!

Elder Bradford

January 8th letter

Hello guys!!!!!

AJ and Elder Papenfuss

I am training a missionary again...my little son is Elder Papenfuss. He's from Bountiful, Utah. He has already served 6 months in the Boston mission. He speaks Portuguese real well and is pumped to work. He talks with literally everyone so he can to practice the language. I'm excited to work with him! I'm still here in the Bandeirantes Ward in Southwest Campinas.

So, our bishop here is going to take a trip to... guess where...Washington state!!! So I'm going to send a package with him to take to you! I'll send some English books that I don't want anymore as well as some Guaraná and Paçoca.

And, I was thinking about coming back here to Brasil to work during the World Cup...I'm thinking they'll be begging for people who speak English and Portuguese fluently to help with the tourists...maybe?

I love you guys soooo much! Keep praying for me! Keep reading the Book of Mormon!!
Elder Bradford

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A LOST MAN!

A DANGEROUS CROSSING!

A RANDOM HORSE!!

A LOVELY CLOUD!!

A POWERFUL MISSIONARY ZONE!!!

Christmas 2013 pictures

HELLO,

So today I'm just gonna send pictures! Yeah! Christmas was pretty awesome!

This was taken during our Skype call with AJ on Christmas Day

Mom, my missionary companions and I loved the little Christmas stockings...thank you so much for sending them!

Jesus soda

Christmas lights!

For our Christmas lunch we ate fried chicken with Tabasco - yeah nothing like tradition!

Our Christmas feast

On Christmas, as we went to our appointments, we handed out kites to the kids. Man they get really excited. They were literally on us like wolves to a...dead...thing. We made the mistake of going to a football field in the end and trying to give out only one, but as soon as the other kids saw they came running in and grabbing at the bag and before we knew it we were robbed by a bunch of 9 year olds :-)

Us in front of a little nativity at the rodoviária [bus station]

The bottom row reads "I am proud to be Brazilian"

My missionary companions with some cool church members in the area I'm serving

We nabbed the following two pics from the Campinas Mission Facebook page:

Entire Campinas mission together for a Christmas party.  AJ is four rows back, 7th from the left.
Tanner Nelson (also from our church ward) is four rows behind AJ, just a little to the right.

December 16th letter

Hello family!

Gabrielly and her grandmother Clarice

So this week was kind of like the week before, we weren't able to enter into many new houses, very little productivity and that kinda stuff. I did include a picture of our baptism we had this past week.

We had a ward Christmas activity on Saturday, like this huge barbeque. It was pretty sweet and some church members brought their friends!! That's like the best thing ever, when members bring their friends to a ward activity or to church.

I gave a talk in church yesterday about persevering until the end. I used a story from a church manual, it's like an institute class called Leadership Principles or Principles of Leadership. Man it's an awesome manual...you guys should try to find it and study it. I think I will use it my entire life.

Well, I'm going to have to apologize for this being short [again] but I spent a good deal of time translating Dad's talk he sent me on a mission experience in Zimbabwe. I'm going to share it with my mission zone. Have a great week! I love you guys so much! Thank you so much for the package! I will likely pick it up tomorrow at the mission Christmas activity!

Elder Bradford

December 9th letter

Hello everyone!

AJ with Elder Cox at the Campinas Temple
(he's in AJ's mission zone and
finishes his mission in the next week)

Sorry, but today the LAN house [internet cafe] decided to close up early, so I don't have time to write a whole lot. This week was kind of...ehhh. We had a bunch of meetings and didn't have a lot of time for our regular missionary work, so we're continuing from the same page as where we started last week. We were able to participate in a Cantata (singing thing) at the Campinas temple this past Saturday, so I included a few pictures from that.

We haven't had much success recently in teaching, and same for the mission zone. Sometimes I feel like the blind leading the blind. Christiane [mentioned in last week's letter] had promised to attend church and visit the temple, but didn't end up doing either.  This was obviously disappointing, but this week we'll  pass by her place...we want to visit since she won't be able to attend church for a month because of her work schedule...and her son won't attend without her because he's very shy.

So that's it for this week. Thank you for all the emails! I love you all and please keep up the emails and love and prayers!

Elder Bradford

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The sister in front (Sister Aspítia) has only two days left on her mission and the other missionary (Elder Brayden)
has the same time remaining as me, but since we actually have 3-1/2 months left, he rounded down.