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.

December 4th letter

HELLOOO!!O!O!O!!O!!!

So I have little time again...but I will tell a cool experience.

We got a referral to teach someone about two weeks ago; her name is Christiane. We weren't able to get to her house immediately and had to go a few days later. When we got there she said that she'd been praying and praying every day that we would go by there. We talked with her and met her son, Vitor, who's had some problems with drugs. We talked with them both and taught how they can apply the atonement of Jesus in their lives. I've found as a missionary you end up giving a lot of family counsel!

So, we later took them to a family home evening and it was cool, and we returned there yesterday with some church members. The lesson ended up being a conversation between her and one of the members, but that's no problem because that's what we want anyways. We decided to leave a small thought at the end and I talked about daily prayer and scripture study. We invited them to read everyday. Then I started to explain about how they could start reading the Bible, and Elder Lierley asked them if they had a Book of Mormon. She said "no, I don't". He asked, "do you want one?" She said "yes". It was kind of funny because we hadn't yet talked about the Book of Mormon. So I took out a Book of Mormon from my bag and briefly explained about it and I promised her that if she read and prayed about it she could know that the book is true.

Christiane then interrupted and said, "but I already know that this book is true". And I was like, uh... Sometimes when we teach people they say the Book of Mormon is true simply because it talks about God and Jesus. So I doubted her and I asked, "what do you mean?" And she said, "I had a dream that I would receive this book". She explained with tears in her eyes that she dreamed that someone gave her a book, and not just any book, but a special book...and that she hugged the book and said I will love reading this. Then she hugged the Book of Mormon and we promised her blessings for having accepted it and recognizing the hand of God in her life. She's going to church this Sunday with her son and we're planning to take her to the Campinas temple on Saturday! I'm sooo excited to be teaching her! God indeed prepares people to hear the truth!!

HAVE a great week!
Elder Bradford

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Our recent visit to the Campinas temple

November 25th letter

Hey family, yeah my time is already up!!! hehe, I only have time to write a little here.

This week was good, we had two baptisms yesterday. Elder Tiago took the pictures and he hasn't sent them to me yet so I will send then next week. This week I'm having Elder Lierley act as Senior companion, to help with his training. Hehe it will be cool!

Have an awesome week! I will write more next week!
Elder Bradford