Elder Xavier Stilson - 11-11-13

Elder Xavier Stilson - I guarantee Bishop Wood will love this picture!

 

BOM DIA!!! Well I was transferred!!  I am in Vilha Velha! I am in an area called Cobilândia! I absolutely love this  area and the people here are great!!! The area is HUGE!!! We are in a trio as  well. I’m with Elder Crapo again and Elder M. Silva.

This week was great and went by  SUPER fast! I love when that happens! That means that I am working and loving  what I am doing! Our area is flat except for 2 morros or hills. That is where  all the houses are at. Now at first I HATED walking them, but now I love it!!  They people here are amazing and so willing to accept the gospel!!

This week we had a BAPTISM!!!! Now  how baptisms work here is that you have a wedding in the morning then the  baptism at night ;) The man that was baptized is Iran! He is big like me and we  get along great! He is just awesome!!! His wife doesn’t want to be baptized  right now but we are really going to work on her testimony of the BOM!!!

We also have a new investigator  named Lorival. We met him this week and he is just a great 71 yr old guy! We  went and had some great lessons with him despite our ability to teach PERFECTLY  in our companionship. But he was waiting for us on Sunday when we went to pick  him up and he really liked church! So this Saturday we have a baptism as well!!  

We have also been knocking a lot of  doors this week as well. On the morros and have had some success! There are a  lot of Catholics and members of the Maranata church who are very happy where  they are at right now but we are working hard and I KNOW that we are going to  have great success in this area!

I have really figured out why the  last 2 transfers felt so slow and it was because of my ATTITUDE!!!! As a  missionary you can have an amazing experience during your 2 years of service or  it can go by SUPER slow. If you have the attitude that you are here to teach people  about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and you are ready to do whatever it takes.  Decide how you want things to be and then JUST DO IT!!! ONLY YOU have control  on what these 2 years are going to be, NOT your companion, NOT your mission  president, NOT ANYONE BUT YOU! JUST DO the Lords work and he will bless you and  you will ENJOY THE JOURNEY! I remember in Jd. da Penha when we would walk I  would basically just look down or in front of me and not think about anything  except who do we get to talk to next... Now I am really starting to enjoy the  people and what is around me and we all need to do this!

Like yesterday! I SAW FIREFLIES FOR  THE FIRST TIME!!! And I wouldn’t have seen them if I wasn’t looking around and  enjoying what I have been given!!!

I love you all! I hope everyone will  put me on their mailing list for Christmas.  I would love to hear from everyone.

Well I love you all and JUST DO  IT!!! Whatever it may be!!

 Love,

Elder  Stilson

Elder Stilson's new district

Recent Baptism

Elder Stilson's new area

 

Elder Almen Thorpe - Thanks for the great first email!

DAD and MOM!!!!! I miss you so much!!! Thank you for being such a good example for me over the past years of my life. Elder Christensen is such a funny kid, we hang out a lot during lunch, dinner and breakfast. We don't have p-days because we are only in the MTC for a week. Not this coming Tuesday but the next Tuesday I'll be going into the field. Right now we are all practicing how to invite investigators into the gospel. We do a lot of role play by going into different rooms with our companion and talking to the investigator. By the third visit they want us to ask them if they want to be baptized. My companion is cool, he's from Australia and is a convert and has been a member for four years. Neat story because he's the only LDS member in his family and he's dedicated to help them and is hoping this mission would change their minds about joining the church.
I've learned that I'm blessed to go to seminary and waking up at six in the morning everyday helped so much. Without that I don't know how I would do with this schedule of waking up. Thanks for pushing me to do the best and not giving up on me. I'm feeling like I've almost grasping the true meaning and lesson that my MTC teachers have been teaching me. One lesson I've learned so far while being in the MTC and I hear it from the teachers too and its been on me for awhile is that this work I'm doing is not all about me it's about the person I'm going to teach and the Lord. The words that will come out of my mouth are the words of the Lord. I have a testimony that Heavenly Father has a plan for all of us and He wants us to be happy as he was and that everybody has a purpose in life and those who don't know that purpose are needing help. That's where missionaries come in to help those who are lost. through us Heavenly Father can speak to the investigator.
Everybody here can feel that spirit everytime they go into class. It's amazing to hear from all the kids that have the some beliefs and same goal in life as I do. I have six roommates, two are Samoan, ones from Wellington, NZ, one is an American like me and the other is from Australia. We help each other and get alone so well, its like we are a family but who come from different places. Its amazing how he can get a group of kids from all over the world to work together to bring happiness to others. I've been writing in my journal and I know the elders and sisters names pretty well so far...you can say their names are very unquie. The elders and sisters here say that I have a funny accent which I don't blame them because it is kind of funkey if you think of it. I'm learning some Samoan language for fun from the elders. Also we have learned this beautiful song in the New Zealand language that everytime we sing it I start to cry. I'll have to show you the next time I email or something.
There's a sister here from Australia that asked me one day where I was from and I said from the Marshall Islands. She said her friend was going to serve a mission there. I was very excited that there are some people that go there. She said it was cool and actually meet some Marshallese. I also learned what the language was from another elder but.....I forgot it I'll get it next time. Most everybody here knows where and what the Marshall islands are.
This Thursday we will be going to the New Zealand temple in Hamilton. It's an hour drive from the MTC. They have been telling its a beautiful place and such a neat expereince. I'll make sure to take some pictures for you so that you can see them. I love being here even though some days are hards. Sometimes I get homesick and miss you guys a ton. I love you guys so much and you are in my prayers everynight. Love you mom and dad, I'll see you the next time I email you. It's great to hear the family is doing well.
from Elder Thorpe
p.s. My companion is shorter than me!!! Looks like im not the shortest one!!!

Elder Almen Thorpe - Elder Thorpe's First Letter

Elder Thorpe - Airport Security and Big Smiles!

 

 

Hey Dad and Mom,

I made it to New Zealand safely. The flight itself was very nice but long, all in the fun I guess. This is the best decision I've made in my whole life and loving every minute of it. I'm making sure to take a lot of pictures so I can show you guys once I get back home. At the airport I flew with six other missionaries. They all grew up in Utah and one is named Elder Christensen. He is good friends with our neighbors son Jake Kruitbosch. I still haven't gotten used to the Elders names yet because I'm still getting used to the fact that I'm away from home, so sorry if I don't tell you guys their last names right away. Sometime over the week I'll get their last names down.

 

 While waiting for our flight to go to LA, a couple of us walked around the airport and saw another group of missionaries with a lot of sisters that were going to Cambodia. We also had one girl in our group that flew with us to LA and New Zealand. On our arrival to New Zealand I couldn't stop thinking of the day when you guys will be coming down and seeing the beautiful site I saw while on the plane.

Our driver who picked us up is from New Zealand and Hawaii. According to him, the Mission President here is super nice and so is the Sister President. They asked were I was born and where I was from and I told them my whole background and their answer would be "ahhh that's cool".

They Love Love LOVEEEEEEEE Rugby down here!!!! If you don't play rugby then you watch it. One of my roommates played rugby, he's prettty cool and big. Did I tell you they love ruggby....well good, cause they do!! I told them I wrestled and they said that's unreal cause wrestling is a tougher sport than rugby.

 

In all everybody here is very friendly and nice, tomorrow will be another day. Thank you for everything you two have taught to me, shown me and said to me. Love you both and miss you guys a lot. Tell the family I said hi and that I made it here safely. Talk to you guys soon, love your son, Almen Ray Thorpe 

Sister Courtnee Wood - REAL HALLOWEEN

Sister Wood with the J. Family

Hello po once again!

It has been a crazy week that's for sure. So the typhoon that came through this week was actually the worst storm so far. Yeah I will admit, I was scared haha. BUT it did make for a good Halloween.

I hope you all had a very happy halloween as well. They celebrate it a lot different here in the Philippines and it is Nov. 1-2nd. They all go to the cemetary and eat and stuff. So it kind of made it hard to teach because everyone was so busy. To celebrate Halloween, we dressed up as much as we could, as you can see in the pictures.

Sister Brewer and Sister Wood - creepy costumes, haha

 

While we were hanging out, all the power went out. So that was great. Then that night, the typhoon hit. I woke up at 1 in the morning cause i was blazing hot, and could hear this loud noise. Well, I guess our roof was broken and it literally sounded like someone was shooting missles at our roof and it was going to cave any second. Okay I am probably exaggerating a little, but it was loud enough that we moved downstairs and slept. I got like 4 hours of sleep that night  because the noise was so loud. It was a real Halloween I am telling you. We did get to go out and teach the next day, but it sure did take its toll on all the trees and homes! 

This week is transfers/getting my new trainee!!! I am so dang excited. I will be staying in the same area. Which I am thrilled about. I love it so much. I know that I still have a lot to learn, and training will be such a humbling experience. I am going to need to work even harder to be able to have the Spirit with me always because I know for a fact that I won't be able to do it without the Lord's help. AND, Sister Brewer and I are temporary companions for the next few days. To say I am excited is an understatement. Basically doing missionary work with a best friend. I don't think it gets better than that. 

So I told you about the 2 families that we are teaching from clear out in La Paz. Well we have continued teaching them twice a week. They are so amazing. The amount of faith they have strengthens ours. This week both of them came to church. Wow. It was the greatest thing in the world. I just want the gospel for their families so bad. They have so many little problems, and I know that if they just fully accept it, they will be so blessed. Their lives will be forever changed. Coming to church though, is one step closer to our Savior though. So thrilled for them. Plus we had the 75 year old Nanay Batugal come to church for the 2nd week in a row. This woman is a saint. She WILL be baptized in 2 weeks. So we had 7 new investigators at church. Heavenly Father is blessing us so much. All of the members were so good with taking them in, and so it made our job so much easier. There has been a lot of progression in the ward. 

We taught another person with a monkey this week! Needless to say, I was getting extremely distracted. More than I already do haha. Thanks dad. 

We just got back from eating at a members house. She fed us mussles, squid, and prawns (shrimp). It was so dang good. 

Well, I am truly happy right now. I mean my whole life I always thought the only thing I would find joy in is soccer hahaha. But, missionary work, I hate to say it, beats out soccer! The Lord's work is the most important thing! I truly have a testimony of it. 

Have a good week everyone!

xoxox

- Sister Wood

 

Elder Christian Tanner - Another Day In Paradise

Elder Christian Tanner

Hejsan,

 Well it's Monday again. I dont have to much to write this week either. We have been really busy but there is nothing that just seems to stand out over the week that was imporant or a good story. Haha. I guess I'll just write a few things day by day.
 
So last Monday, as I was saying earlier, we had a hurricane warning. It got crazy outside. Remember when we were in Mexico last year and we had that crazy storm? yeah it was kind of like that. We were told to just stay inside and enjoy being indoors. Well, Bilodeau and I were at the church when it got really really bad. So we decided to go home. They stopped running the busses though! So we ended up walking home in a hurricane basically. Not not really. It was just really windy and rainy. As we were walking through town we could see a bunch of roof shingles on the ground broken and busted up. So we walked in the middle of the street instead. haha. Trees were fallen all over the ground. It was pretty crazy. When we got back home the sisters called us up and wanted to tell scary stories. We sat down with hot chocolate and turned off all the lights, but the scary stories didn't last long before it just turned into a spiritual story night. haha. We just told spiritual stories and it was really fun. The Mission President told everyone in Skåne to stay indoors.
 
Wednesday evening the Källbergs had a game night at the church. It was super fun too. Some members came and us 4 missionaries. Its kinda hard to explain the games, but we played Stop the Bus, had a paper plane throwing contest (which I won of course... not to brag or anything), and just a bunch of team games. Its good for the ward to have activities like this. It makes them closer to eachother, which is what they need here. Other than that we visited with Tony and did our time at the church.
 
Thursday, Halloween! You cant expect me to NOT dress up right? Well, for Halloween I was a piece of 3 hole punch paper. I just colored 3 black dots and put them on my shirt and wore I white tie. It was about as creative I could get and still be missionary appopriate. I'll send the picture if I can figure out how to get this chord to work. Today was by far the biggest day we had though. We had District Meeting in the morning. After that we met with Samuel one of our investigators. We taught him the Plan of Salvation I know he understood it. He is very intelligent and very mature about these things. I am not too sure what he thinks about it though. He shows no facial expression and doesn't really talk much. But he has been keeping his commitments of reading the Book of Mormon. He said he was on chapter 18 of 1 nephi. Thats more than 2 chapters a day he's been reading. Much more than I thought. He is a super cool guy and I really hope we can baptism him and then send him on a mission in 2 years or so (he's 17 right now). Right after that we met with Maria. We visit her everyweek. It wasnt anything too special. Just another visit. After that we went home teaching with Jose Alercon. And after we went home teaching we had to go visit Ingvor. We visit her every week too. I was so exhausted I fell asleep on the bus on the way to her place. I get so tired. Switching between lanugages all day is more exhuasting than one might think too. Sometimes I wake up and i'm just like "ugh.. how in the world am I going to get through today." but i hardly blink and there I am laying in bed again. It just goes by so fast and we're so busy i forget about sleep sometimes. I even forget we have to eat lunch. Study time is over and I am just like "okay, gotta go! we got stuff to do" and my comp reminds me we havent even had lunch yet.
 
Saturday was more of swedens halloween/memorial day. All the busses were on Sunday schedules and all the stores were closed. We got a text from Sister Newell this morning saying to make plans to go to a local cemetery and look at all the candle lights that everyone puts on the graves of loved ones. So we did. It was super cool too. All these candles were lit up all over the place. Really really neat i thought.
 
Sunday was Marias birthday. She hasn't even really had a cake. So thats why we made her a cake. After church on sunday we grabbed all the ward members and sang happy birthday to her and we all ate some cake. She was so happy, as you can imagine. It made me feel really good inside to see that we made someone so happy. She was so happy she didn't say a word the enitre time. Haha. It felt good. We also went with Bishop to go see Markus at the psych ward. Since we dont know what to do with him, we took bishop. But Markus was asleep so we didn't get to meet with him. But we will this coming week probably. Tony also had us and he invited a friend for us to talk to for dinner. So we had this amazing vietmaeze dish that I just loved. I ate 3 gigantic bowls. They were staring at me weird. I dont know how i put that away either. Haha. So after we ate we talked a little bit to Tonys friend. She is die hard catholic and didn't want to talk about it. We did our best and got a fantastic dinner.
 
Jag önskar er en underbart vecka. Saknar er alla.
 
din favorit,
 Äldste Tanner

Elder Zach Taylor - A Scary Halloween

Elder Taylor

 

 

This week was.. a little bit of everything. We´ve been talking with an 18 year old named Leonardo. He´s addicted to 4 different drugs, his house is in really bad shape and his family has basically abandoned him to live alone. He kept telling us he´s ready to follow whatever it is we have to teach him. He came to  church on Sunday, but left after the first meeting because he thought we were making fun of God. All that really happened was the teacher was giving us a demonstration of how not to give a blessing and it was funny, so we laughed.. it was kind of weird. His sister was being taught by the other elders in our area, and she got baptized Saturday. She told us she´s going to help him help her brother. He really just needs a lot of help. We talked to Juan on Friday, and he told us he´s going to move this week... so we won´t be able to teach him anymore. It´s kind of a sad deal, but I suppose we can´t do anything now. Halloween for me was a bit more scary than expected as well.. we went to visit this girl that we had been teaching for a couple weeks. We taught her about the Sabbath day.. but soon after realized she´s only interested in.....well not in the gospel. One of her friends came and they started saying really awful things. I didn´t understand most of it.. but my companion told me afterward more clearly. Her mom in the middle of it said did you know that my daughter wants to marry a North American?.. It was then that we decided we should leave pretty quickly... on the way out, the girl spanked me.. I didn´t have any idea what to do but just start walking faster.. so that´s what we did! So I guess you could say my Halloween was more scary than any I´ve experienced before.. haha. But it makes for a good story. Well, that´s pretty much all for this week.. talk to you all later!

Elder Taylor

Itaipu Dam. This is on the Parana River, on the border between Brazil and Paraguay. It is largest operating hydroelectric dam in the world.

Elder Kaden Barlow - "There Are Dogs Everywhere!"

Elder Barlow and Elder Arias

 

 

Hola Family!

 

It has definitely been quite a week and a half! It’s been really hard this week, but I know that it will get better. Probably what I miss most about Utah is Mom’s cooking, and music.

 

Coming out into the campo has been crazy!! There are dogs everywhere, and it is so noisy. We left the CCM at 6:30 that morning and I rode with the president to the mission home. We had a big training on the money and health stuff in Spanish, which I don´t think was a smart idea because a lot of the people in our group really didn´t speak Spanish haha. Anyway then I got my new comp and we took a taxi to our home.  My zone/stake is Villa Mella and the area is Santa Cruz. I think we are in the North East part of Santo Domingo.

 

We live there just the two of us. It’s actually pretty nice compared to some, we even have a shower and if we want, hot water, but I just shower in the cold because it is better. Our bedroom has air-conditioning too! Very sweet, but we only have one light in the main room so at night I wear my headlamp around. It’s very useful and I’m glad that I brought it. There are no spiders in our apartment (that I have seen haha) and the mosquitoes aren’t that bad either.  In fact, I don’t even use a net [to sleep under], and I have only been bit once or twice. There are a few cockroaches... one crawled over me in bed the first morning here.  Our apartment is nicer than most... some people have bucket showers and our power is only out 2 or 3 times a day ;) haha There is a member that lives above us but she doesn’t cook for us. She does take us to church.

 

For dinner we either eat out or cook rice... I prefer eating out because my comp thinks that he can cook... and he can’t... so I think I shall cook from now on ;) On the bright side I haven’t been sick yet... knock on wood.

 

Now about my comp. He is from Costa Rica and this is his last 5 weeks so actually I will be having two trainers. He doesn´t work hard and isn’t very obedient. He thinks that he can speak English but really it isn´t that great... I can understand his Spanish way better than his English. Not my favorite guy but like you said mom sometimes we have to learn patience. On the bright side I get lots of personal study time while he is sleeping and I have been enjoying Jesus the Christ. I have really missed Elder Foote the past week because he is a great missionary. He got a great trainer too... lucky.

 

Both of us are new to the area so we have been contacting a lot which I don´t mind. I think it’s fun to go up [to the home] and yell Saludos or Buenas and start talking to them. As for my Spanish, people tell me that I sound really good, I even got one member surprised when I told her I had only been out 4 days :) I can understand the Costa Ricans and the Mexicans really well, it’s the Dominicans I have a problem with... they don´t speak Spanish I have decided.

 

We have one investigator with a baptismal date for the 11th of Nov. We just need to find her. The old Elders didn´t keep a very good area book with numbers or addresses, of course there really isn´t addresses, it’s just the shack around the corner with the metal roof. The members are great though.

 

I went to stake conference Saturday and Sunday and actually saw some people that I met in the CCM so that was cool to talk with them again. Also I went on intercambios with a guy named Elder Tirado. He is from somewhere in Mexico, Chihuahua or something like that. Anyway he speaks perfect English and is in the same situation as me where his comp doesn’t work hard so we got to vent to each other. He reminds me a lot of me, just Mexican and speaks Spanish. We even look a lot alike. We have become good friends. For intercambios you actually go overnight so it’s pretty cool.

 

I like the Dominican Republic though. It’s fun when you are traveling from area to area you can take the metro or a carro. You pay 20 pesos to get in this car that is in worse condition that Tanners old ford dinking thing and a little smaller and 7 or 8 people are in it.

 

Today we went to Parque del Este.  It was cool to see a lot of my friends from the CCM and play some football. It’s crazy there were probably 150 missionaries at this park. We went to Mega Central a mall near Parque del Este and I ate KFC today. It was awesome! And I listened to some Maroon 5 in the mall. It was like being in America haha. Kinda crazy.

 

Miss you all and love you,

 

Kaden