March 17, 2010

During the week, i was thinking about temples at one point, i think i was talking to Abrãao** about his mission and he was able to go to most of the temples in his mission. He served in the Provo mission, which went from the point of the mountan to st. george. he was able to go to all the temples in his mission and it reminded me how much i enjoyed the temple while in Sao Paulo. unfortunately we dont get to go to the temple here since the nearest one is Recife and thats way too far away. I also had the thought if u guys have been going to the temple lately. if so, good. if not, i encourage you all to go more regularly. it really is a blessing to have a temple in the same city. many members here in my mission have to pay alot and go through alot of expense just to travel to the nearest temple and visit it. so i hope you all are going to our temple there in town.

The kid that we taught got baptized saturday. The baptism was origionally planned for 6:30 but his mom was like 2 hours late, and we werent going to do it without her there. so it didnt get over till like 9;30 almost. it was crazy, but good.

We have one other person that (we are teaching). Her name is Lia and she works at the bread store we go to. shes been pretty receptent on the stuff we have taught her and shes already been to church twice. so we will see how she goes the next week.


(**Abraao has just returned home to Brazil from his mission in Provo, Utah! I think Kevin's portuguese is having an affect on his spelling!)

March 10, 2010

Sounds like it was a successful lesson taught, but u have always been a good teacher so thats only normal. (Spencer taught a lesson in Church on Sunday.) It was interesting to hear that i helped Bethany pay her tithing when i was home teaching with you. kinda interesting hearing how a little thing to us can really help out other people. Hopefully im doing that everyday here in Brazil. I probably wont really find out about very many of those occasions now, but hopefully i will later on.

Our area still hasnt had much success. We have been focusing more on trying to help reactivate inactives and have been having a little bit of success there. i have a feeling we wont have any baptisms this transfer (sounds like the baptism date fell through), but maybe the inactive work we do will kind of take its place. we shall see.

Everything else is basically normal, still working on portugues. still annoying me that im not able to speak very well and my understanding can be very little at times, depending on the conversation.

Well, i love you all.

March 3, 2010

 

Rain in vegas? haha its been raining the past few days and when i say rain, i mean RAIN.  Like you could almost ride a kayak down the road.  The drainage systems here suck.  We were walking along a street and i notice one side of the road had rushing water and the other side didnt.  That slightly puzzled me why.  Then i noticed that one of the drainage spots wasn’t draining any water off the road.  Well thats helpfull, haha.  At least its cooled down slightly.  Not that much though.  Some times it just makes it more humid, which i dont like.  Ive decided when im home and have a career, i dont want to live in a humid area.  We will see how that goes.

Im continually working on Portugues.  Still not super good at it, but im improving a little every day.  I usually read the Book of Mormon in portugues everyday.  So im doing my best to do my part haha. 

oh another thing about the rain....it just started up right now....yea its pouring cats and dogs. and guess what...we have clothes hanging up to ``dry``. yea they arent gonna be dry for awhile now.  IT doesnt matter to run back now since they will be soaked anyways. arg haha  i miss drying machines.

Sounds like you all are having fun, with the visitors and such. (We had Amber’s friend Carriann, husband and baby over for the weekend.)  haha i can see dad freaking out about the baby.  aww, i miss star.  i wish i could just go and lay my head on her and chill.

So this week has had a few interesting times.  One thing that im starting to notice is that my mission is going to be filled with ´´Refiner´s Fire´´ moments.  I had one last thursday and before it happens i feel really icky and bad.  Then i go thru it and after wards i feel better.  Its good to have these times cause if it wasnt during the mission, i dont think i would be as accepting and such.  So i feel that this mission will help me grow up a bit.  Unfortunately, it will be hard at times, since u cannot work a piece of metal into something without heating it up and pounding at it.  So im slightly ready for the next one, but im just not sure im gonna want one to happen. haha ya know?

We have this kid named Henrigue that we are teaching.  He has family that lives in our area and he is always over there.  His family is actually inactive members that were baptised 15 years ago and for some reason they never told him about it.  Hopefully we can reactivate his family too.

Feb 24, 2010

*  Note:  Kevin has a new email address:  Kevin.Allen@myldsmail.net

Transfers were this week and im spending another transfer here in conquista.  It will be my 3rd transfer in this ward and 2nd transfer with elder Cook.  Im excited to be able to put what we learn from last transfer to work and get some results. im looking forward to it.

Some things i would like to share:

1.  A simple juice recepie (wow cant spell).  not sure if it will work but u can try.  here we use frozen pulp of fruits.  dont know if we have that in the states, but u can be creative.  half liter of milk, and add sugar till its sweet (about half a cup).  Its really good here, so see what u can do at home.

Two Stories:

1. We were going to contact a reference from a recent convert (of almost a year) and we couldnt find it since she didnt have the street name, only number.  We asked her what the persons name was. She said ``Rossana``.  Cook and i looked at eachother, we had an ex-investigator in the area we were searching with that name.  We described the person to her and she said that it couldnt be here.  We went to Rosanna´s house anyways to see if the number matched.  Sure enough, it was here.  We couldnt get her to commit to going to church in the past, but edileine got her to do so. it was crazy. haha what a coincidence, aka work of God.

2.  We were going to visit this inactive member of a few years to see how he was doing.  Bishop asked us to do it.  So we did, he let us in and right when i stepping thru the door i saw how nice the house was.  Beautiful wood frame working, giant pictures of him and family, an x-box 360 (rare to find here) and so on. it was such a nice house.  Definetly the niceest here in conquista that ive seen so far.  We couldnt get him to comit to go back to church the following sunday do to a conflict but we shall try again soon.

Another thing is they have different kinds of bannanas.  I didnt know that was possible. i thought a bananna was just a bananna.  Nope they have a handful of kinds.  it kinda blew my mind. haha