Monday, February 24, 2014

Brazil and all the stuff!

Well, this week was awesome. The weeks fly by, holy moly. I've learned a good lesson this pass couple of weeks. Whenever I walk so much that my start to hurt, I just walk even harder. Now, I don't even feel pain and my companion struggles to keep up with me. But I've decided to apply this principle to everything I do. When something gets too hard to handle, just do it even harder. Awesome results will come. So heres a highlight of this dandy week:

-The sky was really cloudy one day and we were sure that it was going to rain. I felt something hit my head, and I turned to my companion and said: "Eu sentei chuva" (I felt rain). So we kept on walking for a tad and then my companion looked over at me and started laughing. I felt the side of my face and, boom. It was bird poop.

-Every in the square of the city, we set up church paintings and do an Expsição dos Quadros, where we show the photos and talk to people about the church. It's super fun. And you meet a lot of cool people.

-Bianca, our investigator that was supposed to be baptized last Saturday, wasn't baptized. :( She really doesn't pay attention and she started to get really apathetic. It breaks my heart.

- Can I get some letters please? :) They're much easier to respond to with specific questions, and I have much more time to write letters. 

-Our ward got really excited about missionary work and their totally working their tails off. It rocks and its so helpful. The best thing you can do for missionary work is to be an awesome member. 

-One of our inactive members served a mission in the north of Brazil and he says he knew an Elder Steuer. He looks about Dave's age too. His name was Elder Machado. He wants to know who Dave's mission president was. 

-Can I get a recipe for oatmeal cookies?

Alright, well I love all you guys a ton. In D&C Section 4, you learn a lot about missionary work if you study it right. It lists characteristic and attributes that we all need. Study those characteristics and practice those atrributes. The more you gain and work on those, the more miracles you will see in your lives. I promise. 

Well I love you all tons. Keep on rockin' Europe n' stuff. 

Elder Hintze

Monday, February 17, 2014

Zone Conference

Howdy there, familia. So we had an awesome Zone Conference this past Wednesday. We learned a whole lot about missionary work. One thing that I learned that I think you guys can apply is, HELP THE MISSIONARIES! We need help. We need refrences. We need members to help us teach. Each companionship is just 2 early aged 20 year olds sharing there testimonies. And yes, it's powerful. But some people are stubborn. And we need your help. So go help the missionaries. Buy them lunch or email there moms about how awesome there doing. Just help them out. 

But this week was awesome. Me and my companion have been trying super hard to work harder. And we've had awesome results. We've taught some awesome spiritual lessons and my portuguese is becoming better. I tried to teach Elder Martins how to pray in English, and so I started to pray in English but I was struggling to speak my own language! I'm not perfect in Portuguese, but I'm definitely forgetting English. I'm starting to think and pray in Portuguese and I even dreamt in Portuguese last night! Yep. It was crazy. But hey, it's awesome learning a language. 



So I don't have any specific experiences that were super awesome this week, but there is a cool story that President Parrela told us at Zone Conference. So, recently in one of the cities in my mission, a chapel burnt down. President told us that while it was burning, some of the members were watching it. The Stake President saw someone crying and went over to talk to them. He told them that they don't need to cry because it's just material things. But this man said: "I'm not crying becuase I'm sad. I'm crying because I don't see a church here. I see a temple." Apparently, when the church was dedicated, a general authority came and he had said something like: "This spot does'nt seem like a place for a chapel." Wow. I thought it was crazy. now, remember, I am in the middle of nowhere Brazil. Seriously. To get to Uruguaiana, you need to take a 7 hour bus ride of open fields full of cows. for 7 hours. yeah. I'm in the middle of nowhere. But the city is a good size. But theres nothing outside or around the city. 



Anyways, it's Zone P-day so I'm gonna go play some basketball. It's cooled down and the weather is really nice. Anyways, I love you all so much! I haven't got any of the packages yet :( but I wouldn't doubt the Brazilian Postal Service. Apparently, it's not that bad. It just takes a tad longer since you're in London. Okay. I love you all so much! Don't do stupid stuff

Elder Hintze