Sounds like everyone is tearing it up across the globe and things are changing quite a bit in tri-town. World travelers unite.

Luckily I know a dude who is suuuuuuper portuguese from portugal, and it isn't that hard to understand their accent. It requires a bit of mental force, but it possible. In other words, we can vacation anywhere in portugal or brasil or portuguese speaking countries of africa without significant language barriers when I get home. Brasil would be 100% without language barreir, and portugal would be like going to rural ireland where their english is all crazy and has different grammer. Who knows about africa. The people that I know from capo verde are pretty easy to understand, but for now moçambique remains a wild card.

ANYWHO. We are trying out a system of baptizing every week that another elder explained to me at a mission activity that seems pretty good on paper. It takes 5 weeks to set up, but then after that you should technically be baptizing every single saturday. We'll see about that.

we've got quite a few people that we are preparing right now. Lots of super old people and 3 little kids who's parents are less active members that are coming back to church. I don't know what it is, but old people think I am so cool. I feel tons of love for them too because they really understand what is important in life usually and don't mess around. One of them is blind-ish, and to still have fun with the guy we are going to do blindfolded games (try to figure out what you are eating, what your are holding, etc.) I am thinking he is gonna whoop us because we see the guy driving his car all over the place even though he is blind. He's gotta have some mad hearing skills like a bat or something. We'll see if he can compete with me in the "try to figure out what you are eating" catagory.

Sometimes we work with this wayyy old dude in our ward who looks a little like a little puppet and sounds just like that puppet from Mr. Rogers Neighboorhood that had super creepy rosy cheeks, who is SO COOL. I don't know what the heck is wrong with me sometimes, but when I see other people showing real Christ-like love to their neighboors I end up thinking that they are my best friend or something. This guy has been a church member for 20 years (note: the missionaries found him in a bar that they took cover in because it was raining like crazy), and still whenever he meets someone new he plans a time when they can meet the missionaries. A lot of people continually reject his offer, or end up deciding not to try to read or pray about anything, but he still keeps being genuinely their best friend. Last night, he gave us yet another referral like that, and he left joking and everything and then when we walked a ways from the house he stopped, and with a face/voice super full legit of concern, simply told us he wants this new family to be happy. They moved into that house yesterday morning and you could tell even though he had just gotten to know them as he was leaving for church that morning, he legitly feels love or them. He's a boss. I love people like that, and usually they seem to be older people.

If you end up sending a package for my birthday send candy. And send 3-4 of everything so I can share it with my companion and the people here. He is still kind of a turd ball from time to time, but whatever. I think if I keep being exact in everything he'll stop being a slacker. He got out of bed an hour late today, didn't study, then started getting dressed at like 10:40, when we are supposed to be gone by 10:45 and dressed before 8. I figure telling him to change something he already knows he should change won't help, so I just always talk about how happy I feel from doing what we are supposed to do and hope he does it by choice.

Actual birthday list:
1)crest white strips
2)candy (packaged well to not melt/get smashed)
3)tools for my tool box (don't send those, just put them in my room)
4)pictures of washington (especially the tri-cities area), my car, am areal view of BYU (so I can explain everything better to people because they can't imagine a world without forest)

All in all things are going good and I feel little-no desire to slap my comp in the head most of the time. That is what I call a miracle. I hope you guys have a good week and that everyone gets home safe from trips.

LURVESES

P.S. to all friends who may or may not read this but don't write me for 6+ months. you suck.

 

(graphic of poop with flys circling)

well that is cool. It is nice to know that the church's email program doesn't cut corners. They even have a way to send poop to your parents.




ANYWAYS. I am in the new area which is called "Raposo Tavares". It is actually a really good area and there are some people already being taught here. Usually I get transfered to areas where that is not true. The problem is that after the first day, I mentioned to my companion that that day would be the last day that we just pass by members or investigators houses with out a plan and with out teaching a lesson. He got furious and called me a robot. And so it began.



So we went a couple days with him criticizing everything I do and being what we call super "GH" which stands for "the glory of men" in portuguese, just running after some way for other elders to see what an incredible person he is. He also promised to teach me how to baptize like he does and teach me how to conquer my pride and be spiritual like he is. Lucky for me he has tons of experience (6 weeks) and has an enormous wealth of spiritual knowledge (he got a testimony this week). So that has been a blast. My first attempt to change his behavior a bit was to get his attention. So I told simply that what he was doing was really unenjoyable for me and asked him to stop critizing me. He freaked out and started yelling in the middle of the street. I am not going to lie, after a couple days of that I was pretty fed up, but trying to avoid doing the same thing he did, I just started being equally rude one night with sarcasm, but that lasted all of 20 minutes because I felt bad. So, I manned up and just decided to let him be an idiot if he really wants to, but to never let it get to me in any way and just treat him like a normal person. It took a few more days but it worked. I think he realized that he doesn't know how to do anything after I let him fall on his face work wise over and over again day after day and without ever actually saying anything or apologizing he changed a bit. Mission accomplished in my opinion.



So now I am just teaching him how to plan well and how to study well and starting from the ground up retraining him, because his trainer was a slacker who based his personal worth on how his numbers compared to others. Being that this is one of the better areas, he did minimal work, passed a lot of time with teenage girls "teaching" and then left the mess with me. But I am getting pretty used to this whole concept of take someone elses job that they left half done, restarting it and then finishing it. I guess that is what I get for never finishing anything before my mission, huh? Hopefully I can change this situation and get this kid running on all cylinders before he gets transfered because he is all mixed up.



Other than that though, I am excited because this ward is already pretty excited to help. More than any ward I have seen here. The area is pretty small and only has 5 neighboorhoods when my last area was an entire city that included 67 neighboorhoods seperated by long stretches of jungle and dirt roads. This area is in the city. I had forgotten how gross it is in the city. I think it is always about to rain, but then I realize that it isn't overcast, it is pollution. The other thing is people here in my area are richer and very well educated. That is a new thing for me too. Usually we had to read to our investigators and then explain to them, but now you just leave the book with them and they read. It seems like it should be easy, but I am learning that nothing is easy and I just haven't ran into the problem yet.



One problem we did run into was the bathroom. The toilet was clogged when i got there and the whole house was destroyed by the 4 elders that were there (3 got transfered out and I got put in and we took over the other area). So we called in a member who was willing to help and wrestled out a platic grocery sack with something in it that had been tied shut and flushed halfway down the toilet. I didn't even want to know what was in the bag so we just threw it out and I have been spending my nights and mornings sweeping and mopping while my companion stands by watching or "helping" which usually just makes things take longer. He later explained to me that he has never taken care of himself before, and wants me to teach him. Awesome.



Sometimes I stop and I think, "I thought I was called to teach and convert people... why does it seem like all the hard work I do involves fixing other missionaries problems?" All I can say, is that I miss Elder Burkett my last comp, because he was really nice and when we managed to be in our area the work flowed so smoothly and miracles happened every day. But oh well right? happens. I guess I need to get used to it and just enjoy myself as I trudge through other people crap... even if it does have to be literal sometimes (the toilet didn't just have plastic bags). At least we have people to serve and scriptures to study and a heavenly father to pray to. That will never change and in the end those things end up being the most enjoyable part.



Even then, I think one reason that the celestial kingdom will be nice is that people there will be responsible enough not to have to have someone running around being them cleaning up and finishing their crappy work. Just saying.



Anywaysssssssssss, I love you all. I hope Kelsey feels ready for college. Next time you send me stuff, send me some crest white strips and some more peanut butter related items. That should probably be my birthday package along with tools in my toolbox. If you guys still haven't fully completed my set of wrenches with both metric and standard of those nice craftsman wrenches that have a closed ratchet side, consider doing that... just a thought.



HAVE A GOOD WEEK.

Transferrrrrred‏

Well I am getting transfered. That was a bit of a downer because we've been working pretty hard for 3 months and just started to get things clicking here in this city and now I am going to leave my baby son to baptise everyone. We have the next 4 months of baptisms already planned out for the next elder that will come by here. 2 will baptise next week, a family 3-4 depending on what the mom decides she is going to do the first week of august, and because of marriage problems 4 more are already planned for september and october. So this next guy gets to come into an area and have pretty much a guarantee of at least 2 for month which is standard our president set for the next 4 months. So even though I won't get to take part of any of them, at least I got to see the area change and take off. The people in the ward here are getting pretty excited about the work because we have a bunch of new people who are their friends at church. It's funny because the same thing happened in my last area, which has baptised more than 10 I think and most of them I was teaching when I left. So, whatever I guess. Some people sew, and some people reap.

 

I started this thing that I made up called "Project: POTNaM" that is pretty hard core. I made a series of charts in this notebook that I have that span 3 months time and I have to respond to the same 23 questions every night. The questions are made up of questions from this activity in the missionary guide about Christ-like attributes. It is just a bunch of phrases like, "I think about my savior and what he has done for me during the day" and "I actively look for opportunities to serve others" and "I face all things calmly and optimisticly" and I have to put down a number of 1-5, 1 being "never true" and 5 being "always true". And so it goes for now. This is just the 3rd day, but it should be cool to help me start drilling these attributes into my head. I forget stuff a lot, so after 3 months of repeatedly going over these things every night, we'll see if something has changed. The goal is to get some kind of permanent change that will stick with me after the mission. And "POTNaM" stands for "Putting Off The Natural Man." If nothing else I think it is way funny to take out this notebook everynight that is filled with charts and start writing down tons numbers and either cheering for myself or booing myself. I'm not going to explain what I am doing to my comps just to see how they react.

 

It was a pretttty long week though. I got called by the new president to go figure out what was happening in another area on my P-day. We were in the middle of this 4th of july zone barbeque and he calls me and is like "So elder, ARE YOU EXCITED?!" and I was like "uhh... yeah....?" and he was like "THAT IS AWESOME BECAUSE THE CHURCH IS TRUE!!!!!" screaming in the phone. Then he was just like "but also an elder called me and he's jumped over the wall surrounding their house to get away from his companion and their neighboor might call the cops. I want you to go over there and tell me what is going on." So we went over there and that was a blast. Meh. Long story short they were physically fighting and there was blood all over them when I got there. A bunch of crazy pants.

 

Then we went to a "festa Junina" which is like a june party they have. Basically they paint little kids to give them dirty mexi-staches and everyone just dances and stuff. Lots of good food/avoiding the young women who kept taking my companion and I's picture because of our red hair. Also a bunch of crazy pants.

 

But yeah that is it. I am going to another area tomorrow and I still don't know quite where. It is possibly my second to last area at the rate things are going. We'll see....

 

 

Love you all. Stay classy.

 

Olá!!!

AN ABNORMALLY SUCCESSFUL WEEK FINALLY! the funny thing is that the way we did our work didn't change at all. The same stuff we always do and the constant effort we always give just finally clicked. It is funny because I am all excited about how it went, but because of companionship exchanges another élder came to our area for a couple days and it seemed like he had a rough time there. He was just really tired afterwords. Apparently we work harder in our area and don't see as many results immedeatly. But whatever, I'm a man. Deal with it.


So we had 10 investigators at church and at least 5 of them were progressing towards real goals (like baptism), so that was the day that we finally saw a good amount of fruits from our labors. One of our investigators got up and bore his testimony during fast and testimony meeting and made everyone excited about life. Good times. I love it when people pray about stuff and decide to follow Christ.

Other than that a couple of crazy things happened. This story is probably the best one. On tuesday we had gone to a meeting in the morning and then went and ate lunch with a member that lives like 3 or 4 miles away from our place and we were walking back and all of the sudden I had to poop real bad. But not that bad so we just kept walking home, and on the way it was getting worse expodentially. Next thing I know I am getting like goose bumps and cramps and still had a half mile to go. As we got home I had my companion run an unlock the door of our house and I like waddled in and got to the bathroom and just aimed and fired. Just in time right? nope. the lid was down. fail.

The new president is cool. He is from brasilia and is real excited. Doesn't seem super green. He really knows what he's doing. So that is cool.

4th of july is today and we are actually in the middle of doing an activity. I put the cake in to cook and we are going to cook R$150.00 of meat and play uno as a zone singing patriotic songs. Too bad its freezing and the brasilians don't get it. AMERICA.

I love you all and command you to celebrate how awesome america is with all you've got. GET IT DONE.

blairshk‏

This week during my language study I was looking at the equivelant of funny phrases "tear someone apart" and "we ran into somebody on the street" and I found the equal to "just go with the flow." That quickly became my motto as stuff continued to just fall apart and soon I just started serving to serve and didn't care about my level of success anymore. Like for instance we were coming back from a meeting late because someone else had messed up and it was out of our control, then the bus broke down and we missed lunch and pretty much everything else and I just looked at my comp and was like "dude, just go with the flow." After a whole week of that, everything came together in a miraculous way and in 2 days we did everything we had planned for the whole week. Pretty neat. Moral of the story: the Lord does his own work and we are just here to witness it in the end.


In other news, yes I read all letters sent by all men women and children. Especially family. Grandma Velma wins the contest for most letters sent I think. Sometimes I get like 2 or 3 at a time. That is always a good feeling. shout out. But yeah I read them all and I just don't always respond because of time restrictions or the fact that everyone reads my emails and nothing else really goes on during the week other than what I say in my emails.

Also I thought it was way funny that mom said she was saving up money for me. Don't do that, because I should probably earn my own money as much as possible when I get home. If you want to give me money, take all the stereo out of my car and sell the car to a junkyard and leave the stereo in my room with the cash on top of it. If you HAVE to give me something, just buy me more tools. I was thinking the other day and I will probably just join the army to pay for college and be a helicopter pilot or something and then buy broken cars and fix/sell them during the summers to get some extra cash. I figure that will give me a lot of technical knowledge and be fun and if I can get good enough to turn around a couple cars a month I could get like $8,000-10,000 a summer. Then I was thinking the other day as I was stretching, I think it would be way funny to train as a bodyflow/yoga instructor and do that while I am at college to get some spending money/entertain myself. In my head the yoga thing is wayyyy funny.

So basically I don't think I need money, especially given that I always find a way to put stuff together for pretty cheap (car=$900;nice computer=$150;monocle=$-44, because I made $44 off of that somehow.). I am all set with those plans. THEY ARE FLAWLESS. So just buy tools and sign me up for a welding class at CBC when I get home. My life will be complete. Oh, and I will also accept a fried egg.

Recently we got an "assistant to the ward mission leader" and he is really funny. I went to his house yesterday with my comp to talk to him about what we'll do this week and I got him to laugh so hard that he cried and probably almost had a heart attack. He's way old and way fat and smoked about 40 cigarrets a day/was almost never sober/fought a lot about 6 or 7 years ago. Now he is a hilarious member of the church that helps us a ton because he is RETIRED and has A CAR. Those words are sweet to my ears. Also behind his house there are a ton of ugly ducks and chickens that I chase around and that is fun. Also he has a bunch of fruit trees like banana and guava and stuff and lets us eat them. Pretty much the best thing ever. We are best friends.

I got the package. Yay for pictures and cake and smores. We are going to have a zone part for 4th of july and I will utilize the stuff so I don't have to buy anything.

also I am sending a CD full of pictures. There is probably 520 photos on there and I finally got an envelope with bubble wrap on the inside so I can send it. I will send it today.

what else... tomorrow the president switches. That should be cool. Also I am teaching another millionaire and his family. A reference of Carlos Martinz who is SUPER influential in brazil. Sadly they too do not live in my area and after they decide to go to church and be baptized I will pass the reference to their real missionaries. They have a big house. They rent out their property to do church camps of 400 people just to give you an idea. I'll try to get a picture of that.

Other than that, I can't really think of much else.

I love you all. Laters.

P.S. skittles was a good idea. well done.

mehmehmehmehmeh‏

First of all, I tip my hat to dad for asking for a fried egg for fathers day. Well done.




Anyways, this area has been surprisingly hard and we can't figure out exactly what is different because some weeks are good and some are just miserable. So, I decided to try and use some of my talents that I might have that would be different than someone else's to try to find the answer being that I am the one who is here. So I got a notebook and started analyzing everything we have done in the last 2 months in every aspect of our work using math and trying to find correlations between the good weeks and differences between them and the bad weeks. Who knows if I will unlock the secret to what is going to work here. I have a lot of pretty crazy graphs and equations so I am happy even if it doesn't bring any significant fruits.



In other news, I was noticing that in the crazy desire I have to see week to week results I was grinding away without ever taking the time to stop and just think about life or anything like that. So one day I was studying in the missionary guide Preach my Gospel, and I found a couple questions that brought everything into perspective that I thought were pretty cool. The questions were:

"When the last day in the mission field arrives what do you want to say about what you have done as a missionary? What will you want to have become? What differences will you want people to notice in you?"

And so I started thinking about those questions for a few days. After a couple days I was able to sort out my thoughts into answers and then make plans to be able to do exactly what I wanted to, and I realized that things get a lot more grounded and basic day to day. In the end I realized that even if I never am able to make a significant difference in how productive this area is, I wanted to be able to look back and see the time I spent here as time that I dedicated 100% to doing what the Lord wanted me to do, and time in which I learned and grew to a significant amount. So that is pretty easy right? The issue is that I was getting soooo worried about getting some kind of change that I could measure or some kind of success that would satisfy my pride and show me how cool I am that I was forgetting about the things that would really be important to me in the end. So I made plans to make everything I do as a missionary more meaningful and sincere from the time I wake up to the time I go to sleep, and I put them in my pocket everyday and hopefully I can make this a permanent change. At least I am finding that it is a lot more rewarding live focusing on what is important.



So, that is probably something good that I am trying to figure out that can be applied to life later when I have a real job and stuff.



What else... yesterday at lunch we were waiting for them to finish cooking and just talking with the husband who is awesome and he was like "ELDER. I GOT HAIRCUTTING STUFF" and next thing I know I was letting him cut my hair even though I didn't need a haircut. Best decision ever. I am never paying for a haircut here again, and he did a pretty good job. Also his little kid walked up and grabbed the sissors and cut out a huge chunk of his own hair. Also the lasagna they made was incredible. Really it was a good day.



Besides that our bishop took a guy we are teaching who is together (living with/has kids with/isn't married still) a member to this seminar about getting jobs that just happened to be right next to the temple and the visited the temple grounds and stuff and our investigator came back wayyyy excited about it. I asked him if it was cool, and he was like "no. it wasn't cool. it was incredible. the temple way better than the seminar. I felt so good there. it was incredible." So they are finally going to mark a day to actually get married so he can get baptised and start preparing to get sealed as a family. Stuff like that always makes you happy. And not just those two went, but a lot of unmarried couples like that and they all came back amped to get married, baptised into the church, and then sealed. score.



So yeah that is it.



Lurve,

Elder M. Scott Christensen



P.S.- Debit card reminder. renew/send it to me within the next 6 months or so if you can.



P.S. number 2- Also I have started an extreme workout program that involves the goals of being able to do the splits, being able to walk around on my hands grabbing everything with my feet, and being able to do a backflip. I have it all planed out and I should be able to do all of that in the next 10 months. just you wait.



So that is it now.



bye.

CAT WEEK

This week turned out to have a them that was pretty much constant: Cats. We just kept running into crazy experiences that were cat related. so lets hear 'em.




First of all my companion suggested that we go to a street that had never been to before that is this random dirt road in the middle of a maze of paved streets. So we start going down the road talking to everyone and we clap in front of this duplex house and we see this lady pull back the blinds and just kind of stare out at us through her right eye. Hardcore witch style as far as the one eye stare down thing

is concerned. So she just stares at us like that for like 5 seconds and leaves the glass part of the window shut, and we had agreed that my companion would practice talking with her and he just didn't say anything so we just all kind of stared at each other. Then all of the sudden she was gone. After a while we just started walking away, but then she came out and yelled at us and we came back, and let me tell you, she was nuts. My companion said something about how we're missionaries and whatever and she just kept staring. So then I was like, "uhhh... did you understand anything he said?" and the first words she said was "How... beautiful..." So I knew what was happening because this happens all the time, and she invited us to talk to her (we stayed in her front lawn pretty close to the street on chairs because I was freaked out by her) and as we were going into the gate I said to my comp, "dude she has a huge crush on us. If she doesn't understand whats going on lets just get outta here" and he was like, "noooo. you're crazy."

So we are sitting there telling her about how we are missionaries and my companion was introducing himself and I got a phone call from one of our really good investigators and so I went to talk to him and left my companion over there in eyesight conversing with this lady. So then after the phone call we taught a really simple thing and she understood almost nothing and we left. Then after we leave my companion just busts up laughing and was like "that was so hard not to laugh." When I asked him, "why?" he responded that when they where just talking she was like "You guys are CATS." and like made a cat noise with hand/claw action and everything. That is funny because "cats" is like the slang term for calling someone babes or hot or something like that here. Apparently you can be super ugly and if you have clear eyes everyone goes crazy. Especially people that are already crazy and live alone.



Then another day we were coming home and something else cat related was pretty funny. Our house is like a 2nd story half of a house and we have to go up these really narrow stairs, and across a balcony and then we go in our house, and at night it is like pitch black on the balcony where we enter. So we are walking on the balcony and my companion like groans/yells and falls down in front of my and it just looked like he slipped on a pizza box or something like that. Actually it looked way funny so I was getting ready to laugh, and in that same split second a shadow comes flying at me and my joy turned to sheer terror and I let out this super gay scream which caused all the people in the street (and there were a bunch) to look at us. Turns out it was just a stray cat. So I like looked at the people in the street and said, "Ho ho ho, it was just a cat" as if I was totally in control of the situation. But lets be honest. I almost peed my pants. But it seems like maybe I fooled the people in the street...?



Other than that we are just chugging along. We've got like 5-8 people that really want to become members of the church but are having some problem or another. One family we are teaching is way hard core. It is a super inactive member and his wife. They've got a couple young kids, but they are super young and just kind of babble and do nothing exciting. I always joke that they speak english. Anyways, the husbands name is nephi and he was born in the church but has tons of crazy tattoos (like this awesome radioactive symbol on his hand) and does a bunch of crazy stuff and is actually like one of my best friends here. He always just is cruising around in boardshorts and army boots and like a billabong hat. And he and his wife are really really intelligent. That makes it so easy to teach them because they love reading and understand things generally before you get done saying it, and then they do what they understand they should do. And so we've only taught them 3 times, but she is already certain that Joseph Smith was a prophet because she prayed and understands the plan of salvation perfectly and wants to be baptised, and they just need to get married/stop doing drugs. Good stuff. We are probably going to go fishing with him here in a couple weeks too on P-day. Also good stuff. I love talking to them because it is super uplifting and enjoyable to see them change every time we go over there, plus their kid is like 6-8 months old so I like to imagine him being like soren in the near future.



It is basically just a bunch of stuff like that. Also I have decided we need to go a lot more public with our approach. Maybe we'll go Dan Jones style in a park or something. We need to do something because everyone thinks we worship satan and that we are this crazy nazi clan of germans that only speak english in their church meetings. So we'll probably go to a bus terminal or a park and do something to get people's attention and educate them about what we believe and stuff. I heard about a missionary in our mission who told everyone in the city the greatest missionary of all time would be there and then dressed up in an A frame thing painted like the book of mormon and went out. So who knows, the sky is the limit.



Besides that there is not much going on. It is super cold and I still would like someone to reactivate my debit card and send it to me somehow. Other than that I can't think of anything else. I love you all and I think that it is pretty funny/typical that kelsey was on the front page of the news paper laying in front of a square of art. Meh. LURVES YOUS ALLS. LATERS. HAVE A GOOD WEEK.