October 28, 2013 ~ Goiania Brazil Mission, Rio Verde ~ Week 39

Dear Family,

This week was so much better!!!!!!!!!!! Everything just seemed to go so much better this week, it was crazy. WE BAPTIZED VERONICA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Holy Cow! I'm so happy about it too! She wasn't sure if she wanted to be baptized this week, but then on Wednesday, we fasted for her, and we passed by her house (which is at the end of the freaking world in our area haha) and she just straight up said that she wanted to be baptized on Saturday! Elder Santos, my district leader, said that his baptismal interview with her was crazy good as well.  Elder Santos said that she knew everything and even taught him some stuff too haha. But our members in our branch just do not love to go to the missionaries baptisms, it's just not what they do. I literally called every single member of the branch to go to her baptism and literally only 6 members showed up. Even the Branch President has only come to maybe 2 of our baptism the whole time I've been here. But at least she got baptized! She has changed so much too! She even invited her neighbor to come to church with her yesterday and he came! Haha Elder Santos said to me that The Lord was preparing her for this Gospel and so she's an Elect person. Which is really true!! I've never seen any investigator as prepared as she was for their baptism. It was Awesome!!!

Colin and Veronica

Colin, Veronica and Elder Thomas

Elder Thomas, Colin and Veronica and other Elders from Colin's District in Rio Verde

I'm not really sure why the writing style changed all of the sudden lol, but it's not changing back. This computer is straight retarded. Veradiane, Veronica's sister, came to church yesterday as well! We had 7 investigators at church yesterday! This was a blessing really from The Lord because we didn't have the greatest luck finding a ton of people this week. The most investigators I've ever had come to church was 8 so I was really happy with our blessings yesterday.

Things are going really smoothly with Elder Thomas this week. I really love him and we are working well together. We had a weekly planning so we had companionship inventory, which went really great. I think we can have much success together in bringing souls to Christ.

So weird that it's already Halloween! Brazil doesn't celebrate Halloween. They celebrate O Dia das Bruxas (which means day of the witches lol), but I don't think it's on October 31st. Not even sure if this area of Brazil celebrates it. Everyday just seems to be the same, weather wise. There's no change in seasons at all which is something I miss so much! It's almost winter back home! That blows my mind haha. 

Nothing else much happened this week. I'm just glad that things are getting better. Love you guys so much!!!!!!!!!!! Tchau!

Elder Hanson

October, 2013 ~ Goiania Brazil Mission, Rio Verde ~ Letter from Mission President, David Kuceki

Dear Hanson Family,

Thank you for preparing such an obedient missionary. He is a great missionary and an excellent young man. It is with pleasure that we inform you that your missionary was called to the ranks of the missionaries most faithful and trusted in the Brazil Goiania Mission. ELDER HANSON will be serving as a trainer in the POPULAR area in the city of a Rio Verde, Goias. Trainers teach through example how to plan, find, and teach investigators and how to work with the local church leaders and members. All this in order to train the new missionaries. We know that he will fulfill this responsibility with the same amount of faith and diligence that he has demonstrated in the other calling and responsibilities that he was given throughout his mission.
Once again, thank you. You have a marvelous missionary. We love him and know that The Lord loves him. We will continue to take care of him. Please continue to communicate with him. Letters are very important to every full-time missionary. He is under the watch of The Lord.

Sincerely,

David Kuceki
Mission President

October 21, 2013 ~ Goiania Brazil Mission, Rio Verde ~ Week 38

Dear Family,

This week was a big improvement from last week and the weeks before haha!!!!!!! Everything just seemed to go so much better. We're gradually improving with getting our investigators to church. My companion and I are becoming really good friends :)! Please keep praying for our success!

Noah is huge!!! I saw the picture you sent and my mind is completely blown! What the fudge??? How tall is he now? That's crazy. Is he taller than Erik? It looks like he is taller, by the picture lol.

The beliefs of some Brazilians are sometimes unique haha. This week we were teaching these two sisters and we were talking about the Prophets and everything...then randomly they start telling us about a story. One night they we're looking at the stars in the sky and they saw Jesus's Face in the stars so now they know for a fact what Jesus looks like and they are sticking to this story. It really did strengthen their faith in Christ though, so I just respected their story. One of the sisters is a 22 year old girl and she lives with her sister, who is 23. It's crazy to me how interested they are in the church. It's Awesome!!! The older sister ALWAYS reads what we ask her to, but she needs to come to Church.  Veronica is good to come to church and is interested in Jesus Christ Church, and her sister seems super interested as well. Thankfully Veronica is strong and she told us that she prayed about being Baptized and she committed to keep all the Lord's commandments. She's been coming to church so she will be baptized this Saturday!!!!! Pray for her por favor! And for Veradiane as well!

This week we were blessed to find this guy to teach. At first, he didn't seem super interested in our message, but he said that he would go to church. So we stopped at his house a few days later and he said he had kept all the commitments we asked of him and he already received an answer that this Church is true after he prayed and asked Heavenly Father! I was so happy haha!!! So we invited him to be baptized and he accepted :) BUT we found out that his marriage contract prevents him from being baptized for the moment :( So dumb!!!!!! He married legally, but it's like this weird contract thing for only two years (I guess it was cheaper to get married this way lol/but not lol). So yeah, it prevents him from being baptized until he marries her legally. My guess is that about 80 percent of the people here just cohabit. It's so AWFUL and it's so frustrating when we find Brazilians who are really interested in the Church and then we find out they're not legally married.

Answering dad's question about the gates in front of all the houses here, it's so weird! I'm still not used to the gates at every single house. We either have to clap at the gates, or we just knock on the gate really hard. They say that they have them so they don't get robbed!

This past month has been hard for me. Not having any success this month and seeing other Elders have so much success is frustrating to me because I'm so obedient and I always try to do all the right things. It makes me feel like a failure sometimes. But we had this meeting with President Kuceki. He talked about a million different things and so I'm feeling a lot better now about everything....I am trying my hardest everyday and then I realized that I was doing everything right and that I need to try even harder. Then leave the rest up to The Lord. I'm not sure what else I can really do haha.

Love you guys! Thank you so much for the packages that you're sending me! I hope everything is going well with you guys. Love you! Tchau!

Elder Hanson

October 14, 2013 ~ Goiania Brazil Mission, Rio Verde ~ Week 37

Querida Familia,

This week was better than last week. It seems like the mission just gets harder and harder, but the weird thing is that I love it! My companion and I are getting along really great. I'm just trying to teach him everything that will help him as a missionary. Like, there was this one guy that we taught this week that is really knowledegable on the bible and everything. He told us, after we invited him to go to church, that he does not believe in organized religion. People like this, that do not want to go to church, we never return to because there are other people who are willing to go to church and we have to find those Elect people. Everyone has told me to study Chapter 6 of Preach My Gospel because it talks about the Attributes of Christ. So I've studied that a bit more this week. Hopefully trying to be more like Christ will help me be a better trainer.

Colin and Elder Thomas

We were super blessed this week. There were Elders in another area in Rio Verde that were teaching these two girls, Veronica and Veradiane (they had set a baptism date too) but the girls moved to our area a few days ago. So now we are teaching them. They're really interested in the church and they are about 23 years old. They always read the Book of Mormon and the other pamphlets we give them and they've been keeping their commitments as well.  We will continue to help them understand the importance of keeping all the Lord's commandments. On Sunday, we passed by their house and Veronica and her mom were ready to go, but Veradiane was gone out looking for her mom thinking she was not home. We could not get a hold of her so she missed church but Veronica and her mom went to church. We will work things out though.

I don't really have much else to say, so I'll tell you something funny/ not funny about Brazil. The dogs get treated like less than the dust of the earth haha. We'll be teaching a lesson with a family and they will be super nice to us and then the dog starts making noise and they yell at them. The only word the dogs know is "Sai!" which means "leave!". I feel bad for the dogs sometimes. We always laugh about why people even have dogs if they hate them so much haha. Elder Lee loves to cook, and the people always make different types of meat for us. He asks them what type of meat it is and they always say "E carne" which means it's meat haha. But what kind of meat, we don't know????

Thank you for all of your prayers. I'm still waiting for your packages. I think you guys sent about 5, but I have not seen them yet. Hopefully soon. Love you guys!

Elder Hanson

October 7, 2013 ~ Goiania Brazil Mission, Rio Verde ~ Week 36

Dear Family,

Wellllllll, this week wasn't my favorite week of all time hahahahahaha.

I missed two sessions of General Conference. YES, TWO Sessions of Conference. So I literally have no ideas the new stats in the Church. Haha I'm so butthurt you guys don't even understand. I feel like I completely sinned and that I have to repent even though I didn't do anything wrong. We went to the first Saturday session, which is the one I enjoyed the most because we brought our investigator named Jose Carlos to that session. The other session I attended was the Sunday morning session yesterday and I couldn't even enjoy it because I was stressing out so bad about my investigators. It was awful! I literally couldn't tell you what happened during that session, besides President Monson's talk. His talk was by far my favorite! When he started talking about his wife and everything about her, I had tears in my eyes, and I've never cried over a talk in my life haha. Then I was thinking about all the hardships that I'm having on my mission, sometimes I feel so alone, and then he talked about how the Savior will NEVER leave you and I just felt the Spirit so strong, and teared up again haha. Besides that, I'm going to have to print the rest of the Conference talks off the internet :(.

The reason I missed the second afternoon Saturday session was because the rule of the mission is that if you don't have investigators at that session, you can't watch it. So we didn't watch that session :'(. The reason that we missed the afternoon session of conference yesterday was because My companion got super sick. He told me after the first session that he was feeling sick and so we started back home, and then he said that he was going to throw up, and he threw up on the side of the street :/. I felt so bad! I think what he has is food poisoning, because he doesn't feel like he has the flu or anything. I called President and Sister Kuceki, but they couldn't answer because they were at Conference.....so it was a just a big mess with who would be at Conference with my investigators. I'm still stressing out of my mind about it lol.

We did find many people this week who were LEGALLY married! Nobody is legally married, so we were so happy during the week. But then, as always, people just won't go to church! They always say that they're going to go until Sunday and something retarded gets in the way, so frustrating.

I really like my new companion! He's completely obedient, which I'm super happy about and he studies hard and everything. One thing that I've learned on my mission is to have unity in every companionship or you won't have success. So I'm just trying my best with everything. I'm his trainer so I try to teach him things that they don't teach in the MTC. I wish my trainer would have cared to teach me. I'm really just trying my best to help him with everything.

I really am loving my mission! I just read through my email and realize how negative it was but I truly LOVE IT! This week just sucked so hard haha. I'll try to be more positive in my other emails hahaha.

We're still trying to find new people. Guys, please pray that we may be able to find the people who are prepared to hear The Gospel of Jesus Christ, and that we may be able to bring people to Church.

Love you guys! Tchau!

Elder Hanson

September 30, 2013 ~ Goiania Brazil Mission, Rio Verde ~ Week 35

Dear Family,
     Well...I was not transferred hahahahaha. I'm still in Rio Verde just trying to kill it like I always do! lol
Guess What? I'm TRAINING! HAHA. A gringo too! Elder Thomas is from Colorado and he just barely got to the mission on Wednesday. I had no idea that I was going to be training too. They called me like 3 hours before I had to go pick him up and told me that I was going to be training!. So Crazy! Elder Lobos was transferred though and now we have a Brazilian named Elder De Jesus living with us.

     Elder Thomas is cool. He is already speaking Portuguese better than I did when I got to the mission. He's not afraid to talk to anybody either. He got his Visa before he left on his mission so he went to the MTC in Sao Paulo. I think that it would have helped me with my Portuguese to have gone to the MTC in São Paulo, because they only speak Portuguese there haha. But he's learning about everything so quickly. I am trying to teach him everything that I know because I actually want to help him (unlike my trainer) because I never really was trained. I basically had to learn everything myself. He is trying to help me as well, because he knows that it's my first time being a trainer. But he's not afraid to say if he thinks that I could have done something better in our lessons haha so I think that it's a good companionship. He's not stressed out like crazy like I am, either haha. I think I was a straight up girl when I got to Brazil. I'm a little stressed out though, but I think everything will work out well.

     This week did not go too great. We had so many people say they would come to church and literally, nobody came. So Annoying! We passed by all of their houses Sunday morning and all of them weren't there or gave some lame excuse. I hate that so much! Why say that you are going if you aren't going to go?

     But we did see a miracle happen. So we were passing by one of the people's houses yesterday trying to get them to church and their neighbor passed by Elder Thomas and Elder Lins (an Elder in by district who helped us get people to go to church) and Elder Lins invited him to go to church and the guy actually went! So we passed by his house yesterday and he is super interested in the church now! He and his wife are legally married. They are interested and really want to hear the Prophet speak on Sunday. They are religious but starting to doubt the truthfulness of their church (his wife went on for an hour about tithing hahaha). That's one thing about Brazil, the people ALWAYS say the same thing at least three times before they let us start to speak. Whenever we knock on doors it's always like that haha. So she said like 3 times the exact same thing and we were just like "we understood you the first time." haha  But I LOVE the Brazilian people so much!!!

     We had to drop a lot of people this week because they didn't go to church. It's sad, but there's not much you can do after you have done your part and the people still don't change. Everyone has to do their part. Naiviv (name change) was one of the people we had to drop this week and so that was pretty sad. She just doesn't have any desire to change at all.

     So this is super random, but this morning I got out of bed to pray and I felt something on the back of my neck. So I smacked it because I thought it was a mosquito. But then I got up and went to the bathroom and I felt it again when I walked in. I smacked it again and a huge cockroach fell on my shoulder! I literally almost started crying it scared me so bad haha. It's Elder Lee's fault haha because he sleeps on the top bunk and last night he said he saw 2 cockroaches in his bed and he said they fell to the floor when he tried to kill them. But I guess they did not fall to the floor, they fell on me! It's all his fault haha!

     Nothing much else happened this week. I'm really excited to train Elder Thomas and everything will go great. Love you guys so much! Tchau!

Elder Hanson

September 23, 2013 ~ Goiania Brazil Mission, Rio Verde ~ Week 34

Dear Family,

Hey Guys! This week passed by SO SLOWLY. It literally feels like a month ago since I've written you guys haha. So much crap happened this week.

First off, the baptism with Rairanne didn't  go as planned. This time, Elder Di Giordano tried to baptize her and she entered the water, but her gosh dang foot came out of the water! At the same time, water got in her nose, so she got super scared to go under again. Then, two days later, the zone leaders called me and said they would talk to her and encourage her. So they came and talked to her and basically tried to get her in the baptismal font, but she wouldn't stop crying. I felt so freaking bad! Especially for her grandma because she had to deal with her crying so much. It was so dumb! In short, Rairanne wasn't baptized :(.

Rairanne's "Almost" Baptism 

Also, Elder Di Giordano finished his mission and went home on Friday :( . It was super sad saying goodbye to him as well! I literally almost cried (but I didn't lol). When he went home, they put this other Elder in my zone with me because his companion went home on Friday as well. His name is Elder Coradeghini (from Argentina) but he was only my companion for just a few days  because this morning we took him back to his area in Rio Verde. I'm not really sure why our Leaders did it this way. So right now I'm in a Trio with the other 2 Elders in my house, Elder Lobos (Lobo means wolf in Portuguese haha so we call him Elder Wolf) and Elder Lee. I'm pretty sure this means that I'll be transferred today :///////////. I'm kind of freaking out haha because I really don't want to be transferred. Also, they put me as Senior companion with Elder Coradeghini and that's also why I think I'll be transferred. We'll see what happens though! Usually people stay in a area for 3 to 4 months and I've been in Rio Verde since fudging April.

Colin and Elder Coradeghini

Colin's District

Nothing really is happening with Naivi (name change) She isn't progressing at all. We tell her to read the Book of Mormon ever time we visit and teach her, but she won't do it. Although- she came to Church yesterday, but only for Relief Society because she didn't want to be in the same room as her cousin. We passed by her house yesterday to talk to her and she told us that there's an Assembly of God Church (which is like a huge Evangelical Church in Brazil) that is close by her house and she said that she wants to go to that Church away from her cousin. I told her "But Our Church is not the church of your cousin, it's The Church of Jesus Christ. Do you want to attend the Church that is The Church of Jesus Christ, or the church of the world?" She didn't really know what to say haha, but I hope the Spirit will guide her in the right direction. As we were talking with Vivian, her cousin came into the house and it was super awkward lol, so Elder Coradeghini and I just  left.

We also went to a Rodizios Restaurant last Pday! It was so freaking good, it wasn't even funny lol!! It was three million times better than Rodizio in Utah. It was so dang expensive as well but we wanted to celebrate!

Elders from Rio Verde Zone

Colin and Elder Di Goirdino

Colin and Jesus

Rodizio!

Rodizio ! (ignore the beer sign  haha)

Other than that, nothing else much happened. I'll end by sharing my favorite chapter in The Book of Mormon, Ether Chapter 12, it talks a lot about faith and Miracles.  I especially love Ether verse 6, "And now, I, Moroni, would speak somewhat concerning these things; I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith". Ether Verse 12,  "For if there be no faith among the children of men God can do no miracle among them; wherefore, he showed not himself until after their faith". And Ether verse 27, "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them". I love the Book of Mormon so much! I know that it is true and it has helped me a lot in my life. Everyone just needs to read it and it will change their life forever.

Colin and Raimundo (one of Colin's converts)

Love you guys! Thinking and praying about you all the time! OS amo DEMAIS!

Elder Hanson