Week 59 Santarem

Hey Y'all! Tudo bom!?

This week was a good one but went by really fast! So to start off we got transfer news this week. And I will be staying here in Santarém! I am honestly really excited, because I love this area so much! It is amazing! And to make it even better, I will be training! I will be getting a new companion that is starting his mission with me! I am pretty stoked but a little nervous because I still have a few things that I am learning in Portuguese but for the most part I can communicate without problems! 

Also, this week we had the baptism of Douglas! It was amazing to see his transformation as he prepared for baptism, to me he actually looked different!

This week I had a very interesting day! We had a wonderful lunch with a giant fish and ice cream! And then we started our afternoon visits like normal. And we ended up visiting Douglas, who got baptized yesterday, and after we taught him he wanted to feed us, so we ate shark with him. Shark isn't the fish, it is a meat that I still haven't gotten a straight answer about what it is. It sounds like the cartilage and other parts of animals that no one eats. Except here they eat it. So ate it fast, it wasn't tasting too good, but I felt fine. And then we visited our next person, and after the lesson she gave us some juice and my comp had a nice clean white plastic cup. And I was handed a dirty, orange-black, cup with a bunch of ants. I had already talked about how I liked the juices here in Brasil, so I had to drink it. So I drank it fast and with my eyes closed. And after I drank it, I started getting sick. So we were walking on some back roads to get to our next appointment so that if I threw up I wouldn't end up on YouTube and some lady came running out of here house say that she wanted to talk with us. So we talked with her and heard her miraculous story. I would say it here but it would literally be pages! So, I'll keep it at spectacular and miraculous to say the least! And we taught a fire lesson with her and her family and then We left because by this point I was feeling really sick. So as we are walking we are talking about if we should return or not, and I just knew I was gonna throw up, I could feel it in my mouth. So I went down an even smaller dirt road and there I lost it. All of the shark and the juice, all of it! After my stock was on the dirt road I looked up and I saw some old Brasilian women staring from her porch, so I gave a thumbs-up and left. And then we kept working and I felt fine! And the other good news is that I did not throw up the delicious fish and ice cream from lunch! So yeah, that was one of my more interesting days but equally miraculous. Without getting sick I never would have passed the backroad of that miraculous lady! Almost no one else lives there,but God knew that she was there and the she needed help, so he sent his sick, broncão, servant to help her out. And in the same way the Lord is aware of all of you and will send help to those that trust in Him and His timing!

It was just a good week in general and I am excited for the next few weeks! We saw a lot of miracles this week and I am excited to see where this upcoming transfer takes me! 

This week I wanted to talk a little bit about change! Because is almost always a hard thing. But to me, it is also the quest of our life. We are here to prepare ourselves to live with our loving Father in Heaven! He wants us to prepare and to be ready to return to live with Him, but we need to change a little to do this. Alma 34:32 says "For behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors." This is our time to work and labor to prepare to meet God! And the labor we are to perform is written out in the Gospel of Jesus Christ! I have seen this gospel of Christ change so many lives, especially my own! I am so grateful for the perfect plan of our loving Father! 

Now pictures! 

1. Great Pday last week with da bois 

 

2. I used some of my Louisiana skills to catch this lizard while we were waiting for the bus

 

3. A close up of said lizard 

 

4. Slavação, one of the neighborhoods that we work in 

 

5. Preparing and cleaning the font for the baptism, I think here we have to do this before every baptism, cause it gets pretty dirty! 

 

6. The goofballs that I have spent the last few days with 

 

7. Douglas and his baptism! It was really a special day! 

This is all for now! Feel free to email me if you would like or if you have any questions or people to pray for! Hope y'all have a great week! 

Com muito amor, 

Elder Sant 

Acreditar. Amar. Fazer. 

Week 58 Santarem

 

Hey everyone! Tudo bem!?

This week was another great one, but for different reasons! To start off we moved houses! We moved from our house above the bakery to an apartment complex that is safer, does not have huge holes in the outside wall, and has a view of the Tapajos/Amazon river! Its pretty nice! But we had to move everything to the third story. We were dead after doing it haha. We were running across our area to teach lessons and after that wemoved houses all by ourselves. We rented a truck and a driver but he only drove, we loaded and unloaded, and did everything but the 3 minute drive between houses. 

So my comp and I were pretty tired, and the next day  we had a big meeting with President! It was honestly  a great meeting, because right now I am in the best spot in the mission, the best city! President loves our zone and it was just a great day! Our president loves to tell stories so it was a day full of funny stories! I loved it! I got to have an interview with him and he gave me some transfer deets, but he made me promise to keep my mouth shut, so I'll wait till next week to spill the beans. 

And then we started working hard again, and it was tons of fun! And then president called us and said he wanted to see our new house and take us out to lunch. So naturally we cancelled our lunch for the day and we gave him a tour of our new apartment. He said they will buy new mattresses for us and they will get an air conditioner for us!! I was pretty excited for this because I haven't stopped sweating since the moment I got here, hahaha. And lunch was really good! He took us to the best restaurant here in Santarém and it was just all around great! 

And then we ended the week with more work and another exchange. So I spent the end of the week working in another area! It was really fun and we got to help out with the baptism of a family of 5! It was really awesome! I loved it! And afterwards a group of like 25 americans arrived and sang a hymn to the family and I was shook. I couldn't believe what I had just seen! So I went and talked with one of the Americans for a little bit (which was very weird to talk in English with someone besides my family)  and they were just visiting to do some service and they are actually attending the congregation that I am assigned to here in Brasil! So I will get to see a whole bunch of Americans the next two weeks! 

This week I was reading in 2 Nephi 31 and I loved verse 20, that says "Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life."  This lays out so many ptinciples of the gospel for us to learn and live. We need to put our trust in the Lord and press forward knowing that only through Christ can we really be enough to do all we need to do. We need to have hope for ourselves and the perfect plan of God! Love one another! Feast upon the words of  Christ! I wonder what difference it would make in your life, if instead of reading the scriptures every day you feasted upon them every day? And if we will try our best with all of this, we have the promise of eternal life from our loving Heavenly Father! 

That is about all for this week, and now pictures!

1. Us unbuilding our beds 

 

2. Most of our junk that we hiked up to the third story 

 

3. This is most of the stuff again, only missing a few things that were around the corner 

 

4. The view from our apartment! You can see the amazon river right there in the back. 

 

5. And in the same photo, but a little zoomed in, you can see a chicken on the roof of that house. 

 

 

 

6. Another picture of the view 

 

7. President talking to us in our meeting 

 

8. The best zone in the world!! It is honestly so fun here in Santarém 

 

9. Again, the best zone in the World! 

 

10. To close it off, the best fish I have had here in Brasil 

 

11. Our lunch with president! 

This is all for now! Feel free to email me if you would like or if you have any questions or people to pray for! Hope y'all have a great week! 

Com muito amor, 

Elder Sant 

Acreditar. Amar. Fazer.

Week 57 Santarem

Hey everyone! Tudo bem!?

Another great week here in Brasil! We have stayed really busy this week talking and teaching a lot of our friends. Normally in a day we do our studies and teach some lessons over the phone. And then we run to lunch and enjoy an amazing meal with some amazing members. And then after lunch we are running between lessons in different parts of our area. Our area is huge so we plan which part of our area we visit each day. And at night we teach more lessons over the phone and are contacting more people to visit the next day. Its honestly really busy and really amazing. And tiring hahaha 

This week I saw more animals! We are walking down a big road on the way to lunch and I looked in the tree on my right and there a foot away from my face was a little monkey! My comp and I rushed to take out our phone and take some photos but it started to run away so we didn't get a good picture. But we stayed for a second. Surely there were more. And sure enough, we started seeing a lot monkeys jumping between trees! It seemed like there was an army that just started running away! It was pretty great, and we got some photos of them running away. I also saw a parrot! We were visiting a member in a little town and my comp pointed to the tree and said "Look at the parrot!" And sure enough just a parrot big chilling in their front yard. Aparently it stays there and its really old. And then the other day we were walking in the city and we started hearing a scream. So on our way to our lesson we pass the sound and see nothing. And then we look in the tree and see that a parrot is screaming to the whole world! So these are some of my experiences with animals this week! Hope you enjoyed! 

This week I was reading in the Book of Mormon when Alma is talking to his son and in Alma 36 He kept repeating the message that keeping the commandments of God is a guarantee to happiness! And it really is! It is not a guarantee of easiness or a stress-free life. But it is a promise of happiness and the Lord always fulfills his promises. If you take that step of faith he will fill your life with more hope and joy than you can imagine! 

That is about all for this week, and now pictures! 

1. A fun photo with the elders in my zone! The other companionship was visiting last pday! 

 

2. O melhor zona no mundo! 

 

3. The Jaguar 

 

4. A giant ant hill!! 

 

 5. One of the parrots! 

 

 

6. Last week I sent a photo of a home on the side of the mount. And I found out this week that it is a members home and we ate lunch there! 

 

 

7. The whole house was pink! Literally everything in and out of the house was pink. 

 

 

8. A little better photo of the view at lunch 

 

 

9. The monkey in the tree running away. 

 

10. One of the monkeys that was running away 

 

11. This is a view of where the monkeys were running away.

12. The other parrot that was just screaming in the middle of the city 

This is all for now! Feel free to email me if you would like or if you have any questions or people to pray for! Hope y'all have a great week! 

Com muito amor, 

Elder Sant 

Acreditar. Amar. Fazer.

Week 56 Santarem

 

Hey everyone! Tudo bem!?

This week was a good one! We taught some fire lessons and we had a baptism this week! That was great! She was super ready and she brought a friend to the baptism so that was also great! 

This week was also my birthday! Thank you everyone for all of the birthday wishes! It means so much!! I really do appreciate it! I had a great birthday! We worked like normal throughout the day and we had a huge lunch! The member cooked a ton of spaghetti rice beans and steak! It was delicious. But I also ate so much that I got sick afterwards! So that was pretty great to walk around Santarém like a balloon, hahaha. And that night we ate pizza and ice cream to finish off my birthday. It was honestly a great day! Thank you all again!  

This week we also got to go to Alter do Chão. It is a big tourist destination here and we have some investigators that live there so we went to teach them. And we visited some of the tourist destination, so yeah it was a great visit. We can't go swimming but we can walk on the beach. Also the water this time of year is about 10 feet above the beach, so we didn't even see it. But we will because the water is starting to drop and by august the beach will be there! 

That is about all for this week, and now pictures! 

1. This is the biggest truck I have ever seen! Imagine an F-250 with an extra seat in the back.

 

2. The aamazon wild looks a lot like Louisiana 

 

3. Amo vocês! 

 

4. This is the river Tapajos, a giant river that runs into the even bigger Amazon! 

 

5. Alter do Chão really is amazing! 

 

6. If you look up Alter do chão on google you will probably see the a beach with huts. Well, these are those huts. Under the water. 

 

7. Te amamos 

 

8. Another picture of those huts 

 

9. This a forest above the beach, and that is a house on the edge of the cliff. 

 

10. My companion likes to make tapioca, I appreciate it alot. 

 

11. Delicious lunch we had in our house! 

 

12. The river Tapajos again. 

 

13. A beautiful sunset. And you can see the kites the kids love to play with floating in the sky. 

 

14. Its a little hard to see but this picture has the Amazon river and some of the kites the kids fly too. 

 

15. My birthday dinner! 

 

16. Cleaning the baptismal font 

 

17. The baptism of Rosane! 

 

18. The Baptism of Rosane again! 

 

19. Taking a break in the little bit of shade we found. 

 

20. Again, the best feeling! After a long, but fast, week of hard work. Its always a great feeling! 

This is all for now! Feel free to email me if you would like or if you have any questions or people to pray for! Hope y'all have a great week! 

Com muito amor, 

Elder Sant 

Acreditar. Amar. Fazer.