February 23, 2015

Well sorry about skipping last week …. I had too much other business to complete and did not get a letter out.

This week we moved! We spent three days doing our move. First, we cleaned our new house. We went in with hoses and a ladder and we scrubbed it all down. The people who used to live there smoked and so we had to clean it really good to get the smell out! Second, we moved all of our stuff to the new house. It's on the same lot as our old house (it'd be like moving from one apartment to the other, except they're individual houses, not apartments).

Since our old house was infested with termites, we wiped down everything and passed termite killer on everything. Then we left all the wood stuff in the sun while we moved everything else. It was a lot of work! The missionaries have lived in our old house for 10 years, and the house was completely dirty when we got here, so there was a lot to clean and throw out! But now we're all moved in and the house is great!

While we were moving, we talked a bit with our old downstairs neighbor (the one who is always hitting the ceiling). She's magically changed and asked to be our friend. So we gave her a picture of Christ and played the guitar a bit for her and now she tries to talk to us every day! (Now we live in the house in front of hers, there is a small yard between us).

The highlight of this week was Friday night. We prepared another integration activity. We did a musical Jeopardy game. (Brazil doesn't have Jeopardy, but everybody caught on pretty quick). Instead of using trivia questions, the teams were given a word and 30 seconds to think of a song that has that word in the lyrics. For example, Train, Dew, or Shoe. It was a great integration activity because everyone got involved, singing, and dancing. The youth really loved it! The funniest part was when we got to a 700 point challenge. It was a race to eat two bananas. Each team had one member go to the front and we gave them bananas. The three in the front were Marlon and Claudinho (two young men) and Bishop Adenis. Everyone thought that Marlon or Claudinho would win, but to the surprise (and delight) of everyone, Bishop ate those two bananas in a second or less! Marlon and Claudinho didn't even manage to open their bananas before he stuffed them both into his mouth and swallowed! And his sacrifice was worth it, because his team won!

On Saturday, we decided to do a missionary activity with Marlon and his brother Juliano. They are recent converts and their mother isn't a member. We want to help them have desire to serve a mission. Marlon is 18 and Juliano is 15. We did a division with them, and on the division we did a race to see who could give out 6 Book of Mormons (teaching a lesson before giving the book) the fastest! Marlon and I won, teaching 7 lessons in two hours! We taught 15 minute lessons and just knocked on every door we could!

On Sunday night, we went to Marlon and Juliano's house again to do a family night with their non-member mom. We played cards- go fish and old maid. Brazilians usually only play cards at bars, betting money, so they'd never played cards before. It was really fun though and they even asked me where they could buy a deck so that they could play it again!

Hope y'all are staying warm way up north!

Elder Jasperson

February 9, 2015

This week passed by so quickly because it was a busy one! We had the baptism of Valmor and Alessandra. So we prepared them all week. Valmor was baptized on Saturday. It was a great service. Elder dos Anjos and I prepared a musical number (I sang 'Behold tis Eventide and he played the piano). After we sang, at the end of the service, we asked Valmor to share his testimony. He bore a wonderful testimony, talking about how good it was to get to know the church and how he'd learned for himself that the gospel is true. We helped him stop smoking and his life is a lot better now. He said that whenever we had a marked visit at his house, he'd feel us arriving from far away because he always felt so good when we visited. He then shared that he started to feel that way when we weren’t there too when he read the scriptures and stuff. In the end, he said “I know that this is the Church of Jesus Christ, and mine too!" That was really cool! He was confirmed on Sunday.

Alessandra was baptized on Sunday, after the meetings. Her baptism was also really special because her cousin, Marlon, baptized her. For her baptism, we made a chocolate cake. During the week, we'd promised her that we'd make her a cake for her baptism. But one day, at Valmor's house, Elder dos Anjos confused himself and said to Valmor that we'd be bringing his chocolate cake to the baptism. "What cake?" Valmor asked. Well, then we got ourselves in a fix and we made a cake for Valmor too! His was a carrot cake. After his baptism, we cut it up and then Valmor told us that he doesn't like cake! So he didn't eat any of it. Afterwards we thought that maybe he didn't want to eat it because eating cake makes him want to smoke. He stopped smoking last Sunday (1 week ago) so it's still really hard not to give in to the urge. But the rest of the people there (and us) liked the cake!

On Friday, we went to a different Burro of Novo Hamburgo to get the missionaries to come and do the interviews. Well, they were taking a while to show up at the bus stop, and a member called us asking us to help him in making a visit to his Nephew in the hospital. So we went with him. His nephew was in a motorcycle wreck and was all broken up. We gave him a blessing and got back to the stop before the other missionaries finally got there! Mormon Standard Time functions in Brazil too :)

We got the transfer news today, and we're both staying here in Jardim Alcântara!

Love y'all

Elder Jasperson

February 2, 2015

Matthew 23:31-46
Mosiah 2:17

Serving another is like serving our God. Because he can't physically be on the earth to lift people up and help them with everything, he lets us be his hands. So we're helping him help others. And he is grateful for that.

Well, this week had some cool stuff happen. First off there was a sick car crash on Tuesday. Somebody shot this guy who was driving, he lost control of his car, ran over a bunch of stuff, and knocked down a telephone pole. As a result, we didn't have electricity all day. Without that, the water pumps didn't work, so we were without water all day too! One day later, another car lost control and knocked down another telephone pole! So on Wednesday, we didn't have any electricity either!

We went to Porto Alegre two times this week for some meetings, and we also had a zone conference, so we had to get up early a lot. As a result, we are really tired today! Elder dos Anjos fell asleep studying!

Because of all the meetings and stuff, we didn't have much time to work during the week. We had a fun ward activity on Friday, Elder dos Anjos and I planned it out and it went well. The members are a bit livelier now so that's good!

Valmor finally stopped smoking on Sunday, so his baptism should be Sunday!

Love, Elder J

study time