Faz um tempinho que não mando uma carta para vocês.

Oi familia!  Como vai?!

It´s been a while since I´ve written a family letter.  At least I think so.  Time goes by so fast, and I´ve done a lot of replying to your letters, but a lot of times on P-day I get to the computer and really don´t feel like using technology.  I guess that´s what a year on the mission does.  But I guess I´ll give you all an idea of what´s going on down in Brazil.

These last couple weeks I´ve been needing to push myself a little bit harder.  Elder Toebe is finishing up the mission here in two weeks, and understandably his thoughts are in the future, so I´ve had to retrain my mind not to think about home, but to think about what is going on here.  And it´s been good.  We´ve talked a lot about dreams for the future, which can be distracting, but at the same time, it´s been kind of good for me, because as I´ve been out, I feel like I have a better idea of what I want with my life.  So we´ll see how these last two weeks go.  Elder Toebe has always been a hard worker, but his thoughts are definitely drifting towards home, so I´ll have to step up.

We have a really great teaching group.  We are teaching this really awesome lady named Neide and have been teaching her in her little store called Casa do Norte, where she sells food from other parts of Brazil which are hard to find here in São Paulo.  She was a referral from a member, and we have been teaching her inside the store in the afternoon which is kind of fun.  Anyways, she has made some awesome progress this week.  We gave her the book of mormon about a week ago, and she is already in Alma, and is preparing to get baptized this Sunday with her 10 year old son.  The biggest problem is that she has a leadership role in her church, and is nervous to leave behind the people she leads, but I told her that she doesn´t have to leave the behind, she can keep on leading them to the Church of Jesus Christ and eternal life.  We´d be happy to help :)  I know it doesn´t always work out that way and she might face some rejection and criticism, but still, I´m crossing my fingers.  

We taught another guy named Danilo yesterday for the first time who has been going for church for 8 months, but it´s been so hard to get in contact with him and teach him, but we finally did and after 8 months of going to Church, all that is left is baptism.  We still have to teach the lessons, but he accepts everything super great and is preparing for June 8.  

It´s really great to see the work of the Lord grow and progress.  I´m loving this experience with all my heart, might, mind and strength.  

I really liked the following in my studies this week in Jacob 4:13

  13 Portanto, meus irmãos, quem quer que profetize, que o faça ao alcance do entendimento humano, pois o Espírito fala a verdade e não mente. Portanto fala de coisas como realmente são e de coisas como realmente serão; assim, estas coisas nos são manifestadas claramente para a salvação de nossa alma. Mas eis que não somos as únicas testemunhas destas coisas, porque Deus também as disse aos profetas da antigüidade.

There is so much information in the world, and so much religious doctrine and belief that just confuses people, at least here in Brazil, so it´s conforting to know that God will always reveal his will in a simple way so that his children can understand, and after, will send the Spirit to testify of these simple truths.  And as we study the scriptures, we learn that God has taught the same things since the beginning of times.  It´s up to us to follow.

Love you all and hope you have a great week.

Elder McDaniel

Mais uma em Vinhedo!

Oi Familia!

Another week has flown by.  I guess after a year on the mission it´s hard to think of what to write.  We talk to and teach so many people every week, it all kind of just blurs into one, so it´s hard to think what to tell you.  But I´ll guess I´ll give you some highlights.

Mauro, Madalenna, e Larissa.  An awesome family that finally went to church yesterday.  Larissa is an 8 year old granddaughter of Mauro e Madelanna, and one day she yelled at us in the street, asking us if we were `Os Rebeldes` , or the rebels.  which is a Brazilian tv show.  Anyway, we took advantage of the situation, and told her who we really are, and asked if we could visit them and leave a message about Cristo.  They accepted, and we have been teaching them for about two weeks and they have been loving it.  Mauro is really Catholic, Madalenna is Espirita, and Larissa loves having us over, and she kind of dragged her grandparents to Church, and they ended up loving it which made us really happy.  An awesome family, but challenging investigators.  But I´m confindent everything will go smoothly.

We also are teaching a teenager named Caio who is preparing to get baptized this Sunday.  He´s been ready for a while, but it´s been a fight to get him to Church.  But he finally came!  His uncle has a habit of taking him to play soccer Saturday night, and not bringing him back home, but we were firm with him and his grandma this week.  No playing football Saturday night.  Hard for a teenage brazilian, but he´s started playing with the ward friday night which makes up for it.

And then we have Ronlaldo and Mariana.  Ronaldo has a member who is a brother, but apparently used to be totally against the Church.  He didn´t tell us that, but word spreads quickly through the ward.  Anyways, we found him knocking doors, and he let us right in, which was kind of a surprise!  But a good surprise.   We taught him for the second time yesterday, and he told us he had several answeres during the week that the Book of Mormon is true, and so I was getting all excited, but then he told us he doesn´t want to go to Church here in Vinhedo.  I think he used to be Atheist, and doesn´t want people to know he is changing.  But it looks like he´ll go to church in Campinas at least.  But we´ll have to get him to church here before he can be baptized.  

Well that´s some highlights.  It was a short transfer this time around, only 5 weeks, but both me and Elder Toebe will stay.  It´s Elder Toebe´s last transfer, so 6 more weeks, and he is kind of going nuts.  He is studying Mechanical Engineering, so has been practicing his math lately.  2+4=6  1+1+1+1+1+1=6  10-4=6  (12*2)/4=6.  He´s gotten pretty good ;)

Hope you all have a great week!  Love you all!

Evan  

Brasil!

It was definitely a good week this week!  In all honestly, there have been a lot of good weeks recently.  I´m happy, have a great companion, am working hard, and am a missionary of the Lord.  Not much more you could ask for.

So some quick highlights of the week.

Satudary I was able to go back to my last área in Campinas to watch the baptism of Emerciane.  She has changed so much as she has been prepared to be baptized.   She stopped smoking, stopped using drugs, and honestly has changed her life around.  She was a contact on the street, one of a Thousand, but she felt something when we talked with her.  We set an appointment, went to her house, invited her to Church, and when she walked 40 minutes three weeks in a row to arrive, I knew she was willing to change, and it was neat to see the fruits this week.

I also got News that another one of my old investigators, Josali, got baptized recently, which makes me really happy.  Like Elder Costa said in a mission tour, our missions will keep giving fruits for the rest of our lives, so even when things get hard, you can Always know that it´s all Worth it.

Fladimir was confirmed Sunday.  President Mazzagardi of the Seventy did the confirmation.  He´s in our Ward which is kind of cool.  I talked to him for a bit on Sunday.  Maybe two minutes.  He only talked to me in English and I responded in Portguese.  We both need the practice I guess.  His son is the Bishop in our Ward, so it´s been fun to get to know his Family,  at least a little bit.

Hope you all have an awesome week!  Crazy that April is coming to a close already.  The months are starting to fly by! 

Quase um ano já!

Oi Familia!

It´s crazy how fast the time has past by.  In a couple days I´ll have officially hit the one year mark, and for some reason that just doesn´t even seem fair at all. I´ve done a ton, but at the same time I feel like I haven´t done nearly enough for one year, and to think that this second year will fly by probably even faster, I´ve come to realize that I just got to put it all in each and every day.  

I´m sorry me emails have kind of gotten shorter and less interesting.  Sometimes I just feel like hardly anything different has been happening lately, just with a lot of new faces.  My new goal is to take a lot more pictures this new year.  I feel like pictures preserve memories a lot better, but I´ve gotten kind of bad at pulling the camera out.  Oh well,  we´ll make that a new years resolutions of sort.  

We´ve taught a lot of people this week.  A lot of people with a lot of problems.  Smoking, Drinking, Marriage, etc.  In the middle of a lesson with this couple that has been fighting a ton and just put it all out their for us to help, I thought of a talk by Elder Nelson a couple years ago when he said, `Ask the missionaries, they can help you!`  I remember thinking than, and thought it during the lesson, `Wow, do these people not realize I´m like a 20 year old kid who has never been married and has no idea how to do marriage counseling?`  But I guess that all is part of the calling, and so I read over some parts of the A Familia: A Proclamação ao mundo with them, and told them the message we had will help them overcome whatever difficulty they have, and they ended up coming to church which is a great start!  We will see where it all ends up, but I´m sure we were able to make somewhat of a difference.  

We have been having a lot of success bringing people to Church these last couple weeks.  Now we just need to get them reading the Book of Momon and praying.  The three pillars of testimony, no matter what stage of life you are in.  If you are having problems, make sure you are praying, studying the Book of Mormon, and going to church.  It truly brings revelation.  

I´ll try to take more pics for you all this week and this year.  Love you all and stay strong in the journey.  And always remember why we are here, to become perfect in Christ.

 32 Yea, ^acome unto Christ, and be ^bperfected in him, and ^cdeny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and ^dlove God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be^eperfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect inChrist, ye can in nowise deny the power of God.

 33 And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye ^asanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the ^bblood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your ^csins, that ye become ^dholy, without spot.

Espero que vocês tenham uma boa semana e que fiquem firme em fé, sempre crescendo em seu testemunho.

Abraço,

Evan  

Finalmente choveu!!! ... um pouco

Oi família!
Tudo bem?!

The week has just kind of flown by. Time just seems to kind of
disappear sometimes, but I guess you just have to make the most out of
it.

So here are some highlights from the week... Actually, I'll think I'll
just tell about Saturday, because Saturday was kind of highlight day.
Saturday morning we were able to take Rodrigo e Elisangela to visit
the temple with us which was really great. They felt the spirit so
strong, and all of us were just renewed by the wonderful spirit that
is there. We taught them about eternal families and temple marriage
while we were there, and the Spirit was so strong so I challenged them
to baptism again. I was almost positive they would say yes, but after
thinking for awhile, they went back to their same answer of wanting
certainty. It goes to show that the real path to conversion is
through the Book of Mormon and personal prayer. They have only read a
litte bit, so we need to really get them started on that. They've
been coming to church for 5 weeks already, and they come to all the
activities and everything. Even the members think they have already
been baptized which creates some funny/awkward moments. But with time
I'm sure they'll come around.

After the temple we had a delicious lunch, made some visits, and then
went to visit Larissa (niece of a member who we have been teaching) to
make sure she was all ready for her baptism, and while we were there
we got a phone call from the bishop that the water in the neighborhood
were the church is had been cut, so that kind put a wrench in our
plans. But we called up some other missionaries and last minute they
were able to go to their church and fill up the baptismal font for us,
and last minute everyone drove over to the stake center, but it all
went smoothly which was good. The only problem was that we were
supposed to have a ward activity after the baptism, and the baptism
got way delayed, and so nobody showed up to our church until 7ish and
it was supposed to start at 6, and we had some investigators that had
gotten their early so it was kind of a bummer for them, but oh well.
Everything turned out fine.

Well I guess that's kind of a sneak peak into a day of a missionary.
Or at least a good day of a missionary :). You have to go through a
lot of hot sunny days to have one of those, but it's definitely worth
it.

Amo todos vocês. Espero que vocês tenham uma ótima semana e que
reconheçam o amor de Deus em suas vidas.

Mosias 2

19 E eis também que se eu, a quem chamais vosso rei, que passou os
seus dias a vosso serviço e, contudo, esteve a serviço de Deus, mereço
algum agradecimento de vós, oh! quanto deveis aagradecera vosso Rei
celestial!

20 Digo-vos, meus irmãos, que se renderdes todas as graças e
louvores, com todo o poder de vossa alma, àquele Deus que vos criou e
guardou e preservou e fez com que vos regozijásseis e vos concedeu
viverdes em paz uns com os outros--

21 Digo-vos que se servirdes ao que vos criou desde o princípio e
vos está preservando dia a dia, dando-vos alento para que possais
viver, mover-vos e agir segundo vossa própria avontade; e até vos
apoiando de momento a momento--digo-vos que se o servirdes com toda a
alma, ainda assim sereis bservos inúteis.

22 E eis que tudo que ele requer de vós é que guardeis seus
mandamentos; e ele prometeu-vos que, se aguardásseis seus mandamentos,
prosperaríeis na terra; e ele nunca se desvia do que disse; portanto,
se guardardes seus mandamentos, ele vos abençoará e far-vos-á
prosperar.

Ele sempre está ao nosso lado para ajudar, consolar, e fortalecer.

Abraço,

Evan

Calor de mais! Record setting heat in Brazil!

Oi familia,

Mais um transferência acabou. Time is just flying by. 11 months has
already passed by and before I know it, I´ll be more then a year old
on the mission. Crazy.

So it´s just my luck that I´m in Brazil during the hottest year of the
century. The heat has been breaking records here, and the country is
in danger of going into a serious drought. The rain has completely
stopped and there are some cities that have already cut the water to
conserve. Something like one day on and one day off. We´re still
good here, but if it doesn´t rain soon, I don´t know what will happen.
The Lord will take care of us though, so I´m not too worried.

So other then the blazing sun, life has been good. The hours after
lunch sometimes get a little bit miserable. Hardly anyone is home, so
we are stuck in the streets trying to find people to talk too. We can
usually get into a house or two and find someone to talk to, but
inside the houses aren´t much better without air conditioning. We
have fans to keep us cool at night, but we´ve ended up throwing our
mattresses outside and sleeping under the stars because it manages to
cool down a bit at night, and that makes sleeping a lot nicer. Kind
of reminds me of camping a bit, just with cement all around me instead
of trees, but I´ll take what I can.

So I´ll guess I´ll tell you a bit about Elder Lybbert. He´s from
Georgia, a city close to Atlanta, and came straight here from the
Provo MTC. He had actually got reassigned to Indy as well, but the
visa came just before he left. He has an older sister on a mission as
well, in Georgia, and I think he has a couple other siblings as well.
He didn´t bring any photos so it´s kind of hard to remember. He´s
huge into BMX, so huge that after he had a really bad crash his Junior
year, and after being in a coma for 5 days, he learned how to walk
again, and then how to bike again, and went right back out. I guess
he´ll be safe for two years here. He lost his hearing in one ear
though, so I always have to stay on the right side, or maybe it´s the
left. I really don´t remember. I think being part deaf makes
learning the language a lot harder though. You learn so much from
listening, and without hearning, it´s hard to distinguish words and
phrases, so everything probably just sounds like a jumbled mess to
him. But he´s picking it up. Slowly but surely.

We are teaching an awesome couple right now, and they are even legally
married! Rodrigo and Elisangela found us walking down the street one
day. Rodrigo pulled over and asked us if we could teach him some
English, and we were like ´Sure, if you come to church on Sunday` We
tried to set an appointment right then and there, but he didn´t want
to give his address, and so we gave them the address of the church and
invited him and left, and didn´t think much of it because usually if
people aren´t willing to set an appointment, they won´t come to
church, but sure enough he came, and brought his wife too! What a
great suprise that was. That was about 4 weeks ago, and they have
been coming every week and really love it. They are such great
people. So fun to be around and so fun to teach. We just need to
teach them more, but it´s kind of hard because they are working and
studying until 9 almost every day, so we can only pass by on the
weekends. But logo logo tudo vai dar certo.

Well that´s about it for now. Hope you all have a great week.

Amo vocês,

Evan

P.S.

E agora, meu amado filho, apesar da dureza deles, trabalhemos
diligentemente; porque, se deixarmos de trabalhar, estaremos sob
condenação; porque enquanto habitarmos este tabernáculo de barro,
temos uma obra a executar, para vencermos o inimigo de toda a retidão
e para que nossa alma descanse no reino de Deus.

Moroni 9:6

A semana de milagres

Oi familia!
Como vocês estão?

This week was honestly just filled with miracles, and unfortunately,
due to a ton of phone calls, follow-up, planning, and working, I
didn´t get to record a ton of it in my journal, so I hope I can
capture some of the feelings I´ve had of late in this letter.
Training and being District Leader at the same time can sometimes be
exhausting. It´s go go go 24/7 without much of a chance to stop and
take a breath.

I guess the first miracle I would like to share is Diego (another
Diego) who was baptized yesterday. It is honestly amazing how
prepared he was when we found him. So willing to read the Book of
Mormon, so open to the Spirit, and so prepared to be baptized. I
guess the biggest miracle was just to see the Lord´s promise in Alma
16:16-17 come true.

16 And there was no inequality among them; the Lord did pour out his
Spirit on all the face of the land to prepare the minds of the
children of men, or to prepare their hearts to receive the word which
should be taught among them at the time of his coming--
17 That they might not be hardened against the word, that they might
not be unbelieving, and go on to destruction, but that they might
receive the word with joy, and as a branch be grafted into the true
vine, that they might enter into the rest of the Lord their God.

When I started my mission I had a fairly limited view of what the
mission would be like. I thought if I could baptize 5 or 6 people in
two years I would have done all I could. I thought people would be
really closed and unwilling to listen, and I didn´t have a vision of
what the Lord could do. But as time has gone on, God has really
started to open up my eyes of what his plan is and how we can help
him, and I´ve come to realize that today is the time to harvest the
fruits that have already been planted. Especially here in Brazil.
And I guess Diego is just more proof the Lord has given me to help me
learn that this work will grow and continue to grow until it literally
fills the earth. Right now the gospel has been preached in most
countries, but I´m here to tell you it´s gonna keep on growing until
it fills up all these countries as well. And the Spirit is preparing
the hearts of everyone to recieve this wonderful message! The work
will grow, we just need to decide what role we are going to play.

The other miracle was Luciano. We have been teaching him since we´ve
got here, but he really struggled with smoking for quite some time.
He had gotten down to 1 or 2 cigarros per day for a couple weeks, but
it was hard to take that final step. We had a date all set in stone
for Sunday, but he was still smoking to start the week and a couple
lesson appointments fell through, so I didn´t think it would happen...
but then all of a sudden I got a phone call on Friday night and
Luciano almost shouted for joy and told me `I´ve stopped! I´m done
smoking! Are you excited for Sunday?!` and so of course we went over
there, saw how he was doing, marked an interview, and he was baptized
as well. He´s really made some amazing changes.

Now we have a lot of work to keep everyone firm. Sometimes baptizing
is the easy part, but then you have to follow up with your converts
and do all you can to help them stay firm in their decision.

I hope you all know how much I love you all and how much I love
Christ. It´s really amazing what we can do when we turn our lives
over to the saviour. I still have a long ways to go as missionary,
and a lot to learn, but I know I just need to learn how to give myself
to the Lord.

Love you all and hope you all have a wonderful week. Keep on being
awesome, and always remember the Lord in all you do.

Eu Amo Vocês,

Evan