Letter #13 with a Picture!

Como Vai?

It has rained so much here this past week. Last night was especially bad. I´ve never been so soaked in my life. I still love the rain, but it sure makes missionary work tough sometimes. Putting all s]your scriptures in plastic bags inside your back pack and lugging around an umbrella. Adn then the clouds go away and it get hot and super humid. Last night we left the house around 5:00 after passing through real quick to pick up more copies of the book of Mormon to deliver. It was nice and sunny so I left my umbrella at home. Big mistake. I´ve never seen it rain so hard. And of course the hour or so it rained was when we were outside walking home. Elder Azevedo said it was inevitable to have an experience like this because it was his last working Sunday (next Sunday he will be traveling to the Mission Home before he heads home).

I have a picture attached from the baptism a couple of weeks ago. Hope you guys enjoy it. The lady on the left is Irmã Cida and she loves to work with missionaries. She goes out with us on visits at least once a week. She was a big help with the baptism of Nicolas. The other little boy is Nicolas´s half-brother Adré. I absolutely love that little kid. He usually sits on my lap during Sacrament meeting. And yesterday he came with Irmã Cida to the new convert class and he was really upset. I was proud to be the one he ran to calm him down.

We have started teaching several new people this week. One family I am particularly excited about. We were trying to find the home of a street contact and a 15 year old girl came out of the neihbor house and recofnized us as mormon missionaries. We found out her grandma is a firm member in another town and later foudn out her parents were also baptized. They were active for about four years and then moved to Poços de Caldas and stopped going to church. I think it´s going to be quite easy to get them re-activated. The father, Gilson has some health problems though. He has one very weak kidney and is waiting for a transplant. They have four kids Amanda, Aline, Bruno, and Ana Julia. Their neighbors next door were in the house when we were teaching and one of the girls from that family came to church yesterday with us. The girls made some really good friends in Young Women´s already. i´m really excitd about this family, right now I feel pretty sure we will have sucess with them.

We are also teaching a college aged guy, Domingos. We walked past his apartment as he was leaving and he wa talking to a friend and he saw me, an American, and said in English, ´´did you understand what I said?´´ I said yes and we started talking as we walked down the street. He was curious to know why he saw Americans dressed like me walking past his apartment so often. So I told him we are missionaries and that we wanted to come by and share a message with him. He is one of the friendliest guys I have met. He has never joined any church, not even baptzied as a baby in the Catholic church but loves to study religions. He has entirely read the Bible, Quran, Torah, and a bunch of other religious texts. So it wasn´t too hard to give him a Book of Mormon. Another blessing for being an American, I have had so many oppurtunities these past two weeks to talk in English and people that want to know what an American is doing all the way out here. It´s so awesome.

I recieved a nice bundle of letters Saturday. Thanks for all the letters everyone. And I´m repenting and will get a bunch of letters sent out tomorrow to all of you. I have written/am writing a bunch of letters today.  

Dad has some questions for me that I think everyone would benefit to hear the answers:

1. Can you print our letters?    Yes. But I´m not sure how much it costs, probably not much
2. Does including a full talk to much for you to print? I would love to have church talks sent. I´m running out of church magazines to read (surprisingly).
3. Can you give out treats, pictures or trinkets to the children there? if so would you like us to send you some?  It would be niceto have stuff to pass out. Kids here love to get $1 bills or other little stuff.
4. Are there any pictures  church or otherwise that you would like for your apartment? We already have quite a bit of this stuff around so no need to send this kind of stuff
5. Are there any personal products that you cannot get there, toothbrushes, deodorant...? I haven´t encountered really anything I can´t get here. Maybe some Gold Bond foot powder. The stuff they have here isn´t quite the same
6. Can you chew gum? How is your supply holding out?  I can´t chew gum unfortunately. I gave most if it away =(
7. Is there any clothing needs that you have  shirts, socks...? Maybe a few pairs of thinner socks. The ones I have are nice but a little warm and take forever to dry. But I can buy them here too if necessary.
8. And I can send pictures but, I´ll still send the majority through mail on the SD cards.

Well I love all of you guys. This past week has been quite good. It´s improving and I´m excited to see what comes next week. Who is going to be my new companion? Will I be transferred (I definitely hope not)? Things are forever good here as a missionary.

-Elder McLelland

Letter #12

Minha Familia e meus amigos!

    We confirmed Nicolas, the boy be we baptized last week. Unfortunately he ended up not wanting to do it in front of the whole ward. But it was kind of a blessing for me, I didn't have to worry about saying things wrong in front of the whole congregation. That was really cool. Irm Will, in the bishopric, coached me through the part of the confirmation that has to be exact. Then it was amazing to let the Spirit take over during the blessing part. The gift of the Holy Ghost is such an amazing thing. I see it work with me everyday and it's so exciting to be helping others receive it too.

Interestingly, this past week I have encountered a bunch of English speakers this week. They are really excited to have a native speaker to talk with. A lady that works in the juice shop across the street from us stopped us and started talking perfect english asking me to stop by some time so I can talk with her in english. I think she just wants to speak in English, but who knows it might be a great oppurtunity to share the Gospel too. I met a man who goes back and forth from here and New York every 6 months for work. He spoke very broken English but was really excited to talk to me and invite me to his home. A couple of weeks ago we were walking to our lunch appointment and a lady stopped her car and asked if we were ``mormons创. We said yes and she then told us she had friends in USA that are mormons and while she lived there starting reading the Book of Mormon but doesnt have a copy here. We went and delivered it this week and she also spoke very broken English but wants us to keep coming to teach her the Gospel and wants my help with English. I hadn磘 really thought that my ability to speak english was going to bring teaching oppurtunities. I had been focusing so much on forgetting about English so I could connect to the people in Portuguese.

Unfortunately this last week also had a lot of struggles. Many of our investigators haven't been progressing much. The family we took to church last week has kind of gone cold. After we extended an invitation for baptism the mother was pretty firm that she has already been baptized. Kind of strange, I've encountered this a lot too, she doesn't seem to realize the contradiction she made. She had just said and agreed that her baptism was invalid because of the lack of authority and lack of choosing to be baptized (she was only an infant) but still is firm that she has already been baptized and doesn't need to be baptized again. The children seem interested still but mimic the responses of their mother.

This coming Saturday I have a commitment to attend a Seventh-day Adventist church service. A young man pulled over and offered us a ride so he could talk with us. He was really eager to learn about us and also share his religion. We are going to one of his services on saturday and he will come with us on Sunday. He also has a book for us just like we gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon. I'm kind of excited to see what it's going to be like. Apparently it's more or less common to visit other churches as missionaries to show respect to other churches too. I had never really thought of doing that.

Well, the work is still plugging along despite some disappointments. And despite the struggles I'm still happier than ever to be here. I hope all is well there too. Glad to hear weather is cooling down there. It's getting wetter and hotter here. I love you all.

Elder McLelland

Letter #11

Greetings from Poços de Caldas!

     Well, there I was yesterday cold, surprised and a bit nervous standing in a baptismal font baptising Nicolas Alexandre da Costa. I was pretty sure that the baptism wasn´t going to happen yesterday. The night before we were in Nicolas´ gome asking his mother for permission (he is only 8 years old almost 9) and she was pretty firm that she wanted to wait a while. But Sunday morning when the lady from the ward that has been helping us went to pick him up the mother decided it was alright for him to be baptised. It was quite an experience. I was really nervous. I hadn´t prepared at all because I didn´t think it would happen and I assumed Elder Azevedo would perform the baptism. But he handed me the white jump suit and told me to do it. There was another little girl from the ward that was baptised too. The Spirit was so strong as I spoke the simple words of the baptismal prayer. It was nice to have that good end to a rough week.

Friday/Saturday we did splits because our district leader had to go around doing baptismal interviews. So, Elder Walker and I were companions for a day in his area. That was pretty cool. The Spirit definitely helped us a lot to understand what people were saying and we knew how to teach pretty well too. Unfortunately on Saturday our appointments together fell through and it rained a ton which made it nearly impossible to contact people on the street. But it was nice to have some time with Elder Walker and speak some English. We both are unfortunately struggling with our trainers. We both have a feeling that our work could be much more efficient and that many of the small rules are being bent or broken. It was nice to at least talk about it and share some ideas to help improve. 

Sunday was also amazing because we finally had success getting investigators to Church with us. We had a family for four that came with us and they were all ready to go when we stopped by to pick them up. (Quite a relief after the past four houses we went to no one came through with their commitment to come with us). The family was Maria de Lurdes and her three kids William, Wesley and Isaura.  It was really nice to have them there and it made our week feel a bit more sucessful. 

We also have several individuals we are working with now that I have high hopes for. We are working with a couple of men that want our help to break their drinking habit. We are also teaching a lady that lost her father a little over a month ago. She was taught by the previous elders here but had to stop to give more time caring for her father. She was very greatful to hear about the Plan of Salvation because she is bery worried about the condition her father is in right now. Isn´t it wonderful to know that we can live as families forever and that those that have passed away are in a safe place and still have a chance to accept Christ and His Gospel?

Today we are going out to play some soccer with the youth in the ward. We are taking the two boys that came to church with us. William and Wesley, to help them get to know other youth better. I´m kinda nervous to play soccer with people that have been playing all of their lives. I´ve also been fighting a cold for the past two weeks, and its actually getting worse so I plan on sleeping a lot today to hopefully help. We get so exhausted from working all day everyday that its hard to recover from something as simple as a cold.

We work quite a bit with a family here in the ward that is absolutely amazing. I´m not even sure what the last name of the family is. Names are different here in Brazil and no one goes by their last name at church. It´s always brother/sister and then their first name. But they are absolutely amazing. They have a 17 year old son, Erick, that comes to work with us often. And their oldest, Nathali, leaves in about 3 weeks to serve a mission in the Provo Mission. They are always happy to feed us and help us out with the work. The father, I´m not sure what he does but he often travels to work in the Sacramento Area. It´s always cool to meet someone that has heard of Galt, especially here in Brazil.

Well everything is going pretty well here. I´m starting to get the hang of things better. I´m getting more and more excited to keep going with the work. I love being here.

Elder McLelland

Pictures!

Scott's mission president sent these in the mail.

It's so fun to see him looking so good!

Letter #10

Howdy Everyone.

Well we worked quite a bit this week and taught a lot of lessons. It磗 such a wonderful feeling to testify multiple times in a day about Jesus Christ and the Restoration of his gospel through Joseph Smith. It磗 so wonderful to have the Spirit testify to me and investigators so frequently.

I磛e already encountered a few interesting things during lessons too. For example we were teaching a really nice old lady and her family and they were so accepting of us. She told us that she used to be very active in another church until her pastor told her she couldn磘 pray to Santa Maria (an obstacle we will have to work hard to overcome). She took here little picture/shrine thingy of Santa Maria down off of the pedestal and passed it around and kissed the picture and then did the sign of the cross with her hands. Luckily they didn磘 expect us to do it but I was quite nervous watching it get passed around the room getting closer and closer to me. In another lesson the young mother we were teaching just out of the blue started breastfeeding her child without any covering whatsoever. It磗 a natural thing but completely took me off guard. Definitely some different culture things to get used to.

We have a good pool of investigators to work with right now. Unfortunately we weren磘 sucessful in getting many to church. It磗 so disappointing to see people feel the Spirit, and even say they know the it磗 true but not have a desire to act on it. We are teaching a man and his wife and her father and they are wonderful and accepting. They all believe our words to be true, but the young man said ``I磎 already Catholic. You are wlecome to come share the Word of God whenever, but I磎 already catholic and don磘 want to change that创. I still have hopes for the rest of the family but it磗 so tough to see people not have desire to act on the Spirit. We are also teaching a woman who is ashamed to go to church because she doesn磘 know how to read. While in the CTM i bought a nice book that had a whol bunch of church paintings in it. I gave it to her and she absolutely loves it. She could hardly put it down while we were trying to teach her. She promises to go next week, hopefully she does.

I just looked out the window and it pouring outside. It was hot and sunny 20 minutes ago when we got here. I磎 jealous that you guys keep saying it磗 been cooling down a lot there. It磗 just starting to get hot now. Not super hot, 95ish but in church clothes with humidity it磗 not my favorite. It takes FOREVER for clothes to dry. we don磘 get drying machines. On Sunday morning I had a unique experience. I was ironing my socks to get them dry. I felt a little ridiculous passing the iron back and forth, over and over on a dumb sock. But I磍l get used to it.

Today for P-Day, we met up with the other two companionships here in Po鏾s and went hiking. Here in Po鏾s they have a lot of hills and on the top of one of them they have a big statue of Christ. They call it ``O Cristo创. It was absolutely beautiful up there. Sorry you will have to wait a little while to get some pictures of it. It was a pretty grueling, steep climb but well worth it. There are a bunch of pretty trees along the path. Quite tropical looking in some places actually. Then on the other side of the hill the trees are types of pines. It was awesome but now I磎 sunburned and exhausted. 

You guys asked a little bit about packages. I guess you got some instructions. Don磘 send any major electronics. You asked about CDs, that would be fine. i was actually going to request some Tabernacle choir. Musis can be anything by the Tabernacle choir, and hymns. EFY type stuff, if they are hymns are OK too....but I don磘 really want that kind of stuff to be honest. Just Tabernacle choir or instrumental hymns are great. Try to make packages as light as possible, for costs and if it is heavy people will want to take a look and possibly steal things or they will hold onto it at the post office and charge big fees. I can磘 really think of much I磛e been wishing for...except Root Beer but that磗 not really possible. You did mention blister stuff, that might be handy. And just send everything to the mission home, thanks.


Well, everyone I磎 doing great here. I磎 picking up on Portuguese more and more everyday. I can understand a lot more except for a few of the sisters that talk super fast. The work is picking up more. And I love the city I am in. I磎 so happy to be a missionary. 
I love you all!

Elder McLelland

Letter #9

Hello Everyone!

      Well I'm finally here in the mission field. We had to leave the CTM by 4am last tuesday to make our flight. It felt a little ridiculous flying for 40 minutes. It was pretty much like taking a plane from Fresno to Sacramento. But, they said statistically it is safer for us to fly even for that short period. We arrived at the little airport in Ribeiro Preto and President Prieto and his wife, and the assistants were there to pick us up. We drove to the Mission Office and had some training there. That reminds me, they want all mail to be sent to the mission office, never directly to us. Which is kind of unfortunate because I'll probably only be able to get my mail about once a month or so. But oh well, rules are rules. The mission office has a different address now too. Anything sent to the old address will get to me so go ahead and use that for now, I don't have it with me at the moment to tell you guys now.
       Anyways we had lunch at the Mission President's home, and were assigned our companions and Areas. My companion is Elder Azevedo and our area is Pos de Caldas 1! Elder Azevedo is Brazilian, he is from Teresina and speaks no english. I'm definitely going to have to learn quick. I was really confident in the MTC about my Portuguese, but now that I'm here....holy cow. I have a lot to learn. The people here are super hard to understand, they mumble a lot and have a little bit different accent. Our first day in Ribeiro Preto we have to register with the Federal Police there. But the 12th, the day we arrived, is a national holiday, Dia das Crians, or Children's Day. So everything was closed and we had to stay the night in Ribeir Preto. We had nothing to do in the afternoon so they sent us out to street contacting. I wasn't ready for that, 7 hours of walking and not having much sucess because no one was out in the streets because of the Holiday. Wednesday we got registered and took a bus to our area. We got here in Pos around 11:30 at night. 
        My area here in Pos de Caldas is absolutely beautiful. It's so nice to be out of the big city of Sao Paulo and breathe some fresh air. My area is also the only area in the mission has a lot of wills to climb to get to peoples houses. The hills are quite brutal here, I've got some pretty gnarly blisters. Some of the hills are so steep that you decrease altitude quick enough for your ears to start plugging up. It's pretty intense, but awesome. The people here are great. The first couple of days we spent most of the time introducing me to members and asking for referrals. I'm not sure why Elder Azevedo didn't already really have many people he was working with. He has already been here for one or two transfers. But we have some good people now I have high hopes for.
        I went to church yesterday, which was amazing even though the plans we had for investigators to come fell through. There are three wards here in Pos, our averages about 80 people a week. The Spirit was awesome sitting in our tiny little chapel and I was trying my best to understand the talks. The members here are so nice here. I think the hardest part for me about Brazil will be our lunch appointments. Here in Brazil lunch is the primary meal so we are fed lunch by the members. You have no idea how many times I've already heard ``Come mais Elder, come mais创. It means ``eat more, Elder, eat more创. The sisters take pride in how much they get to feed the elders. So far i've been basically only eating one meal a day, but the equivalent of a normal 3 meals. It's going to take some getting used to. 
        I'm going to take some pictures of the area today and get them sent next week hopefully. I'm not sure how doing snail mail is going to work since I only receive it once a month. But, feel free to go ahead and send as much as you want. I'm just not sure how often I'll be able to send mail to all of you. I will hold off on taking pictures of our apartment. it's in pretty bad shape right now. My goal for the day is to get it looking nice. It's actually pretty disgusting right now. It looks like it hasn't been cleaned for quite a few weeks. I sometimes get the feeling that my companion is kind of loosing steam. This is his last transfer. I hope I can get things working a little better around here even though I have no idea what is going on most of the time. I kind of feel like we waste a lot of time and our planning isn't very thorough at all. I don't know how to suggest improvements when I can hardly speak and I'm so new and don't know the process. But from what I was taught in the CTM i feel like a lot of improvements can be made to increase our success here. 
         I'm super excited to be here. We have several investigators I think we will have some good success with. We taught an awesome lesson on the Restoration yesterday to a young couple. They seemed really interested and the wife. Camila, was already reading from the Book of Mormon before we left. We are teaching an old man named Sebasti, and he seems to be very interested as well. And yesterday while trying to find someone else's house, we met a lady named Angela. She at first had no interest at all to talk to us because she is already a firm member of another church. But she began to share here worries about one of her sons who is having a lot of troubles. She was basically begging us to come and help her son. She was even in tears while we were talking on the street. She really wants the best for her son.
          Well I want to all know that this truly is the work of the Lord. I feel the Spirit so often already. It's one of the most difficult things I've done but it is already bringing me great joy. I'm doing very well and I look forward to hearing more from all of you.

I.U.
Elder McLelland

Letter #8

Boa Tarde!              
Well here goes my last email from the CTM. I can hardly believe I have just one more week here and I'll really be in the field doing real missionary work. This past week has been great, and watching conference absolutely amazing. Last Friday we went to do street contacts again but this time it was in the middle of Sao Paulo. I haven't been around that many people in one place I don't think. It was intense, but awesome.            So we had a goal as a district to ``contact" 100 people in our two hours there. We defined a contact as talking to someone and getting further than just a ``hello". Our district made it to 86, and the reason we fell short was mainly due to me and Elder Walker. We ended up talking with one man, Marcos, for about 40 minutes. We found out he already had a copy of the Book of Mormon, but he had questions for us. His main worry was that if he joined the church he would have give up his family and work to serve a mission like us. He didn't understand that that wouldn't be required of him. We explained that the best we could and we talked a lot more about other stuff in the book of mormon too. He also hadn't ever talked to missionaries so we gave him the phone number that usually accompanies the Book of Mormon they recieve. He didn't have it so we wrote it down for him and he said he would call it to find out more. He seemed pretty excited to understand to understand more about the church.             
Elder Bashford, my district leader, is an amazing violin player and he had a really cool experience using his talent while we were contacting. He saw a guy playing a violin on the street to get money from people so elder Bashford went up and started talking to him about the violin. After a while the guy asked him to play so Elder Bashford play from memory Glory to God on High. He really amazed the guy and he accepted a Book of Mormon. While Elder Bashford played, his companion Elder Anderson talked to the people that were slowing down to see what was going on. They gave out some pass along cards as along witht the Book of Mormon. It was a really cool experience for all of us, even though it dumped rain on us for about 30 minutes. Luckily for Elder Walker and I the 30 minutes of rain happened to be while we under a bridge talking to Marcos. So we lucked out.           
 So it seems funny stories have been a common request, so I'll share a story. About 6 weeks ago I bought a tie from who we call ``the tie lady". SHe owns a little shop around the corner and sells cheap nice ties. So I bought a really nice blue tie that has black stripes on it. I was wearing it about 3-4 weeks later and Elder Bashford was also wearing a blue and black striped tie to so I said, ``hey, our ties match today." I got a blank stare from Elder Bashford. It turns out my nice ``blue" tie is actually a nice purple tie. It took me a month to find out. I love being color blind.              
Conference was absolutely amazing this weekend. It was one of the most relaxing weekends because we watched conference and had free study time in between. It was really nice. We watched conference in English, which I was really glad about. Also the Seventy that spoke, Jairo Mazzagardi, is Brazilian and he was one of our devotional speakers we had a few weeks ago here at the CTM. I got to meet him when he was here. I'm totally blanking on who said, it was one of the Twelve, that talked about the 5 steps to living a consecrated life. Was that Eyring, maybe?   I can never remember if I don't have my notes with me. I also really enjoyed the one from Patrick Kearon, the one who told the story about being bitten by a scorpion in Saudi Arabia. I absolutely love general conference.             
Well I have just one week left here and I can hardly believe it. I am sooooo excited. We leave really early next tuesday morning for the airport. we have to leave the CTM by 4AM for a 30-40 minute plane ride to Ribeiro Preto. But I am getting so excited to go. I feel really quite confident in my speaking skills. I still don't understand a lot but definitely enough to get by. Even today while waiting for Elder Walker at the Post Office I talked to a man who is a motorcycle courier. They have a lot here in Sao Paulo and he was telling be about how dangerous it is here. One person dies every day from a motorcycle accident here in Sao Paulo.But it was really neat to talk to him a little bit about me and the church but more importantly to just have a casual conversation with a complete stranger. It definitely has been boosting my confidence. I can't wait to be teaching people and helping them find the way to true joy and happiness. We have practice lessons everyday and I promise people blessings in our fake lessons. But I still feel the spirit so strongly as I do it because I really know it's true.          
Well I hope all is still going well at home. How has it been babysitting Lily? Leah and Brian, you will haev to tell me all about your nice vacation. How is all the extended family doing? I hope all is well. I look forward to hearing more soon.         
 Love, Elder McLelland