Dengue Fever?

 Saturday March 15, 2014

The daily journal thing didn't really get rolling until Saturday, but I'm making it a habit now.

Well today was... really bad.  Elder F. and I started our studies in the chapel because some of our investigators said that they would show up, but they didn’t.  That’s one of the things that I am learning in my mission; how to deal with disappointment. You’ve got to “just keep swimming.”

Dengue is transmitted by mosquito

Anyways, nothing really interesting happened today until I ended up in the emergency room with a fever of 103.1, vomiting , diarrhea, and a sore throat. Apparently I got some virus, but it's starting to pass. I just hope that it passes faster. Well, I actually hope that it passes slower if you know what I mean!  I didn’t want to go, but it is mission rule so we went, and waited, and waited some more, and basically had the doctor tell me what I already knew.  Oh how I miss my doctor parents!  I wouldn't have to waste my time and money on going to the hospital for every little thing if I was home.  Anyways, they stuck me with an IV, and gave me fluids which helped me to feel a little bit better.  That was the highlight of the day.

Sunday, March 16th, 2014

Sooooo, this is the 17th, 18th time on the toilet for me today.  I’m writing this as I am suffering from this stupid virus from hell.  It’s really not fun.  I couldn’t work today because I have to use the toilet every 30 minutes or so.  Ugghh!  Curse this freaking diarrhea.

My first baptism!

I did manage to make it to the baptism today.  We baptized Vitor and Natanael…and it was the first time I have ever baptized anyone.  I was relieved to do it correctly on the first try (for many reasons).  It was a pretty great experience despite the horrible virus. One of our baptisms fell through because our investigator is attending military school on Sundays so he is unable to attend any Sunday meetings.  That is unfortunate because he is so ready for baptism.

  

We learned that Elder Freeman is getting transferred into the zone next door, Sumaré, and Elder Whatcott got transferred to Zone Oeste (I think). He's going to be a district leader there!! Our new zone leader is Elder Packard (Elder Cetraro is still here), and he's pretty cool. He was home schooled too, but he's one of the more normal home schoolers. Well.... abnormal for a home schooler, but more normal in his behavior. Haha.  I am going to miss Elder Freeman.  I have learned a lot from him, especially about being obedient at all times. 

Monday March 17th, 2014

My special friend.

It is possible that I have dengue, but I don't think that it's too bad because I just had some minor weakness in my body on Saturday and I'm a lot better today. There are a lot of the weird and crappy viruses that can happen here. It's really horrifying and I'm glad that I haven't gotten anything super bad yet.  Overall I'm feeling fine, but I have a very special relationship with the toilet now. I think that I might have to talk with my mission president, we're getting too attached to each other.... 

This was my last day with Elder F.. I got to see a ton of new faces at the transfers, but I also recognized a bunch of old faces.  I think that I am getting to be an age in my mission where I am familiar with just about all of the missionaries.  I was super excited to see former companions, Elder C. and Elder Z. again!  The transfers went well, we just had to wait until 1:30 because the taxis were really slow today.  

So I am staying in my area, and my new comp is Elder Butuhy. As you can probably tell by his name, he is not an American. I don't know what to think of him yet, but we'll see how it goes! Elder Butuhy is from Santa Catarina (one of the more southern states of Brasil) He just got finished with his training (I guess that the Lord just doesn't want me to learn from an experienced missionary), and he's been a member his whole life. His parents are converts, but his older brother has already served a mission. I still don't know a lot about him because we haven’t had a whole lot of down time to talk.

Here are the three baptisms that we had this transfer.

Laricia's baptism.

Vitor's and Natanael's baptism.

FAITH and WORKS

 Day 242 - March 9, 2014

            So I think that I am going to start writing daily in my journal because there is starting to be less and less time on Sunday’s to write a summary of the week.  Unfortunately, this will be a short entry.  I am going to make a lot of changes in this next week so that I am a little more organized. I think that will my next project!  I have been working on being exactly obedient and now I think that I will work on my organizational skills.  This week was a little tiring.  I am learning a lot, that is for sure!  As far as our investigators go, things were pretty exciting this week…but not in a good way.  The ex-husband of one of the ladies that we were teaching tried to kill her…3 times.  (with a gun)  She had to move to get away from him.  I guess that this is pretty typical for Bom Jardim. 

            Anyway the rest of the week was trying to keep up with D.  He is tearing through everything that we give him!  He already wants to serve a mission and he is only 14 years old.  He even asked us if an exception could be made so that he could serve when he was 17!  We have been working with him, literally – because he likes to come with us on teaching and contacting visits. His baptism is scheduled for this week, and I am pretty STOKED about it!

            Carnival is finally over.  It wasn’t too crazy here because we're a little bit further inland, and all of the crap that goes on happens closer to the beaches. Oh one thing that I don't know if I said or not last week is that there were CROWDS in the street with sacks of flour and eggs and stuff, but we got lucky and didn't ever run into them head on, although we passed very close! However, Elder Whatcott got hit on the back of his head with an egg!!! He was pretty excited that he got to see some action, but he wasn't too happy about the egg part!

            I have been trying to play piano for the ward during meetings, but no one here can sing and the person who leads the music has trained them to sing to a specific tempo…. soooooo we still have to coordinate things a little better. I'm trying to convince him to let me play a musical number one of these days, but we'll see! I'm starting to take more pictures, but I have to be very careful!

            So one of the things that I'm learning about right now (especially with my companion) is about faith and works. He decided that we should go all out this week and hit every single one of the standards of excellence, and I couldn't say no because how would that seem? 'Nope, I don't want to work that hard' or 'Nah, we can't do that’. Soooooo, I decided to study faith this morning (something that I was lacking when it comes to hitting all of the numbers that we are supposed to). Anyways, I was studying and I realized a few things. Faith is a principle of ACTION and POWER. It is the force that empowers us to work for a worthy goal. I think that the standard of excellence is a worthy goal, so I'm going to work and develop my faith to make it happen! Faith is an EXTREMELY important principle in not only missionary work, but in our lives as well. How many of us place 'worthy goals' in our lives? It's really easy to place goals as missionaries because it's the most focused time in our lives. However, during our lives sometimes we need to take a minute, put a pause on life, and evaluate where we are. If we do this, we can realize what exactly we need to do to better ourselves. As a missionary I'm making these pauses at least every single night before I go to bed. As normal people, we should hold at least one of these 'pauses' every week. This can help us use our time more wisely during our week and be more successful.

            EIGHT MONTHS down, 16 to go, for the non-math folks that means I am 1/3 of the way through my mission!  Hard to believe. It is true what they say about the language, 6 months in country and you are reasonably fluent. About 25% of the people who I talk with on the street think that I'm Brazilian, so I'm doing really with this part of my mission.

Contrary to popular belief, there are not monkeys everywhere in Brazil!  This is the very first wild monkey that I have seen on my mission...which is already 1/3 over.

Okay, I know that this looks disgusting, but it was good!  Rice and chicken with guacamole and doritos.

America!!!

I love you all! 

Elder Colvin

PS. Congrats to Brett and Peter on their mission calls. They will be great missionaries. I am sad that it will be so long before I will get to see them again.

Missionary Work and Carnival

 Day 235 - March 2, 2014

         I'm doing just fine! Working hard as usual. I threw up a couple times this week, slept a ton on Friday to recuperate, but I got better really quickly, so its all good!  It is Carnival week here, but in our area there are no restrictions, except that we cannot go to the actual carnival celebration for obvious reasons.  Unlike what you would expect, here in Bom Jardim, carnival is super chill. Just a bunch of kids running around in the streets throwing flour and eggs. AND funk music. It's not the kind of funk that you're thinking about, but funk here is the worst kind of music that you could possibly imagine. It's worse than any kind of rap you could try to find. ANYWAYS, we don't even get a day off here. Our zone actually has a goal to do 317 contacts during carnival, which runs from basically Sunday until Thursday. (317 because that's the mission's goal for baptisms this month.) It was our zone leaders' idea, but I think that it's pretty cool. I don’t know how many people will actually be around to contact during the holiday, but we shall see.

Here is the past week in review:

P-day entertainment

Monday – This was a relaxing P-day.  I am definitely not used to that.  To not be busy is pretty strange for me.  We bought a bunch of food, fruit, and snacks, watched Monsters University, and I got to practice piano! The piano was definitely the best part of the day!  As far as work goes, we talked with a recent convert who wanted to fall away from the church.  I think that we helped him to resolve his problem.  We also gave a Book of Mormon to an investigator who is going on a long business trip. 

Tuesday- Our weekly planning session actually went well for us for once.  Almost every time it ends with hurt feelings, but we actually were able to resolve everything like adults.  SHOCKER! 

         I ended up getting sick after lunch at a member’s house.  I was sick again two days later, but with some extra rest on Friday, I am feeling better.

         Later in the day on Tuesday, we went to visit a contact, but were only able to talk with his Mom. It was kind of a cool experience because she has been to 3 of her siblings’ baptisms, but has never investigated the church.  Now her son in interested in the church.  She is Catholic, but she says that she only attends because her Dad wants her to go to church with him.  She said that of all the churches that she has been to, including her church, she felt the best when she visited the LDS church.

Wednesday – We went early to district meeting and I practiced more piano for about an hour!  It felt so nice to actually play.  Anyways in our meeting we set a goal to have 36 baptisms as a zone this month to help out with our mission goal of 317 baptisms.  It is going to be difficult.  I just hope that we don't have a lot of Elders that will just be throwing people into the water and calling it good, because there is a huge lack of follow-through here.

Thursday – After lunch we went back to teach some of our investigators and they (not surprisingly) live outside of our zone.  Every time we find someone who is ready and willing to listen to us, they live outside of our teaching area.  The highlight of the day was probably when we had our lesson with I.  We ended up teaching her with Clara and Niliane (who is waiting for he mission call).  Our investigator, who is normally very quiet, was completely silent with other people around.  Seriously, she was not saying a thing.  Elder F. and I were just about ready to give up, but we asked Clara to give her testimony.  Just before she started, I. asked her if it was hard for her to join the church.  Clara then shared her conversion story, which involved a lot of personal sacrifice.  It had a really huge impact on I.  She is now super excited for her baptism and is very happy.  She seems almost like a different person.

Friday – Well, I woke up and was sick again.  (This time with vomiting and diarrhea.)  I called my mission president’s wife like we are supposed to, and then I decided that I could tough it out.  Elder Cet. and I went on a split because we were both feeling sick and thought that our companions might be able to get something done without us slowing them down.  We stopped by a couple of houses to try to teach a little bit, but no one answered their door. Finally we gave into whatever it was that was making us sick.  We slept from 3-6 and then we got ready for out Family Night that we do with all of our investigators who want to come.  It was a good thing that Elder Cet. and I went, because we had a really spiritual meeting where everyone felt inspired to make changes in their lives to be able to feel the Spirit more.  The members who came said that they felt inspired to be better people, and our investigators were inspired to be baptized (I. in particular.)

Saturday/Sunday – The weekend was a little slow, except for our lesson with D. (the son of the woman I mentioned early who has all of her siblings in the church.)  He is only 14 years old, but he really wants to be baptized and prepare for a mission.  He is super smart and it is awesome to teach him because he is eager to learn.  He has already been to church twice.  The other elders had a baptism, and we invited I. to go to see what it was like.  She had a great experience and is very excited to be baptized soon. 

         All in all we are doing really well here.  The only problem is that we don't really have problems.  Because of that, our zone leaders, and even our district leader, don’t pay too much attention to us.  They don’t give us very many tips on how we can do better or anything.  Fortunately, we have our ward mission leader.  He helps Elder F. and I a TON!  On Sunday, he gave us he following advice, “Just keep dong what you are doing and you will get better with practice and time.”  I HATE that answer because I like to have something that I can actual work on!  No worries though, all is well.  I am at the 8 month mark…WOOHOOO! Soon my sister will be at the half way point of her mission!        

Ward Mission Leader to the Rescue

And I thought Mom's haircuts were short!

Day 228 February 23, 2014

The week in review:

Monday

P-day was pretty uneventful.  We cleaned the house (more like, I cleaned the house…).  We bought a bunch of groceries including a lot of fruit at the fair.  We watched The Croods (?), and I got a haircut.  Our Ward Mission Leader, Erivan cut our hair for us and after that he did some visits with us.  We were visiting with L. and Erivan ended up explaining why it is so important to stick around for all of the three hours of church.  He did this by sharing his first experience in church and how it affected him.  It was a horrible story about walking into gospel essentials for the first time and having a kid throw yogurt all over him. But, he decided to stick around and he had a great experience in sacrament meeting.  That lesson turned out to be very effective because L. stayed for the entire three hours of church on Sunday!

 

This cute puppy's name is Mel(honey).  She belongs to the members who own the internet cafe where we email on P-days. 

Mel is a great part of my p-day!

Tuesday

We had our weekly planning session and it went well until companionship inventory.  We ended up arguing when we gave each other “advice” on what the other could do better.  We were both pretty rude to each other. Elder F. was upset with me for emailing three minutes longer than the allotted time. Anyway, it ended up not being the best scenario.  But he is right and I will do better next week.  A cool thing happened at the end of the day.  We only had 10 minutes to do some contacting and we decided to walk down a specific road.  I thought it would be a good idea to say a prayer to help us find someone quickly and it worked!  We only had one contact, but that was E.  He is often away with his business, so it was unusual to catch him at home.  He was just getting ready to leave on a business trip.  He accepted a Book of Mormon, said that he would read it, and wanted us to return!

Elder C. and I, he is a great missionary!

My Brazilian trainer.

Wednesday

Today was Zone Conference, and it was pretty far away. I have never been so claustrophobic in my life as I was in that bus ride to the conference.  We has our entire zone in the bus AND other people.  Anyways, we got there and conference was good.  It was also very long.  We learned a lot about obedience, but all-in-all President Souza was pretty happy with the condition of the mission.  We didn’t get back until 7:40, so we ended up only teaching one lesson to our ward mission leader’s nephews. They have baptismal date set for March 9th.

Thursday

We had our weekly meeting with our ward mission leader.  I am so glad to have an awesome WML.  He is the best leader you could basically ask for.  I can’t think of any improvements that he could make to be any better.  We’re working with him a lot on how we can get members involved in the work.  Our lunch appointment fell through, so we ate with him.  He offered us some kind of pepper. He was all like, “be careful! This pepper is a destroyer!”  (It doesn’t make sense in English).  Do you know what it was?  REGULAR black pepper!  Haha.  I guess that they just don’t have too much of that around here.

Friday

We taught 15-year-old D. again and she has read everything that we asked her too. She even reread Alma 32 three times.  She is really a great investigator.  We held a family night that night and I. came.  She made a lot of friends and she actually leaned over and whispered during the message, “All of this is for me?”  Our WML is really inspired because it was perfect.

Saturday

The only day of the week when we didn’t bother our WML.  Nothing super interesting happened but we did a lot of contacting and found 11 new investigators.  They seem a little flakey, but I think that some of them have potential.

Sunday

Church was really good!  One of our investigators that we stopped teaching came back to church!  Also, L. brought her cousin with her to visit, and he is pretty interested.  We left to visit people after lunch with Erivan.  I am definitely a lot happier this week than last week.  Erivan is helping both Elder F. and I grow a ton.  We’re going to keep on working hard this next week.  I am starting to get the hang of things.  What a difference a good leader makes!

So this is the 3-week mark that I'm here in Bom Jardim, and I have to say that it's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Everyone always talked about Bom Jardim in a bad way, but I still haven't gotten mugged.... yet..... Haha, I guess that the missionary schedule is the exact opposite from the 'dangerous' times here. Anyways, one of the things that I think is protecting us here is our obedience. We are making sure to take extra precaution to follow ALL of the rules, no matter how small they are. We can really see the blessings come from being EXACTLY obedient. A lot of times people think of commandments as 'rules' or things that are there just to drag us down, but I can testify that that is not the case with God. Every single commandment is here to bless us. In the Doctrine and Covenants, we can learn:

D&C 120:20-21
20 There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated.
21 And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.

I know that these things are true. I have seen it time and time again in my life and I'm just now starting to realize the real importance of it.   I don't remember exactly how to explain it, but it is like we are soldiers in a war. If a soldier receives orders from his general, he should follow them. If he follows them, he is faithful to his general. If he doesn't, he is labeled as a traitor. When we receive orders from God, the same principle applies. If follow God's orders, we show that we are faithful to Him. If we really want to follow Christ's example, we have to follow His commandments. The problem is that we have pride. We think that we are better than the rules. We begin to think that we don't need to do something because we know better. This manner of thinking is prevalent in The Book of Mormon and The Bible. Every time that God's people followed his orders, they prospered. When they prospered, they began to become prideful and trust in themselves rather than God. Then they fall because of their own weakness as mortal men. They only begin to prosper again when they come to rely on the Lord once again. I can say that I am guilty of falling into this vicious cycle on more than one occasion. This is my goal for this week, month, year, mission, life.... Who knows, maybe I'll never leave this cycle. However it is all that we can do to rely on God and trust in the direction that we receive from Him. Anyways, this week was a huge improvement BECAUSE we started to change something in ourselves to trust more in the Lord than in our own strength. We should all strive to do the same to continue being blessed by God. I hope that everyone has a great week and that we can all learn something new with every coming day! 

~Elder Colvin

Growing up FAST ???

 Day 221

            Well this week was….frustrating.  A lot of good things happened, but not a whole lot actually happened in the way of results.  I feel like this area is in this patch of stagnant water that isn’t going anywhere.  This is frustrating because there were tons of baptisms before I arrived, and when I arrived and our numbers plummeted.  I really like this area, but I feel like I’m more of a burden than anything else.  I’ve never had an actual “experienced” senior companion before and now I’ve had two transfers in a row where I’m senior.  I still have no idea how to be even a JUNIOR missionary.  This week I found out what will be my challenge for at least this transfer (if not the entire mission) and that is my own maturity.  I am not going to say this to be prideful, but I have been blessed in a lot of ways.  I can teach well, I listen to people well, I am good at helping them, I am basically fluent in the language, and many other things that I have been blessed with.  But as good as I am at helping people with their problems, I can’t even help myself to fix the one big problem of maturity.  I recognize that it is a problem, but I have no idea how to grow up faster. I don't like it when my only option is to 'wait and gain experience.' Aghhhh! I guess that is going to be my problem to conquer and one of the main disadvantages of coming out on a mission early.

            Elder Freeman and I are definitely struggling against our own inexperience.  Anyways, I’m going to learn a lot here, even if I don’t have anyone to teach me.  Elder F. is still working on his Portuguese, but it is coming along. With any luck we’ll improve in our teaching style this week with some help from our zone leaders. 

            So some of the good things that happened this week:  We visited with a lot of people, but in particular with our recent converts.  We visited with 2 of the sweetest old ladies that I have ever met.  J. always makes food for us and has the sweetest testimony ever. She and M.C. used to be DEVOUT Catholics, but they felt that this was the true church and converted.  I think that is super cool because J. doesn’t know how to read, so she has to be taught all the lessons verbally and because of her disability she has learned to rely on the spirit.  She is very in tune with the spirit and was basically converted based on how she felt when she went to church and took the lessons.  It is really a touching story.  Now she is going to bring the rest of her family to church. 

My beautiful sweaty boy.

            This week was a LOT better as far as the snakes go. This time no one tried to flash me…Instead they just called me “beautiful” in English!  Haha. Now that we and our ward mission leaders know who the problem sisters in our ward are, we don't have anything to do with them. They actually used to be WARD MISSIONARIES. My companion said that they were super useful and helped them a ton.... oh well! It's definitely not worth the risk.

            Other than that we have our usual drunk people yelling at us in the middle of the street. I am actually starting to understand them, which I don’t know if it’s a good or a bad thing.  Seriously, I have had at least 3 members of our ward ask me “ta Americano mesmo?” Are you really an American?  Yeah, so that helps me to feel a little better about my language skills. 

            Anyway, this next week will be better.  We are fasting today to learn how to gain more experience and be more effective missionaries.  Also we are both sick with the cold that Elder Cet. passed on to us and it sucks! I am going to give it my all this week!

So the first picture is a picture of when we made crepes and we used Nutella and peanut butter!!!! It was super good!!!

        

This picture is a picture from the wedding of the 2nd counselor in the bishopric. He helps us out a lot as missionaries, so we were invited. They asked me to play a piece with the young women of the ward. They said that the wedding starts at 6. We show up at 5:30 to practice a little bit. Do you know what time the wedding started? 7:30. We wasted TWO hours of our time and guess what? The young women bailed on the song because they hadn't practiced and they didn't want to embarass themselves. And we were sick with this darn cold. I was more than a little bit frustrated this weekend.

        

I got my Valentine’s package before Valentine’s Day! Thanks! I loved it! I'm going to be making a bunch of those cookies tonight! I still have some of my old cookie mixes so my American companions are going to love me!

Snakes in the Garden

Day 214, February 9, 2014

     A LOT happened this past 2 weeks.  I got transferred to Bom Jardim, which is an area that’s more dangerous than the last.  You can sort of grade the dangerous areas of a mission based on how many sister’s serve in that area.  I have yet to serve in an area in Brazil where there are any sister missionaries.  Fortunately, I love my new area, and I have made it 2 weeks without getting mugged, so that is pretty good!
     One of the things that I miss about my old area is the apartment buildings, specifically the shade of the apartment buildings.  I haven’t seen anything taller than 3 stories here, which is definitely a lot different.  It is funny how even though it is more dangerous, the people are much more open to being taught here.  I have already had my first baptism, which was a great experience.  I will explain a little more about that later. 

     Unfortunately, the danger here does not stop with thieves.  There are a lot of ‘snakes’ here. A. LOT.  Snakes are girls or women who REALLY like the missionaries.  Specifically, we have two women in our ward (who are active members) who chase after missionaries.  One of them has already had 2 missionaries sent home…you can guess why.  She literally places a target on an Elder and tells all of the girls in the ward that she is going to have sex with that particular Elder.  It is really sick, and wrong that she is even in church with that kind of mentality.  She has even created a facebook page for other snakes who want to hook up with missionaries.  I am told that our zone leaders (who share our apartment) have made it clear to her that they are not interested.  But my companion’s trainer got targeted and so he was transferred before there could be a problem.  I replaced him…  So that is one thing that is kind of worrying me, but I know that if I follow the rules, nothing will happen.  Another ‘fun’ experience that I had recently happened when we were walking home and this girl starts catcalling at us.  At first I just ignored it, but then she shouted “Ei!” So I just turned around ANNNND then turned back around as fast as I could because she lifted her skirt up to flash me!  Then she shouted, “Come here”.  Man, I was out of there as fast as possible!  So it is a weird place to serve a mission!

     I am really fortunate to have great housemates and a great companion.  It is interesting and fun to have American’s for companions.  I think that I appreciate them much more now after having to work within a different culture.  Here is a summary of what they are like (there are a lot of Elder C’s in our house):

After it is all cleaned up, we send pictures to our mission president's wife as proof of cleaning!

     Elder F (my comp) He has been out for 2 transfers. He is from Missouri and he is pretty chill, goofy, and easy to get along with.  He already speaks Portugues pretty well, but he just needs to talk more to build up his reaction time until he doesn’t have to translate anymore. He likes to work out, so FINALLY I have someone who will exercise with me!! He wants to study and train to be a bodyguard when he finishes his mission.  He played a lot of basketball before his got here, and he farts, A LOT.  Actually to be fair, all of us North Americans fart a lot….it’s the beans, they just kill us. 

     Elder C.  is an interesting guy.  He is super funny, hard-working, was an Eagle Scout, and is in the official Bananagrams Club (didn’t know that existed.)  He is a good example to me.  He and Elder Cet. are my zone leaders.  Elder C. is on his last transfer of the mission, but he still is working super hard because he doesn’t want to have any wasted time on his mission.  A lot of the Elders in his position just mess around in the end.  So I am lucky to have him as an example.  He is from Dallas, Texas.

     Elder Cet. is a person that I have had the most in common with during my entire mission.  He wants to study biomedical engineering.  He did dual enrollment and got his associates before serving his mission, he knows a lot of karate (his dad is his teacher), he plays a little bit of piano, and he was a lifeguard.  It is pretty cool to have him here.  He is from Logan, Utah and has curly hair like Jimmy’s.  He is really funny, and he also loves to work out so that is more great news for me.  Here’s hoping that I can get in shape on this transfer!

     The first week of the transfer was great.  I got to know my area and the other missionaries in my zone.  My leaders are really good here, which is a great blessing to me so that I can learn from them how to be a better leader myself.  Elder Whatcott is in my zone!  It’s pretty great to see him again.  He hasn’t changed a bit, but I think that I have really grown because all of his kidding doesn’t bother me anymore.  He is his usual goofy self, all-smiles and whatnot.  Another thing, our new ward mission leader is AWESOME!  Erivan has already served in the bishopric, served a mission, and he works!!!  It is really nice to have someone actually help us.  Also, he is super funny and intelligent with the gospel, and he gets along great with people.  In other words, he is the perfect ward mission leader. 

     To wrap up the second week, I had my first baptism here.  L. is 16 years old and very reserved but smart and willing to learn.  It was super easy to teach her because she was willing to listen to us and then apply what she learned.  I am really glad hat I got to help her to prepare for baptism.  I just love helping people learn about the gospel and how they can really change their lives.  It makes me super happy. 

I had one more exciting thing happen to me, a random street contact gave me a Bleach T-shirt!!  Yeah baby!

Tchau!

Elder Colvin

Transfer to BOM-JARDIM

Zone Conference with some snazzy T-shirts, just prior to transfers.

So this past week was relatively uneventful, just the usual appointments falling through and bible bashing people who can't ever open their ears and actually learn something. We worked really hard to invite as many people that we could to come to church, but NO ONE that we invited showed up. However, our recent convert V. showed up and she brought one of her friends! Her friend said that she wanted to learn more about the church and so we're going to pass by and talk with them sometime this week! 

Oh, well...... Not exactly.  

Sorry, I didn't have the time to finish the letter I started this week because I got transferred!!! My new area is Bom-Jardim! I guess that I wasn't working hard enough or the right way with my trainee, so Presidente Souza replaced me with someone else to finish the training for Elder N. I'm a little bit bummed... But I'm going to start this transfer from a fresh slate, and work even harder.  I'm planning on doing absolutely everything that I can to redeem myself for whatever reason that I had for not being able to train a missionary. My new companion's name is Elder Freeman. He's from Missouri, he's been out 4 months, and he seems pretty cool.  He actually likes to do exercises, so I think that I'll actually get more fit here! I will be senior companion, but in terms of numbers, he's already got a lot more experience than I do. I just got transferred a couple of hours ago, so I don't know a whole lot about our area. Unfortunately I do know that this area is even more dangerous than the last, so I won't be able to take very many pictures....

I'm not sure exactly how I feel about my whole transfer situation, but one thing is for sure, it's a new start for me. I am going to make sure that I start this transfer right, and that I am going to work harder than ever before. I don't know the area, I don't know the people, and I don't know my companion.  The only thing that I do know is that I am going to grow a lot in this area, and that I'm glad that my president sent me here so now I have yet another opportunity to grow even more. Really we should never be afraid of change in our lives, because through change, we can adapt, we can learn, we can continue to search for ourselves in all sorts of circumstances. Until next week!

~Elder Colvin

PS. Notes from research - "Bom Jardim (Good Garden) is a district of Fortaleza, capital of Ceará state. It is situated in the southwest of Fortaleza. It is the most populus district of Fortaleza with about 250,000 residents in five burroughs.  The Bom Jardim neighborhood has 37,758 residents over an area of ​​2.53 km ² .The area was originally settled in 1961 with rapid growth in the 70-80's. The name of the city arose because "the ladies of leisure" who provided all kinds of services on site, were treated by customers as flowers and roses, and that was a "good garden".  With unbridled growth, the slums emerged. Few schools, no hospitals, lack of sanitation and poor security led to violence throughout the district. Most neighborhood streets are dirty and there are many points of garbage disposal in the open. Streams are also used for disposal of sewage. From the late 90's the neighborhood appears in the newspapers as one of the most violent of capital.  Undoubtedly, the greatest challenge of Bom Jardim neighborhood is defeating the epidemic of violence.  The high incidence of crime is directly related to the trafficking of drugs existing in the region.   Government actions are promised but no concrete results are seen, leading to high mortality rates among young people."

HMMMMM, maybe ignorance is bliss....! (Brenda)