May 29, 2017: Crazy Week

SO my friends and family.

I am loving it out here in the city of Valença. It is going great. I am learning many new things. The food is not too bad anymore. In fact, I have made french toast quite a bit this week. I just gotta find some syrup to put on it. haha But it is great. 

This week was definitely an adventure. We had a great lesson last Monday. They loved it. We will teach them again tonight. The first part of the week was pretty normal. One of the coolest things is teaching seminary. This last week was my first time teaching. I decided to teach because I was fed up with the way two of the missionaries taught seminary. They didn´t prepare anything and nobody learned anything. So I taught and we learned about John 4. It was really great. I taught them about what I learned in Jesus the Christ in relation to that time period and the relationships between the Jews and Samaritans. They really enjoyed the lesson and so did I. So I might do that more often. 

Valenca!

Saturday we had quite the experience. Elder De Melo (the District Leader) and I had to go to a neighborring city and hour away called Ituberá. It´s a cool place. So we took a bus over there in the morning. There are quite a few members over there and they had friends they wanted us to teach. SO we ate lunch there and after we taught a lesson to 10 people!! hahah It was crazy but it went very well. I drew out the lesson in the way our mission president taught us and it held their attention very well. We taught the first two lessons together because it is tough to go over there. I needed to go pee before we even started the lesson. Incidently, I drank a liter of soda the night before and hadn´t emptied it out. SO this lesson was about 2 hours long... Near the end of the lesson I was ready to EXPLODE. I literally thought that I would pee my pants. I have never felt that way before. I was in so much pain and worry that I was sweating.... We taught the lesson with a member and he wouldn´t stop talking! Finally they passed it over to me to bear my testimony and invite the people to come to church. I just said "I know the things we taught are true, in the name of Jesus Christ amen. Sister, I have a question, can I use your bathroom?" hahahaha So I went and luckily did not have an accident. I peed for like 2 minutes straight. It was a very crazy experience. The lesson went very well though. The spirit was very strong. haha 

We stayed for dinner at a different member´s house and at 7:00 we took the bus home. 

Me and Elder De Melo

 

ALSO, We had a great experience on Sunday. We taught the first lesson to a family that we contacted earlier in the week. We taught the family and the spirit was very strong. At the end of the lesson, nobody wanted to move. They accepted to be baptized. I talked to them about the importance of praying to receive an answer. The man told us that he has had visits from churches before. But, we have something different. He told us that because of this feeling, he knows that it is true. I explained that he was feeling the Holy Ghost. They loved the lesson. It was such a cool experience how God helped us find and teach these elect people. I know that depending on God in His work is crucial. We must be worthy, follow the rules, dilligently seek, and the Lord will provide.  This family was so cool. The guy is an artist! He does a lot of oil painting. So we immediately became friends. haha but that is how we broke the ice. Just talking about art. 

ANYWHO, this week was great. The SPIRIT is so real. I love feeling that when I teach. It is so amazing. I love this work. I know that it is very important and that it is the best thing I have done in my life. I love you all!

Love,

Elder Davis

May 22, 2017: Josenilton

HOWDY!

Hey everyone, this week was another great week! It was quite the adventure. Lets see... so nothing super crazy happened. BUT, we did go to zone conference in Itabuna. We had to take a 3-4hr bus ride on Wednesday night to get there. We arrived at 2 in the morning in Itabuna. We slept over at one of the missionary´s houses. Other Elders were already sleeping over there. So... they didn´t have any more beds. Lucky I slept on a broken bed. I should´ve taken a pic of it. But it was sagging into the box spring. It wasn´t very comfortable. I didn´t fit on the bed either. But, it worked. I slept. haha 

SO the next morning we woke up, got ready, and went to the conference. It was a great meeting. It was really great to be able to see Elder Prado, Elder Cuevas, and Elder Castlemain there. I love those guys. They taught a lot of great stuff at the training. We were able to learn a lot and learn what we needed to do better to help our area. 

So this week is going to be a great week of work. That was the biggest highlight of the week. We ended up getting back in Valença at 3 in the morning. We ended up walking through the rain with boxes of Book of Mormons in our arms. It was scary because a homeless guy started following right behind us asking for money. We kept telling him no but he didn´t stop following us. It was weird. But, we got home safely. 

I also tried Acarajé. It is a famous food from this area of Brasil. It is kinda like a baked potato. It really wasn´t as good as they say... 

Another cool experience was teaching Primary again. SO these kids are sooooo CRAZY. It is just two kids but they are the roudiest kids I have ever met!  But, my mother gave me the idea to use a puppet to teach them. So this week I did. They loved it. haha I named the puppet Josenilton. It is a pretty normal name here. They paid attention and laughed and it was great. I think I might make a Josenilton fan club. haha!

This is Elder De Melo the District Leader. He is a weird guy. But, I like him a lot. He has a crush on CC and wants her email haha

I have been studying a lot this week about the Gifts of the Spirit. It is really amazing to me that we have the power to achieve these Gifts through diligent seeking. I feel as though this can be very important in our lives. To seek to develope our spiritual attributes. I know that we will have more power as a missionary because through this we will be more aware of our spiritual man and the importance of everything in an eternal perspective. To know more about it read Moroni 10 and D&C 46. I love you all. Have an amazing week!

Happy Birthday Jordan!

Love-

Elder Davis

May 15, 2017: BLUURB

HEY FOLKS,

Well I hope you all had some good sleep. Yesterday was great. It was a great experience to see you guys. I am glad that everyone is doing so great. 

Family Photo:)

So I don´t have much that I want to say about this week.... because of the skype. But I will do my best to update yáll. (haha the keyboard doesn´t let me type y all)

So Monday was a great day. We were able to teach a guy named Marcos. He is super busy but hopefully we will be able to teach him again. We also played some basketball with some members and their friends. It was pretty fun. They don´t really know how to play basketball... So they just foul and airball. haha But, that´s all good. They thought I was a professional basketball player. It was quite the experience. 

Throughout the week we had a lot of good work. We are working on finding new families. We found a great family that lives right next to us. Their house has a cake selling shop at the front. I went and bought a cake there (because I felt like it) and we did a contact with them and marked a visit. We visited them on Thursday and taught the first lesson. It went very very well. The people loved it. They are an elect family. We are going back to teach them tonight. Super excited. Maybe I will buy another cake too... So that family was definitely the best part of the work. It was great to see how God is supporting us here on the mission. 

So things are going better with my companion. He likes to talk with one of the Elders that lives with us. So he generally is just with the other dude. Which can be frustrating when I want to plan and stuff. But, we are getting it all worked out.  I am getting used to the food. It´s pretty normal now. It´s not the greatest food ever. But, it´s not as bad as I first thought.

So, this week I have been studying more about Joseph Smith. I had been listening to the Joseph Smith Papers Podcast. It is very amazing to learn about his life and hear more details about everything. It has really strengthened my testimony that he was a prophet of God. That he was a normal man, raised up by God to serve in this great calling. It is amazing at all the miracles that happened in his life and the life of his family.

Anyways, I love you all. Have a great week filled with spiritual experiences. 

I found a cool quote, "Spiritual Light rarely comes to those who merely sit in darkness waiting for someone to flip a switch" -Dieter F Uchtdorf

Love you guys, 

Elder Davis

May 8, 2017: I Should've applied "The Giver" in my life...

HEYYYLOOOO

I should´ve applied the Giver in my life... or the Hunger Games, or Divergent. Basically the fact that Utopias don´t exist. haha 

Valenca at Night

So I was super excited to go to this new area in Valenca. I hear so many awesome things about it. But, it wasn´t what I was expecting... haha It´s still good though I am still loving life. My companion is Elder Lucas. He is a cool guy. He was in the army. So he´s a little idk how to explain it. But he doesn´t want to show weakness. He is very head strong in things. But President Bangerter wants me to help teach him and show him what I learned with Elder Prado. But it will be good. haha  

The house is nice so thats good. We just eat rice and corn meal with cut up sausage in it for lunch every day. We usually don´t eat anything for dinner. Lunch we eat some bread. So I think I might get a little skinnier here... hahaha 

The place here is a group. We met for church in our house.  Its 4 floors.  The bottom two are the church and the classrooms.  We had 12 people at church on Sunday so it´s struggling to grow and be strong. But we are working our hardest to help it out. When I got here the atmosphere that the other elders put off was that this area sucks and that they are just counting the days until they leave. But I want to help this place be better. If they are happy the spirit will be stronger and they will want to work more.

Valenca

SO this week I don´t have much to report. I left on the ferry boat on Tuesday to my new area. I had to drag three suitcases tied together with my shoulderbag.. It didn´t really work out. So in the end some Brazillians helped me out. I then took a 3 hour bus ride and then I arrived. When I got there, nobody was there. The elder that dropped me off at the ferry boat forgot to call for my companion to tell him when I was coming. So I waited there for 3 and a half hours. Luckily, a member sells popcorn at the bus station so he helped me get to the house and meet my comps. It was an adventure!!

The rest of the week we have just been doing a lot of finding. The teaching group is really small here so we need to help it grow. So that was pretty much it guys. Here is a cool experience I had... 

This week I have been praying to find the elects of God. We had a cool experience in which God placed a man in our path. I had a prayer in my heart that whole day. While walking to a bairro in our area, a man called from us from behind. We stopped and began to talk with him. He told us that he is a member from Salvador, he served a mission and that he wants us to teach his cousin that lives in our area. It was really amazing that out of nowhere, I received an answer to my prayer. We have marked to visit this family on Tuesday. It was a very humbling experience for me that God is controlling this work and helping us every step of the way.

(Wow I love copy and paste... Saves so much time and work...)

Anyways, I love you guys. Hope you are loving life. I can´t wait to see you on Sunday!

Love-

Elder Davis

May 1, 2017: Eight Meses

SO Everybody how is it going?

TRANSFERS has happened this week. So that is exciting. I will be going to Valença. My companion will be Elder Lucas. I heard that Valença is a great place. I have been wanting to go there for a long time. It has a milkshake place called Mr. Shake. It sounds so good. So I am excited to try that! The area has a little group. I will do what I can to help it turn into a branch. So I am very excited to go there. It´ll be awesome. I will leave tonight or tomorrow morning. I have to pack up my bags though... 

8 months out on the mission!

Honestly, I am pretty sad to leave this area. It is a great place. I have loved having Elder Prado as my companion. He is my favorite comp so far. We have a really similar humor so it just worked well. We never got bugged at each other or anything. It was a lot of fun. But, this next transfer will be great as well! 

Feeding Monkeys! 

I don´t have too much time to talk today... but this was a great last week. We had some really great lessons. The spirit was very strong. I was teaching the restoration. While I was teaching there was a ton of little kids in the room. I was worried that nobody was able to hear or pay much attention. I kept teaching though. The kids just got louder as I got closer to the first vision part. But, as I began to say the words ,"eu vi um pilar de luz, acima de minha cabeça...." The whole room went quiet. It was the strangest thing. The craziest kids just stopped talking. After I finished the account, they started talking again. It was a really humbling moment. 

Sculpture I am working on...

We found an elect family. We found this family through contacting a contact that Elder Prado did. It was so awesome. Elder Prado opened by asking two deep questions. He asked what they loved most, and what they feared most in life. They responded and their responses had many connections with the Plan of Salvation. We felt that we needed to teach the Plan of Salvation before the Restoration. We taught it and the Spirit was present and very strong. The investigators had their eyes glued to us as we were teaching. They loved the lesson and had many great questions as well. We left their house grinning. The next day we met to make sure they would go to church. They said they still would and that they had searched up and watched Joseph Smith: A Prophet of the Restoration. They loved it and felt very similar to Joseph Smith. They came to church on Sunday and were well-integrated in the ward. The investigators commented about their experience during Gospel Principles. The members became very excited. They started teaching our investigators the entire first lesson. Afterwards, a few members told us they wanted to do visits with us and that they especially wanted to visit that family. It was very cool to see how excited the members were by just a small conversation with the investigators. It is exciting to watch members become more involved in missionary work. Through this experience, my testimony really grew about the importance of utilizing the members in the work. It showed me how to excite the members so that they can become more powerful missionaries as well. 

Anyways That was it for this week. Also, I watched the Cokeville Miracle. I invite all of you to watch that movie. It is very powerful.

Love you all!

Elder Davis