Week 14 Letter

Monday, August 20, 2013

Famlee!

Well, you are all in one of my favorite places in the world right now and won't get this letter for a little while, but I’m gunna write it anyways! 

Things here are good. We just had a zone conference yesterday (which is why I am writing this letter on Tuesday) and I am really excited to apply the things we learned. Things with our branch have been really tough. Some of the members have a big problem with contention, and to make things worse the president was giving a little bit of faca over the pulpit this last Sunday to specific people, so there were some offended people needless to say. Anyways, so there were some arguments, not huge ones, but arguments nonetheless going on Sunday. So our branch is struggling, and we as the missionaries in the ward have really been thinking hard and sweating a lot over the branch. We didn't know what to do. 

However, we had interviews with the President, so in my interview I asked him how as one missionary I could help the branch become a branch of Zion, and I got some direction that really eased my stress and made my pathway clear. He said a lot, but one line he said in particular sums it up. He said: "Don't split your time. Baptize." He told me to find and baptize people that didn't care if there was hypocrisy in the branch, didn't care how lousy church was, but just wanted the blessings of exaltation. I was so happy to hear this. So, we are not going to worry about the members too much, we are just going to do our job as missionaries and baptize. Really I already thought that this was how it should be, but President definitely confirmed it.

The language is good. Not great, but definitely better every day. I can understand people who talk clearly like they do on the continent; unfortunately those people are few on the islands... People here talk slurred and only say about half the sounds, so all of the words blend together and it is still really hard to understand. It is really hard sometimes, but it is exciting to see my growth in the language. I can read the scriptures just fine, write and speak well; I just need to work on understanding. 

Things with Fernando are hard right now, but we are fasting with him on Saturday and Sunday this week, and I know that will help. We weren't able to talk to him this last week very much, but we will get things done. 

Anyways, hope you all are having a great time at the lake; you probably are actually home now if you are reading this, so I hope you all had an amazing time. I love you all so much, and miss you all a lot!

Love you all!

Elder Lee

Mom, as far as the camera goes, I will get it either way. I doubt I will leave after this transfer so you could send it to my house address. However, if you send it to the mission office, I will get it eventually as well because people need to make a trip to the continent for some things and they could bring it back to me. idk. 

Also, idk if I have told you this, but I only live out of one suitcase here, because you can only bring one suitcase to the islands, and apparently the place in the church and mission office where they keep suitcases got robbed. A ton of stuff was stolen out of the suitcases, so I may be missing things. idk. I had basketball shoes in there, a suit, my nice jersey, pants, shirts, and other stuff. I don’t remember everything. So I don’t know if anything of mine got stolen buts odds are they did. Sister Fluckiger said missing things would be replaced, but I have no idea how that is going to work. It is a mess, but I can’t do anything about it right now. 

Anyways, I love, you, have a great week! 

Alright, well, I think it would just be better to send the package here to the island. Are you going to send the tie with it? I saw all the ties in the wedding pics, they looked good! You did a great job with that, you definitely deserve this vacation! Anyways, I love you, and will talk to you later!

Tony

I love Tony's pictures.  It is such a beautiful place.  This has been added to my bucket list.

Week 13 Letter

Monday, August 12, 2013

Dad,

The work here is a little rough, sometimes it is hard when I give everything I've got and don't see the results I'd like to see, or we don't make our goals. Mas, eu não vou estar desanimado! (I won’t be discouraged)

We will keep finding more people to teach. The lord has people who are prepared; we just need to find them. And we will teach and help even the people who aren’t completely elect 'come baptize me please' type of people until they say 'come baptize me please'!

Thanks for the email though, it was just what I needed, especially #12... hahaha...

Anyways, hope you have a great week and stay to keep everyone sane through the wedding. Try not to have too much of a Steve Martin 'Father of the Bride' moment, because you still have 3 other girls left! And I would avoid listening to 'time' by Hans Zimmer too, because too much nostalgia isn’t good for a person ;)

I love you dad, have fun this week!

Elder Lee

Juliet: Shawn, you’re being a child...

Shawn: I am not a child!!! My Nintendo ds is very special to me!

Famlee,

How is everybody?! I hope you are all having a great time with everything, I know I sure am! Things must be crazy with you all there with everything that is going on! I hope you all still find time to have fun with all of the good things you are doing. 

Things here are great. Whenever things get hard we just work even harder, because that is the only real solution. I am tired tired, tired, but I love it! We are really focusing right now on finding people to teach. That is one of the hardest things in this area. So we talk to everybody, and sometimes it is hard or a little scary, but I'm a missionary, so that's what I do!

We are really trying to help a man named Fernando get ready for baptism. His wife has been a problem... She says he can do what he wants as far as religion goes, but anything we do with him still puts strain on their relationship. The best solution would be to have her join us in one of the lessons so she can see what we're all about, and feel the spirit too, so we are going to try and do that. I know we can get everything figured out there, the question is when...

Also we are trying to meet with Josué and Rute's mom, Guaretti. She will join the church if we can just start teaching her! We taught the kids about how important they are in their family as the only members, and I think that will really help their mom. We will just have to see. 

I don't have a lot of time now though; we are going to go explore Monte Brasil... Keep having fun everybody, I love you all soooo much!!!

Talk to ya later!

Elder Lee

Mom, I don’t know if you are around or not, if not I will really miss emailing you too! Just want to let you know that you are literally the greatest mom in the whole world. Seriously, a lot of people here could have benefited from a good mom, ya know what I mean? Anyways, I'll send this email and see if I get a response, but if not I will start on a family email for you to read when you get home!  That’s all so crazy with Shauna... 

They made a new temple video recently, have you seen it!? I want to see it so bad, but it will be 2 years =( I heard about it because our branch just did a temple trip to Madrid Spain. We heard from elder Jacobson’s dad that it was really good.  The Lisbon temple is going to be amazing; it is going to be a BIG one, with big grounds.

Right now our investigators are struggling. We don’t have a lot that are progressing =( Hopefully we will mark Fernando to a date today though =)  The Lisbon temple will be done in a few years. I will be here for the groundbreaking.

Fernando isn’t the dad of Jose and Rute, he is somebody else. We are trying to work with their mom though, but that has been a little bit of a battle. 

Beijinhos! 

Tony

Week 12 Letter

Monday, August 5, 2013

Hey everybody!

Sorry I didn't get a letter to ya'll last week, it was a crazy Monday.  But here I am again today!

I get to stay here in the Acores again this transfer! I am really happy about that. This area has a lot of potential, it just needs a little push and I am doing my best to give it a shove! You've seen pictures by now, so let me explain a little. 

We live in Angra do heroísmo, which translated means "cape of heroism". Pretty awesome name for a city where as missionaries we save peoples souls (Plus it makes it even more like the legend of Zelda... hahaha)! Our city is right on the edge of the island, you can almost always see the ocean. 

Our area covers over a third of the island. We walk all over the place. There are little towns spread all over. We go to Terra-Cha, São Mateus, Posto Santo, a lot of other towns as well. Every town is beautiful, and really interesting in its own way.

The food here is really good. As missionaries we eat a lot of rice and tuna fish, but when members invite us over for meals we get awesome food. They make this stuff you put over rice that is amazing! The capo verdiano people make it the best though, and also make some other really good stuff. At members houses we eat all sorts of things. We had octopus the other night. They have a really good fish they eat here called buck-ul-yow (that’s how you say it, I have no idea how it is spelled...). We tried to deep fat fry some the other week and it was super salty. So we asked a native and they told us you have to soak it in water for 3 days before cooking it... oops...

The island parties for half of the year, and right now a thing called Praia-Fest is going on. Praia is in another area, but two missionaries on our island went home this transfer, so we were in Praia to be with the dying elder's companion until he gets his new one. The whole city and most of the island was in Praia partying all night! It’s not bad partying, it’s something you can take the family to, for the most part at least, but they have live music all night, so until five o clock in the morning our hose was shaking from the music. I took some pics from the balcony I will try to get uploaded sometime this week.

We have another elder lee coming to the island to be district leader. I don’t like the confusion that will bring, but it will be a little bit fun going on divisions with him so its elder lee and elder lee =) Sure wish it were one of you guys though!

I love all of your letters! It only takes a minute to read a letter, so don’t worry about time, I will read it and reply!

Shauna, I expect an email from you before the wedding! And I want a tie from it, so I hope you were planning on that!

Well, I love every one of you a ton! Keep having fun, don’t worry about it being the end of summer, just have as much fun as you can before school is back!

Go swimming for me!

Elder Lee

Mom,

Answers to your questions - Yeah, let me see if I remember them...

Not transferred, staying in the most beautiful place in the world for now with the same companion.

No more baptisms that you know about. It’s really tough right now but we are really going to work and hopefully have at least five this month!

As far as a camera goes, idk. I really don’t know what to do and don’t have a lot of time to give it any thought soooo... yeah

Same address yay!

And complications last week we just didn’t have any time to email because of weird scheduling with a meeting our volta da ilha took longer than it was supposed to.

My dropbox is full so I can’t upload more pics until I do something about that. I don’t know where I am going to keep all my mission pics. I have a card I guess I can put them on. So I’ll need to move every time I upload my pics from online to my card. But I'll get pics to you. Josué, Rute, and João Pedro are the names of the boys we baptized.   I found Jet a wife he can marry. I will try to get a picture of the little girl this week at church... hahahaha, she is cute too, and they’d be perfect ;)

I think I am making progress in the language. Sometimes I feel like I should know more, but then I just try to work even harder so I can still feel good about myself =) 

It’s weird to think though I have almost been gone for three months now. That is 1/8 of my mission gone. Sometimes seem more fast than others, but I just don’t think about it much.

yup tambem! Have fun and I love you more! We gotta go!

Your little Elder Lee