Letter #87

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

It was super cool to talk with you all on Christmas, and it looks like everything is going well!  Thanks for the pictures of Sinter Klaas and the new journal.  Of the two Christmases that I've had on the mission, this one was the best.

I feel kind of sick, because I ate a lot of chocolate.  But I could have worse health problems than that.  Here I am complaining about a tummy ache because I ate too much chocolate when as we speak there are probably a kajillion people having a double-triple heart-to-lung tri-pass, which is almost certainly fatal.

Love you much,

Jack

Letter #86

This week has been a good one.  Today has been especially good, because it's P-day and I've been reading stories of my ancestors on FamilySearch.  It's literally incredible some of the stuff that happened with them.  Some of the people that had the best stories were Jannigje De With, Jonathon Collins Crapo, and Peter Crapo.  This stuff is so good that you could make a movie out of it.  I translated to Portuguese one story from the life of Jannigje De With and I'm going to use it with one of our investigators.  I think i'm going to do the same thing with a few other stories as well.  There's one story with Jonathon Collins Crapo where he decides not to drink coffee and it makes all the difference.

This week was pretty stressful, we had to get everything ready for the Christmas Conferences and it was the first time we had ever done a conference of this size.  A lot of stuff went wrong, but in the end everything worked out and it ended up being a good experience.  Christmas is awesome!  I'm super excited to open up that little green package that Mom sent me.

We are getting used to our area, and the last missionaries that served in it didn't leave too much for us, so we're starting from scratch.  We had some great experiences where we were able to find some people, we just need to find the time to visit and help these people progress.  The other day we prayed to find somebody to teach and the very first door accepted us and said we could come back.  God's preparing his children!

We got a huge gift basket from one of our recent converts the other day and I've probably eaten my weight in chocolate already.  Maybe it's good that I extended the mish so that I can work off the kilos that I'm gonna gain during the Christmas season.  On Christmas we're going to make a huge American breakfast.

In closing, I'm going to include a quote from my great grandmother, Jannigje

“Loved ones, in this Church we can learn where we came from, the goal of living on the earth, and where we are going when we shall leave this earth, and also many other problems will become clear to us, which we could learn from the bible but did not understand, because we did not have an explanation for it.

“Many mistakes have I made in these five years since I became a member of the Church, but this I know, if we sincerely regret the ill we have done to God and men and we confess our guilt not only to God but also to those we have hurt through word or deed, it certainly will be forgiven. May we always remember more the warning of our Savior given in the garden of Gethsemane: watch and pray so that you may not be tempted, then we will make less mistakes, and go through life happier.”

Much love, 

Jack

Letter #85

I'm sorry if I scared you with my last letter.  I want you to know that we are absolutely safe, nothing happened and nothing is going to happen.  I was transferred to a new area, which I included a picture of.  I can assure you that nothing will happen in this new area because it's probably the richest area that I've ever seen in Brazil.

It was pretty funny our first day in our new area.  It was the exact opposite of our last one.  Our old area was Ala Ipiranga and our new one is Ala Irajá.  I would like to denote a few differences between the two.

1.  In our new area, the parks have ponds with fish instead of puddles with diapers.

2.  In our new area, people participate in running teams instead of drinking circles

3.  In our new area, there are fancy condominiums instead of unfinished brick houses

4.  In our new area, people have money and teeth instead of empty pockets and gummy mouths

5.  In our new area, people have shitzus with ribbons instead of wild jackals that eat trash

6.  In our new area, people have garages to fit five cars instead of deformed garage doors to fit the cars.

7.  In our new area, we talk with intercoms instead of talking with people.

8.  In our new area, people eat dry leafy greens instead of perfect, dripping barbecue.

9.  In our new area, thirst is drowned instead of quenched

10. In our new area, people try to sell us into pyramid schemes instead of saying that they lost their job.

11. In our new area, people have jobs instead of twelve laughing kids.

12. In our new area, the gospel is needed just like it was in the last one.

I loved my last area, the people we absolutely greaty, but I really am excited to try out a new environment to teach.  Our ward is super great, I am really excited to be there.  There are a lot of people that speak English, we're even going to teach in English tonight.  It will be good practice for Elder Zolet.

This week was super busy.  We had to supervise transfers as well as the reception of all the new missionaries.  It was a lot of fun to see the new missionaries showing up so excited about the work, straight out from the MTC.  Some of them were saying, "Wow, I can't wait to knock on some doors, when are we going to go tracting?"  It was pretty funny.

Today we're going to go to a sushi buffet.  We'll see how it goes.

I love you all so much!

Jack-O

Elder Vawdrey's Birthday

Letter #84

Dearest ones,

We just got back from a Brazilian barbecue restaurant and it was super good.  We weighed ourselves before and after and I gained a solid 3.5 pounds.  Lots of meat, it was great.  But you just need to be careful, apparently when Brazilians want to be cool they mix weird foods with strawberries.  I went and tried a certain dish, which I thought would be dessert, because it had strawberries, but it was strawberries with lobster sauce.  It reminded me of the time we went to that Dutch Christmas at Noah's and all the foods looked like desserts but everything had fish or eggs in it.  Dirty Dutchmen.

Thanks so much for all of your letters.  It's always great to hear from you and everything that's going on.  It's weird to think that I'm going to turn 21 next week.  I'm getting old, just like Dad always says.  Dad doesn't even look old, he looks the same as he did ten years ago.  Mom hasn't really changed too much, either.

Thanks for sending my pictures of Penny.  I'm ready to meet her.  But all in due time.

I've been having a great time with my companion.  He's from Curitiba and he keeps telling me that I need to go visit him after the mission.  We'll just have to wait and see.  I would like to come back to Brazil at the end of July to see 4 couples that I taught get sealed in the temple, but we'll see how things go.

This week was good.  We are working in the office, but not too much.  We do our studies here in the morning, eat lunch at the mall or a local restaurant, and then making our way to our area.  When President Brum needs something, we do it, but other than that, it's pretty chill here.  Little by little me and Elder Zolet are figuring it out.

Last week we had a meeting with all of the zone leaders in the mission and me and Elder Zolet gave a training that I think President Brum really liked.  It was a lot of fun, I like to give trainings because it's like an adrenaline rush of the Spirit.

Yesterday night I was coming from our area and Elder Zolet and I started talking about what marriage is gonna be like.  Weird stuff.  I told him about my plans to have 12 kids.  It's gonna be awesome.

Love you all much,

Jack

Letter #83

Dear Family,

Things are going well here.  It's kind of ridiculous how fast time is passing.  Ya gotta be alert.  I kind of feel like my life is a game of Fruit Ninja, and the fruit is the minutes of the day.  I feel like every minute is being thrown my way and I need to slice it like a sword with great accuracy.  If I don't it falls to the ground and becomes useless.  And with every minute the fruit starts flying faster and faster.  

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go play some Fruit Ninja.

We had a good week.  Elder Madri and Elder Baker, the other two assistents, went on exchanges in Araraquara, so I chilled here with my companion, Elder Zolet.  It was pretty chill, I was teaching him how to use Excel.  I went nuts on Excel this week, grabbing a bunch of numbers and analyzing and comparing and doing averages and percentages.  It's funny how doing math helps to clear up the mind a bit.  Rarely have I had to use the math side of my brain on the mish, so it was nice.

Today is P-day, but we still taught a short English class.  English is hard.  I'm forgetting a few things, but little by little I'll remember stuff.

We're gonna have a baptism today.  It was pretty cool, we showed up in the area and there was already a girl ready to be baptized.  Her name is Kenia and she's going to get baptized today.

I've learned a new principle.  It changed my life.  I learned that the way that you start a project or activity with greatly influence the way that you end it.  If you start off playing well, you're more likely to end well.  If you wake up and are already laughing and smiling, it's more likely that you'll be laughing and smiling throughout the day.  If you pray in the morning, you'll have the Spirit sooner.  If you start off unorganized, you'll probably end unorganized.

So if you have a hard time with life, wake up in the morning and smile at yourself in the mirror for a minute straight.  You'll feel more optimistic about the day.  Elder Zolet is super happy and optimistic, that's how I learned this new lesson.

It's been a while since I've sent pictures.  Sorry.  Here's a free sample.  

I'm gonna be 21 soon.  Whoa.

Love,

Jack

Letter #82

Dear Family,

This week has been good.  We had some solids lessons, marked a baptismal date, and made a few people cry.  In a good way.  

Working in the office here is making me remember a bit about how it was in the office in Tallahassee.  A lot of the principles that I learned there are going to be applicable here.  We need to be organized and focused with the time that we have here in the office so that we can finish all of our necessary tasks.  Afterwards, it's time to do the best work of all: TEACH!  Being a missionary has really fortified my desire to be a college professor, because I absolutely love studying, writing, and teaching.  But not just teaching for the sake of teaching.  Teaching to reach an end.  To make people better.  It is a way that I can fulfill one of the counsels in my patriarchal blessing that says that I will be able to influence and bless the lives of others witht the knowledge God has given me.  I'm gonna do my best to learn as much as I can so that I can help others.  Learning is my passion.

Elder Zolet is my new companion, but I unfortunately didn't get to work with him this week.  There are four assistents here in the office, so we did an exchange for the entire week.  I stayed here in the office withe Elder Baker while Elder Zolet went with Elder Madri to help some desperate missionaries in Franca.  Kind of a bummer that I wasn't able to go, but I'm sure that Elder Zolet was able to help out the missionaries in the way that they needed it.

We had a great lesson yesterday.  Like I said, we made a few people cry.  We went to teach one of Elder Baker's investigators named Flávio, who was desirous to learn more but was having a hard to understanding what the missionaries were teaching.  But he was moving forward with faith with the hope that he would soon understand God's plan for him.  We were able to teach him about the Plan of Salvation yesterday and it finally clicked.  After reading Alma 16:16-17, it was amazing to see how well he understood when he said, "My very next prayer, I'm gonna ask God this question: 'Am I the lost sheep?'"  He showed a lot of humility as he understood that perhaps he was lost in need of finding, and that Christ had a plan to bring him back into the fold.  When his wife came back from dropping off the daughters the two prayed with us, both cried, and Flávio stood up and starting reciting back to his wife all that he had learned that day with us and how much it had helped him.  It was great.

Love, 

Jack