Busy Pdays

Dad asked:  Are you taking any opportunity to see any of the countryside on P-DAY? It sounds like a nap is the best part of the day.  You might want to try to get to know the country a bit; the change might do you some good.

There isn't really much to do here to get to know the country, and even if there was something good to do I wouldn't have time. P-day goes like this:
Wake up 6:30 just like every other day and follow the normal study schedule until 10:00.
From 10 to eleven clean the house.
At eleven until twelve thirty use the internet to report all the numbers for the zone, write a zone newsletter, write to you guys, write to the mission president, and try to backup pictures.
12:30 to 2:00 buy food for the week.
2:00 arrive in house, eat.
3:00-6:00 free time! (Wash clothes, organize stuff, sleep, and write letters.)
6:00 back to work!

Basically, you have 3 hours of free time every p day. For example, if I wanted to go to the museum downtown, I would spend one hour on the bus to get there, one hour in the museum and one hour to get back to the area, so it isn't worth it. Plus I wouldn't have clean clothes for the week.

When I was in Bauru I almost had the courage to go to the zoo, but I slept instead.

The life of a missionary doesn't have time for sightseeing, and there isn't anything really of worth to go see. Maybe one day I’ll pass through Foz do Iguassu and I’ll go to see the waterfalls which is one of the 7 wonders of the world, but you can only go with the mission president so it’s rare to go. Maybe I’ll be a zone leader over there and I’ll be able to beg the president to go.

One more transfer comes to an end here; the time seems to fly by faster and faster. I have 1 year and four months on the mission, at the end of this transfer I’ll have 1 and a half years. Crazy.

I got a letter from Jessica, she knows Elder C, he was a really great missionary, in my first city  he was the zone leader of the other zone in the city. He was even an AP at the end of his mission, so Jessica you have my permission to date him.

I’m hopeful for this new transfer, me and Elder S will stay together (this will be his last transfer before going home) and I hope that we find some good people to teach. This Sunday a woman went to church that is really interested, but every time we talk about some kind of commitment (go to church, baptism, etc.) she just says stuff like "I can’t answer you that now, we´ll see when we get there." these excuses are really annoying. But she feels the spirit really strongly when she reads, we just have to help her recognize that it is an answer to her prayers.
Another family that we are teaching is a family of 4 that we tried to baptize at the beginning of the transfer, the wife and son want to get baptized but don’t want to do it without the Father, and he doesn’t want to commit to anything. It’s like watching in a horror film when you know the person is going to die and there is nothing you can do about it. you just watch as he is blinded by the craftiness of men and Satan leads him bit by bit to eternal damnation, and worst of all he is dragging his family with him.

Something that I've learned on the mission is how really there are only two options: Follow God through his Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Satan, by doing anything else.
It’s really that simple.

And it’s a pity that there are so many members and leaders of the church that don´t understand that and so they don’t have the desire to share the gospel with their friends. I was one of those people and I’m repenting of it now

Love you all!
até semana que vem!
-Elder Leete

Pray for everything to go well this week

Monday, April 16, 2012 7:58 AM

This week was a good week, we have been working with B and R, they are a young couple with a little baby boy, J. They, with B´s brother, A are family that wants to get baptized but the husband is having a little bit of trouble with the word of wisdom, they were scheduled to get baptized yesterday but we will have to wait for next week since everyone wants to get baptized together. Pray for everything to go well this week.

Other than that the mission is preparing to receive an apostle, Elder Quentin L. Cook, next week along with the president and another seventy too. We are all really excited to hear the words of the apostles about missionary work. When I was in the CTM it was lame, we didn’t get any apostles to speak to us.

Transfers are next week, I’ll probably get moved to another area since I’ve been in this one for 3 transfers, but who knows, me and Elder P are doing really well here so maybe we will stay one more.

Love you all! Hope you are all well! I feel bad because I’ve been way busy to write hardly anything on p-days but you guys will just have to be patient. Sewing all the holes in my pants and shirts and washing the sweat stain on the collars by hand are more important than writing right now.

Love you all!

tchau!
-Elder Leete

My District:
left to right
Elders G, Leete, T, R, B, & P

Elders T and B are the zone leaders

 G and R work in the ward right next to mine and Elder P´s

11 MONTHS!

I had a great week too, we have been working hard this week and we found a really great family that went to church yesterday and accepted the invite to be baptized next Sunday! There really are people that are ready to be members of the church; the only hard part is finding them.

Congrats for Courtney and her cowboy, it's weird for me to think that everyone from the ward that I've known for so long are getting all married off and spreading out in the world.

What’s been really weird this week is to realize that I’ve been on the mission for 11 months. 11 months!! That’s really, really crazy. The time here doesn’t make any sense, sometimes the day crawls away at an unbearably slow pace but other times it feels like there is just too much to do for way too little time. There are just too many people to baptize! I know they are there! There is just too little time in the day. Sometimes after a day of proselyting and then accompanying the district (oh, I think I forgot to say I’m district leader now) and passing all the numbers you realize you have 5 minutes to shower and go to sleep at 10:30. And then it seems like the blink of an eye later you are awake and doing it all over again.

But I’m happy here, really happy. It’s great to do this work all day, every day. Sometimes you get to P- day and have a couple hours just to lie around and rest and you just are antsy to get back out and teach the gospel.

I know it´s true and it´s found in this church
The Church of Jesus Christ

-Elder Leete

The Average Day

Editor's note: Because Kevin only gets 30 minutes to email on pdays his letters have been short. He  spends time reading the long ones we send him.  So this week my letter to him was only one paragraph (we did mail him letters too).  Then I asked him to answer these questions that we came up with at FHE: 

1.     What scripture would you like on your Missionary plaque?

2.     What is Brazilian food like? What are the recipes?

3.     What is your typical day like at the CTM?

Wed 5/25/2011 10:26 AM

Haha. I guess since I don’t have anything to read I’m going to have to spend the whole 30 minutes writing. So here I go I guess.

I don’t know what scripture I want on my missionary plaque. For now it can be Isaiah 41:9-10 or maybe Philippians 4:13 or maybe that one scripture in 2 Nephi that dad shared on the day I left. They are all really awesome.

The food here is 50% arroz e feijão (rice and beans) and 50% salad and meat. Pretty good stuff, I love it. . .  except that the classroom smells really awful after meals. 

The average day is wake up at 6:30 shower and dress for personal study at 7, breakfast at 8, class at 8:30 until lunch at 1. Class again from 2 until dinner at 5:30. Gym from 6:30 to 7:30. Take another shower and change for companion study at 8 and daily planning at 9 till snack time at 9:30. Lights out at 10:30. Pretty exciting, huh?  In class we spend time learning the language and the lessons in preach my gospel and how to be good teachers. On Tuesday and Sunday nights we have devotionals where 70s or mission presidents will speak and Wednesday is P-day. P-day we wake up at like 5:30 to leave to go to the São Paulo Temple all morning and get back at about noon where we eat lunch and write letters and get our 30 minutes to email. After that, we have free time to do laundry or go wander around outside and buy stuff. There is a really good bakery, a cool place to buy ties, a paper supply store, a supermarket, shoe store, Churrasco (like the Brazilian restaurant we went to in Provo), bunch of other shops for like clothing and stuff and a few corner open air cafe places.

More about the food: every day for breakfast we get ham or bologna and cheese sandwiches and cream of wheat-ish porridge stuff. About once a week we will be really lucky and get like potato flour pancakes or cereal. The cereal is delicious, its chocolate frosted flakes! I miss eggs and bacon though. If we ever get eggs the yolk will be pre broken and cooked (gross). Lunch is usually excellent, there will be the meat of the day, beans and rice, Pão (bread), salad, and fruit. The fruit is always fresh and delicious. The fruit juice is always way better than the dessert which is usually a pudding-like substance that has a random flavor. They are really good about 20% of the time. My favorite is Feijoada, when they cook in a bunch of meat in with the beans and rice. It’s really, really good and a staple here.

Well I’m out of time all, I love you all so much. Have a spectacular week! Type you next week!