Time Ticks By

The time ticks by, and Christmas doesn't seem like it will come this year, it just gets hotter and hotter. Hardly believe that I've spent the whole year of 2012 in a foreign country preaching the gospel. I’m also excited to have my LAST skype call with you all on Christmas! I’ll be home probably before next mother´s day!

The mission passes by way faster than I imagined it would. But I've got lots of people to baptize still!!!

-Elder Leete! 

Valiant Defenders of the Truth

Thanksgiving passed by completely unnoticed, but that’s okay, there are a lot of holidays here that we don’t have there so it all evens out. Not like we celebrate any of them though. Just on holidays there are a lot more drunk people so it’s more fun to do street contacts. 

Every month the zone leaders of the mission have a special meeting with the mission president to talk about how to better the missionary work in the mission. I've learned that there is an eternal principal that is involved in this: 

The study of doctrine has a more profound effect on behaviors then a study of behaviors. When we really study and understand the doctrine of Christ and the Atonement, we naturally work harder and have better results in missionary work. You talk with more people on the street and have more spirit in your lessons.

It’s the same thing in our day to day life, and with teaching investigators. If someone understands the doctrine of the Law of Chastity and really understands that they are offending God by living together without being married, then they can use their agency to choose if they will get married or not, and they will receive their recompense in the last day.

I can recognize that 90% of all the times we sin we simply are tricked by Satan into not thinking about the definitiveness of the doctrine. We think, "Just a little bit isn’t all that bad" or "what I’m doing doesn’t really fall under this commandment". He tries to get us to forget where the lines are or better yet redefine our own lines or the lines set by the world.

As missionaries we try to be "Valiant Defenders of the Truth" (as it says in the missionary handbook) and testify of what GOD has set the standards to be in such a way that the person feel the spirit testify of its truth, then let that person choose for himself if he will follow or not.

I’m really learning a lot on the mission. It really is a lifetimes worth of experiences all shoved in two years.

I definitely recommend it for everyone.

Love you all!

-Elder Leete

Happy Thanksgiving

Me and elder P are doing well, we are trying really hard to
get the members of our ward involved in missionary work, so we are
trying to get them to go with us and teach people and we will try to
do some activities to get them excited.

We have some possibilidades for baptism this week, so we are going to
pray a lot that they happen. Our zone has been baptizing very little
lately so if me and Elder P show the example I think it will
get everybody really excited to work hard.

Happy thanksgiving everybody!

I’m sending another flash drive of pictures home today.

Love you all!
-Elder Leete

New Companion/Old Companion

Hey Everyone, 

i´ve got some exciting news, the new transfer starts now and my new companion will be Elder P! i´m really excited that we will work together again, i trained him when he arrived on the mission and now we will be Zone Leaders together 8 months later!

after 12 weeks of working in this area we havn´t baptized anybody, but we have a few people that are progressing and i´m feeling like here in a couple of weeks we will start baptizing a lot! just have to have faith!

realized that i will have spent half my mission here in the Ts Stake, i´m getting to know every area pretty well.

lets see the MIRACLES happen these next few weeks!

Love you all!

-Elder Leete

P.S. for the Christmas package I could use some more blistex, and i want updated pictures of everyone! and more milky ways!

I love you all!

 

Halloween, Stake Conferences, Election, & Smoking

Halloween past by completely unnoticed, if i didn’t have to renew my vista on Oct 31st I would have never even thought about it.

Here in the “Londrina T” stake we will have conference this next week. The culture about Church meetings are a lot diferente here, because more than half the people don’t have cars they have to walk to church so one of the biggest concerns that bishops and stake presidentes have  is simply getting the people to go to church every Sunday, and especially stake conferences.

I really look forward to stake conferences; I really can recognize how spiritually great the seventies are. When I was growing up a stake conference was just like any other Sunday, but now that I guess I’m more spiritually involved in every church meeting, I can see and feel the difference in the spirituality of brother John Doe in the Ward and one of the seventy when they visit. I´m not saying that brother John isn’t spiritual, because an  honest testimony with sincere words Always brings the spirit, but when a general authority talks he brings with it his calling, and they always talk about what the people in that region really need.

Are there really 47 missionaries from our stake? That’s crazy! Here a stake is Lucky if it sends out 7 or 10. How many wards are there in the stake?

As for the election, every investigator seems to ask me who is going to win, and I’m so disconnected I don’t know anything. Hey, if my ballot got there in the mail, can you guys vote for me. Send one more in for Romney (not like it will matter, we do live in Oregon)  

I Liked the Package you all sent! I got a bunch of Pictures from R and Peanut butter and Cake from the Family. Every morning now I make a “vitamina” how they call it in Portuguese. I put whole milk, bananas, Nesquick, and peanut butter in a blender. It’s delicious, But I’m also gaining weight. . .

This week is my Companions Last week on the mission. We have about 8 people that could be baptized but have problems. (Marriage, word of wisdom, etc. . .)

We are teaching a young couple that both smoke. We gave them a blessing to stop and the husband, who smoked a carton of cigarettes per day didn’t smoke any more since then. The wife is having a harder time, she just is smoking less. This is the third time on the mission that I gave someone a blessing to stop smoking and they stopped. They all have the same thing that they just don’t have any more desire to. I know the Priesthood is real, but it completely depends on the Faith of the person who was blessed, I have given blessings in a lot of people that just kept smoking in the same way.

Love you all, I´m doing great here

-Elder Leete

Hard Work is Starting to Pay off.

One more week passes by, me and Elder S have been working really hard and it’s starting to pay off this week, we found a young family on Saturday and they went to church Sunday and when we went to visit them Sunday night they said that they liked it at lot and "who knows, maybe we´ll get baptized. . ." without us even asking them! The only problem is that they are a little poor and don’t have the money to get married.

Also, on Sunday, there was a missionary couple visiting our ward that is serving in the Temple and they went with us to teach a relative of theirs. She is an old lady and asked "if I wanted to get baptized next week, would I have to like take a class or something?" before we even started the lesson!!

I really hope that we can help these people be baptized this week; they are the first people we´ve seen in a long time that are really interested in knowing the truth.

Also today I got 2 packages! One from you guys and one from Rebecca. That and a bunch of cards and letters for my birthday from last week.   Today is a really great day. And to top it all off, I found a place that sells Cereal really cheap only like 4 R$!! A box of frosted flakes is like 15 R$ here so I never buy it, so this week will be the first time in like a year and a half that I have cereal for breakfast!


I love you all! Have a great week!
-Elder Leete

Drunks & Missionary Mid-life

 This week went by really fast, the assistants visited our zone so one stayed with Elder S. in our area while the other (an old friend of mine, Elder L) did a split with me and we visited all the areas of the zone doing splits with everybody. It was a lot of fun.

My birthday was good. I taught a couple of drunks in front of a bar that are real art freaks (are studying art and theatre in the university ) when we gave them a Book of Mormon he gave me a book about Brazilian art in return. That was my birthday present for the day. Teaching drunks is always entertaining. Unless they are those angry drunks that think that our religion is false and they already follow God. (Oh the hypocrisy. . . .)

We have been working for the past month or so with some investigators that are having a hard time to stop smoking. After a certain point you can’t really do much more, you don´t have enough minutes on your cell fone to be calling them all day reminding them not to smoke.

I’m starting to reach the missionary mid-life crisis.

not really mid-life, just the realization that in a few short weeks I will only have 6 months left on the mission.

Have I really worked as hard as I should have?

Have I baptized as much as I could have?

You start to become tired, both physically and mentally. My companion right now is on his last transfer before he goes home, and it shows. He is really beaten up. I’m thinking to myself, will I be like that in six months? Will I have worked as hard and have given my all so that really I’m physically and mentally and emotionally worn out? Or will I just kind have glided through the mission with have given everything I have.

These thoughts give me a new resolution to give more than I have given before and go all out. I’ve got a  lot more time and a lot more people to baptize.

love you all!

-Elder Leete

P.S. did you guys send me any packages? and if so to what address so i can look out for them