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

weekly letter 25 de julho

hey all! p day again, I can´t believe how fast this is going, it seems like I blink and the week is gone. on p days we wake up and do our normal schedule of study then go to the super mufato (equivalent of Safeway) and buy food for the week. today I bought bread, bologna, and cheese for breakfast and dinner sandwiches along with milk, bananas, and crackers for snacks. I'm really glad we eat in members´ homes every day for a big lunch, otherwise I have no idea what I would eat. after shopping we head to a lan house to use the computers, its something like 1.50 USD to use the computer for an hour. 

this week has been a week of miracles in my zone, we had something like 7 baptisms yesterday and Saturday. I had my first zone conference this past Thursday which was really great, I really love my mission president, he is truly inspired.

 the lesson that we have really heard is that there are lots of people that are prepared to be baptized, who have already gone to church a few times but just nobody invited them to be baptized. these people are family members of less active members and recent converts and old investigators in the area book.

 the field is truly ready to harvest, the hard part is finding those people that are ready. because when you find a person that is ready they will accept the gospel and get baptized in a few weeks.

 me and my comp made the mistake of trying to teach people that really don't have the will to change, they like the lessons and talking about God and we have great spiritual lessons, but they don't read and they don't pray to know if these things are true, we found that if these people don't accept our challenges to read or pray, then they simply won´t progress and its a better idea just to stop visiting them.

 I'm glad I'm learning these things now early in the mission, I see a lot of people that have 10 months or a year and have very little baptisms because they made this mistake to waste time on people who don't have the will to change.

 well, that's about it for this week, have fun at the reunion everyone, you should guilt all the cousins into writing me or something :)

 tchau

-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!