11/7/11

A short email. I´m doing well. hey family! I´m out of time to write a lot of stuff, but I´m doing really well, and I´m working super hard. I love you all a lot. The church is true! Love, Elder Forsyth

10/31/11

Hey you guys! whats up?! It´s only been a couple days since I last wrote, but I feel like every day has been a race... I feel like every second is a teaching experience now, and the training really doesn´t stop. I feel like I have a million things to do every day. But I like it when life is that way. It gets way easier to sleep at night, and I´m more excited to wake up in the morning. Elder Kutomi is doing well. we get along well and we´re working hard together. The greatest blessing I have is that he already speaks Portuguese... so I won´t have to teach him the language. He also served as a missionary in São Paulo for 3 months before serving a full time mission, so he has experience teaching. He´s really young (18), and has never lived away from home before, so there will be a lot of little lessons of growing up that I´ll have to teach him, but some of those things will take time, and he´ll have to learn for himself. The work is going really well. We are teaching a ton of great people, and we should have a lot of baptisms this month. This next 5 weeks will definitely be hard, but I´m going to learn a ton of stuff, and I´m excited. In the mission, they call the trainers dads, and the trainees sons. I really do feel like a dad in a lot of respects now, and i think it will help me learn to be a better dad in the future. I don´t have a lot of other things to write about... I love you guys, and I want you to know that I´m doing well. I´m not having any nervous break downs, and my district is great. The spirit is strong, and like I said, I´m learning a ton. Thanks for the letters and emails! The church is true! Love, Elder Forsyth

10/26/11

Holy Cow!!!E.Forsyth‏ What a week! I got a call Monday afternoon that I was getting called to be a trainer. We spent the whole rest of the day saying goodbye to people, and packing Elder Santos´s bags. We got to sleep late, then we had to wake up at 4 for me to travel to Joao Pessoa. When I got there, I had training all morning. Then we had subway for lunch (for the first time in over 16 months). then our new companions arrived, and we had more training. My companion is pretty neat. He´s from Sao Paulo. His name is Elder Kutomi. I was in the MTC with his brother. I thought that was pretty cool. He's 18 years old, and reminds me a little bit of Ben. He's a little shy, and you can tell that he´s a little nervous, but I´ll do my best to help him out and show him the ropes :P The good thing is that we should have a few good baptisms this month. We had 3 men at church this week, and all of them can be baptized this month if they accept the invitation. All of them are Washingtons friends. We also are helping a woman get married, so that she can be baptized. I payed for the marriage, but her husband said that he would pay me back. They´re super excited. So after we had all that training, we went to the Presidents house to eat, and all the new missionaries bore their testimonies. (there were 17 new missionaries! the biggest group in the mission). All of them were super nervous, and all the Americans were struggling with the language. I couldn´t believe that I was exacly like them last year. So much has changed in the last year and 4 months, and things will continue to change until the end of the mission. At the end of the day, we slept with 30 elders in a house in Joao Pessoa. It was rough. I didn´t sleep much, and we had to wake up early to return to Natal. We didn´t have any problems with the travel though. Everything went smoothly. Now we´re back in our area. An area opened in my district, so now I´m the district leader for 6 missionaries. I only know one of them. I´ll have to get to know the others, and hope that they´re good. haha. I´m looking forward to training. It will help me remember what it was like to be new, and will help me be a better example in the mission. I love you guys. I got some letters this week. One was from a girl that I didn´t get to baptise in Canguaretama, but she got baptized after I left. She wrote a really nice letter thanking me. I thought that was really great. I hadn´t received letters in 3 months, because the post office was on strike. I love you guys. Thanks for your love and support and prayers. Keep choosing the right, and keep writing. :P Love, Elder Forsyth

10/17/11

Essa Semana Foi Boa :) BATISMO!!! (Bah-Chees-Moo)! Oi Familia This week was pretty great. We had interviews with president. My interview was pretty short, but he said that he´s happy with my progress in the mission. He said I was really shy when I got here, but now I´m a servant. I don´t know exactly what that means, but maybe it means that I´m not shy anymore... I don´t know. I asked if i could call you guys during the week of Amber's wedding instead of Christmas, and he said maybe. I´ll have to ask him again in December. If not, then I´ll have to split my 40 minutes with Mom and Emma and with the rest of the family. Me and my companion accidentally killed an investigator this week. I don´t exactly know how, but I think we cursed her and she died. We were teaching a couple that was living together but not married. My companion and I were joking around saying that they would have to get married for them to get baptized, or the woman, who was 70, would have to die, and we could baptize the man. That week, the woman went to the hospital, and two weeks later she died. :( I was kinda sad, because she was perfectly healthy when we met her, but now, maybe we´ll baptize the man... we know that she´s in a better place now. We baptized an 18 year old boy this week. His name is Washington. He´s incredible. I think he´s been my favorite baptism. For sure, he´ll be a powerful missionary, and leader in the the church in the future. I can´t believe Kyle is home now! Congrats with the engagement Amber and Kyle. I can´t wait to see you guys next summer! Everything is going well for me. We´re working hard to teach and baptize all of Washington´s friends. The work is going great. Next week I´ll talk to you guys on Wednesday because of transfers. Let me know how you guys are! I love you, and I´m glad that everyone is doing well. Keep choosing the right, and I want to hear more from my brothers and sisters. Kyle included ;) Love, Elder Forsyth

10/10/11

Hey Family! This week went great. I´m getting pretty excited because it looks like we´re going to baptize an 18 year old named Washington next week. He visited the church yesterday, and loved it. He participated in all the classes, and has some friends in the church already. We had two other boys at church that want to be baptized too, but it will take a couple months for them to be ready. On saturday night I went to the hospital with Elder W Santos. During the day he was sweating a lot, and was light headed, so at lunch I took him home and made him drink a lot of water and lay down. We worked the rest of the day like normal, but then at 11:30 at night, he told me we had to go to the hospital. He wanted to go without telling anyone, but I told him that for us to leave so late at night, we had to call Sister Hall. We called her, and she authorized us to go to the hospital. He was still feeling really hot, and was feeling a lot of pain in his kidneys when he woke me up. We went by taxi to a hospital, and then they gave us a ride in an ambulance to another hospital that had a urologist. We thought he might have kidney stones, but with all the tests they took, they didn´t find anything. They just told him to drink more water, and take an anti inflamitory medicine. We got home at 3 in the morning, and then woke up at 7 to go to church. The whole thing made Sister Hall pretty worried, but everything is fine now. She´ll probably talk to us a lot tomorrow, because we have interviews with the president. I´m really doing well though. It´s been getting hotter here, which made my companion sick, but I haven´t had any problems, and on the contrary, I´m actually feeling a lot more energetic. We´re working a lot, and starting to have more success. We should be able to have a couple baptisms in the next couple weeks. I´m out of time now, but I love you guys a lot. Thanks for all your love and prayers and letters and stuff. I´ll talk to you more next Monday! Love, Elder Forsyth

10/3/11

Conferência Geral! Hey Family! I loved general conference this week. I thought it was so cool to see the men from Pleasant Grove sing in the the priesthood session! I saw both Bishop Christiansen, and Trevor Wiley singing. I told my companion, "If I wasn´t right here right now, I´d be in the conference center singing." I liked all the talks. I thought it was interesting how we were counseled not to call our church "The church of the Mormons", and the Book of Mormon is "The Book of the Mormons", but not everyone calls the members of the church Mormons. They just think that the missionaries are the Mormons. There was a kid in our ward that asked his mom, "Are the Mormons going to eat at our house this week?", I thought that was way funny. I told him, "Hey, you´re Mormon too... and yes, we´re going to eat at your house..."...haha. the work has been going well this week. We found a ton of new investigators, but the problem this week was that we found 6 new men, but when we went back to visit their houses a second time, they were all drinking... It's tough. I´m glad to hear that you guys are all doing well. I want to hear more from my brothers and sisters, and I want you guys to send me some pictures when you can. I feel like it´s been over a year since I´ve seen you guys... Write me when you can. I like to reply to the emails that I recieve more than just talk about myself in an email to the whole family. I love you guys! Love, Elder Forsyth

9/26/11

Oi Família! Hey everyone! The work here is going well. I´m doing well too. Just work as usual...haha.. I feel like I´ve been writing "just work as usual" for the last 2 months... I´ve really gotten used to my work now, and I´m just in the groove of things I guess. This week I did a split with my zone leader. I was a little nervous, because I thought that he would just tell me all the things I was doing wrong, but it actually turned out better than I thought. My zone leader is a lot more energetic than I am, and I really learned a lot from his enthusiasm. In my patriarcal blessing, it says I have a quiet wisdom about me, and so I never worried to much about being a talker, because it´s really not who I am, but now I´m realizing that I also need to have confidence to be a good teacher, and leader. Sometimes I get so reserved that it looks like I´m embarrased, and shy, but that's really not true, and I need to show more authority, when I´m talking with investigators, and also other missionaries. I can´t think of a whole lot else that happened this week. I´ve been getting a lot better at Portuguese lately though, and it's become really tough to speak in English. 3 or 4 times this week, people complimented me on my Portuguese, and a man even told me that he didn´t know I was from the US. He thought I was from another part of Brazil. That made me really happy. I love you guys, and I hope you all have a great week. I know that the Church is true, and blesses lives. I´m looking forward to General Conference! Love, Elder Forsyth

9/19/11

Hey Family :) It´s only been a few days since I last wrote, but it's already p-day again. Work is going well. We have a lot of progressing investigators, and we´re looking forward to having a few baptisms in the next couple weeks. I´m super excited for general conference! Today for p-day, we visited the biggest cashew tree in the world. It took up a city block. We walked a little bit around inside it, then went home :) I didn´t take pictures, because my camera is a little broken, but Elder Santos took a lot, and I´ll copy some of his. I´ll probably get a new camera this week. Other than that, the week has been really calm. I can´t think of anything else to mention.....thinking.....oh yeah. I met a family from Logan, UT here. The Uitto family. Lenny is from California, and went on a mission to Belem, Brazil, then found his wife on the internet a few years later. His wife is from my city, and they came back to visit the family for 18 days. They went home this week. I baptized their nephew, so I´ll for sure have to meet up with them after the mission and see how they are. My bishop was also released this week. He´d been serving for 9 years. That would be a rough job to do, but he did really well, and he´s pretty excited to rest a little bit now. Elder Simpson, my companion 5 months ago, is in my zone now. We talked a little bit at the cashew tree. I love you guys all a lot. If you have any questions for me, or jokes or poems, feel free to send them. The church is true! It changes lives! Stay firm in the gospel, and you will be more happy. Pray always, and read the scriptures. Love, Elder Forsyth!

9/14/11

Hey family! I just wanted to let everyone know that the mission here in Parnamirim is going great still. Transfers went well this week. I´m staying in the same area with the same companion, but the big change will be that I´m now district leader. I´ll have to let you know how that goes next week. I´m pretty excited though, and can't wait to let you know how it goes. I´ll talk to you guys again in a few days on Monday! Love, Elder Forsyth

9/5/11

mais uma semana em Parnamirim‏ Hey you guys!!! I can´t think of anything cool that happened this week, so I´ll just write you my testimony. I know that we lived with out Heavenly Father before we came to earth. He knew us perfectly, and loved us perfectly. He knew all of our capacities, and our potential. He knew that we could learn and grow a lot more if we left his presence, and came to earth. On earth we would be able to learn for ourselves the things that we could never learn from his example. He sent us to earth, to our earthly parents, for us to fulfil our true potential. In the same way that all of us left our Heavenly Parents to come to earth, I left my Earthly parents to serve a mission. There are many things we can learn from our parents. We can learn from their counsel, and from their examples, but there are also many things that we have to learn for ourselves, that we can't learn from other people. These things include testimony, faith, patience, and diligence. Just as I left my heavenly home to learn and grow, I left my earthly home, to learn and grow, and fulfil my true potential. Here on the mission, I´m learning about faith through study, fasting, and prayer. I´m learning patience through trial, and I´m learning diligence through hard work. It's incredible how the test changes when you don´t have your parents looking over your shoulder. You have to do things because of your own will, and not just because your parents want you to do them. I know that the mission is changing my life. It´s changing my character, and changing the way I act and think. I´m learning things that I couldn´t learn in any other place. I know that the church is true and that God answers our prayers. He has called a prophet in our day to lead and guide us. The scriptures show the way, and the Sprit is our guide. My mission is preparing me for the rest of my life, and the rest of my life is preparing me for eternal life. It´s important that we prepare now. (Alma 34:32) I love you guys, and I hope you all have a great week. Write me when you can! Love, Elder Forsyth

8/29/11

Aqui em Parnamirim. Carta de Elder Forsyth‏ Hey you guys! This week was a pretty good one, with a few ups and downs. We had a mission conference that I liked a lot. President Hall talked a lot about charity, and the reasons why we serve. We watched a movie about the Prophet Thomas S Monson. It was nice to have a break from normal work. Last week we taught a ton of lessons, and found a lot of new people, but in the end, everything fell through, and no one went to church, and no one was baptized, and no one was confirmed. This week was the opposite. With the conference, we didn´t teach so many people, and we didn´t find so many new people, but we still managed to baptize a 9 year old boy, Neto, and confirmed Viviane, and we had 5 investigators at church. That made me pretty happy :) I´ve been a little sick and tired this week, but I´m getting better now. I´ve just been a little congested. I thought it was pretty strange though, because exactly one year ago, I was also sick and congested. I was just reading about it in my journal and I thought it was a strange coincidence. I guess it has something to do with the changing seasons. I had a pretty terrifying experience this week. I put my shoes on to leave the house, and I felt something in the bottom of my shoe, but I thought it was just my sock folded over, so I didn´t think twice. I sat and waited for 10 minutes for my companion to finish getting ready, and when I went to stand up I felt the lump in my shoe wiggle. In a milisecond, I took off my shoe and threw it accross the room. It hit the wall, and a huge cockroach ran out under the table. I couldn´t believe it. He´d been there chillin in my shoe with my foot for 10 minutes. We don´t usually have any cockroaches in our house. That was the first one I´d ever seen. It freaked me out though. Work is going pretty normally here. I´m starting to look forward to Christmas, but thats still a few transfers away. Tell Stephanie HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!! for me. I can´t believe how old everyone is getting. She´ll be 9 years old now! I love you guys, and I hope everyone has a great week. I miss you. Love, Elder Forsyth

8/22/11

Hey you guys! This week was pretty normal. We prepared a primary boy to be baptized and a girl to receive the Holy Ghost, but both of them were out of town on Sunday :P I hate when that happens. We didn´t have any investigators at church. It was fun preparing the primary boy though. He had a lot of fun questions. He´s only 10. The hardest part for me was teaching the law of chastity. I had no idea what to do. I thought about just skipping the subject, but then I worried that my district leader would ask about it in the boys interview, and I wanted him to be prepared. I asked him, " We have some parts of our body that we shouldn´t share with everyone, right?" and he said, "huh???" and then I was stuck. I didn´t know what else to say. I looked at my companion, and he was in the same boat. I asked another question, "We can´t just run around in the street naked right?" he said "Of course not", and I said, "It's a commandment that we keep our clothes on in front of other people. The only exception is your wife in the future, and the doctor." I think he understood....hahaha.... Other than that, my week was pretty normal. Elder Santos and I get along well, but our house is always really quiet with just the 2 of us. I like living with 4 missionaries. It´s always a lot more fun. Good luck with everyone starting school! I want to see more pictures of you guys. I never even saw Benjamin's senior pictures. Let me know whats happening with you guys. I love you a lot. The church is true, and I love being a missionary! Love, Elder Forsyth

8/15/11

Hey family :) This week was pretty normal, but had a few perks :P Satuday night we baptized a girl named Viviane. She´s 14 years old, and her brother is already a member. She must have been elect, because it was one of the easiest baptism I´ve seen in the mission. The first day I met her I asked her if she wanted to be baptized, and the next day she told us yes. We taught her all the lessons in the next week, and then she was baptized :) She already has a lot of friends in the young womens, and her brother will for sure help her stay really active in the church. I was really excited to help her join the church. Last night I took a 3 hour bus ride to Joao Pessoa, then I slept in the mission office, and then this morning I went to the police station to renew my visa. Everything went smoothly, and now I can stay in the country for another year, but now I´m way tired from the travel, and it took up almost all of my p-day :( Me and my comp are doing fine. I know our area pretty well now, and we´re still helping a lot of couples get married. While I was in Joao Pessoa, our executive secretary told me that I´ll be coming home on the 28th of June. That gives you guys plenty of time to plan a big party :) I´m glad that I´ll get home in the summer. It will make the transition a little easier. Sister Olney, who flew out from Salt Lake with me, is coming home in January, and it will be super cold when she gets back to Idaho. I can´t believe that she´s already finishing her mission! I feel like it was just yesterday that we were in the airport saying goodbye. I love you guys a lot. Everything is going well here, and I hope everything is going well at home too. I pray for you always. Love, Elder Forsyth

8/8/11

Hey you guys! Wow! This new area is so good! Instead of a branch full of youth, I´m now in a ward full of families! My new area is a really new part of the city, with a lot of young couples that live here, and the church has really flourished here in the last few years. The ward here has already divided 2 times, and the people are excited to help out the missionaries. I´m teaching a lot of families now. The biggest problem is that it´s really hard for people to get married here in Brazil. You need to have your ID, 2 testimonies, $400, and your birth certificates. Your birth certificates have to be new, and if they´re more than 3 months old, then you´ve got to go to the city where you were born to get a new one. It´s a little retarded. We´re helping 4 families get married though, and if everything goes right, one of them will get married September 10th. We marked the marriage and the baptism just this week! The very first time I was at their house I made them choose the date, and now the whole relief society is excited and preparing things for them. My companion was born in Argentina, but lived most of his life in São Paulo. He speaks Spanish, so maybe I´ll learn a little bit with him. :P He´s 24, and has been a member since he was 12. He waited a little bit to go on the mission, because he was drafted for the airforce, and then worked for a couple years. He´s pretty quiet, and responsible. He acts a lot older than I do, and I´m a little afraid to goof off in front of him and sing in the shower and stuff... he´s been on the mission for 4 months. We had a zone p-day today. We played soccer in the sand, and ate açai. It´s a cool fruit that is popular in the north end of Brazil. I´m a little tired now, and I´m ready to go home and sleep until 6 o'clock. I hope that everyone has a fun week this week! I´ve still got to get to know the rest of my area and my ward members, but next week we´ll already start to baptize people. This week we marked three baptisms. A girl will be baptized next week, a boy the week after, and the woman who we´re helping get married will be baptized after the wedding. Thanks for all your letters and prayers! The church is true! Love, Elder Forsyth

8/3/11

WOW! This week has been a little nuts. This week, work was getting pretty difficult. We worked and worked, and worked, and everything kept falling through. In the end of the week we were left with only 2 or 3 good investigators, and now I know why the Lord let everything fall through. He wanted to close my area! Elder Ferreira and I both got transfered today. He went to Campina Grande, and I´m in Natal now. My new companion is Elder W Santos. He´s from Sao Paulo, and has 3 months in the field. This week was full of a lot of drama in Canguaretama. President got involved last night, and I still don´t know what happened, because I was transfered before I got to find out. My district leader is still there, but he´ll probably get pulled out today, because it´s not going to work out for him to work there anymore either. But yeah, I´m happy to be in Natal! I´ve got a cool new companion, and a new ward that seems really stong and accepting. I love you guys. I'm really am happy and loving the misson. Love, Elder Forsyth

7/25/11

Hi!!!

This week was a little tough as far as work goes. We had to cut a lot of people who were progressing really well last week. Actually, we didn't really cut them; they cut themselves. We walked 40 minutes to bring a girl to church, and when we got there, her little sister was at the front door with Book of Mormon in her hand saying that her sister wanted to return the book. We just told the little sister that we would come back another day talk with her older sister....groan..... One cool thing that we did this week though was go to the beach. Well it was´t really a beach; it´s a river that´s in our area that looks like a beach. We took a lot of cool photos there that I attached. It was pretty fun. I like the district that i have right now. Elder Silva Souza is our district leader. He´s smart and always beats me at chess. He´s fun to talk to. Elder Galvez is his companion. He´s from Washington and he´s been on the mission for a little over 6 months. He´s a fun guy too. Elder Ferreira is my companion. He´s been on a mission for 7 months now. He´s only been a member of the church for 21 months I think. He teaches really well though, and is really obedient. Everyone gets along great at our house. Joel, who we baptized last month, is still firm in the church. He´s excited to recieve the Priesthood soon. Roniele, who we baptised a couple weeks ago, didn´t go to church this week. We´ll have to stop by there tomorrow to see why. We´re still struggling to find some friends for her at church. It´s a little tough for us to integrate new members unless they´re already friends with someone in the group. I never realized how important it is to help people who are excluded until now in the mission. It´s really tough, because Roniele doesn´t have a chance of staying firm in the church without people supporting her, and her family isn´t going to church, so it´s just up to the girls in our branch now... I´ll let you know how things go. We´ve been teaching a girl Mariana for over 2 months now, and she hasn´t been baptized yet because her dad won´t let her. Her mom went to church his week, and so we´re hoping that the mom will convince the dad to let her be baptised this next week. We´re hoping to see a miracle happen. Our president really wants the mission to baptise 200 people this month, and right now the mission is pretty far behind. We´ll keep doing our part though, and working hard everyday. I love you guys, and I´m glad to hear that everyone is doing well. In the next few weeks I ´ll try to send home some dvds with pictures on them. Thanks for all your letters and prayers, I pray for you guys all the time too! Love, Elder Forsyth

7/18/11

Hi Everybody! This week was a pretty normal week. We had some challenges and some success, but overall, we´re still excited to work this next week and see what we can change here in Canguaretama. We worked a lot this week making a lot of contacts, and finding new families to teach. We found some good ones too! One young couple we found belong to the Jehovas Witness. They gave us a pamphlet about their church, and we gave them some stuff about our church. We studied their matierials, so that we´d know how to do a good bible bash with them... hahha.. just kidding. Yesterday we ran all over the city to get our investigators to go to church, and hardly anybody went. We ran around from 2:00 until 5:00, even though church started at 3:00. we found Roniele at 4:30 and ran her to church to get confirmed. Then after the meeting we walked her home. We´re going to have to visit her with some members for her to stay firm, because right now she´s still really new and doesn´t have many friends. After we walked her home, it was dark, and getting late, and we didn´t know what else to do for the day, so we started to walk around looking for men to talk to, because we´d only taught 6 new men in the week, and we wanted 8. As we were walking, Elder Ferreira saw some men in a house watching tv. He noticed that the Brazil soccer game was on, and that they were having a shoot out to finish the game. I thought it was a good chance to make a contact, but Elder Ferreira was a little embarrased to go over there during the game. I asked the men watching the game who was winning, and they invited us in to watch. We watched the last 30 seconds of the game, then taught them a lesson. It was great :) I felt like it was a really good example of being in the right place at the right time, being focused on the work. We´re to return there next week to teach the whole family. Other than that, its been a pretty normal week. We´re still feeding the monkeys that visit our window, and they´re getting a little more courageous. Maybe next week they´ll starting eating the banana out of our hand. Thanks for all your letters and prayers. I hope that Emma and Josh and Ben get better soon with their wisdom teeth. I love you guys so much! Love, Elder Forsyth