5/2/2011

This week has been a great week. We worked a ton, and ended up baptizing Ingred, that girl I met a few weeks ago! When I first met her, I thought she just wanted to talk to the missionaries because she thought we were cute, but now I´ve realized that she really has a testimony of the gospel, and she was so happy, excited, and willing to be baptized this week. It was amazing! Definitely a convert that I´ll remember.

In testimony meeting I gave a testimony on willingness. Like it says in the sacrament prayer, we should be willing to take upon the name of Christ, and always remember him,and keep his commandments which he has given us. There are so many people who take the sacrament every week, when they really aren´t willing to keep all the commandments. I was thinking a lot about how people pick and choose what commandments they want to live, and by this they really aren´t willing to do what the Lord wants, and they´re being prideful. I´m trying now to do my best to keep ALL of the commandments, and there are a lot of extra ones once you get in the mission... Ivan bore his testimony, and so did Elder Simpson, and by the end, Ingred was crying because of the spirit that was there. She cried at the end of the baptism to. She´s really understanding the importance of all these things.

I can´t believe everything that's going on at home. So much is changing. It will be good to talk to you guys this week.

About that... my president has put a huge damper on me. I can´t skype you guys on Sunday, because apparently it´s breaking the Sabbath day to speak with you through computers on a Sunday. If I were to do it on Monday, it would have to be between 7:30 and 3, which is horrible, because everyone will be at work. I think I´ll end up just making a regular call to you guys on Sunday in the afternoon. It sucks, but I can´t do anything about it... looks like Christmas is on a Sunday too, so maybe skype will never be a possibility for me on the mission. Know that I still love you though, and I look forward to talking to you this week still. I don´t have too much more to say, so just have a great week, and I´ll talk to you soon!

I can´t believe I´m almost 20... like i said, everything is changing, but hopefully things change for the better and not for the worse.

Have a great week, and remember to read the scriptures and pray.

Love, Elder Forsyth

Happy Easter!

4/25/2011

Happy Easter! and Welcome home Amber! I´m super glad that she´s home now, but I´m not going to lie, it did make me a little home sick to see the pictures :( It will be me one day :P here in a year and 2 months! Don´t worry, time goes by super fast, and I´m more than happy to stay here in Brazil. The work is going fantastically, and we´re having a lot of progress with our area.

So far this transfer we haven´t baptized yet, but this week we have 4 people possible that we can baptize, so chances are that at least one of them will stick! We have my snake (Ingred), her friend (Gabi), another moça(Elen), and a new boy we met this week, Wallace. He´s super cool. He went to church this Sunday, and then asked us how he could become a Mormon :) I think that´s a great question. We´ll have to let him know how it works this week.

These last couple transfers have been some of the happiest times of my life. I´ve really begun to realize how obedience=happiness.

My first companion told me, " The only rule we have is that there are no rules."

My second companion told me, "There are too many rules to obey all of them, so we´ll do what we can to be mostly obedient, then whatever happens happens."

My third companion said" The reason we have rules is to not get into trouble, so if we can break the rules without getting into trouble, all is well..."

Here is what I think... Blessings follow obedience, and not just selective obedience. We must obey ALL of the commandments of God. This is where we get our power. This is where we get our confidence. These is were GOD gets his power. He gets his power and priesthood and glory, through our faith, obedience, and salvation. It´s actually a deep concept if you think about it. I´ll keep studying it more.

I love you guys. Keep writing me every week, and tell me how you are so that we can help each other to stay strong. Not a whole lot more happened this week, and if I forgot something I´ll fill you in next week!

Love, Elder Forsyth

4/18/2011

Sorry I didn´t get a chance to send a big letter to everyone last week :( I got kicked off the computer right before I was going to send my letter. That sucks huh?!

Everything is going really well here though. Everything is getting really wet... It´s the beginning of the rainy season, and it´s raining com força! We played soccer in the rain for two hours today.

So, for those of you who know Ivan, he´s a member that lives here who likes to put pictures of me on facebook. By now you´ve probably seen pictures of me with a girl named Ingred. Now I´m going to tell you about this girl...

Normally, we don´t make many contacts with girls. Our job is to strengthen the wards, so we look more for priesthood holders. But last week a girl stopped us in the street and started asking tons of questions about us. She was super excited to hear that we are both Americans, and the next day we went to her house with Ivan to teach about the restoration. She loved the message, and went to church the next day. She liked church, and we took pictures in the garden out front afterwards. Ivan did really well to explain to her that the missionaries can't hug or anything, and she was pretty respectfull of that.

The next week we went to her house, and she had developed a photo with just her and me in it, and she had framed it, and put it in her room! She is progressing super well though. She read the Book of Mormon, prayed, got an answer, went to young women's, and went to church again this Sunday. She said she wants to be baptized, but she also said that she wants to get a visa and visit Pleasant Grove! I´ll keep you guys updated with how things go with her.

I´m so excited that Amber is coming home. I´m so proud of her! I like what she said, "Missions are hard, but they´re worth it." When I first got out here, I realized that a mission was nothing like I thought it would be, but now, I´ve realized that my mission is what I want it to be. I´m making my mission how I think it should be, and it´s starting to work. Everything that I wanted to learn on the mission, I´m learning, and I´m going to be so much better for it once I get back!

I love you guys all so much. thanks for your love, and your examples. Choose the right, and write me letters from time to time :)

Love, Elder Forsyth

4/4/2011

So this week was a pretty fun one here. I´ve spent the week getting to know my new area and my new companion. The area is great with lots of members who want to help us. We have a recent convert, Ivan, who works with us almost everyday. He´s great! He will leave on a mission in May, but until then he´s helping us out tons, and he´s basically working with us full time as a missionary, but he´s not a missionary, so he can use facebook. I´ve been letting him put up some of my pictures for you guys. I hope you all like that. He speaks a little English if you want to send him messages and stuff. He tells me all about the messages.

This week we had interviews with the President. He told me some really great things, and I really think I´m on his good side :) I´ll keep doing my best to stay that way.

So Elder Simpson was called as a senior in this transfer, so we´re basically both on the same level as far as experience goes, and I speak just a little better than he does. He has a little over a year on the mission, and President told him that he would have been called earlier as senior if we´d just had more missionaries. I´m sure the same is true with me. I´ll probably get called as soon as more missionaries arrive, but for right now it´s great to be a junior. With Simpson I have all the responsibilities of a senior, but I don´t have any of the accountability...haha. We´re going to work super hard this transfer though. We´re way excited.

So basically conference was awesome! I got to watch the first session in Portuguese, and all of the rest in English, in an air conditioned chapel. It´s basically been a three day weekend for me, because we didn´t get a chance to work Saturday or Sunday, and now it´s p'day again. I feel physically and spiritually recharged. What did you guys think about conference? When the prophet started talking about a special temple getting constructed, a voice in my head started shouting, JERUSALEM! but then he said Rome, Italy. That's still super exciting though, and I think there might even be some prophecies about the Rome temple, but I don´t know what they are. I'll have to study that more when I get home...

So yeah, everything is really good here. That's crazy that Amber is coming home soon. It seems like yesterday when I had to leave her and drive back up to Utah State through the night. Just one more year and 3 months before we get to meet back up again!

I love you all so much. The church is true. Make sure you all study the conference talks when they come out. I´m still studying the talks from last conference, and they're great! Our church is totally different than all the other churches here in Brazil, and the biggest difference is that our church is true!!! Don´t ever forget that, and if you´ve already forgotten, then try to remember again, because this testimony changes peoples lives, to be more happy, and full of love and purpose.

Have a great week you guys, and I´ll write to you more next Monday!

Robbed!

03/30/2011

hey family!

So I´m basically super happy today. We had transfers today, and things happened a lot differently then I thought they would. Elder Fisi has 6 months in Geisel, and he´s going to stay there for another month training an American elder. I only had 5 weeks there in Geisel, but I ended up getting transferred to another mission in Joao Pessoa, Jardim Veneza. I´m here with one of my best friends from Mamanguape, Elder Simpson. He was called to be senior in this transfer, so we have about the same experience in the mission, and we´re going to work really well and really hard together. I´m super excited for this transfer.

So yeah, like you guys know, I was robbed last week, and I´m sure you´re dying to know how it was, so I´ll tell you now.

It happened last p'day. On p'days we play soccer and write emails and go to the store. That morning I had my backpack, camera, ipod, soccer balls, and the last of my money with me. I had my camera and ipod because I´ve been backing up all my pictures on my ipod to be safe. That afternoon, we went back home and I dropped off my camera, and then we went back out to work at 6:00. We were going to go return some stuff to the members. We had borrowed some soccer balls and a guitar. Here, it´s already dark at 6, but we weren´t thinking it would be that dangerous at 6 in the afternoon. As we were walking we entered into an alley. When we were in the middle of the alley, two guys with hats on and guns came running in from in front of us. I was thinking, "They´re either running away from someone, or they´re running at us, in which case, we´re screwed..." They ran us up against the wall and started yelling, "Throw it all on the ground! This is an assault! Everything! Backpacks, wallets, cell phones!" Elder Fisi threw everything, including the guitar, which made a horrible sound when it hit the dirt. I just kinda froze and put my hands in the air. They took my backpack, which had my ipod and some soccer balls from a member, and they reached into my pocket and grabbed my wallet, which had the last of my money, and my mission card. They took everything from us, except they left the guitar on the ground. Luckily, the guitar didn´t break when Fisi threw it, so we were able to return it to the member unharmed. As they ran away in their flip flops, I felt pretty angry, and I felt like that for the next couple days, but now I´m feeling better. The things they took really don´t have that much worth when you compare them to the things that are really important. I like how my investigator put it who was confirmed this week, "They took your rings, but they left your fingers." I know that the experiences I´m having here in Brazil are worth way more than the things they stole.

The next day we ran into 2 little boys and they asked, "Can we ask you a question?"

"Sure you can..."

"Were you two assaulted last night?"

"uh, yeah, How did you know?"

"Because we saw your ipod, and we were watching videos of you last night. They´re trying to sell it for $R70"

"Oh, that's cool. Tell the guys that stole it that they can keep the money, and the ipod, but i´d like my wallet and backpack back."

"ok..."

we never got our backpacks back though....

So yeah, that was my week. I don´t have an ipod anymore, so if you want to send me cds that would be cool. Any motab is great. There is a showtime cd that they made which would be neat to have. Singles Ward, Best 2 Years, Hometeachers soundtracks would be great too.

I love you guys all a lot, and I look forward to writing more to you next Monday and talking to you on Mothers Day! I´ll try to get skype figured out here so that I can see you and talk to you!

Love, Elder Forsyth

3/21/2011

I know it´s been a while since I´ve sent any good pictures, but on the computers in this lan house, I can´t do anything. I´ll have to try something new this next week.

So, this week was pretty awesome. I think I told you last week that we brought two men to church that we could probably baptize. I´ll tell you now about one of these men, Carlos.

We met Carlos last Saturday, just a little more that a week ago. He was sitting outside his house, all alone. We went and made a contact, and asked him to come to church the next day. he accepted, but here in my mission everyone accepts and then gives a lame excuse when it´s time for church, so we weren´t expecting much. But the next day we passed by, and he was all ready, waiting outside his house for us :) We were super excited, and we went to church with him, and he loved it. He was a little nervous, because he wasn´t used to being around so many people, but it was still really great. We found out that he lived alone, and that his birthday was coming up, so the whole next week we visited him, taught all the lessons, and then on Friday we planned to finish up with the commandments, fill out his baptism form, and then have a birthday party for him to celebrate his 50th birthday. So we started teaching the commandments, and talking about the baptism questions, and we discovered that he had a lot of problems. He drank coffee, but that's easy though as he just has to promise to stop, which he did. He drank beer, but like coffee he just had to promise to stop, which he did. The last problem he had took us by surprise, and was a little harder to fix. Carlos was gay. This 50 year old man who lived alone, who was progressing so much in the gospel, and who was loving the church.... was gay. It kinda killed the birthday party we had planned. And when we started filling out his baptism form, looking at his date of birth we found out that it wasn´t even his birthday, but we didn´t say anything though, because we already had bought the cake and candles. He wanted to be baptized so badly though. He wanted to leave all his sins, and start a new life. He promised us he would stop being gay, but still it was a little more complicated than that. First he had to be interviewed by the zone leaders, then the zone leaders had to talk to the mission president, then the mission president had to talk to the stake president, and then the stake president had to interview Carlos. I felt really bad for Carlos, with all the interviews he had to do, because he was so nervous. But he did really well in all the interviews, and was allowed to be baptized! This man changed his live completely to join the church, and I had the opportunity to help him! It was probably one of the most rewarding baptisms I´ve seen. He was so ready to change, and start a new life following Christ. It was also the fastest baptism I´ve had. We met him and then 8 days later he was baptized.

So that was the highlight of my week. Everything else has been going normally.
I hope you all have a great week. I´ll try to send pictures of Carlos´ un-birthday party and baptism. Thanks for your emails, letters, and prayers. They mean a lot to me. I pray for you guys every night too. Keep choosing the right, and don´t forget about me once Amber gets home :P

Love, Elder Forsyth!

3/14/2011

Well, I started writing an email, and then I got about half way through a paragraph and realized that I was writing in Portuguese, and that you guys wouldn´t understand what I was writing...

This week has been really good though. We had a mission conference on Wednesday that I really liked. They talked about cleaning our houses, budgeting our money, obedience, and baptizing more men. Basically all these things I had been thinking about for a while. When I got into my new area, the house was a mess, and my companion didn´t have any money because he´d been spending it on dumb stuff before, so I had to pay for all of our stuff with my emergency reserve. I cleaned up the house, and made some goals to be more obedient, and then we went to the mission conference. Basically my companion got burned for all of the things that he was doing wrong, and I felt really good, because I was already doing the things that they said we should do, like have an emergency money reserve and stuff.

We´re still working really hard on converting more men in our area, because all of our wards have enough members to split, but they don´t have enough priesthood authority. The good news is that we found 2 really great guys this week that we brought to church, and they´ll probably both get baptized next Sunday. One is Carlos. He´s 50 and lives alone with his dog. He´s a little strange, because you can tell he doesn´t talk to very many people, but he loves talking to us. He got way nervous with all of the people at church being so friendly, but he says he wants to come again next week :) We´ll talk to him more about baptism during the week. The other man we brought was Clebson. He´s 24, and pretty chill. We brought him in the church, and a deacon walked up to him and said " Are you going to get baptized today?" he was a little surprised and confused, and said, "Today is just my first time in the church." I wanted to smack the deacon across the face, but we were in the church... and he didn´t realize that those types of questions tend to scare the crap out of our investigators. Its ok though. Like I said, Clebson is super chill, and says he wants to come to church again too. My favorite question as a missionary is " When can you come back to visit me?" When people are really interested you know! Both of these men asked us that question after church, so I´m pretty sure they´re golden.

This week has been great. I´m really happy, and I have a lot of energy. I´m loving the Lord's work, and I know that this church is true. p.s. i gave a 15 minute talk in church. It was way hard in Portuguese, but I pulled it off!

Love, Elder Forsyth!