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