Leaving his "son" with 4 pending baptisms, Elder Henry heads home.

Dear Dad,
     You hit the nail on the head.  I simply feel super surreal, I feel like a deer staring into the headlights waiting for the car to hit me lol.  At least -I- remembered Spencer's birthday.  Of course, a lot of good that does him, seeing as I'm still here in Brasil LOL.
     I'm pretty confident that my greenie will be able to make it here no problems.  Unfortunately for me, we have 4 more baptisms lined up for next week that the next missionary will be able to inherit. (Michael trained his current companion, so he is his "son" in mission tradition).
     I'm pretty excited about our mountain climb.  You know I've never hiked to the Y before?  I would love to go with you guys.
Love you Dad, until Thursday!
Love,
Elder Henry

Yeah, I'm pretty anxious to see you guys again.  Man it really doesn't feel like the end of the mission.  I feel like there's still another year or so left for me, now I understand why everyone says, the mission is so short.  When you are in the mission it feels like it will never end, but now that I'm here, it all seems surreal.

Also I'm planning on leaving most of my Shirts/Pants, my trench coat, a pair of shoes, and the camera here with some members and recent converts.  Paula, the bishop's wife has needing a camera for a long time, and with your permission I'd like to give it to her as a parting gift.  It probably isn't worth that much in the states, but a new camera here is out of reason for a Brasilian.  They are super expensive for what they make in a month. 

I have flip-flops and tennies, as well as tee-shirts.  Cargo shorts would be good, but I also have a pair of gym shorts (only problem is they are pretty raggy already).

I love you all, until Thursday!

Love,
Elder Henry

Last baptism of his mission! And 4 Elders in the ward now!

Last baptism of the mission!  In beautiful Mathias Velho.

Dear Mom,

Of course I'll write next week. It will probably be super short. But for sure I'll send at least a "I'm alive!".

     Well we had yet another baptism this week, but beyond that we don't have any perspectives for this week in baptisms. We had a super productive week administratively as we received two new missionaries in Mathias Velho. I feel pretty good about that, as I took a ward that was baptising 3 per year, to a ward that needs to have 4 missionaries because of all the work here. Of course not everything is perfect, and our apartment is SUPER cramped (its basically a studio apartment, with one tiny little bedroom. The poor other pair of missionaries are sleeping on the floor because they don't have beds, and not even space to put two more beds). We hammered out a ward mission plan, and for the first time since I got here, the bishop actually seems excited to work. Yeah, I feel pretty satisfied with what I have done here in Mathias. Now I just have to find something productive to do this week as we have hardly any investigators >.>.

     Yup. I'm pretty excited to come home next week, but its super surreal. I feel like just like I felt like before the mission. "I'm actually going home? I'm actually going to live in a different country here in a week? What's it going to be like?" <- Pretty much the thoughts passing through my head. The new companionship here are Elder F. Oliveira and Elder Luz, both are from São Paulo. They are both 4 months into the mission, so we've got 3 greenies all in one house with me lol. Well I guess I'll attach a photo of the baptism before I go.

     Love you Mom!

Love,

Elder Henry

Looks like they were having a good time with some of the new converts and YSA's.

Strong to the finish.

I can't remember if this has been on the blog already--reliving his childhood by playing in the ball pit with children in Mathias Velho.

 

 

Dear Dad,
     I wanted to let you know, because of our conversation a couple weeks ago of how we had baptised yet another mom (without the father) into the church, that miracles still happen. Heavenly Father was able to help their marriage, and here we have the last member of the family being baptised into the church. L, the father.
     Ah man, how I am dying for some fresh home baked chocolate chip cookies!!!
Love you dad,
Love,
Elder Henry

 

Dear Mom,
Sherry is completely right. Absolutely ridiculous 35$ for a piece of paper that says "I've never done nothing wrong here in Clark County". (Sherry had to pay for her police letter and her Apostille this week and was none to happy with the fee system).
     Yup we watched the missionary broadcast on Sunday, it passed here at 7 o'clock, so I'm pretty sure they taped it and showed to us afterwards.  How crazy is that! Missionaries will be able to use facebook and blogs now to proselyte! Of course it will probably take a while to hit here in Brasil, where we still don't have cars, or cell phones that can text :P. Fortunately for Sherry she'll probably be able to use Facebook on her mission (lucky!).
    This week we finally finished off I's family. Her husband was baptised into the church. I really hope things continue to go well for this family and that they will stay strong in the church. I've done my part, now its up to the ward and them to make the right choices. They are going to have a rough road ahead of them, but I believe that they can make it to the temple one day. Oh man, I hope that here in a year I see a picture of them sealed in the temple :).     

     Speaking of temple, we are going to the temple today with President Wright. My last time going through the temple here in Brasil for probably a long time.
     I forgot to tell you, we are 100% safe down here, I don't know if there's been anything on the news about it in the states, but there are a ton of Protests going on here. Nothing super serious, and there is some violence but much less than the TV shows. Also everything is happening in like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. There are protests happening here in Porto Alegre and there was one yesterday in Canoas, but we are so far from the center of the city that I didn't hear or see anything.
     Love you Mom, can't wait to see you in a couple more weeks.
Love,
Elder Henry

Going strong to the end.

Dear Dad,

That's awesome that the truck is up and running once again!
The travel plans aren't too bad for me. I don't really mind a road trip, but I will be released for the trip right? Because I do -not- want to spend 14 hours in a car without music or movies to watch. Heck, I'll be able to use that time to catch up on Dr. Who with the whole gang ;). Also after visiting Sherry in the MTC I was planning on heading up to the Provo Temple, and meet up with some of my friends for a little while to chat and say Hi. Nothing that will take the whole afternoon, but something like 30 minutes to see everyone before heading back to Washington.

Well I better go e-mail Mom before I run out of time. Love you Dad!

Love,
Elder Henry

 

Dear Mom,

Well life is pretty normal here in Mathias Velho. We didn't really get a whole lot accomplished last week. It was one of those weeks where you pass by your investigators and they aren't home all week long. Like it was a conspiracy against the missionaries. A.L. was confirmed yesterday which was good. L went to church, and has a baptismal date for next Sunday, and most of our recent converts were at church as well. So yeah everything yesterday was pretty pleasant.

Its a misty gray Washington kinda day, which is pretty awesome, and we are gonna spend most of our P-day today with Vitor and Ederson. Mmm, I do miss your pork chops and applesauce.

Yeah pretty lame e-mail. but hey that's life right?

Love you Mom,

Love,

Elder Henry

 

Another great week topped off with a baptism!

Sister Ferinho's birthday party with the zone
 

Ana Lúcia's Baptism

Dear Mom,
Nope, I'll probably order the suits next week. I talked a little bit more about prices, and turns out its not -as- awesome as a deal as I thought it was. Its gonna be about 100$ per suit, depending on the fabric I choose there the finished suit will fall between $75 and $125 and comes with the pants, which is still a great deal I think, but its not quite as good as I thought it would be. I'm thinking that we'll only have money for one suit, and I'll probably get another black with pin-stripes because the one I took on the mission is pretty battered up from 2 years...
     Yeah I'm pretty sure there's no way I can afford Alpine Village... Waaaay too expensive for me. I was looking at the BYU website right now and trying to remember a little bit about Southridge, and I'm pretty sure I had a friend the lived there, Dave. What I remember about the apartment is that it was kind of dirty, and had a really small living area. Of course the dirtiness was probably the tenants fault and not the apartment, but I'll ask Sherry a little bit about it.
     Awww, Strawberry Shortcake sounds soooo good right now.... Heh, my companion just got done writing his family in Spanish, and now he's trying to talk to me in Spanish without even realising it :P. Fortunately I'm starting to pick up on his Spanish, but he usually has to repeat 2 or 3 times before I understand. I totally know what he's going through, because whenever I wrote you guys right when I got here, I had a terrible time trying to write Portuguese, because you are thinking in English instead of Portuguese.
     Weather today is grey with a chance of rain. Good old Washington weather. What I don't understand is there appears to be -more- Mosquitoes now than in the Summer! They should all be dead already! Don't they know that when winter comes they need to DIE!? It's not nearly as cold as last year in Rio Pardo. I think it stays a little bit warmer here closer to Porto Alegre.
     Elder Mendoza is speaking really well, because Spanish is really close to Portuguese. Its really quite interesting, because about half the words in Spanish are the same as Portuguese, and the other half are completely different.
     We had another baptism yesterday, an 8 year old who goes to church with her grandma, who is going to church for like 25 years, but never was baptised because of some problems in her documents. Anyways it was a nice service, we'll see if we can't string up another baptism this week, we are on a 4 week roll here! I don't want to stop it now. What's cool is Elder Mendoza can say that he's baptised every single week of his mission until this point LOL. I'm really glad that we are able to have baptisms together, because I remember my first transfer in the mission without baptisms, and I kind of felt like, man this baptism thing is -never- gonna happen.
     Anyways I should go write the rest of the family. Love you Mom.
Love,
Elder Henry


Dear Dad,

It's still quite strange to me that we are in different seasons. You are getting the pool set up, Mom's making Strawberry Shortcakes, and we are starting up our soup season, the wood stoves are coming out, and everyone is settling down for winter. You know there is nothing more awesome than a wood stove. Food just tastes a hundred times better when it's cooked on a wood stove, and of course you keep the whole house warm. Every time I see one here, it reminds me of Great Grandma's wood stove in her house in Eugene.

Love You Dad,

Love,
Elder Henry

Let's learn Spanish again too!

Elder Mendoza, E.'s dad, E., and Elder Henry!

Dear Mom,

Do you have any contact with Elder Black's Mom? Because he pretty much didn't know anything about anything, he didn't know if his Apartment fits 4 or 6. Anyways I can't talk with him anymore about the situation because he went way out into the middle of nowhere and I can't e-mail him while I'm on the mission.

That's super cool that you guys went down to Eugene for a baptism!

Only 6 more weeks before Sherry leaves LOL. I bet she's anxious to leave. (Actually it's a little over  5 now!)

We had E's baptism this Sunday, the other man in the Picture (other than my companion) is his Dad. He felt super good at the baptism and we are going to start teaching him today as well. I'm pretty excited, it would be awesome for both of them to go to church together :).

Anyways the LAN house is closing I'm gonna have to get going. Lots of Love.

Love,
Elder Henry

PS Forgot to tell you, My new companion is Elder Mendoza, from Paraguay! He doesn't speak English, and is learning Portuguese! Maybe I'll pick up his Spanish and speak 3 languages when I get home!

Last transfer of the mission.

Vitor & Douglas's baptism

 

 

Transfers!  I'll be staying here and training and Elder Chidester will be leaving.  I'm pretty excited to train for my last transfer, I can't wait to see who will be my greenie :).
     One more thing about BYU, Elder Black said that there might be room in his apartment for another couple people and I would LOVE to live with him, but I remember you saying something about paying a deposit.  Is there anyway for me still to switch over to his apartment?  I'll see him tomorrow at Transfers so I'll be able to get more details from him. 
     That's super cool about the new mission in Vancouver.  Where are they going to put the mission office? 
So this weekend was the Baptism of Vitor and Douglas.  It still kind of blows my mind how many baptisms we've had, honestly it doesn't feel like so many because it was just one family.  We started teaching a new couple that went to the Ward dinner party last Friday.  There names are Chay (sounds like Shy) and Guilherme.  Guilherme was a really successful investor until the 2008 crash and lost everything.  We had a great first lesson on Sunday, and I just love sitting and talking with him as he pretty much went the same career path that I'm looking at.  Anyways they both loved the dinner and want to go to Church next Sunday.

     Well this E-mail is kinda short, but there wasn't too much more that happened.  I love you all.

Love,

Elder Henry

Burger King & McDonalds with Vitor on P-day

Dear Dad,
 Here its really common as well for missionaries to pick up 9-11 year old kids off the streets and teach and baptize them which I really just do not like.  If this family stays active and continues firm in the church, there will be many missionaries that come from their family :).  The gospel really works the best when the family learns together in the home.

     I'm pretty excited to receive my greenie tomorrow.  I'm really quite happy I'll have the opportunity to get a brand new missionary, although it is a really big responsibility as your trainer really shapes how the rest of your two years go.  I'm excited though :)

Love you Dad.

Love,

Elder Henry