I'm an old man! 2-9-15

so tomorrow i will become an old man.. and that is just weird! i cant believe that im gonna be 20, seems like it was yesterday that i was home, a little 18 year old punk leaving on the mission... time is just passing by way too fast!

so things have been going really well here in Siqueira in a couple of areas, and not so good in others so lets get the run down started! 

So the good news is that me and elder Kimball are killing it! we are teaching so many lessons a week (about 40) which is like nuts, ive never taught so much, which is way more fun than walking in the burning hot february sun here! so we have been going pretty hard core teaching tons of people, but the only problem is... that no one goes to church! ah dang it! the same problem! its like.. its not that hard... just wake up at 8 and go to church! its actually pretty good there! you will be pleasently surprised! but that isnt really a new challenge! but i had a really good experience the last night. me and kimball were talking about how we werent able to get people to church and stuff and that day i think we had taught about prayer literally like 8 times, and kimball was like, "you know we tell every one that they just need to converse with God and talk with him about how we feel and really just try to talk with him from the heart.. lets pray!" i think it was one of the few nights in my mission where i really just put it all out there before God.. normally i just tried to figure it out on my own, but it was an awesome experience... after the prayer, it was like ideas were coming from all directions! it was really amazing! that is the best part about the mission, just when you think you know what you are doing and think you can do it on your own.. you realize that no matter how good you are, you need the Guy upstairs to help out! over all we got some new plans to get people to church, really excited to put them into action! 

This sunday president Gomes gave us a surprise visit at our church meetin.. he walked in and i had the horrible realization that i had forgotten to shave.. smooth move Ryan... but im pretty sure he didnt even notice! 

also this sunday, Islei gave a talk, and it was seriously so good! it seemed like he already had like 2 years as a member, he was bearing his testimony and using scriptures, it was so good... honestly i dont think there is anything more rewarding that watching some one get truly changed by the Gospel... its gonna be real hard tosay good bye there! 

investigator watch: we got no one who is really progressing other than Maria. she is Vitoria´s mom,one of my recent converts! she stopped drinking coffe this week! it was legit, she just asked usto take all off here coffee away! so we took it, and the rest of the night my bag smelt like coffee until we found a garabage.

we also gots Mécia, she is showing some life again, she is really having a hard time praying and with coffee, we will see what we can do! 

we got a ton of others, but none of them went to church so yeah..we will see what happens this week!

thanks everyone for the birthday wishes and hope that everyone is doing well! love you all and hope you have a great week! Carnaval is happening this week so it should be a party up in here!! 

Elder Ryan

well here it is! 3-24-14

This week was a really good week! me and elder Arraes talked a lot about what we needed to do to help us have more sucess.. and we tried to applied and it showed! we had tons more sucess!! 

we decided that we would start working in an area that is about 2 kilometers away from the city, seeing as we had had very little success inside the city, and our first day there was amazing! we found a family there and started teaching them! marked them all to baptism! was awesome!  found a young man who was baptized but never confirmed, started talking to him and he told us that he wanted to be baptized and this time confirmed so that was super exciting! hoping to baptize him this next week! we also decided that we just need to start talking to tons more people, so that is what we did! haha started talking to everyone that we saw.. hopefully we didnt freak to many people out! haha but it was really good, if you want to teach people you got to start talking to them! haha on thursday and friday we found 2 more families to start teaching! which im super excited for! teaching families is the best! because really, the gospel was made for families! it helps strengthen families unlike anything else! so we are super stoked to be working with families now! the only real bummer about this week is that no one came to church again.. but that really isnt a surprise, but we talked to our zone leader, and he gave us lots of good ideas so hoping that next week we can have at least one person at church! haha

thursday one of the elders that we live with, had his birthday.. because the branch here is so small, the members who are active love the missionaries, so they threw him a surprise party and that was fun to participate in! really i just was there for the cake! haha just kidding! but the cake was pretty good! haha

this week in my english class we had a grand total of.. one person! haha, one of the youth in the branch came, but he really liked it and im hoping that he will tell all his friends and we can get a good sized class going! its wierd.. but i realized that i started forgeting things in english! haha 

oh i forgot to say that the new area where we are working has tons of huge hills!! like ive never seen anything like them! sometimes when we are walking up them i wonder to myself.. why did they build houses here?? haha but that has been a work out! haha i will try to send some pictures! 

well this week i learned that if something isnt going right.. work hard and find a soluition and change your circumstances! i think that lots of times, as missionaries, we pray to have a change in our success, that we will find more people to teach and things like that, and then we dont change anything about the way we work,or where we work. i learned that after you pray for these things, youi need to do everything that you can to change your circumstances. read this one talk by Elder Bednar that talked about applying our faith! that if we just believe that things will change without giving it our alll, nothing will ever change. sometimes the blessings we recieve from God arent him placing people in front of us to teach, although he may do this, but more often than not, he will give us the strength and desire to change things for ourselves! hoping that i can start applying this more fully in my work! 

well hope that all is well for all of you back home! love and miss you all!

Elder Ryan