December 30, 2013

Kyle wanted to share his testimony with all of you and said to click on the link below and listen to the beautiful music as you read.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugV6QGcafEE

It has been 1 year and 7 months since I have shared my conviction that Jesus is the Christ in English. I have labored, thinking, praying, and teaching in Portugues for this time and I have grown to discover with profound understanding the love that God has for each one of his children. I have grown to love deeply the Brasilian people. There have been many times where I have gone into a stangers home that let me in when there was no compelling motive, except my humble request. I entered that house and taught the truth of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, the plan of salvation and the Pure Doctrine of Christ. With my normal eyes I felt despair that these Family would not come to Christ because the forces of the world were so loud. I feared my words fell on deaf ears. However, I have seen lives changes, hope enter into the lives of families, despair and hate disappear, grudges flee because of the words that left my mouth. I am conviced that the words that left my lips were but a small part, but that as I spoke of Christ, his sacrifice, his prophets, his church upon this Earth, the truth of these things were carried to their hearts by the Holy Ghost, the comforter and confirmer of all truth. I now give to all, my words and certainty that Jesus is the Christ the living son of God that was born to Mary, and died for us on calvary. It is my solem promise to all within the sight of my words and those beyond, that our Heavenly Father is anxious to see everyone of us return to his presence. For this purpose he called his Prophet, Joseph Smith, to restore the total truth of the teachings of Christ, as well as the power to baptize here upon the Earth in his Church. We may all know the truth of this through humble and sincere prayer, and study of the words of the Prophets in the Book of Mormon, the Bible, and the living Prophets. If there are doubts we must leave them behind and ask in Faith. If we have forgetten or our knowledge has been dimmed because of sin, repent and come into the light. Repentance is our greatest gift and we should all do it more often than we do. The first step to be taken is to begin the search, open the Book of Mormon and read the introduction, read the invitation in the 2nd to last paragraph, accept and prove to yourself the truth of my words. I send my love to all and my firm knowlege that if we all go to the temple, and keep our covenants we can remain together forever.

In the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.

Elder Krause

December 25, 2013

From Randi-
Merry Christmas everyone!  I hope you all had a wonderful day with your families. What a blessing to get to talk to Kyle today!  We got to skype with him from a members house.  He looks so good and is loving his new area.  He said the people are very kind to him there.  It was so different talking to him today than last year.  Last year when we had to hang up we were crying knowing he had so long left.  But today was filled with so much joy, knowing he'll be coming home in just a few months!  We have been so blessed having him on his mission.  He has had so many wonderful experiences sharing the gospel.  He truly loves the people in Brazil. It was amazing to see the growth in him today.  He is a man now!  Anyway, I just wanted to thank you all for your support of Kyle!  Keep praying for him these last few months.  There are still many lives for him to touch!
Love you all!
Randi

 Christmas Eve was spent caroling to members and investigators houses.

 We had so much fun and the people loved it!

 This dear member loves the missionaries and took us all out to pizza for Christmas Eve.

 hahaha I, of course, ate too much!

Yummy pizza.  And yes, that is corn on it.  That's very common here to have corn on pizza.

December 16, 2013

Hello everyone!  I don't have tons of time but just wanted  you to know that I'm in my new area and it's GREAT!  My new companion has been out about 4 months and he is from Sao Paulo, Brazil.  I really like him. My new area reminds me of Arizona...it's really hot and dry!  There are lots of dirt roads and the people are really hard workers and are educated. It's a really nice city.  I am in the branch here.  There are also 2 wards in our building and the people are really excited to help us out. The goal is for the branch to become a ward by April so we are really busy! People feed us all the time here and there is lots of fruit everywhere!  They have this local soda made from the fruit here and it's so good.  I can't wait to talk to you on Christmas!  Have a great week and I love you all.  Keep reading the Book of Mormon!  
Love,
Elder Krause

December 9, 2013

Well I'm getting transferred to Jauziero!  It's about 9 hours away but it's a nice place from what I hear.  It's on the very northern part of Bahia right by a river and I will be in a branch , which is what I like!  It's really hot there and they grow really good fruit!  I'm excited for that!  I said goodbye to a bunch of people yesterday but I gotta go today and say goodbye to a few more.  I will miss it here but am excited to be going to a new place!  I will still be a district leader so that will be good too!  And I better start practicing the piano because they said that no one out there plays!
    A cool thing that happened this week is that this family that we reactivated invited us over for dinner and they were super happy and thanked us for the work we did, so that was good!  And we had some good family nights with people this week too!
    So I have a bunch of pictures this week to send you!

So this lady is awesome!!!  She made us lunch and we went and helped her make it!  It's called acaraje. It's like a sandwich of shrimp, some paste stuff, and tomatoes and it's super good!  Here we are peeling the shrimp!

Here I am cutting the tomatoes.

Making the bread. The dough is made from beans and it's really good! They are like the hamburger of Bahia!

Then you fry the bread in this oil made from coconuts!

Here I am digging in!!!

This is what happens after you eat 7 of the sandwiches!!!  They are so good that you eat just 1 more even though you are full! They sell them on the street but they are too expensive so we never can get them.  So while we could we ate all that would fit in our stomachs!

This is our little buddy that lives there and she ate 4 of them!!!

My comp ate 5!

These are the boxes that Dana and Hailey sent me!  Lots of good stuff!

Thank you!!!

This is my good buddy that we reactivated.  I love this guy!  And he speaks some english so that's fun!

This is a great lady that we also reactivated.  She loves me!  haha everyone does! :)

Here's another lady we reactivated and baptized her daughter.  The other one is getting baptized soon too!  

Another cool family here!  It's hard to be saying goodbye to everyone!

December 2, 2013

     Well this week was awesome!  We had a big stake musical fireside that President Hart's family did.  Some of his grown kids and grandkids came to visit from the United States.  His oldest son sings in the tabernacle choir and his wife plays violin in the tabernacle orchestra and their 3 little girls play really well too!  So they sung and played violins and it was SUPER good!!!  Afterward I got to talk to them and it was fun because they all speak English!  And we talked to dental stuff because the oldest son is a dentist too.  It was funny because he was a little shocked when I told him my dad is 40 and he said, "wow, I'm almost 40 too...I could be your dad!"  hahaha it was funny cause he only has little kids!  
     The total highlight from my week was that this inactive girl came to church this week and I think she's probably in her 20's and just had a baby.  And I got to bless her baby!!!  Because I was the one that reactivated her she asked me to bless the baby.  I had never done that before and it was the coolest experience and she's totally excited to be back at church!!!  She hasn't been in a little over a year!  
    Well transfers are next week and I'm probably getting transferred so I'll be excited to see where I'm going! 
   I love you all!  Have a great week!

November 25, 2013

This has been a good and busy week.  We have been teaching lots of people. We had lots of people come to church this week because it was the Primary Program.  And we had these 2 men come that we are teaching.  One of them came on his own last week and this week brought his room mate.  They loved church and bore testimony in class about how they know The Book of Mormon is true.  So that was really cool.  We worked a lot this week!

 Well I truly believed Thanksgiving was last week so we celebrated a little early!  We ate with this family that lives below us and it was awesome!!!  She made an apple pie and a pumpkin pie that we really good!  I made the mashed potatoes and gravy!!!  We had a super good time!

 Here I am eating my "Thanksgiving" feast in Brazil! 

 So for a while now we have been going to this English school to help teach because a member of the church works there.  He always asks us to come help teach English.  This was one of the classes and they LOVE the Elders to come teach.  It's so much fun and they really like learning and some of them even have interest in hearing about the gospel!  

This was a dance they had.  It's called "the dance of called to serve"  because a missionary in the ward is getting ready to leave for his mission and this is his farewell party.  We went and snacked but of course didn't dance!

November 18, 2013

So this week was a crazy one, but ended well!  So on Wednesday one of the missionaries comes out and he has pretty bad athletes foot.  But he's been putting some cream on there so I wasn't too worried.  But on Wednesday he had a bunch of blisters that were popped and bleeding and it wasn't from walking, they were on the top of his feet.  So I was like, "Bro, we are going to the hospital cause that's bad!"  So we went across the city to this hospital and had to sit there in the waiting room the whole entire day!  However, they finally gave him some medicine and it looks like he is getting better, but he could hardly walk this week.  So we had to do a couple of divisions to help out, but even still it was a little rough.  We also had a family that we reactivated have a huge fight right in front of us while we were visiting them.  So that was stressful.  They have some serious issues that are way over my head.  
   On a good note we have this guy just show up at the church the other day wanting to be taught.  So went to his place to teach him and found out his roommate was gay.  But this guy isn't.  However we taught both of them and they understood and accepted really well, so we will see.  So that was my week, lots of ups and downs!

 Here I am last p-day teaching some members how to make pancakes.  They are both return missionaries and super cool to hang out with!

They turned out so good!!! We ended up making banana pancakes!

November 11, 2013

I am very happy today!  It's been a great week.  The other day this lady actually called us over to visit her.  When we were talking to her we found out that her daughter was baptized years ago and had gone inactive but was coming back.  The only thing is that her daughter lives in another town!  So we went back there the other day with a member that lives close by her and started talking to her with the member.  Anyway, her husband has recently died and she is really struggling with that.  So we were able to teach her about the plan of salvation and she really liked it and was happy to know where her husband was at.  She accepted the challenge to be baptized so we are really working with her!  It's neat to find someone who really needs the gospel in their life and be able to help them find those answers!  We had taken a youth with us to her house as well and she was so excited to be teaching her too!
   Well last pday ended up being crazy after I emailed with you!  We went to the ice cream store, and that was great of course!  Then we had to help with some marriage problems and then go help change a flat tire!  haha who knew, the missionaries do so much more that just knock on doors! :)
   Well, I will finally need some new white shirts!  Mine are pretty hammered!  The good thing is that I can buy them here for really cheap!  Everything else is lasting pretty good.  And I'm within 6 months of coming home so I'm going to try and make everything else last.
   Ok so I'm going now.  We're going to a members house to teach them how to make pancakes! Love you all!

And yes, I finally got a haircut!

November 4, 2013

     This week was pretty good.  We had a lot of people say they would come to church, but it rained, so most of them stayed home.  However this old guy that we baptized, he was there, and he shared one of the most sincere and humble testimonies I have seen to this day in my life.  Everyone was shocked I think and he said in the end, "I know I have found the right place and it's here that I will stay until I die".  Man the spirit was so strong.  We did lots of teaching too! Yesterday at church I taught the joint lesson for the Elders quorum and Relief Society.  So that was pretty fun!  Oh and I forgot, we had this guy show up to church last week that works for Walmart.  He was baptized 19 years ago and has been inactive for a long time because of work.  But he was having some family problems so he decided to come back and stop working so much on Sunday and now he is firm.  He was come 2 weeks in a row! And we are teaching his wife who is not a member.  Nor are they married, so hopefully we'll be having another wedding soon!  And the fun part is he actually speaks English pretty well so we've been talking!
     This week was transfers...I'm staying in Salvador!!!  A new elder arrived in our apartment that's hawaiian and from Alaska!  haha funny I know!  He is really cool and fun to have around!
   Elder Gaverett is coming this next week so I'm super excited to hear from another General Authority! The spirit is always so strong.  I think he is the area presidency of Brazil!
  Well that's about it for this week.  Sorry no pictures.  I'm headed to get a haircut and go to the ice cream place again with some members.  So I'll take pictures and send them next week.
Love you!
 

October 28, 2013

So this week was a good one!  This area is really heating up!!!  We got a ton of people reactivated this month and have lots of prospects for baptism this next transfer.  Oh ya, I found out I'm staying here this transfer with my companion!  Tonight we are going to teach this family that we found last week and they seemed really good.  I pray that they have been reading and are ready for our lesson tonight.  We also are teaching several spouses of members.  One has totally stopped drinking and is ready for baptism so that's exciting! So yesterday I spoke in Sacrament meeting, taught Gospel Principles and confirmed our new baptism.  It's crazy how busy Sundays can be but I love them!  One thing I know you will be excited about...when I went to the mission home last week to get my package and mail I saw my release date...I leave here on May 22 and get home on the 23rd...which is Dad's birthday!

So here's something kind of freaky...this catholic church we went to see last week has "powers" to heal sick people but you have to take a picture of that person and and take a plastic part of their body there.  So this was the room full of plastic body parts and pictures of people hanging on the walls.  

We had a baptism this week!!!  yaaaaa!  The old guy next to me was baptized by the member on his left.  A while ago a member brought him to church and he enjoyed it so much he kept coming alone!  He's been coming for over a month now and yesterday in Elder's quorum he made a comment that was super good and I think everyone was shocked!  He's a pretty funny guy!

October 21, 2013

(Please include Kyle in your prayers this week.  He has been very sick.  He tells me he is doing better but I of course worry about him.-Randi)

Well, I have been in bed sick this week with a high fever and was really, really tired. I talked to the mission Dr. and got some medicine and I'm feeling a bit better.  So not tons to report this week since I was so sick but I think we're scheduled for a baptism next week so that's exciting!  The mission office called and I have a package waiting for me so I'm really excited to go pick that up! We had a lady from the States visiting this week and she took us out to ice cream and made dinner for us.  It was pretty cool and nice to speak English with someone as well.  I must say I'm missing some good ol' American food these days! :)

Well nothing else too exciting this week.  Love you all.  Have a good week!

October 14, 2013

My week was really, really good!  We have had some good success with less actives this week.  I had known about this family for a while but didn't know where they lived.  Then on Saturday I felt that we needed to go there.  So I called them up and asked for directions.  They live way down in the favela but we somehow got there.  There had been a bit of a scandal and they hadn't been to church in about a year but everyone in the ward loved them and they had gone to the temple and everything.  So I just started teaching them about the tree of life and we had a great lesson!  They said if she felt better they would go to church in the morning.  I was kinda sad because I really didn't think they would come because when we first got there they said that they wouldn't go to church in this ward.  But Sunday morning...they were there!!!  I about cried I was so happy to see them!

 We went to an ice cream shop today.  I had a banana split.  It was pretty intense...coconut ice cream, tapioca and chocolate with Nutella on top!  

 Me and my companion!

 Acaraje-which is a typical bahianan snack.  It's like a pasta stuff, shrimp tomatoes and fried dough.  it's really, really good!

We went and walked around down town this morning.  We went and explored this really old catholic church that was cool.  And then we saw these paintings on the side of a building.  Pretty cool!  We dress in our missionary clothes whenever we go down town because we are safer as missionaries than as tourists!

October 7, 2013

    I finally got the package with the ties!!!  YAY  One of the ties you sent me is the same mark as my suit.  It looks so sweet!  I have given almost all of my ties away so I was excited to get some new ones.  Although I'm sure they will be gone soon too! :)  Mom, you had asked if I have any special requests for Halloween candy...just send anything!  I love sharing candy with the kids here.  This conference everyone went to the stake center to watch and I had told some of the kids in the ward I would bring American sweets (starbursts) for them to try.  They kept coming up to me all day long asking for them but they had to answer a question about conference first before I would give them one!  haha it was pretty funny and they LOVE starbursts!!!
   I loved conference!  I really liked Elder Soares talk about being calm. He is brasilian so that was cool to see!  And we were able to get some of our investigators to conference so that was good too!
   We have a family night lined up for tonight so I'm excited about that.  We had a super powerful lesson with one of our investigators and a member.  This member is divorced with 3 kids and reminds me a lot of some of our friends back home.  She is such a huge help and a great mother.  I really like this family.
   There is the daughter of a member here who married an american missionary 15 years ago and now lives in America but is visiting here.  We spoke English and it was weird but cool.  I have forgotten some words in English because I hadn't spoken it for a while.  Also, she brought an old inactive friend with her to conference so that was good.
   I need to get some batteries for my camera and then I'll send you some pictures next week.
I love you all!

 

September 30, 2013

   I don't have tons of time this week so I'll just give you a quick run down.  We are working super hard here with one family whose husband is not a member YET.  He has stopped drinking for 3 weeks and has been coming to church.  We are getting really close with him.  
   I'm super excited for conference next week.  Last time the small branch I was in didn't have internet so we couldn't watch it we just had to watch it online on our pdays.  But here we should be able to watch it and I'm really looking forward to hearing the words of our Prophet.  
   I hope everyone at home is doing good.  I miss you all!  Have a great week.

September 23, 2013

Hello Mom!
     Well this was my first week with my new companion, Elder Alves.  He is from Sao Paulo.  He is this super happy little Brazilian!  He has about 11 months on the mission and we work really well together! We have been doing family nights like crazy.  This week we've already had 3!!!  Last night I made chocolate chip cookies for everyone and they loved them.  They don't really have cookies like that over here.  I thought I had a recipe but half way through I realized it was incomplete so I had to improvise.  haha but they turned out pretty good!  For one of the other family nights I made a bundt cake.  The only problem is that when I took it out of the oven I tipped it over while it was still hot and half of the cake came out and the other half didn't!  So I picked it up with my hands and put it back in the form.  It looked terrible.  So I just put a bunch of frosting (sweetened condensed milk and nesquik) and we took it.  Everyone was laughing because it looked like crap (literally)!!!  But then they tried it and everyone thought it was sooooooo good and wanted me to make it again!!!  It was so funny.  See mom, I can cook!  Everyone here just uses sweetened condensed milk for frosting but I decided why not make it chocolate and add some nesquik!
     We only had sacrament meeting this week because a sister in our ward passed away so they had her funeral Sunday morning.  It was pretty sad.
    We have been super busy teaching this week.  Lots of good people here.
Well I love you all, have a good week!

September 16, 2013

Well I'm loving my time here in Salvador!  Being a district leader is good.  Lot's of responsibility and everyone comes to you for stuff but I'm learning lots and loving it!  Salvador reminds my of San Francisco, lots of hills but more of them and more steep! We should have some baptisms coming up.  And we're working lots on reactivation.  We are working like crazy.  I'm becoming a master at catching busses! haha The members here are great with helping us out with references and feeding us!  One sad thing is that my buddy Elder Whitney transferred out today.  But Elder Alves will be my new companion and I'm sure he'll be great too!  I am staying in Salvador for another transfer! YAY! Well, have a good week!  Love you all!

Yay I finally got some packages!  I think my favorite thing was the Lawry's seasoning salt!  Actually it's the Birthday Cake Oreos!  Those are so crazy good!  I have to ration them out to myself!  

September 9, 2013

So this week was a hard one...none of our investigators came to church!  But we'll try again next week.  This week we helped a lady in our ward move.  We got there and she only had about half of her stuff packed up and we were the only people that showed up from our ward!  So we moved for like 3 hours!!!  She lived on the 4th floor.  Oh man, me and my companion were exhausted and by the end we were just throwing stuff in bags and taking it down to the truck.  haha It reminded me of going with dad to some of those Elders Quorum moves like that! Well that's about it for excitement this week! Enjoy the pictures!!!

So today for pday we went to this lighthouse down by the beach.  It's one of the more touristy sights here and was really cool!  It was a super pretty view of the ocean!

It was so crazy hot we decided to get some coconut water to drink.

More touristy stuff.

Can you believe this view?

September 2, 2013

This week President and Sister Hart came to our district meeting so that was really cool! and we also helped them out with an activity that they were having in there ward, where there were three rooms all representing the three kingdoms of glory, and we were in the celestial room in white singing hymns when people came in.  The people in black are lucifer and his wife (the Bishop of that ward)

So this was pretty cool too!! We had a baptism on Saturday, of that little girl on the left side! Her name is alice, and she is 8. Her mother is a member that is a little less, active and the husband is not a member, so we are in the process of reactivating the mother, and the daughter wanted to get baptized so she did, and with the husband we are going its going slow  but we are working on him. 

Here are my three little buddies in this ward. They are from são paoulo, but they live here with their mom, who is recently divorced, but super cool, she has been helping us reactivate some people. This was on the bus when we went to a family home evening  at a less actives house. Those boys helped us do street contacts out front of the church this Sunday. We really didnt have anything to do so we were just talking to people in the front of the church, and they came up and wanted to help, they got sooo excited and would stop people and give them a pass along card, invite them to church and everything!!!! It was pretty fun. 

Me and my companion have been on a chess kick lately!

Some members wanted to  learn how to play chess so we took our chess board over there and we taught them how to play!

We were walking home one night and we saw this big worm snake looking thing, I had never seen one before so we took a picture and this is it!! its right in the crack of the sidewalk and the road, i think it was like a huge worm or legless lizard. 

This past week on pday I made wing dip with the sauce mom sent me.  Man it was good!  We sat around and played chess and ate wing dip!

Night picture of Salvador.

Letter from Sister Hart (mission President's wife) Sept. 2, 2013

Hi Sister Krause,

 

I just thought I'd e-mail you to let you know what a wonderful missionary your son is in our mission. We attended his district meeting last Wednesday and he presented the training. It was so well done. He's going to make a really good leader. On Friday night, his district helped out with a ward activity depicting the Plan of Salvation. The missionaries and Pres. Hart and I got to be in "The Celestial Kingdom." I feel like I'm there whenever I'm with our wonderful missionaries. I hope you enjoy these pictures of Elder Krause.

Love,

 

Sister Hart