July 29, 2013

   

Here's some more pictures from that holiday I was telling you about last week.  It was so funny!

Me just being funny!

This is me with Maora, Joales is behind me and that is one of their kids in front of us!

Well this week was busy!  We helped that lady Mari, that I baptized a couple weeks ago, move the other day.  She just moved close by in the city and had quite a bit of stuff (but nothing like our moves)  We moved all of their stuff in 3 hours and in one medium uhaul.  So I was like pfff that's easy!  I realized that we have a lot of stuff when we move! :)  Anyway, I think her husband was pretty impressed that we came and helped! 
     We started teaching Mere's mother and she was super excited about that. and we started teaching the cousin of Maora, who is also great. The only thing that is stopping Maora from being baptized is marriage, her husband is super cool but he is going a little slower than her. We were teaching her cousin with her and she shared something she wrote in her journal and it was her powerful testimony of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, and the plan of salvation and I could hardly believe it!!!! ah, also we taught the mother of Mere and she was beaming the entire lesson and bore an awesome testimony as well of the church and the book of Mormon. Its great to see the people you teach wanting to share the gospel with others and bringing them to church, awe man this is how missionary work should be and its so great to be getting this point finally.       
We set out with a branch list of people, and we went to visit all of the inactives. And there were a few of them that were soooooo far away but we found them and they seem to be pretty good people, just have difficulty getting to church, so we will have to get them excited and build their faith a little bit. It seems like we did lots and lots of walking this week. Also the box with the scriptures that I had ordered arrived, so I wrote letters to people and last night we had a family night, and I gave one thing of scriptures and an illustrated Book of Mormon to Sidinei and Mere, and the other to Maora and Joales. They both were super excited and loved it. Ah it was sooooo cool. We had a great family night, everyone bore super strong testimonies and ah it was just incredible. Something else kinda crazy is the story of Jessica. This young girl that we baptized about 3 months ago. She was dating this kid in the branch, but they broke up soon after she was baptized. Then his older brother who lives in São paulo came home to visit and now they are dating and she is going to drive back with his family so São Paoulo this weekend and they are going to go to the temple!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Which is super super great, she has been wanting to go to the temple for a long time!!! And she will only be able to do baptisms but it will still be really cool!! It's funny that she is dating his brother now but they seem really happy!
   Well I had a phone interview with President Hart this week and he told me I was going to transferred next week.  I am going to cry when I leave this area.  I love these people so much and have been here for so long.  But I know there are people other places waiting for me to teach them so I'm excited for that! I will have to catch a bus and ride through the night because transfers happen on Tuesday.  
Love you! Talk to you next week!

July 22, 2013

 This week was super hectic but super awesome as well! On saturday we had the wedding. It was great, there was tons of people there, everyone was happy and crying, there was a cake, (i didnt have to buy it some people in the branch ended up helping out) and ya it was great!

Cutting the cake!

At the reception out back of the church.

And on Sunday I baptized them both.  It was a much smaller event than the wedding but much more spiritual and enjoyable!  It was really cool and a day I had been waiting a long time for! The cool thing is that Sidni is the first man to be baptized since the branch was formed!  All the rest of the baptisms have been women and children.  I was pretty stoked about that!

This is their daughter Camilla, who was being a little stinker but is SUPER cute!  It was such a special day, I was smiling the whole time!

After the baptism.

This is me and Joales.  He's another guy that I'm teaching.  We had a branch party this weekend as well.  This was a great success and tons of people came and this time of year they have a holiday called St. John.  It's like a tradition that people draw mustaches and beards and dress up like hillbillies!  I didn't have any hillbilly clothes so I just went and Joales drew on my beard and mustache!  haha it was pretty funny.  He draws really good and tagged my name on the chalk board behind us too!

July 15, 2013

Well it was a great week!!!  Other than the baptism we had a talent show.  I juggled and everyone loved it.  I'm getting really good cause everyone always wants me to juggle for them! haha it's pretty funny!  

Mere and Sidni are getting baptized on Sunday!!!  I'm so excited.  We are having a wedding and reception for them on Saturday and baptizing them on Sunday!  I love them so much, they are incredible.  They are really taking a step of faith because money is super tight with them but they are going for it!  So I wanted to do something special for them so I ordered them scriptures on the website.  They don't have quads in portuguese so I got them really nice triples.  I know they will love them!  I will take pictures, don't worry!

And we ate lunch at home one day this week so I made mashed potatoes from real potatoes and they were so good!  I put some cheese in them and my companions loved them!  And today I am making french toast for lunch.  We don't eat at members houses on Pday.  

 This is Mari that I baptized this week!  She is so awesome!!! She is married and has a 2 year old.  her husband is a cool guy but not super interested so for the time being we are going slow with him.  She was so excited and gives lunch for us sometimes too.  She has already started doing her geneology!!!

So we set this pool up in the "church" and we fill it when someone is getting baptized.  Hopefully we can baptize so many people we can fill it more often! 

I made this cake for her baptism and everyone loved it!  They said I am ready to get married because the cake was so good!  HAHAHA

She invited tons of her friends and family and they all loved it.  They are going to come to church this Sunday and we are going to start teaching almost all of them!!!

This is me and my favorite drink but my companion doesn't like it!!!

This is us at the waterfall with Elosmar.  He is a member of our branch.  This was right before Elder Morris got transferred.

This is part of our chapel.  It's a two story house and this is my friend Elder Henrique playing the guitar at the talent show.

July 8, 2013

Well we worked a TON this week!  I'm pretty worn out! We had a super cool activity with lots of people there and we missionaries organized it.  It's called integration night at the church and we are having one every week this month.  It's pretty much like family home evening but for the whole branch to help unite them more cause there's so many new people.  We played a few games and I gave the message about climbing mountains (and showed them the pictures of when we climbed that mountain).  Then in the end we gave a cooking demonstration...me and Elder Henrique did the thing where I hid behind him and did the arms and he did the talking.  And we made a big mess and in the end brought out donuts that we had bought!  People were laughing so hard and it was a great activity!!!  So that was my highlight this week.  People were either traveling this weekend or sick so we didn't have too many people at church.  

Next week we are having a talent show  so that should be pretty fun!  People always like the activities we have and tons of them come and bring their friends!  I can't believe I have been in this area for 5 months, I know everyone so well and will be sad when I have to leave!

We have a baptism scheduled for tomorrow so I'm really excited for that.  It's that girl that we found knocking on doors.  She is really excited so it should be great and she has asked me to baptize her!

Sister Hart's father died so our leadership meeting was cancelled cause she had to go back to the states to help with the funeral and stuff so we haven't gotten any mail or packages yet.

Another funny thing about this week...the branch president and his family went to Peru to visit their family and his wife usually leads the music in sacrament meeting.  But with her gone they asked me to do it.  So for the past 2 weeks I have lead the music in sacrament meeting.  Pretty nuts right! I have to sing really loud so they can follow my tune since there's no one playing a piano.  Can you picture that?

Well I love you all!  Have a good week!

July 1, 2013

Hello all!  I am doing good! Our week was good.  We found this lady while we were knocking on doors this week and she was pretty much depressed when we found her.  We have been teaching her and she's doing so good.  She's inviting all of her friends and relatives to meet with us and to go to church.  She asked me to baptize her so I'm super excited!  I pray that everything goes right.  She is out of town for a few days so I just hope and pray that nothing bad happens.  Another cool thing is that one day when we were there teaching her, her husband had the Confederate Cup on TV so we watched a little with him and BRAZIL won!  It was sweet!

Well that's it for this week!  Love you!

Here's a mormon message that I watched and thought about you and dad...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdCPMwhvJ88&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PL4E784EC0770935C0

Here I am with 3 other Elders.

June 24, 2013

Yay, I'm staying here.  Which is good because I have a lot of work to do here still!  I'm bummed I didn't get to watch the missionary broadcast here.  The internet is so slow and we couldn't get it to load.  

This week was good.  We had a zone conference so we travelled A LOT!  And good news...a kid that I taught a year ago in my first area is getting baptized in a couple days!!!  So exciting!

Well it's a holiday here today so all the regular internet cafe's are closed.  We had to walk for 2 hours to find this place and it's really bad.  So I gotta go now.  But I love you all!!!

June 17, 2013

I have tons to tell you...

     This past week was a great one!  So we had lunch for the first time with this less active family that was baptized about 2 years ago.  The wife stayed firm but the husband fell away so that has taken it's toll.  But we went to lunch and it was great and we left a good message and everyone was happy and progress was made!  After lunch we ran to this government building to be witnesses to  Sindni and Mere's wedding!!!!!  It was so cool!  They bought their wedding rings and on the inside they put their names and engraved CTR.  I had told them about how you used to wear my CTR ring on your wedding finger until dad got you a new ring and they liked it so much they had it put on their wedding rings!  I think I am going to do that with my wedding ring as well!  

     And this past Sunday we baptized a brother and sister we have been teaching!!!  

   Also we had an awesome family night with a bunch of our investigators about unity in marriage and eternal marriages so that was pretty cool and exactly what our investigators needed.  It's funny that I teach people all about marriage and parenting and I'm not even a parent of husband yet!   Mere was telling me that she's been having problems with her daughter getting into trouble at school and she was asking what my opinion was on parenting.  So I told her some of the stuff you used to do with us but I felt a little lost because I've never had a kid! It's kinda crazy the stuff you do on your mission.  

     We played a game after the family home evening lesson where you write down something that you want someone else to do and you put in in a bag.  Then once everyone had written their thing down you tell them how the game goes...the name of the game is "the maker becomes the doer"  So what you wrote for someone else to do you have to actually do, which was good because people had written down that they wanted ELDER KRAUSE to do a lot of things!!! hahaha  But it ended up that both people had to do it so I ended up "demonstrating" how to juggle, hip hop dance, samba, ballet dance, act like a cat and act like a monkey.  But it was funny because I saw my investigators do it was well which was pretty fun and everyone had a great time and wanted to have family home evening more often!!!  

   Well transfers are this next week so it should be interesting.  I really, really want to stay in this area because I LOVE the people here and we have so many people that we have been teaching and preparing for baptism and will be baptized during this next transfer.  But we will see where the Lord needs me.  Where he sends me I will go, I just hope he has plans for me here! :)

 This is the brother and sister we baptized!

 This is the couple we have been teaching forever and that I was the witness for their wedding.  It's crazy trying to help people get married here.  They have to go to their birth city and get new birth certificates.  So I have been having the missionaries in those cities get the papers and send them to me so that we can start the process here.  Then 30 days after they get married they can get baptized!  It's such a long process and soooo much paperwork and it costs quite a bit of money!  But it's all worth it in the end!

Remember a long time ago I told you about when we baptized someone in the Branch President's pool on a Sunday night.  This was her!