Merry Christmas!!

Skyping with Elder Mangum Christmas Morning was the best!

A Baptism and a Sealing!

Things are going great here in Feitoria. Keila and her family right now generally travel at the end of the week to visit Dad working on the beach. Things with Gustavo this week went great. Gustavo is the son of member who was baptized in Cruz Alta, Robison. A couple months back, them and Robison´s brothers, went to our church for a couple of weeks but nothing happened. We ran into Gustavo a week or two back in the street and he tells us, “I´m about to turn nine”. We have him lead us to his house and his birthday was Dec 9 and he was baptized Dec 17.

People in the ward definitely remember Elder Banda. He is the only child, first generation American, his family lives in Laredo Texas right by the border of  Mexico. He passed Christmas here last year, was here in total 4.5 months last year. This week was a fun week with him. I´m eating a lot with Elder Banda, everyone loves him and he loves to buy food for us both. He is a great guy.

We visited some people that he was close to baptizing a year ago and started things back up with them and President let us go to the sealing of a companion of Elder Banda, his first companion in Feitoria, Oilguin (I have no idea how it is spelled).

On Friday we went to Porto Alegre for the sealings, bought some stuff at the temple store, attend the sealing, and it is pouring rain when we get out. We also lost power inside the temple for a couple times for just a little bit which was a bit odd. Anyways, we take pictures under the cover in front of the temple in the rain (whole time I´m thinking how this happened for y’all too, nearly 25 years ago). Then someone gives us a ride to the bus stop that we take to get near the train station to take back to Feitoria. However, once we were on the bus, we didn´t know where exactly to get off or how to get from the stop to the train station. Luckily, at the stop after we got on, an RM who got off his mission 5 months ago got on, sat with us and talked.  He got off with us, bought us milkshakes at Bob´s, and guided us to the train station. We got back in Feitoria late for the activity only to learn that the activity was postponed to start later because Feitoria lost power for a while and a bunch of trees fell, and the activity ended up started right as we had to go home for the night.

It was a bit weird to hear the youth age changes the church announced.  First the guy on the bus told us and I didn´t believe him because he was pulling a lot of jokes, but it turned out to be true. Doesn´t particularly matter, Noah was ordained to the Melchezidek Priesthood when he was 10 years old, I believe. Priesthood doesn´t really have an age. I keep reading the quote by Elder Anderson about the fellowship being challenged in interesting ways. Someone also said something really profound the other day about the church’s changes, how the restoration is still occurring, and how the law is still being revealed/changed for law of Moses to the higher law. Very cool to be living at a time like this!

Only a week until Christmas and Skype!

Love you!
Elder Trevor Mangum

Transfers

Today is transfers.  I am staying put, my new companion is Elder Banda, a missionary who already passed through Feitoria who will end the mission with me this transfer (which means I´ll be able to go to the temple at the end of this transfer!) Turns out Elder Banda is from Texas, on the border of Mexico, his parents are both from Mexico, I think. 

Not much happened this week, people traveled this weekend so no baptisms.  We did some service moving wood that was a house I think.  We had an activity at the church, a birthday celebration for one of Bruna´s kids, Léo. While we were there, Elder Favoretti felt a sensation to go check what was going on outside.  We saw a person in the entrance of the parking lot and went to talk with her.  We gave her a tour of the church and introduced her to Bishop and she wants to be baptized, so we´ll see how things go this week.

Also this week, we learned that Pedro received a personal response that the church is true. He started off by saying, I know that God won´t strike down a tree to show me that the church is true, but I prayed for him to show me through something that would not happen without the influence of God and it happened. He explained and essentially, his dad hates religion and is always bashing religion and people who participate, and he prayed that when he told his dad he was going to church last Sunday, that his dad wouldn´t care. His dad just went OK. And that was it. He says he knows the church is true, just has to work through some things so I plan on working with him this week to help him be baptized this Sunday, so we´ll see how things go.

I´m feeling really great.  The rest of P-Day last week was great, we went to Parque Imperatriz which I´ll send the pictures in a little bit. Sunday was the sacrament meeting of the Primary which was super good. We have our ward Christmas party this Friday night.  

We had several churrascos this week for lunch from families saying goodbye to Elder Favoretti, but he´s still in the same zone so I´ll see him every week.

I´ll have to travel to Novo Hamburgo in not too long to meet up with my companion at 3 and Elder Favoretti to meet up with his companion. Have a good week!

Love,

Elder Trevor Mangum

3 month holy shoes, wearing those soles out!

Primary Program

December!

Trying on Favoretti´s "funk" glasses that someone gave him and posing. Funk is kind of like Brazil´s version of rap, but different, a more wild-like sound.

Hey Everyone!

Life is going great here, although I woke up at five in the morning, went to the bathroom, threw up, brushed my teeth, and went back to bed, so I probably ate something that didn´t set well yesterday so we´ll see how the rest of P-Day goes.

This week we didn´t have a baptism, with the family of Keila and Julia both traveling on Sunday. We´re sitting there in sacrament as it´s starting and Julia walks in with the family of her member friend, Camila. We look at each other, run home to grab her form for Bishop to sign after her confirmation, and I performed my first confirmation in Portuguese which was exciting but also stressful, but all went well.

This week we really wanted to run into Robson or his son Gustavo because a week or two back, we ran into Gustavo who said he was about to turn nine. Robson is a member who´s inactive and apparently came to church before I arrived in Feitoria when Elder Favoretti was still here and asked for his son to be baptized but nothing happened. Ana, Roseli´s daughter told us where she thought their house was. She was mistaken, and we wandered around for a while. We´re walking and I say a silent prayer in my mind to please please let us find them. Elder Favoretti says we´ll go to where Gustavo gave directions to the other week and as we´re walking there, a random person stops us and says she is a member from Sao Leopaldo who moved here and went inactive for a while and wants to return, but is moving to another house here in Feitoria and will call us this week after the move to schedule an appointment. Then we´re walking, Elder Favoretti goes "you remember what Gustavo looks like right", and I go "Yeah…Actually no I don´t." Then we walk two or three steps I glance to the right down a street and go "Wait isn´t that him" and there was Gustavo, had him lead us directly to his house and visited his father another day and Gustavo´s birthday is this upcoming Sunday, my last day with Elder Favoretti is the first day that we can baptize him because we can´t baptize the children of members that are only 8 years old. 

Next week, Sunday night December 9th we´ll receive a call and next Monday we´ll travel for transfers. Elder Favoretti thinks I´ll stay here in Feitoria and he´ll leave, but there´s also the possibility of both of us leaving, so we´ll see next week.

It is great to be in December! I think I´ll be passing Christmas Day in the house of Irma Roseli, so I´ll probably do Skype there.

Love y’all,

Elder Trevor Mangum

Best Week Yet!

This week was amazing. There is a girl Julia (who I thought was a member) who comes with a family that is a member to church like every week. We ate lunch with the family on Sunday and they were like, no go visit her and her family this week, they aren´t members.  The missionaries met with them some time ago & nobody knows why they weren´t baptized. Long story short, the whole family came to church, Julia was baptized this Sunday and her brother Matteus will be baptized next Sunday. The parents have to marry first. 

Keila and her family returned home this week, we learned on Tuesday and visited Wednesday and the dad talked with us.  They are such a great family. Unfortunately, a poisonous caterpillar burned Edinai this Saturday and he was having an allergic reaction so they had to go to the hospital for him and the rest went to a cousins house so no one came to church this Sunday.  This week we also painted the outside of a members mom´s house which was easy.

One family we work with is having a lot of financial and health struggles and just going through a really rough patch right now with everything.  We visited with them one day this week and found out they didn't have any food. Elder Favoretti says, "Don´t worry, we´ll be back by 8 tonight and we´ll have food for y’all to eat". As we leave, Elder Favoretti says to me, "I´ve got a crazy idea". We knocked the doors of members nearby, asking for a little bit of food like rice or beans or something and also passed by in our own house because members always give us food and we cleaned it all out and returned with a good deal of food for them. It was amazing. It reminded me of how we are often answers to others prayers when we are in the right place, doing the right thing and listening to the Spirit. Anyways, doing that for this family was really touching.

I did give a talk in church yesterday. I started off with Revelation 12:11, that we overcame Satan by the Atonement of Christ and the word of our testimonies then in the Premortal life and that we came overcome him again here in the same way, that I already had talking about the importance of using the Atonement in our lives and that I´d be focusing on by the word of our testimonies, talking about gaining a testimony of Christ by reading and studying the Book of Mormon every day, but that the scripture didn´t say by the power of the testimonies that we had, but by the word of our testimonies, that we have to share. Then I read in 3 Nephi 18 how Christ says let your light shine, that He is the light within us, and that we let it shine through us when we do the things which He did. Then I talked about Light the World and invited everyone to participate this year. That is cool that you have the ability to talk with people in my ward and had already heard that I had spoken in church!

Zone Conference was good, interview with Presidente was good. In zone conference, I remember that Presidente talking about improving our acompanhamentos, to not only visit daily but have them feel the Spirit that is with you every day. In my interview, he gave me some tips for improving my accent that the vast majority of Americans mess up with. I´m feeling great. 

This week was definitely one of my favorite on the mission!

Love, Elder Trevor Mangum

Food Poisioning

Happy Birthday Caroline!  

Well this week was a rather different week for several reasons. Elder Favoretti and I both got sick this week, but several days apart, so we lost two days visiting Oban, the public clinic right behind our house. Elder Favoretti´s was the beginning of the week, on Tuesday, and he had gotten food poisoning and that´s why he almost passed out last Saturday and again Tuesday, something he ate. Then this past Thursday we had a ward activity at a park for lunch, apparently it was a holiday, so everyone was off work and school. Anyways, we had churrasco and something you always have with churrasco here is "Mayonese" which is like potato salad. Let´s just say it was very hot on Thursday and apparently I should´ve avoided the Mayonese. However, all the workers at the clinic loved talking to an American and they stuck something in my vein and let it drip in me and I felt better, prescribed some medicine to help with stomach pain and while we were at the clinic waiting for me, we received a phone call to come do service, so while Elder Favoretti helped Brother Jacobs make a cement drive way, I got to sit in the shade, Sister Jacobs brought out their amazing grape juice and happened to have the medicine that I was prescribed and I took it there.

Keila should return home within the next couple of days, I think. Irasema as well, along with her deaf sister that she cares for, also got sick, theirs was Saturday, vomiting and stuff and said if they were better she´d go to church the next day, but didn´t end up going. We also met her daughter that works in Sao Leopaldo this week. Anyways, Irasema is doing great. Church was good, final speaker was the stake YW president who had another great talk about all sorts of stuff, but part was about uniting and uplifting other members, investigators, and recent converts.

This week someone that we´ve only taught the first discussion to, Pedro, who is the boyfriend of an RM came to church and he brought a friend, Murilo. They both really enjoyed it. Pedro has already been to institute and liked that a lot too. 

I don´t know how Thanksgiving works, like yesterday at lunch I saw something about Black Friday and asked if they have Thanksgiving and they said yes so well, we´ll see. We do have zone conference this week again. As long as I don´t get poisoned again and get to eat some good meat, I´ll be alright. I think this Thursday we actually have lunch at Roseli´s based on the calendar, but not sure for certain.  

Have a fun, week long Thanksgiving break! 

Love y’all, boa semana!

Elder Trevor Mangum

Eating ice cream with a giant spoon and drinking tererê after a hot day. Tererê is cold chimarrão, like the one we made is with cold limeade, tastes super good

Irasema's Baptism and an American Lunch!

Keila had to go to the hospital in Porto Alegre Sunday night/Monday for the pains from anemia false form. She had to take morphine and have blood transfusions, stays in the hospital for like 15 days I think. Her brothers stay at a relatives house while the parents deal with stuff at the hospital and dad works, so we haven´t had physical contact with anyone except the Grandpa on Monday night who told us this, but we´ve called Cintia, and Keila is doing fine.

Irasema's Baptism

Irasema has progressed very well. We visited her Monday and talked with her about her baptism for Saturday but she said she wouldn't give a for certain yes until Wednesday, that she needed to pray and ask if she needed to be baptized now. We come back on Wednesday and she starts talking with us about how she´s so worried for her daughter, like Tuesday or Wednesday she had a dream about her dying and just has been thinking about her daughter nonstop. Elder Favoretti pulls out Ether 12:27( through 29 I think, stopping where it says something about The Lord´s will be done or something) and applies it to her, that she prayed drawing near to God about whether she needs to be baptized and God showed her weakness, her daughter, that she really does need to be baptized this Saturday, set an example for her daughter. She´s crying and goes I will. I will be baptized this Saturday. His will be done. We leave, I say something to Elder Favoretti about like what on earth, how´d you connect that, have that scripture ready. He said something like yeah, it just popped into my head when she was talking about her daughter, I didn´t prepare it at all, all the work of the Lord, but we are happy to be His instruments. The Relief Society President visited her Friday because she knew she´d be working during the baptism. Irasema was baptized and confirmed the next day.

Sunday we had a member of the stake presidency who talked about how the ward needs to help more with missionary work, how every member is a missionary, how while they don´t wear a name tag like us, people still know they are members and thus they have to act in a certain way and can´t do certain things, needing to be accepting politically because just because you received personal revelation that a candidate is right for you doesn´t mean that is the right candidate for someone else and stuff like that. Apparently, our ward has had a hard time with politics and several people have stopped coming to church for this reason.

We had two teaching miracles happen this week. One was we were trying to find a contact and knocked a door to ask where the street was and we happened to knock on the door of his brother.  He and his wife have seen us walking and wanted us to teach them. They told us that they wouldn´t be able to make it church this Sunday but next Sunday that they would. Then, one time when we were visiting Roberto, two boys, 12 and 11, friends who live by Roberto walked in and we taught them. Not sure why they didn´t come to church, one of them even ran up to us as we were walking back to our house after (and scared us) saying that he checked with his grandparents and he would come to church. In answer to your question from the pictures from last week - The pizza here from this place is so good, I get one half bacon, the other half chocolate and strawberry. We are not allowed to play soccer, so no. I haven´t played any sports out in the field.

Roseli said if I ever visit with my parents (or without) that we can stay at their house to save money by not paying for a hotel. That really touched me. Also, this Sunday for lunch, we had it at the Alves family who have two sons on missionaries right now in Brazil and they made a special American themed lunch for me, with French fries and hamburgers. It was so awesome! They're a fun group, have a son a little younger than me and a daughter younger than him and a son who's married. Also, if you or dad receive friend requests, it is from Brazilians who are feeding us and have taken a picture most likely and would like to send it to you.  Anyways, have a good, birthday packed adventure this week!

Love, Elder Trevor Mangum

Keila's Baptism!

Keila's Baptism on Sunday, November 4, 2018

Things are going great. Keila and her family are amazing. Only Keila was baptized this Sunday, but the whole family minus grandpa came to Sacrament, but only Keila and Wellington (14 yr old brother) stayed all three hours because they had a visitor come into town. We baptized Keila after church and her dad pulled up as we were taking pictures beforehand and he really liked her baptism. Really, the whole family wants to be baptized, everyone likes us a lot.  We usually read a bit in the Book of Mormon with them and explain, then everyone reads a verse and explains it. 

The other people we teach are doing fine, a decent bunch of them need to marry and that takes quite a while once that process actually starts. Irasema´s baptism is marked for this Saturday and she´s progressing well.  We had my first ward council here, started at 4 in the afternoon.  It happens on the first Sunday of every month, but not when there is General Conference, and thus this was my first one. We were just a part of it for the first thirty minutes, talking about recent converts, people progressing, and whatnot and then Bispo Warken dismissed us.

A funny encounter happened yesterday we visited Sergio after ward council. Sergio at some point while we were visiting together said, “Thank you very much” in English. Certainly startled me! Apparently some years ago he took like a basics of English course or something. People do want an English class but I’m not sure about teaching one. Elder Favoretti said he´ll make up excuses for the rest of the transfer, but after that (because he´ll leave and I won´t) "Boa sorte, meu amigo!" Elder Favoretti and I have some fun together.

Our district grew in size, now we have a set of sisters, one of them was one of the Sister Trainers for our mission while I arrived. Our new zone leader is Elder Romero, don´t know where he´s from. We also received another Elder, Elder Rush from Nashville. This Sunday was also weird because it was "Horário do Verão", day light savings, so we jumped forward an hour which made getting up rough. So we are now 4 hours difference in time from each other. 

Roseli also said this past week she was going to come to church, but she didn´t, but we visited her and she told us how she had to housesit for her son William who went out of town. I figured it was because of time change, because the time change happened automatically on people´s phones last week but this year it was changed to the first week in November or something. This week we’re going to start teaching the boyfriend of a returned missionary sister, we´ll see how that goes. I think he might be atheist or something, but she´s brought him to Institute, gave him a Book of Mormon, and talked about her mission with him and she said he wants/is willing to meet with the missionaries. 

This past week did have a good amount of rain, but it kept things cool, so I can´t complain too much. Apparently the only thing that is done for Halloween here is you can have a Halloween party at school where you dress up and stuff. Also school here is very different, there are three different sessions, morning, afternoon, and evening, and you pick one and go to that. Also, their summer break is in like December/January to February/March or so. Milkshakes here are amazing, there is this ice cream/milkshake stand not too far from us that we hit up sometimes, I love me some chocolate ice cream, but it is definitely no blue bell. 

Tell Brother Skanchy thanks for the advice, about finishing the chimarrão before passing it (which I´ve done every time and talked with my companion and he said yeah you have to otherwise it is really rude) and finishing my plate every time (although one time a few weeks back I left some sauce, was like a cheese whatever on my plate because it was seconds that I was forced to get and the mom apparently tried to make me feel guilty with a I don´t care, but ,,, and her kids got embarrassed and said mom stop he doesn´t understand. This was near my beginning so Elder Favoretti did explain what happened/how she was trying to make me feel guilty afterwards to me. Now I make sure and look at the plates of the people who’s house we are in to see if my plate must be literally spotless or if I can leave some grains of rice). I do like looking at all the advice of everyone in my journal, it really helps!

Love y’all, 

Elder Trevor Mangum

Pizza with the tradition of writing how long you’ve been on your mission

Porto Alegre Visits and 1st Transfer Complete!

It was a busy week, being the last week of the transfer and 2 trips to Porto Alegre.  Both trips to Porto Alegre were very different. On Wednesday, for my training as a new missionary, we took an early bus to the train station, rode the train with another dupla training in my zone, took a bus and then ate at a buffet with them and other duplas arrived and ate with us too (apparently all the trainers had eaten there the day when we arrived). Then we walked to the mission office, had a little thing without our companions where we filled out some little paper about how well you and your companion do certain stuff, and then we talked about the joyful and difficult experiences we´ve had and stuff, had some training and talks all together and then a roleplay or two. The second trip was different because we took the train to Novo Hamburgo and met up with our zone and took a rented bus from there to Porto Alegre to the Porto Alegre Sul grounds and chapel where we heard from Sister Franco, 2nd Counselor in the Primary General Presidency and her husband. Her talk was better, but they were both really good. They talked in Spanish (from Argentina but lived in SLC for a long time and knew English) and we had a translator translating in Portuguese next to them. It was broadcasted to everyone in our mission, Porto Alegre Sul, and probably some ones in Spanish speaking countries too, I´d assume. 

Our week was a lot shorter with Wednesday the whole day in Porto Alegre and most of the day Saturday in Porto Alegre as well. Keila and Ednai were not baptized this weekend, but we have a for certain next weekend. Their Dad came back in town and they had to go visit his mother who they hadn´t visited in over a month and her birthday had passed in that time. Sunday was also elections again, so it was very difficult getting anyone to church.  The election stuff was less crazy this time around, and justifying for Elder Favoretti was even quicker. Got to see the cafeteria of a school in Brasil!

Our ward is good, this week we had 82 people in Sacrament meeting and Elder Favoretti gave a talk that encouraged more help from the members in missionary work (received a call from bishop to give this talk night before at 10).  After Sacrament meeting, we received our first member reference that I´ve gotten in this area, someone that an RM sister is dating who she has brought to institute, he has the Book of Mormon. We´ll visit him this week and see how that goes. Our church starts at 8:30. I´ve passed the sacrament, never blessed. We had 2 investigators attend church this week, only 1 that we have been teaching (Irasema/Ilasama, I´m not really sure...), the other was a 9 or 10 year old that was brought by a friend whose parents might be members.  Elder Favoretti always thought she was a member but she isn´t or something. Not really sure I understand the whole story, only that she is not a member. Roseli’s family is good, they like our company a lot.

Transfers were given last night and come into effect today (people move areas today). Apparently if you are transferred you don´t get P-Day. Lucky Elder Favoretti and I weren´t transfered. A decent amount of people in our zone got transfered, including our zone leader who was in my district, Elder Walters who is from Texas (I think Dallas) and he is now the new assistant which Favoretti is excited about.  They were trained and spent time in houses together and are pretty close. Also, apparently one of the Sisters from Brazil in my group and is my zone, is now training, after only 1 transfer in the field, not even finishing full training, which Elder Favoretti has never heard of. 

I´m doing great. Legs are getting stronger every day, either less pain or I´m used to it. Gotta build my leg muscles. It´s nothing with my shoes, although I think we forgot to factor in the Trevor factor when we decided how many shoes to bring. They aren´t near breaking, for certain, but they definitely look well used already, so we´ll see how things go. Things are hard, for certain, but teaching brings me joy every day.

One transfer complete!

Love,

Elder Trevor Mangum

Teaching and Churrasco

It was a good week.  Church was good. Roseli and her family didn´t make it, still working with them, but Elder Favoretti said missionaries have been working for a very long time to reactivate them and he´s fairly certain we´ll be able to do it. Sergio is doing great, perfect elect. Every time we visit him he says something like ‘I´m on the path of God, everything is perfect’. He was confirmed yesterday.

We had 4 investigators at church yesterday: Danielle (who I don´t remember if I´ve explained or not, but her "husband" is a member nonactive who is married to another woman who left him for a woman and the divorce is finally underway. She comes to church almost every week.), and then a family: Keila (12), Ednai (9), and the mom Cinthia. The dad and older son are out of town right now, I think he´s the equivalent of a trucker. Their life has been super hard, I´ve almost cried a couple times during lessons, but it has been great getting to know them. For instance, Keila has this disease that is essentially reverse anemia, too much iron forms in the blood and so she sometimes has super painful attacks and has to go to the hospital in Porto Alegre for I think transfusions. Medical/science terms are somewhat easy to understand because they´re the same with different pronunciations, I think.  They also had a son die at 3 years old many years ago from this same disease. However, the Plan of Salvation finally satisfied/filled Cinthia. She said she´s had dozens of Pastors teach them and preach about her son but none filled her or left her with a desire to go to church until us. We taught them once with the dad but the rest has been without. Keila and Ednai are set to be baptized after church on Sunday, but the parents, like just about everyone, are not married and need to be married before they can be baptized. We´re teaching a couple different couples that need to be married as well.

Things are good with Elder Favoretti, he is slowly easing more responsibility on to me, like now I start off our first lesson with people with the questions on finding out their needs and what not which is a bit hard at times, but like the small silences as I think and form questions and whatnot aren´t anywhere near as bad or awkward as I thought it would be. I think my communication skills are coming, slowly. My understanding is coming a lot faster than speaking. While I can´t understand a lot of words, in context I generally can understand the phrase, although there are also a good deal of times where I´ve thought I´ve understand on context clues and answered a question that wasn´t asked, so yeah.

This week I´ve had a good amount of churrasco, barbeque. It is so so good. Reminds me of the times in Will´s backyard, only they cook things differently, on like those smore sticks, can´t remember what they´re called in English, and pretty slowly. We eat a lot of meat here which is great cause I love it. I also had tererê this week which is like chimarrão/mate, only cold and with juice. It was with lemonade/lemon juice and tasted exactly like frozen lemonade and those drinks, it was so so good, especially since spring has started and things are definitely starting to heat up. 

This upcoming week I´ve got a training in Porto Alegre on Wednesday and on Saturday a member of the General Primary Presidency is speaking in Porto Alegre and we get to go.

Always good to hear how everyone is doing. Insane to think I´m starting my sixth week here in the field. Also, already developed an insane amount of gratitude for a loving family and parents. Elder Favoretti was raised by his grandparents and has had a lot of crazy experiences. He is amazing though, 21, has a fiancee in Minas, been a member for 3 years, super funny and has great stories.

Have a great week! 

Love y'all! 

Elder Trevor Mangum

1st Zone Conference Pictures

Conferencia da Zona Novo Hamburgo

Sergio's Baptism

Sergio was baptized yesterday after church, it went great. Alex and his family is the opposite, was very sad for me on Tuesday when we went to go visit them and were told that their mom doesn´t want us teaching Alex anymore because she doesn´t want him confused or something. It left me very sad, but Favoretti said it isn´t Alex´s fault, he´ll get another chance down the road. We´ve taught a couple of different families who all need to be married which is annoying because despite living together for years and years and having kids together and raising them, they still aren´t married and some of them don´t want to get married.

Thursday morning I had my interview with Presidente Jones which was awesome. Said he loves my letters to him because they´re always positive. I said yeah, that days are hard, but there is a bit of good in every one and he said keep up that thinking, that missionaries at the beginning don´t generally have that attitude (particularly Americans) and thus struggle. The main struggle is walking, Elder Favoretti walks so fast that I have to run a little bit every day to catch up with him, my legs are always dead at the end of the day. Also, Presidente told me straight up that I have one of the best trainers in the mission, so learn well and feel fortunate and grateful. He also said that we´ll have received 75 new missionaries from July 1 to the end of the year, nearly half the mission (which would be 88). Also, based off his interview with Elder Favoretti, there is a decent shot I´ll be training immediately after right here in Feitoria. Gotta learn it all well enough to teach it all. Got 8 more weeks to prep. I also finally had my little interview (or part of it at least) with Sister Jones that I didn´t get to do the first day with lack of time, and that was fun too.

Zone Conference on Friday was good, Presidente taught about the Atonement, Sister Jones about charity, the assistants about always teaching people, making conversations, and about improving our baptism invites. The zone leaders then had us do practices of baptism invitations where we roleplayed as a real person in our mission that a dupla is teaching right now. It was really good. I also had divisão again in Sao Leopaldo on Thursday after my interview until zone conference on Friday. We did service Saturday and my back is a little sore. Lots of buckets of dirt that I moved to fill in cracks and holes, I think we like filled in his foundation under his house and stairs with dirt. Fasting on the mission is only hard because of thirst and your desire to drink. We did have fast and testimony meeting yesterday.

Every Sunday night, we visit this less active/not active family and just talk and eat with them, Irmã Roseli, her husband, and their 14 year old daughter Ana. I kind of had been growing a bit impatient that we kept visiting them because it seemed like nothing was happening although I always enjoyed spending time with them, super fun and nice. Anyways, Roseli has been having serious problems with health recently, like possibly has cancer and shared with us last night that she knows the church is true, that the Book of Mormon is true, but just doesn´t know why she doesn´t come to church (they did have issues with a person) and I´m fairly certain that they´re going start coming to sacrament meeting again. It made me realize that what is meant by teaching people is talking with people, being their friends, sharing your experiences, like the assistants were talking about.

Before I forget, last week I forgot to write about the elections for President here in Brazil.  It was wild stuff leading up to it, people driving around honking so much with flags, they litter the streets so much with all these little papers of the candidates, we had to go on the Sunday morning of General Conference for Elder Favoretti to register as nonvoting, went to a school by us and I got to go inside, first school in Brazil. We´ll have to this same thing in a couple of weeks for the runoff election of something. Also, you should look up what I think in English is called The Fourth Missionary, By Lawrence E. Corbridge, June 22, 2002. Haven´t read all of it yet because it is in Portuguese for me, but what I´ve read is really good, I think you´d like it.

Good luck from Brazil, have a great week. Y’all are in my prayers,

Love,

Elder Mangum

District Meeting, Investigators and Dessert

It was a pretty good week. There were definitely some highs and some lows, but we´ll start at the beginning. On P-Day’s we don´t really do that much, not much to do in Feitoria. We may go to a park or something today which is like the one thing we can do. I just studied a lot last week, which made me remember how much I enjoy learning. Tuesday we had another district meeting where we ate breakfast as a zone, every companionship bringing a little something. Some of the sisters made some cake with frosting, it was a good little thing. We have the zone leaders in our district, Elder Walters from McKinney Texas and Elder Nobre from Mozambique. They seem really cool and gave a good training to our zone about being on the Lord's team bringing people to Christ. We made a goal as a companionship to have three baptisms this month. We have my first zone conference this upcoming week on Thursday I think.

I´m not sure if I´ve talked about them before, but we´ve got a couple good progressing investigators. One is Daniel, who is 25, who is so into what we´re teaching and to learning. His mom is Evangelist but is encouraging of us because he´s never been baptized and also is okay with us teaching her whole family. Another set is Alex, 10, and his sister, Angela, 15. We were knocking doors and trying to visit the houses of contacts but things weren’t working out, so we were a bit sad.  But then I saw this boy sitting on the sidewalk in front of a house and smiled and waved to him.  We made contact, taught a lesson to him, his sister, and his sister´s boyfriend. Gabriel, Alex, and his sister have baptismal dates for the 21 because conference was only broadcast at the stake center which is not our building, so we have to take a bus and therein much more difficult to bring people. But they´re all enthused for baptism, and it warmed my soul to hear 10 year old Alex say "I want to be baptized". In similar circumstances of knocking and contacting, we came across Sergio, a man of 72 years old who is fairly receptive and came to conference with us Sunday afternoon and has a baptismal date for this upcoming Sunday after church.

However, the bad news: we go to Gabriel Saturday in between sessions to bring him to conference to watch and then be baptized. He isn´t home, so his family calls him and he comes back home and we talk and he makes up the excuse that his mom doesn´t want him to be baptized again, that she doesn´t feel he is ready, etc. We tried to talk with him like you’re 19 and quell fears and whatnot but to no avail. His parents are also super tranquilo and we´ve even taught his dad the Restoration. Another low was that I was feeling under the weather Friday and Saturday and a little Thursday which made my first splits on Friday a bit difficult, but Elder Silva (Fortaleza) and I still worked hard and did well in their area with 4 lessons, 7 novos, and 5 datas. And I woke up Sunday sweaty but feeling perfectly normal, so I´m back to A-Okay.

General Conference in a different language is weird, especially when since during the gaps you can hear a bit of the English. I was surprised by how much I understood. I took notes Sunday during both sessions, writing in English, but I understand a good chunk of everything being said. I really enjoyed all the choir stuff in English, especially Saturday morning with some of those more Primary hymns, really good. I think people are pretty happy about 2 hour church. I´m glad I´ll be able to say to my children, back in my day, we had three hour church, we had Sunday school and Young Men´s/Young Women´s every week. I think it is good to have more family learning. 

You asked about buying food here. I usually just buy biscuits, cookies, and stick them in the freezer. They don´t really have much variety, decently similar to Oreos. The stores are a bit different and weird. Still weird with the prices. The weirdest thing I´ve been fed was yesterday for "dessert" and they called it dessert, we were fed by members straight up boiled sweet potatoes that they cut off a piece right there in front of us and gave it to us. This isn´t like a Brazilian thing, maybe a Rio Grande do Sul thing, because Elder Favoretti eats boiled sweet potatoes for breakfast all the time and we talked about it after. I have the equivalent of frosted flakes for breakfast every morning, so I buy that and milk too. Any of the desserts that are actually desserts are pretty good, especially when it has some sort of chocolate in it, like once we had this warm chocolate pudding, another this chocolate sorvete with, I don´t know how to describe it, like if you put crushed up animal crackers in ice cream, really good.  

Love,

Elder Trevor Mangum