New Transfer

Well, my second transfer in the field is over. Apparently July went somewhere while I wasnt looking. Elder Davis left yesterday and my new companion, Elder Estrada(I think thats his name), will be here about 6 oclock.

This last week was pretty good. We had a small meeting with the Mission President. He came here to interview everyone, and he had a few words to say to everyone before the interviews. He just emphasized working hard and being responsible. We have a new standard(or pattern), to work with and it gives us more freedom, but more responsibility also. He just wants to make sure we are doing what we should be doing so we can get the most out of our time.

My interview went fine. It was the first time I had ever sat down and talked with him, so it was a tiny bit awkward. He asked about how I am doing and how is family. Those type of questions. It was good though.

Ive been working pretty hard at studying the language this last month or so, and I am really starting to understand how the language works and is structured. I think after this next transfer I will be speaking really well. Having a Brazilian companion will help a whole bunch.

Life is good and things are going well. We made some really good contacts this last week so hopefully we will have some new people to teach this week. There's another companionship in the Center who have been working with a man. He went from smoking 4 packs a day to only smoking one or two cigarettes per day in just a week and a half. That was a week ago, so I have no idea where he is at now, but I imagine that he has stopped completely. Ive met him a couple times and he is really awesome.

I hope everyone is doing well. Have a good week!

Elder Siemers

4 Months!

I've already been out 4 months. Crazy. My second transfer in the field is almost over. Pattern is gone. I can actually have a conversation with some people. Life is good.

Not a whole lot happened this last week. We had a crazy party at the church to celebrate something. I wasn't quite sure what, but it was fun! Festa de Junina. There was lots of good food and there was lots of people there. The bolo(cake) was especially good. The Young Women of the church think I am obsessed with cake for some reason. I might have just mentioned that its important for their salvation to make cake for the missionaries or something like that. I might have also let one of them take pictures off my camera of her birthday party with the price of one cake for each photo. She still hasnt made any yet... The other day we were teaching a lesson with Yasmin. She took us to a friend's house. At the end of the lesson Elder Davis asked, 'do you have any questions? Any doubts? Complaints?' I chimed in with, 'bolo?' Yasmin hit me on the leg, and the girls mom said she would make us cake next time. It was hilarious. I just said that I was joking and that they didnt need to make us cake. But, ya. I have no idea why the young women think I am obsessed with cake.

We are getting together with our District to head up to the Christ statue this afternoon. Transfers are next week, and we have a few missionaries who have been here for a while, so it will probably be a farewell party.

I hope everyone is doing well. Até mais. Tchau!

Elder Siemers

Long Week

Oh man. We walked a whole bunch this last week. We were getting a lot of pressure in our Zone to make 'pattern'. We are supposed to contact 160 people every week. This is really hard to do and still actually teach people. So, we walked around, knocked on doors, and got pattern. It wasnt the funnest of weeks, but we definitely worked hard. I got sick this last week also. Elder Davis has been sick for about 2 weeks and I finally caught it. But I am on the downhill of it now and should be back to new in a couple days.

Couple funny things happened this week though. One day we were walking behind a group of young teenage girls. There was probably 15 of them. As we passed them, Elder Davis asked 'bom?'(short for everything good?) The entire group responded at the same time. 'Booom'. It was hilarious. I couldn't resist myself, so I then said, 'tudo bem?' (all well?) and of course they all responded at the same time. 'Tuuudo'. We were dying of laughter for the next couple blocks. Last night I started talking to a guy who was more drunk than I thought he was. He wanted me to open the Book of Mormon to a random page and read a verse. One that touched my heart. I opened it, but he started talking more so I didnt get to read anything. He then grabbed my shoulder and started crying. I could hear him praying for help. After the tears cleared up I turned to Alma 7 and read him a couple verses. He then took the book from me, prayed, opened the book, then picked a random verse. He was really looking for inspiration. He picked some verse that just says some thing like 'and these things all happened in the forty-six year of the reign of judges' or something like that. Not helpful to him at all. Eventually a friend of his walked by and we asked her to walk him home. He left with her, but not before giving me um abraço em Jesus(a hug in Jesus).

Other than that, the week was pretty much uneventful. We had a few really good lessons. Hopefully they are interested and we can continue teaching them. We are a little low on investigators right now.

I hope everyone is having a fun 4th of July. It's a little weird not having any fireworks or a potluck, but things are good. Tchau!

Elder Siemers

Quick One

So, I dont have much time, but this last week was good. It started off slow, but picked up quite a bit at the end. We had another baptism. Bruno. He is 13 and really awesome. His family came to the baptism last night, which was good because there were church leadership meetings so there were only 3 members there. We need two witnesses for baptisms and I was the only one there to witness at first. It was a really nice baptism. Very personal. Elder Davis and I ended up singing a hymn. There wasnt a program planned because of all the missing members and Bruno is not familiar enough with the hymns, so he said to not have any songs. But, I wanted him to have a special baptism, so we sang Nearer My God to Thee in portuguese. The whole baptism was really nice. His mom was crying when she left after the baptism. The people here are so awesome.

We didn't quite have our required number of contacts for the week, but we made a lot yesterday after the baptism so we were close. We have been discussing and debating numbers and missionary work for the past couple weeks. We are trying to find a balance of getting our numbers, and focusing on the people and their needs. Life is good though. Things will only get better and they are already good.

Sorry this email is so short, but I am out of time. Love you all. I will talk to you later.

Elder Siemers

Going Up to Christ

Last pday we were invited to a birthday party. We went up to the Christ statue on the mountain overlooking Poços de Caldas. It was a lot of fun. We met the birthday party on the start of the trail, but we got there before them, so we had some time to waste. We were hanging out in a gift shop when the herd of monkeys showed up. So, of course we bought some bananas to feed to the monkeys. I was taking pictures for Elder Davis and Elder Anderson while they fed the monkeys. Elder Anderson was with us for the day while he waited for his new companion. The man at the gift shop had trained one of the monkeys to sit on your shoulder and eat. All the other monkeys wont touch you unless they are snatching something out of your hand. Before the other Elders were done, all of a sudden a monkey jumped onto my leg. He then started crawling all over me trying to get to the banana in my hand. I quickly handed over my camera to Elder Anderson, but he couldnt switch it to video fast enough. Anyway, this monkey finally got to my hand and latched onto the banana. No matter what I did I could not get this monkey to let go. I eventually started swinging it around through the air and trying to pry it off with my other hand. He eventually grabbed the banana on each end and bit into it right in the middle, through the peel. It was hilarious. After a long struggle and losing half of the banana, I finally got him off. The man who works there said he has never seen that happen. He has worked there for 35 years. We then proceeded to head up the hill. After a quick stop at a shady statue we moved on and up the hill. The statue is really big and really cool. We had the birthday party on the back side of the hill with an awesome view of the country. The cake was super good.

We confirmed our two baptisms yesterday in church. Maria de Lourges and Antonio. We also went to another barbeque after church. We have been teaching an inactive man, who wants to come back to church. He also wants us to meet and start teaching his girlfriend, so he came up with the idea to have FHE tonight. Oh, and it's also going to be a barbeque. Life is really tough here in Brazil. =)

We have a lot of really cool investigators right now. It's crazy how some people are just ready to hear the gospel. We had a lady come up to us on the street and ask us if we could start teaching her. She is already ready for baptism, but we had to ask for special permission for her to be baptised. We havent seen her since we found out but she is going to be really excited when we tell her the good news.

We have not had a relaxing pday since ive been in the field, so today we just took it easy. I did some laundry, wrote some letters, and that was pretty much it. The only problem is that Antonio, wants us to come over today, so we will head out of the house early. Oh well. Anything for a new member.

Life is good, and the food is even better. I will talk to you all later. Tchau!

Elder Siemers

Baptisms, Barbeques, and Contacts

This week has been crazy. We had some interesting discussions about numbers on the mission and felt a lot of pressure to get our required numbers. It has been a little frustrating, but the week has been good. We had two baptisms yesterday. Leonardo´s mother, and Antonio. It was super awesome to be at the church yesterday. Seeing Antonio in his white jumpsuit was really special. We have been working with him for a while and it was awesome seeing him take this huge step in his life. He talked about serving a mission all morning.

Afterwards, we had lunch at a member family´s home and I experienced my first churrasco. Brazilian barbeque. Beef, pork, chicken, sausage. It was all there, and so was I. The perfect combination. It was really good. I wanted to eat all day.

We went to an inactive member´s house this week. All the houses in brazil are walled off at the street with a door or a gate. The family has an intercom on the street and they can unlock the door from inside their house. We buzzed them on the intercom and a man answered. We told him we were the Elders and he went and got his son. We then told his son that we were Elders and he immediately told us to come in. We were just turning toward the door when he says 'oh, and Elder. Be careful of the dogs...' Bzzzt. click. The door unlocked as we pondered what that statement really meant. Elder Davis opened the door and three dogs come pouring out barking their heads off. One of them, the smallest, goes straight for me and jumps onto my leg and bites me on the thigh! I was not happy. I managed restrain myself and did not to kick the dog accross the street. We then went in and talked to Hebert. He's been inactive for a few years and he wants to relearn everthing and come back to church. Maybe even serve a mission. He is really awesome.

My companion traded backpacks with of our zone leaders who is going home. They made the swap during our meeting last week with our zone. We got home and finished out our day. On the way home we realized that our house keys were still in his old backpack. Ugh... There was no way to get the keys that night so we climbed over our gate and under the barbed wire above it to get to our apartment. I then went to the window and started shimmying the shutters. I knew the shutters dont have a very good latch. After a few minutes I was almost ready to give up. Then divine intervention occured and the shutters popped open. I then boosted Elder Davis up so he could reach through a small hole in our window and unlock the window. We had to climb through the window for the next two days until we got our keys back. I felt like we were robbing the place everytime I climbed through.

We have been having some problems with our toilet. It was filling up with water and it took a couple flushes to get everything down. Toilet paper would just float around on the top of the water and not go down. We were worried that there was a clog somewhere. We made a homemade plunger and tried to free things up. Nothing worked. We finally figured out what the problem was. We had bought one of those clean your toilet with every flush type things and it was making the water really bubbly. The water was turning into bubbles, that why is was going so high, then it was too light to push anything down. It was pretty funny when we figured it out. So much for trying to have a clean toilet right?

We contacted a lady last night who was pushing a stroller up a hill. I offered to push for her and we talked to her until we got to the top of the street and the hill. We then parted ways. There was a group of men standing in front of a nearby store and we could tell they were talking about us. This happens fairly often, because two americans together in Brazil is kind of an unusual occurance. We walked passed them and as we did they asked, 'who are you?' They had been so impressed with us helping that lady. They asked us all kinds of questions and we talked with them for a while. We gave out a Book of Mormon and had a wonderful talk with them. They are from another church that is really big in Brazil, and usually their members kind of ignore us. They brought out two hamburgers and some juice out of the store and gave them to us. It was such and awesome, respect building conversation. We are definitely going back there to say hi. Maybe even do some grocery shopping. The people here are amazing.

Yesterday was when we had the baptisms, the barbeque, and the super contact with 6 or 7 people. So, yesterday was pretty much the best day ever. Portuguese is coming together more and more every day and I am understanding people a lot better so I am getting more and more excited about the work. Life is good. I hope everyone has a wonderful week. Até mais!

Elder Siemers

Brazil is good.

Things are going well in Brazil. We had a mission tour this last week. Elder Godoy of the 70 gave us some training. He talked about traps missonaries fall into with teaching. It was good. We had to go into Ribeirao Preto, so we took the 4 hour bus ride the night before and stayed with the office Elders. The next day the bus home wasnt until 630 so we got home really late. We have a few more people interested in baptism. Leonardo´s mom is really interested. She loves the change that has happened to him over the last few weeks. She was at family home evening the other day and came to church yesterday. We have another investigator named Gustavo. We teach him quite a bit and this last time his uncle came in while we were teaching the plan of salvation. His grandma comes and goes during our lessons and she was there also. His uncle asked how he could get to the celestial kingdom so Elder Davis told him we could tell him 5 things that will get him there and asked if we could come back and teach him the 5 things. (Faith, repentence, baptism, gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end) So we came back and set a baptism date. The grandma might be interested also. At the end of the lesson we they fed us dessert and while we were eating a teenager walks in with a Book of Mormon in his hand! It was crazy. Elder Davis and his previous companion had given it to him a long time ago and havent seen him since. He is Gustavo´s cousin. So we started talking to him and invited him to church. He was there yesterday and really liked it. We bought matching ties last p-day and snuck one into Leonardo´s backpack during family home evening. We wrote our names on it and the date of his baptism. We didnt tell him we had some also, so we all showed up to church yesterday with matching ties. It was fun. He also passed the sacrament for the first time and bore his testimony. He is super awesome and plans on converting his entire family. He is also counting down until he can serve a mission. 3 years and 9 months. We have another investigator who wants to be baptized and he has been working towards it. He is really close and we just need to finish a few things and get him to have some time off from work. Soccer is huge here and I havent picked a team yet. Everyone always asks which team you like. I promised this young man that if he gets baptized soon, I will pick the Corintians, his favorite team. We have started an English class and meet once a week. Thats is a lot of fun. I learn more portuguese as I try to teach Brazilians English. Its really cool. Well, things are busy. We hope to have some baptisms in the near future and hope to keep finding more people to teach. I will talk to you all later. Tchau!