Week Ninety Nine - Home!

 

Elder Batten is Home!

 

 

Week Ninety Eight

Hey, sorry I didn't send a long email last week. I wanted to play basketball so I didn't have much time. I'm really sorry.

This week we had tonnss of rain, like more rain than Maceió has had in a really really long time. Like a lot of the streets got flooded and a lot of the stop lights broke down, and the rain caused the road to break and there are a lot of holes in the street because of the rain. The city is not that well built for rain. We had some buckets in our house catching water that was pinging from the ceiling. We had quite a few spots of droppage and a lot of the ceiling got wet and paint started to fall from the ceiling. But it was cool. We spent repeated days wet and the house smells like wet clothes, and wet elder.

We had a stake conference here at the church this weekend. It was great. The president of the Recife temple came and talked. He and the stake president both gave very powerful talks. The conference was really spiritual. I enjoyed it a lot. 

We are going to start working with this lady named Neide this week. She came to the conference because she felt inspired that she needed to be there. She has quite a few doubts and questions about religion and such. We visited her house once, she lives in a favela in a really humble house, but I'm excited to work with her this last week.

I don't know If I'm gonna be able to send email next Monday, there are lot of things scheduled for me to do and dinner with the president so I don't know, if not, see you soon!

Elder Batten  

Week Ninety Six - Mother's Day Edition

It was good to talk with everyone on Mother's Day. I forgot to show my planner that a sister in my district made for me. On the front is my plane passage to go home, and on the back she made like a collage with things for after the mission, it has the law of chastity, a picture of the temple, a cut out of a girl, and a little baby. It was pretty funny.

We spent some time this week finding new investigators. We found quite a few, but a lot couldn't come to church this Sunday "because of mother´s day". But we had Jadiel at church with his little daughter this week. I'll try and take some more pictures this week, I haven't taken any in a while. Where going to have a family home evening with the members tonight so I'll take a picture with everyone. 

3 more weeks. It feels like so much time but it is also so little time. Confliction. 

sorry I can't think of much else to say

have a good week ,

Elder Batten

Week Ninety Five

Sorry I didn't send an email last week, we were kind of pressed with time because we had to do it on Tuesday since Monday was labour day. But last week me and my companion helped a member to slaughter a pig. My companion wanted to kill it. He had to give it the blow with a hatchet. He kind of looked like a clown doing it because he was too scared to hit it hard and ended up just kind of hurting the pig. This other guy who was there had to end up grabbing the axe and killed it. I helped skin it and do a few things. I also gave the pigs baths and put out food for them.

This week we are spent a lot of time trying to help Jadiel's family because the members got really excited to see a complete family go to church. It's been a while that missionaries have brought a complete family to church here. We helped them move their house on Tuesday and when we got there they were totally unprepared to move and we just started putting things on a cart and wheeling them to the new house which was like a 5 minute walk. They eventually called their "friend" who had a small truck who helped out. He was this 70 year old guy who surprisingly had a lot of strength and energy who just spent his time chewing people out. Except me and my companion who were actually helping. And we ended up getting a lot of rain. But I kind of liked that part. That entire day I was having reflux and I ended up spending the night throwing up at 1 in the morning. I think it was vinegar that I ate at lunch. But I slept the entire next day so it was cool and I feel better now.

Have a good week!

Elder Batten

Week Ninety Four - Itinerary

No email this week. Monday was a holiday and Tuesday he ran out of time.

But we got travel itinerary!

Elder Batten will be home on Wednesday, June 7th!

Week Ninety Three - Last Transfer

This week we had some setbacks with Ronaldo. But his mom is progressing a little bit and Jadiel and Rita went to church on Sunday. :) That was actually pretty nice though seeing Jadiel and Rita at church.

Also Maria (who still hasn't been baptized because her mom won't let her) gave us a reference of her friend Luana who saw us walking in the street and Maria told her that we visited her. (we actually generally teach Maria in the home of our recent convert family because they are neighbors) Maria invited her to hear a lesson. And Luana went to church on Sunday. We're also gonna try and teach her family who are from some evangelical church I don't know which. 

So this week I enter into my last transfer, I will be staying in my area with my companion. We weren't transferred so I am excited about that. 

Also sometimes Davison (my eternal investigator from Gurguri) comes and visits somtimes here, and his pastor heard that he is going to the mormon church and he is almost undergoing church disciplin in the adventist church.

Have a good week.

Elder Batten

Week Ninety Two - Happy Easter

Hey, I had a great week. We had some great progress in our area. Also Easter was cool. We recieved some chocolate from the members.

Ronaldo and his mom went to church with us on Sunday. It was really cool. They have a baptism marked for here in a week or two. 

On Friday Nadson got baptized. I'll include the picture. It was a really rainy day and we walked like a ton that day to resolve some things and we got super wet and it was tiring. But the baptism was great!

This week I stepped in esgoto and my shoes stink and I got my pants and shirt dirty. 

Happy Easter!

Week Ninety One

Hey, we had a good week this week. We found some new investigators. We are teaching a family now. Jadiel, Rita, and Ritas mom and brother Nena and Ronaldo. They seem to be really interested. They ended up waking up late and didn't go to church on Sunday, but this next week we committed them to go.

We had a zone conference this week. They talked a lot about the missions goal for this month which is 120. 

We have a baptism this week. Nadson is going to be baptized. I'll make sure and take a picture. Also Maria's mom maybe will let her get baptized here soon. We will have to wait and see. She's almost done reading 2 Nephi. 

I finnished reading the Book of Mormon in Portuguese again this week. 

That's about it for now, have a good week!

Elder Batten

Week Ninety

I really liked General Conference a lot. It was loaded with a lot of good talks. We had a good week of work. We've been having trouble following up with Ailton because his cousins who are members don't really help that much. Maria's mom looks like she will let her get baptized this month. We've been teaching the mother of our recent convert who is sick right now. She had chikungunya a while ago and she hasn't totally recovered. We're also teaching this guy named Isaias who is 19. He appears to be elect. He accepted a baptismal date, and committed to pray. He watched a session of general conference and seemed to like it a lot. We've got some really good investigators right now.

Week Eighty Nine

Hey! The secretary is close to buying my plane ticket home. He asked for the name of my airport this week, but he still hasn't bought the ticket. Only 10 more weeks XO. Kind of wierd that it is so close. I feel like I've only been here for a few days/ an eternity. Not really sure which one it's felt like. It's kind of a mix between the both.

We got called a few times this week to go to the hostpital to give some blessings. We gave a blessing to a members brother who was shot in the neck, shoulders, stomach, knee, foot, and side. It was a lot of flesh wounds (bad joke). But he was getting better and we gave him a blessing to heal entirely, he had a surgery the next day and everything went well. 

We are teaching the cousin of a woman we baptised. his name is Ailton, he is 16 and he has been going to some of the courses that they have here at the church, like english, and computer formatting or something like that. He has gone to a few of the activities at church, and seems pretty interested. We taught him for the first time 3 weeks ago, but we hadn't been able to follow up on him for a while now. 

Also last Thursday me and my comp went to clean the house in Trapiche for the two sisters that got transferred to there. The house was left filthy filthy filthy when the elders were ET´d. And the sister that was going to move in there I know and I felt bad so we went to clean the house. Also she was coming there with a greenie and I didn't want the newbie to get scared. Because my first house on the mission was absolutely destroyed and when I walked in and I thought to myself "what did I just walk into?" The house was nasty. So we cleaned it for like 2 hours. I filled a big trash bin full of trash and left it in the apartments dump. (they live in this super nice apartment on the beach). But it was nasty. 

yeah thats about it. have a good week love you.

Elder batten

Week Eighty Eight

Hey! So we had 2 baptisms this week. Graziela and her daughter Gabrielle were baptized on Saturday. It was a pretty great experience. I'll include the pictures.

I did some baptismal interviews this week. I went to Coruripe, and the Barra de São Miguel. Coruripe was a cool city. The church isn't really settled there yet, they have to go the the Barra to attend church.  It was a really cool city and a lot different than Maceió. Like people stay outside at night and stay in the square at night. We had to spend the night at the Patriarch's house because it is kind of far. But I was with Elder Toma who is American. He has like 5 months on his mission. Before going to bed the Patriach asked him if he wanted something to eat and Toma looked super confused. I had to explain to him what he said. Afterwards Toma was like: I thought he asked me if I wanted Niki Manaj, and I was super confused? I laughed a lot.

Yesterday we passed the transfer. Elder Piagentini got transfered and me and Andrade are going to continue here in the area. 11 weeks left.

Elder Batten