Week Forty

It feels like yesterday when I sent a Skype message on Christmas. I don't know if I will be able to call you here in Tobias but if I can I will let you know.

This week was a lot of work. We lost a lot of time having to resolve some things. First, we have to change our house and we finally finished all of the documents and got it sent off to the mission office. So now we have to wait until we will be able to move. That will really blow some time, but that's ok. Also some sisters in my district had 3 baptisms this Saturday so we had to go there which is a two and a half hour bus ride. When I finally got all of the interviews done we had missed the last bus to return to Tobias. We had to get another bus to go to Aracaju the area of the LZ in another zone. But we were able to return the next day before 12.

Also, we lost Degenalda who was our investigator who was progressing the most until now. It was pretty difficult. She doesn't want to start attending a different church. It was frustrating because she didn't read or pray specifically to receive an answer. She went to church and liked it. She even cried during the testimony of a member but there is nothing I can really do about it. I did give a talk on Sunday about missionary work. I hope that someone felt something and will have the desire to change the branch.

We have been asking everyone in Tobias for references. Even when we make contacts in the street we ask for anyone who would maybe like to receive a visit from the missionaries. This week we received 9 references from investigators and random people. No one went to church but I have hope for the next week.

Transfers past yesterday, I will be staying in Tobias with the same companion.

Love and miss you all

Elder Batten

Week Thirty Nine - Tobias Barreto

My week went well. My new area is Tobias Barreto. It is in another state called Sergipe. It was a 7 hour bus ride to get here and an hour of taxi from Rio Largo to the bus station. Tobias is another small town kind of like Rio Largo but Tobias is a little bigger and a bit more complicated. There are more roads here and I still don't know the area all that well. I think that I will get accustomed in another two weeks, but that's all right. It is a branch here averaging about 30-35 members. Yesterday there were 30. The second counselor of the branch is younger than I am.

My companion Elder Custodio and he is from Fortaleza. Normally on Pday I just sleep, but my companion  has some things he needs to do during Pday, for example today he got his eyebrows done ... I'll leave it at that.

We have a baptism marked for 23 of April. Her name is Degenalda. She is our best investigator that we have been working with the last 2 weeks. She liked testimony meeting yesterday and even cried at the testimony of one of the members. So that was awesome. I don't have too much to report.. this week we made a lot of new investigators and taught a lot of lessons but many have already been cut off. So, it's pretty tiring work but I'm pretty animated to it's all good.

Love and miss you
Elder Batten

(Luke's District)

Week Thirty Eight - District Leader

So I don't know exactly why I got transferred. All I know is that the mission president wanted to make some changes and I am a district leader now. I really wish I could have stayed more time in Rio Largo but it is how it is. I received the call at 12:00 that I was being transferred and I had to be at the bus station at 5:30. The bus station is an hour away from Rio Largo so I had to run home quickly to pack my bags and leave. I said goodbye to one of my converts and that was it. I didn't have time for anything else which sucks.

But now I am in an area called Tobias Barreto. It's another branch. Actually the smallest branch of the mission but that is okay. I am in a different state of my mission now as well. Before I was in Alagoas, and now I am in Sergipe. My district is all sisters... but one of them is a new sister that came on the mission a few weeks ago. She is actually Zach Newsom's friend. So that's pretty sick. During conference and interviews with the mission president I talked with her for a while it was pretty cool. This week I will take a picture at District meeting and send it.

General Conference was awesome. It was a lot easier to understand than the first time 6 months ago. I didn't have any trouble this time. The translators have boring voices but you just have to press attention and it's all good. I really liked Bednar's talk during priesthood session and also Holland's  and Elder Arnold's.

We had to go looking for a new house to live in this week. There were some problems with the owner and he is trying to pass off old bills for water for the church to pay. So we kind of don't have water in the house to do dishes. There is a little bit to take showers but I don't know when that is going to run out.

I sent pictures in another email.
Have a great week, love and miss you.

Elder Batten

Week Thirty Seven - Emergency Transfer

Yo, so I'm getting emergency transferred right now. I need to go home and pack my bags and stuff. I only have a few hours to do it. So yeah, sorry. I didn't get in trouble or do anything wrong so don't worry. I have pictures for you, but I'll have to send them next week.
Love and miss you.
Sorry for the small email.

Elder Batten

Week Thirty Six

I'm feeling better now, I'm back to normal. I was pretty close to normal the last P-Day actually. This week went pretty well, we worked a lot and made some new investigators. I heard that Mom cried the whole time while reading my letters, won't say who told me. It 's really weird now that I'm that missionary out in the field who's parents read his letters from the pulpit. That's really strange for me. I kind of expected that Emily would pick up the language pretty quickly. She's pretty smart and if I remember correctly she studied a bunch of Spanish in high school. That's cool that Cole got a scholarship to Utah State. That's pretty awesome.

This week was a lot of work. We had to recuperate from the week that I was sick. Also I didn't mention but all of our baptisms marked for this past week fell through. We have a problem with un married investigators, and their kids that are progressing have less than 15 years so they have to wait out three months or until their parents can be baptized. We were hoping that some of the older siblings would start to progress but it isn't seeming to happen. We have some potential baptisms outside of Celia and Jose who need to get married. It's only a question of real desire to follow the answers that they have received.

I don't have any pictures. I'll prepare something for next week but I can give a funny story. It's a little raunchy but not that much. So me, my companion and a member were walking to a family home evening and these two women passed by.  One of them just shouted out "Olha ele, que gostoso" which is like, "look at him, so tasty" or something like that, but gostoso has another meaning which signifies wanting. When I looked up at her she just gave me this face and I died with shame. I looked at my companion and Wania the member who was with us. I was like you guys heard that too right? and they just started laughing and giving me crap. Not the first time, but it never stops being awkward and weird, especially when the women has like 35 years.

Also I have a crazy story: when I arrived at church on Sunday there were some Americans sitting in the front of the chapel. I greeted everyone and came by to talk with them. When I started talking one started responding only in English, the other didn't understand. Turns out he served his mission in Brasilia and married a woman from Rio Largo after his mission. They were there with some family visiting her parents. But the crazy part is that they are from Oregon City. One hour from home. I was so shocked that in Rio Largo, in the middle of nowhere I met someone who was from Oregon.  Which is not a common place for any Brazilian to know. It was pretty crazy. So I spoke a little English with them, which was different.

But love and miss you, have a great week!
Elder Batten

Week Thirty Five

So this week was uneventful and kind of blew. I got really sick with high fever, diarrhea, headache and just sore body and a little vomiting. I went to the hospital early in the week to get it solved out and the hospital said I probably had a virus. I took medicine through an IV which is common here, but when I returned home it didn't really help. I actually continued getting worse. And I had a fever of 102 that night. So I had to return to the hospital later in the week and they said that I had an intestinal infection, which is what I had originally thought. So I've been taking medicine for that the past few days and I'm feeling a lot better. I should be able to work normally this week. Because the last week I had to stay basically on my bed. We left a few times later at night to make visits, but I'm hoping to return this week to completely normal. So yeah, I'm feeling good now, the medicine has been working and killing whatever crap is inside of me so nothing to worry about.

I don't really have anything to report about this week since all I did was rest, but church yesterday went well. We had branch conference which was pretty cool and I was writing in my journal but it's been more than a month that I didn't write in it. I know I should but it just got annoying and I forgot about it.

Also, transfers passed and I will be staying here, same companion.

I hope everyone has a good week. Love and miss you.

Elder Batten

Week Thirty Four

This week was great, but our baptism fell through. It was pretty hard, but I'm confident it will happen some day. Something hard to explain here is authority for baptism. A lot of people aren't able to understand this, but we are continuing to go there and teach the entire family. It was for Eugenia and her mom (Maria) to be baptized on 5 of March. The date was made a while ago and when Maria got sick with dengue we were not able to continue visiting them. When we were able to return we discovered that Maria isn't married. Resulting, Eugenia kind of shied away from the baptism. But it's possible that on the 19th and 26th we are going to have anywhere from 4-6 baptisms. Which is gonna be sick. Only the next transfer is going to be March 13th. I don't think I'm going to leave but if I do I will get pretty annoyed.

I'm a little bit sick right now. I've had an upset stomach, fever and headache for the past couple of days so I'm kind of without anything to say. But we worked hard this week, we were able to bring 9 investigators to church this Sunday. The total amount of people there was 48, so things are getting better.

Sorry, I'll try and write more next week.

Elder Batten