Week Eighty Three

So I love my new area, also I'm in a trio. Me and Elder Piagentini (his trainee) and also Elder Andrade, the other zone leader. So I'm not alone as a zone leader, I'm still training and my other companion is the other zone leader. Our zone had 8 areas but now it only has 7. A missionary went home this week and they had to shut the area. But this mission has like 5 trios so I don't know why they don't open some of the areas. But it's kind of a difficult zone, areas that are broken, some wards with a frequency of 40 50 60.  So it's a little difficult. Our area is great but it underwent some re divisions to help out the ward closer and lost some members. Christofferson is coming in March. It sounds like they are going to erase all of the lines and redo everything. It really does need it. They need to undo some wards and maybe even a stake or two.

The area wasn't closed. They just switched the missionaries who were there. So we had to re learn the area. But we baptized 5 people this week and we have baptisms for this next week as well. We got off to a good start. We spent the week getting to know the members and this area. Luckily Andrade had served in the neighboring area at the start of his mission and already did tons of divisions in Prado.

And yes, we heard the broadcast. The broadcast said we could wake up at 7:30 and go to bed later. But our mission will continue waking up at 6:30 and returning at 9. The sun rises early and sets early here so it doesn't make sense to wake up later. It gets dark at 5:30/6 here and at night some areas can be dangerous, but we can do companionship study whenever we want to.

Also I did a division this week in the Barra de Sao Miguel. soooo sick, look it up on google!

Love
Elder Batten

Week Eight Two - Transferred

I hope that story last week didn't scare anyone, I just thought it would be interesting to share.. 

So I got transferred.... I'm going to Prado which is an area really close to the beach (just great to help with the trunkyness! just kidding)  I'm kind of disappointed but it could be good for me. I'm mostly disappointed because we have a couple Laise and Vageanio who have a baptismal date for this week. I've worked my entire mission with the goal in mind to baptize a complete family. And finally when I had it... I'm going to be transfered. It's not that I'm not happy with the baptisms that I've had... but I don't feel satisfied until I baptize a family. I'm still determined. I know I found an entire family in Rio Largo that was baptized but I wasn't there to see it. I got transferred before. 

 

But I've always liked opening areas. It always brings new experiences. Also I may be zone leader alone which will be interesting. 

 

Sorry time is short today, hope you have a great week!

 

Elder Batten

Week Eighty One - In the Bairro

So the week was good and bad. We were able to find some good new investigators and are progressing to have some baptisms this next transfer, but on Sunday no one came to church. So that kind of sucked. And most of the people didn't come because they were sleeping or other useless excuses. And we are going to have to leave Ednilson for a little while because he has stopped progressing for a while now. We did get this lady who hadn't been to church in a long time to come but her husband who we are teaching didn't come. 

A crazy thing happened this week. So we were going to enter into this place called Sorriso 1. It's a bairro which I don't know how to translate. Just like an area you know? But when we got there, there were a bunch of police cars and stuff and we saw a bunch of people circled around this sidewalk corner. We were going to descend the hill and enter in to talk to Ednilson but this member saw us and frantically stopped us. People were only going down in large groups because there was a lot of gunfire and some shoot outs between police and criminals. People were circled around the street corner because there was a head on the ground. yeah... a head. Turns out these guys were stealing mangas or cocos during the night and this farmer shot one of them and they returned to kill him but found his son, killed him and put his head on a post, then someone took it off and threw it on the street corner. But someone covered it with a plastic bag. And so we left and went to another part of our area and during the lesson this neighbor frantically entered telling our investigator to shut down her store because there was going to be a shoot out, which never happened. I doubted that it would actually happen because there was so much police there. And everyone was frantically running around to shut down the stores and stuff. So we decided to go home because it was so crazy. There wasn't really any present danger but every one gets worked up when things like this happen. Don't worry though, it's not like I was ever in any danger. But the next day everything was back to normal.

So that was our week. Hopefully yours was better.

Elder Batten

Week Eighty

We had a baptism this week. Mikaella who is the granddaughter of a member was baptized. We had 3 baptisms marked but the other 2 fell through. One will happen this week and the other I'm not sure. We've been working hard with him but he hasn't been fulfilling commitments recently. We did have some investigators go to church for the first time this Sunday which was really great. 

Also we passed the week without water in our house. We didn't realize that we were having a water shortage and we used all of the water from the reserve in our house. Then we were without water to shower, wash clothes, rinse dishes, and flush toilets. So we spent the week filling up buckets and water gallons at the church and taking them home to shower and wash clothes. Taking showers with buckets wasn't all that bad though. What kind of sucked was not being able to wash dishes and flush toilets. The problem is that flushing a toilet requires like almost an entire bucket of water and we had four buckets and 2 of those 5 gallon water jugs. So we would use the bathroom at the church sometimes. It definitely tested our patience a little this week.

If you want to hear interesting things that happened to me this week.. one, I killed a scorpion.

Also yesterday on the bus I was returning to the chapel from a commitment far away. The bus got really crowded and I ended up standing next to these 3 girls who were seated. They started talking about me and I just kind of got all awkward looked and smiled and said thanks... they then told me I looked like the Ken from Barbie and one touched my hand which was dangled over the seat. They asked a bunch of questions so I told them about the church and invited them. Then when the bus got really really crowded and I had no where to flee she started touching my hair and put her head on my shoulder and asked if I wanted to sit on her lap like 5 times which I said no I'm fine 5 times in response. Then we got to the stop and I said see you at church next sunday and one grabbed my hand and held on to it but then let me go to descend the bus.

So you asked for interesting stories, at the moment I really only have things like that. 

Hope you all have a good week

Elder Batten

enjoy the pictures, there are a lot

Week Seventy Nine

We had a good week. It was a little difficult with some meetings and stuff but we got some things done. We had a little trouble accompanying some of our potential baptisms but this week we have some possible baptisms for saturday. So we've got some work to do this week. We´ve been working a lot with the members and going after family members and references that they have.

We did some divisions this week. There are a couple of missionaries that are having trouble opening an area so we went to work there one day. One of the elders is new and the other is not exactly inexperienced because he has some time on the mission but doesnt know too much. So I grabbed the newbie and left with a list of members making contacts and stuff. 

One of the investigators that I was teaching before we divided the area was baptized on Saturday. The other that we have could be baptized on saturday if he can stop drinking coffee this week.

Have a good week, enjoy the snow

Elder Batten

Week Seventy Eight

Me and my companion had some nice progress this week. We didn't find a ton of new investigators but we found some people who seem pretty serious and commited to pray and read. Ednilson and Mayara may get baptized on Saturday it's not too certain yet. Ednilson was able to stop drinking coffe, but he has some other problems. We also have a baptism marked for the 21st which is pretty certain.

We´re teaching this guy named Sandro who was the reference of a member. When we started teaching him, he told us he had been praying recently asked God for guidance in his life. That was on the same day that we challanged his sister who is a member to give us a reference. it was pretty cool and the testimony meeting was very powerful at church when almost their entire family was there together and some of them bore testimonies.

I'm really loving this area a lot and I'm pretty happy here!

Don't have much else to say. I'll take pictures this week

Love

Elder Batten

Week Seventy Seven - Happy New Year

Hey! I hope that you all had a good New Year. Our New Year went well, but there wasn´t  too much to do. Everyone here left for the beach. That is pretty common on Holidays. But we returned home a little early, and ordered a pizza to celebrate. There were a bunch of fireworks at midnight but I was too tired and lazy to get out of my bed to go and see them. 

The week went well other than that. I like my new companion. We´ve been building a new teaching pool. We visited a lot of members this week and we are getting some things going. The way we divided the area I stayed in the area which we weren´t really working that much, but we divided the investigators who were progressing to be baptized. So we will work in the other area a little to help out Ednilson and Mayara. 

Ednilson has a baptismal date set for this week but he´s got cold feet. We are working with him to start living the commandments. He´s been keeping commitments and praying, but the New Year kind of jumbled things up. 

I gave a talk on Sunday. The bishop asked us 4 to talk about a principle of the Gospel. (Faith, repentance, baptism and the gift of the holy ghost) I talked about the gift of the holy ghost and afterwards the Bishop finished the meeting. It was cool, but there weren´t very many people at sacrament meeting to hear it though. 

I hope the new year was great

Elder Batten