July 30, 2012

Tuesday:  As usual district meeting and as usual we get to lunch mega late which makes the whole day nice and late, especially because we took a different bus this time and it took a solid 2 hours to get to lunch and then after we finally got to lunch, finished eating, and took another bus to get to our appointments, it was nice and late but we taught a few new people there and then walked back to Bertioga and all the way to the church, had a ward meeting but ended up leaving and doing a division so that was sweet.

Wednesday:  A normal day.  We talked to our investigator about why he didn’t go to church on Sunday because it was supposed to be his baptism and well the rest of our appointments fell through.

Thursday:  At lunch we had some cane which is essentially just like a giant reed that you cut off the outside shell and chew on the center part and it’s really sweet! I’m like hooked on the stuff.  The rest of that day we stayed in an area and knocked a ton of doors and marked appointments for this week!  One of our investigators is a street vender and he was trying to sell us all this stuff after our lesson because they made us dinner and well I gave in and bought three of those beach straw hats that are actually pretty nice for 5 reais so that’s $2.50 for 3 mega nice beach hats, oh gotta love Brazil!  I’m just not sure how I’m gonna get them home.  I bought a hair clipper for my birthday present for myself because getting a haircut here is very expensive so I just have to cut my hair six times with the thing and its already worth it!  The only problem, you all know how I LOVE cutting my hair and well I cut it WAY too short but well good thing I’m not trying to impress anyone and everyone has gotta have an awful haircut at least once in the mission...right dad?  I hope so because everyone in the ward is already giving me a ton of crap for it.

Friday:  just another regular day! We did our usual route and well besides cranking out some solid contacts, not much else went down.  There was a birthday party of someone in the ward so we hit that up real fast, got some brigadeiro and salgados and then we were out of there.

Sunday:  Not much went down on Sunday either! We taught some less active families and got home and started the process of cleaning the house.  The president is coming tomorrow to do interviews and to see the house and well it’s gonna be a fun night tonight.  We decided that we are just gonna have to throw away some of the dishes because they have had food in them for the past 4 months and never been opened, gotta love the mission!  I‘ve been keeping track of how many steps I take every day and well I hope you are ready for the weekly grand total…47.84 miles baby! Pretty impressive right, HECK YEAH!   

SEU FILHO, IRMÃO, E MELHOR AMIGO

ELDER GUBLER 

July 11, 2012

So just to get all the transfer stuff straight, I’m in Bertioga, THE BIGGEST AREA IN THE MISSION,  and well it seriously is absolutely huge! It is about as big as all of Diadema and well it’s just me and Elder De Assis holding down the fortress of salvation here.  I love my comp!  It has been raining like nobody’s business here! Like we are talking lakes of water in roads and well cement doesn’t really exist on any of the side roads here because we are pretty close to the beach so my shoes are taking a BEATING!  They’ve gotta last at least a year and I’ll break out the other ones but a really quick rundown of the week goes as follows.

TUESDAY:  The day of transfers.  We left at 1130 and didn’t get to my area until three hours so it really is kind of out in the boonies of our mission!  In fact we are going to the temple tomorrow and it is gonna take the whole day to go to the temple, do a session and then come back!   But after we finally got in the area, I unpacked which was really nice and then we met the Pres of the Relief Society that night and she is the greatest!  We are getting tons of help from the ward already!

WEDNESDAY: The first district meeting in Guarujá and we have some solid people in the district!   I just love the ward! I SAW THE BEACH!

THURSDAY:  It marked six months and well that was a little crazy!  Time really is just insane on the mission! It feels like it has been a while but at the same time it has FLOWN.  A few other highlights, my companion found some cockroaches in his shoes at lunch, I gave my first blessing, it was raining like crazy and well ya know I burned a tie that night!  Six months on the mission baby!

FRIIDAY:  Still raining like crazy and at this point, every single road was a lake!! I decided to bring dry soaks and swap out during the day because it gets really annoying having soaking wet soaks ha but well they didn’t last longer than 30 minutes dry and they were already soaking again!  Welcome to Bertiágua.  Thank heavens a member in the ward bought us some new umbrellas so that was mega nice because I lost my small one and the extra that was laying around the house was awful! I don’t know why everything seems to fall apart 5x faster on the mission but it really does!

SATURDAY:  We got money for lunch and we bought a little pizza and some bread and ham so that was lunch.  Luckily had 30 bucks in the bank that finally showed up for me to survive here because well we are ABSURDLY poor! The area is so huge that we have to take the bus from appointment to appointment and it’s a solid 14 reais to go district meeting and the stake and just to give you a little idea of how much stupid money has gone to the bus. I saw our chapel here and it really looks like a temple!  The thing is under a year old and is sick; it’s a little different that Inamar h our graffiti covered rented building. 

SUNDAY:  We got to see the dedication of the temple in Manaus and well that was our church! It really was so cool to be able to see it.  Another example of how amazing our ward is, one of the counselors in the relief society gave us 100 reais, so 50  a piece for us to be able to pay for going to the temple and to be able to go dedication!  Well that brings us to today, sitting at a members house playing pool, pinball and having a barbeque! oh i love Brazil.

com amor e caridade, ELDER GUBLER :) 

May 28, 2012

Terca:

- We had zone conference and it was pretty great! I really like the zone conference because we get to hear from Pres and Sister Tanner talk which is always exciting because the Spirit is always mega strong and the lunch we get is always extra delicious so I’m quite the fan of zone conferences.  The only bad thing is they take literally ALL DAY!  We get there at 830 and didn’t get home until like 6 so there went the day but it was definitely put to good use!  We practiced testifying about Joseph Smith and the first vision and its funny because we are always doing practices for that and always talking about it in lessons so you would thing that it would get a little old or you’d get "accustomed" to the Spirit or something like that but it really is amazing because the Spirit that I feel every time when I testify about that is amazing. You definitely need a testimony to serve a mission but wow you testimony gets two times stronger every day but you really have to think about what you know and how you really feel about things.  Just amazing!  The rest of the day was pretty exciting too!  Brazilians LOVE fireworks and well we had a random firework show in the middle of the road so that was pretty sick.

Quarta:
-So our house has been DISGUSTING for a while now and I couldn’t take it any longer so sadly I had to use my study time in the morning to clean the house.  Now our house is livable and luckily that same day the owner of our house cam and fixed the toilet, I have been using the toilet at the church but now we have dishes and a toilet that works...it’s glorious. 
- Also a recent convert’s sister is really progressing!  She said she wanted to be baptized on Sunday so we marked for the next week but flashing forward to Friday, the Bishop called us and said that her Dad doesn’t like that we were passing by so much and well we aren’t allowed to pass by there anymore and I’m pretty devastated because entire family except the Dad all wanted to be baptized but now I’ll probably leave this coming transfer and won’t get to baptize them but we don’t really know what to do because it’s a little tricky with their Dad.  All I know is that the Lord has a plan and it will all work out in the future.   
-Also we passed by another investigators home and gave her a blessing to help her stop smoking! The power was there and it went really well!  She started crying and we thought that would help but she is still smoking so... apparently the desire isn’t strong enough for her... she says she wants to be baptized but if she really did she would stop.  But we are still helping her in anyways that we can and the rest of her family too because we found out this week that her daughter wants to be baptized in a couple weeks too but I will probably be gone for that baptism too. 

Quinta: 
- Marlon, the one with the mission call, went into the CTM!  The CTM feels like it was years ago but we stopped by and said our final goodbyes to him before he left!  I gave him my shock pen because I figured he could get some major use out of that in the CTM and a tie and I attached a pic of us before he left.  It’s funny because he never smiled in pictures but after he was set apart he is grinning like a champ, pretty cute.
- We totally spaced about English class that night but somehow luckily we passed by the church at 7:38 so we were only 8 minutes late.  That worked out oddly well and we also got some new investigators so it was a solid day.

Sexta:
- Friday was a pretty devastating day.  We found out that we can’t pass by our recent convert anymore because of his Dad and another recent convert stayed with us for most of the day, like from 3 until 9 and of course when we have a member with us NOTHING works out how you want it to.  We only had one lesson, I mean come on.   So that kind of stunk but he has been helping A TON lately!  I’m so proud of the kid because whenever we see him, he is always telling me about some new friend that he talked to about the church and how he wants to serve a mission and well I just love it because he has only been a member for what a little more than a month!  Can you say ELECT because I sure can.   

Sababdo:
- Saturday we may have spaced a little about English class too.  I forgot to write it in my planner this week and if it isn’t written down you forget because I have always got so much stuff flying through my head at all times!  But a cool experience this week that I just remember but didn’t write down so I don’t remember when it was but I was reading something in Portuguese and this sounds weird but I couldn’t tell if it was English or Portuguese because I was thinking in Portuguese too so I thought I was reading in English and I know that doesn’t really makes sense but I loved it because I get a little stressed about not knowing the language as well as I want but we are getting there, slowly and surely. 
- We also had a split with a member from Vila Noquiera because apparently they baptized someone that lives in our area.  That was a little annoying because we didn’t haven’t had much success this transfer with baptisms but we he finally introduced us so that was great and hopefully we can get him going to our ward now!  Also we passed by the school to talk to one of his friends and I talked to an English teacher there who actually had decent English, I was impressed because no one knows English here but yeah I was talking about maybe an English class there because we would get a heck of a lot more people to show up and it would help a ton with finding new people but again it probably won’t happen until I’m gone so that stinks but I do kind of want to go away so I just can’t decide what I want.

Domingo:
- So Sunday right before church started the bishop asked me if I could give a talk.....did I almost puke,  yeah. I can barely give a talk in English so I was kind of freaking out to give one in Portuguese but he just said a quick five minute talk so I thought up a little something and well gave my talk, it wasn’t too great because I didn’t really think it out too well but I talked about the love that God and Christ have for us, shared a little story that I have and well I may have shed some tears too.  Oh and I may have taken 15 minutes, opps again!  Let’s hope one day I can actually get a little comfortable with talking in front of people because my hands were disgusting, dripping with sweat.  Gotta love being a freak.

And well that is it for the week! Its Monday right now and this morning went to jardim botânico, I don’t know how that translates botanic garden but it was pretty sweet!  And we will probably go take a nap after this but I attached some pics to the email of a plate of food so you can see how amazing the food is here and just so you know I usually pound through one and a half plates like the one I took a picture of.  I also included that poster that I made on there too because I think it’s hilarious so anyway enjoy, everyone be careful and stay off the wall, I love you all, love the emails and I’ll talk to ya next week! 

sue filho, irmâo, e melhor amigo,
ELDER GUBLER 

May 21, 2012

Monday:

-so I realized Monday that I know my verb conjugations pretty well and grammar and that stuff but my vocab kind of sucks so I printed out the 1000 most important verbs in Portuguese and I’ve been studying that thing up so let’s hope that will help because for some odd reason it had a little break down on Monday about Portuguese.  The language is hard but we’re getting there and the harder something is the more rewarding it is when you pull it off so I will be "patiently" awaiting that day. 

-also I printed out those stories you sent me in the CTM so I could finally read them and just out of curiosity I translated them with Google translate to see how off it would be and well that program doesn’t really know grammar so me and my comp are gonna work on translating it correctly so I can use them in my little lessons and thoughts with members.

Tuesday:

- We had district meeting and we did a nice little tie trade and that is what the mission is all about , that’s how I’ve got a different shirt and tie on in almost every pic because we love to trade.

- We did some service for a ward member after lunch and that was fun. We used a pulley thing to lift and dump sand and bricks onto his roof.

- And the most important story of the day, we had an split with young men from the ward. We got a pizza that night and well half of it was all these meats and I think clam (MEGA salty and pretty gross) but the other half was the cheesy chicken one we got last time and I certainly enjoyed it.

Wednesday:

- FINALLY our money fell on Wednesday and it was about time because I was sick of eating crackers and butter for dinner ha but we may have gone grocery crazy and I dropped 45 reis on groceries but good news I’ve still got a TON of food so it was a good call because I don’t have to go shopping again and we had a split with our old bishop, and visited an investigator and talked about her goals to stop smoking and all that good stuff! I really want to baptize that family because I can see them really changing, we’ve just got to get the coffee and cigs totally gone and then we should be good. 

Thursday:

- A young man in our ward that got his mission call a while ago and is going to Brasilia spent most of the day with us to see how the mission is really like so that was pretty great and we got some solid lessons with members.

-Also I know this isn’t big for you all but the funk, that annoying really bad Brazilian music is always playing on the streets and its amazingly annoying so when I hear English music it’s like a tender mercy and well I heard dubstep in a car that was passing by and well I’m just glad about the tender mercies of the mission.

- And then there is English class... this is quite the story so buckle up! but we teach English class at nights on Thursdays and I always leave the front door open so welcome people in a stuff but now I’m a little nervous too because well I’m talking about verbs or something like that and this guy that is BEYOND drunk stubbles in and well let’s just say it was mega interesting because I could obviously hardly understand him because he was slurring everything so bad so he was mega drunk he called everyone there the N word a LOT, he kissed my hand a LOT and kept saying how beautiful I was, he smelt AWFUL and well it was essentially quite the experience.  I finally got the courage to touch him and just kind of escorted him out of the church and shut the door. Gotta love those drunks.

Friday:

- I found out I’m not 170 so that’s 20 pounds I’ve gained since being in the field and becoming fat is becoming a serious worry.....

- Also saw a crazy bad motorcycle accident... we went to the church to use the bathroom and when we came out there was a HUGE crowd of people in the road and well come to find out two motorcycles crashed into each other and it was terrible.  One of the guys wasn’t too bad, he was just lying there but the other was all cut up and they both were pretty bloody but I realized that as a missionary I couldn’t do anything because if something happened to him it would come down on the church so I just kind of told people to hold the guy down because he kept on trying to get up and well it was just pretty sketchy.... but the ambulance finally showed up and there was nothing I could do with all my amazing lifeguard skills so we left to use our soul saving skills ;)

Saturday:

- I had a sneeze fest.  We are talking 25+ times in a row and it was wretched. I almost died.

- We also we took an investigators pack of cigs to help her with her goal.  It felt a little weird knowing my comp had cigs in his backpack. 

- Also had a FHE at our ward mission leaders house and it was solid but a few people came so that was kind of a shame except for the fact that it means more sandwiches and cake for the fat kid i.e. ME.

Sunday:

- Church was solid, we talked about baptism in our principles of the gospel class and well got the sister of  to mark for baptism this next week so I am PUMPED for that

- Also I found a shock pen I think on Friday and I put it to the test on Sunday because everyone is always asking to borrow my pen and well it was a hit and I decided that will be my goodbye present for young man when he is off to the CTM :) I will miss the little guy because it was absolutely hilarious but he can put it to much better use there!

Monday:

Well after all that it bring us to TODAY which was quite the day.  We had a district P-day all together and played basketball, card games, weird EFY games that were pretty fun and kicked the soccer ball around a lot, oh and capture the flag!  Pretty solid day but man the mission does a number on you because I feel like I’m gonna die I’m so tired!  I may have ate it during capture the flag, I get a little competitive but it was a solid day.

com amor, ELDER GUBLER

May 14, 2012

Since it was my 5 months on the mission we bought a pizza and it was my first one in the field and it was pretty solid!  The pizza in the CTM was pretty gross but turns out that real Brazilian pizza is pretty solid.  I made my little special invites "convites especias" for English class and church and I’m pretty proud of those little guys and we had a solid 7 new people in English this week and I’m even more recognized as the free English teacher so we are getting there!  Onto Tuesday, it was kind of a rough day but we did talk to a few less actives and recent converts.

Wednesday:  sadly Wednesday was another tough day with connecting appointments but it was a day marking with people so that was solid! We filled up every single hour of Friday so that was pretty sick.

Thursday:  On Mother’s day you got a nice little sample of my companions’ magic!  It’s solid the first time you see it but if you see it more than once it’s pretty easy to figure out how he does it so essentially I know how he does all of this magic but Thursday he pulled out a new one that was absolutely crazy!  I don’t want to take forever talking about it but he asked four questions, one for each person: think of a number 1-1,000,000; an object in the room; a color; and think of either a car or a bus and he wrote his "guesses" on a piece of paper and had someone hold in their hand while we wrote our answers on paper too and well I have no freaking idea how but he got all 4 things right!  Another highlight for the day is English class!  I’m starting to get the handle of this solo teaching thing!  I just did the basic stuff like the ABCs and they wanted to know happy birthday so we did that and some grammar but the little outlines I’m using is helping a ton!  Soon I’ll be an English teaching pro and maybe I can get my comp fluent too. 

Friday was quite the day!  We finally had district meeting but well we took the wrong bus in the morning and ended up going to terminal and it was just a tad bit stressful because we ended up being a solid 30 minutes late.  In district meeting was when I got the packages which rocked Tara and the letter from Carly with the pics so thank you again!  After district meeting we had the full day marked!  Every single hour but sadly only 3 lessons went through so we only got 50% of the stuff that we marked... welcome to Inamar! It’s not hard to mark with people but to actually find them home the second time is nearly impossible!  We also had another lesson with a recent convert and his family where we talked about the plan of salvation and out lesson turned into a discussion of deep doctrine so that was mega fun but they all seem to believe everything but baptism is a big step so patience I think is gonna be the key!

Saturday:  We had the new 7 people so I taught some new stuff and it was pretty solid!  I got some free cologne from a member once again, gotta love being American, and well we had some lessons and a the person in our ward who is going on the mission had a little party at the ward but we couldn’t be there to see all of it so that kind of sucks but he is leaving next week and this week he is gonna spend a whole day with us!   From 9 in the morning until 9 at night so I’m pumped for that!  I love you all more than anything and I already can’t wait until Christmas so I can see you all again! try not to forget about me, remember who you are and I’ll talk to you next week!  You are always in my heart and in my prayers.

com todo de meu coraçao,

ELDER GUBLER 

April 23, 2012

Dear Family,

Tuesday (terça-feira): we had district meeting as usual and it was the last one with everyone in the zone there because its transfers this week so some people are moving on, but really it was a pretty slow day on Tuesday we only had one lesson go through so that means your average day of walking all over the place but welcome the mission!  We also practiced up a storm for the musical number! I was kind of a just a tiny bit nervous about that so when we would get home at night that may have been my focus so now that it’s actually over I can catch up on my journal and actually relax a little!

Wednesday (quarta-feira): we did a division with one of the areas in our district, Serraria. I stayed in our area and it was quite the day! that was the first time that I had to navigate the area by myself because the one other division we did I was the one that went to a different area so it was a nice little test to see if I actually how to get places in our area and I think I did well.  The division didn’t start until one thirty but we started thing out by getting someone from the ward to come with us to get some lessons with members, we knocked some doors, met some new people and got fed quite a bit.  I really like the Elder I was with.  He is brand new in the mission and only had one transfer so 6 weeks but he is Brazilian so obviously has the Portuguese so it’s was way cool to be able to see him in action conjugating everything the way it actually should be done.  He was quite the spiritual kid so I definitely learned a ton and overall it was just a solid day!  He was also eating up our area because he just kept on saying how the work is so hard in their area.  We visited an investigator family, I could name everyone off for forever but it’s a huge family that all lives together in the same house so it’s always madness and they love us.  We actually taught I think the only person in the house that we never taught before, so it was a productive stop in too even if they may have kept us there for 2 hours talking away.  But there really isn’t that shocking for that house because so much is always going on but essentially I’m just really glad I am where I am! Because everyone always says all of Diadema the work is pretty easy but I think every area in the mission has its positives and negatives but we had to end the division.

Thursday (quinta-feira): Thursday was definitely a good day!  We got a solid 5 lessons which I’m plenty proud of for one day and we got someone to mark a date for baptism!  A little background info, on Wednesday we marked with someone we made a contact with on the street but when we went to where her house should have been, the number didn’t exist so I asked all the houses around the area if they recognized her and no one did sadly but that was how we met our new investigator.  The conversation started out if she knew our contact and went from there to can we come by and talk to you tomorrow because she was pretty excited!  So excited that after the first lesson, the first time we actually talked with her she marked for baptism on the 29th but sadly that can’t happen anymore because she didn’t come to church this Sunday so now we have to push it back one more week and she was definitely prepared as well!  It’s so amazing that the only thing that we had to do is share the knowledge that we have, talk about the blessings we have received and bear simple witness and God takes care of the rest. This work is amazing!  The opportunity to see people completely change their lives right in front of your eyes is something that cannot be replaced!  Also knowing that you helped someone make that change is one of the greatest feelings ever.  We also talked a recent convert and had English class that night that the bishop actually attended so that was fun but no pressure.  It was just numbers which is pretty easy to teach so I held my own and well as of this transfer I better get used to holding my own because well I’m gonna break the news to you all now.... Pedersen is going away.  My daddy of the mission, devastation I tell you and I am actually kind of pretty nervous about solo teaching but I should get the hang of it fast enough or at least I’m hoping so.  But anyways after we got up to 999,999 on the numbers we did a quick little scripture study which turned out to be not so little at all.  The class is usually over at 8:30 so we can get home by 9 on time but it went to 8:45 so we were already a tad bit behind in the first place but instead of me trying to explain all the scriptures in the Bible about the Book of Mormon, the bishop was all over it and well he really got into it.  He switched back into missionary mode and our investigator got all of her questions answered, it just may have taken some time.  We may not have gotten back at the house until almost 10 but they Bishop was with us, he knows our curfew but he let it slide I guess.  It was really cool to be able to see him in missionary mode and hear how to actually explain the scriptures well.  The week before in English class she asked us to show her some but I didn’t a ton of the top of my head so I pulled out the Isaiah scriptures but said id study and come back with more and well I came plenty prepared with a solid 10 but the Bishop was all over it and he is one spiritual guy!  I really just got pretty lucky with my ward but onto Friday!

Friday (sexta-feira):  Not much went down at all, another one of those days. We talked to our new baptisms and did some lessons with them and talked to our investigator that was really progressing but then just stopped and won’t come to church, keep appointments, or obviously commit to baptism but ugh it’s just tough with her because she was so close to committing but then slowly started falling away and as much as I really don’t want to admit to this I’m pretty sure we lost her for at least right now.  She is back hanging out with her partier friends and she is changing.  We talked to her and it was like our power lesson, focus on baptism, and kind of guilt trip and ask her what she wants to do type lesson.  We were fasting to get ready for the conference with Elder Cook but we invited her to fast with us about what she should really do.  Well as of right now still no word from her because we haven’t had time to go to her house and she didn’t come to church but that’s when the work gets tough, "dropping" people... especially people that know it’s true but there are so many people that are prepared and are ready to make the covenants with God right now.  We talked with the bishopric on Sunday in our little meeting we started having about the ward helping her realize that you can have fun in the Church so that is the next step but I’m thinking it could take a while to get her back to where she was.  We just have to get her to follow through with the things she knows

Saturday (sabado): Saturday was quite the day I tell you! I had my first singing performance which went pretty great if I do say so myself :), I got to see the old CTM district again, we got some more mail (sadly still no sign of packages and lastly but most importantly we got to hear the words of God through one of his disciples on earth today Elder Cook!  Let’s start things off at the beginning though!  We got to São Bernardo at 8 in the morning to "practice" and well no one was there yet so we warded a little, came back at the 8:30 and it seemed like half the mission was there.  I saw some Elders from the CTM and so we were chatting it up, re living the old days, telling mission stories and just bonding. I told him and essentially everyone else there about my first baptism story and well that was a hit.  An Elder from the CTM and well he thinks he tore a ligament in his ankle.  They thought it was broken and took like 12 x rays but now they think he tore something and he said they just sit in front of the church all day and try and hand stuff out there but man I feel bad for the kid and he is now staying in my prayers because that would stink more than anything to have to go home to get surgery or something like that.  But after some madness of the assistants trying to get control of everyone, we finally got to practice the number a couple times with everyone and the piano and it was a little sketchy during the practice because it was hard to hear yourself and the piano and stuff but prayer was about the only thing I had at that point because after only practicing it two and a half ways through, Elder Cook showed up so it was game time! He came with Elder Mazzegardi the area 70 here and also the one who gave the closing prayer in the Sunday afternoon session of conference.  President and Sister Tanner started things off with their talks and then we were up... did I feel like I was gonna die…of course not.  It’s not like I have never sung before in my life, it was in front of the entire mission and an Apostle and it was recorded.... no biggie right?  But well it turned out pretty solid!  We didn’t have many tenors so were all just kind of holding ourselves and I help my own so I guess the process of beginning to learn how to sing has begun!  Youre all gonna be in for a treat in two years but onto the real highlight, Elder Cook!  He talked about converção real or real conversion and it was a pretty great talk but it was funny because the two things that hit me the hardest were new scriptures that he showed us or new principles.  They were two things that we hear all the time as missionaries but when an apostle of God is speaking directly to you, it makes it a little more profound. he said this is EXACTLY where all of you are supposed to be. I get the chills just writing that and I have always known that this was what I was supposed to be doing, I got my answer a long time ago but the comfort and the spirit that I felt was amazing.  The other point that hit me like a wall was that no matter how hard anything gets or how unfair something is, everything is made fair through the atonement of our Savior. Wow did that hit home because yes this mission is hard. I’m not gonna lie and say it’s all fun and dandy and I’m in one of the better off areas in the mission but things still get hard.  No matter how bad things may feel, all I have to remember is that Christ has been through EXACTLY what I have been through and that this is EXACTLY where I’m supposed to be.  Wow. I just love this mission!!!!  After that though we got our little sack lunches and were on our way, back to the real world the rest of the night we just worked on but not much more happened or at least compared to the stuff that happened earlier nothing felt that noticeable time is just weird on the mission I tell you.

Sunday (domingo): Another pretty big day!  It was the day I did my first confirmation/blessing in Portuguese and well it went pretty solid. I was kind of freaking out about that for the last half of the week but I didn’t want to memorize anything for the blessing so it was tough to really feel like I was prepared but I had the opening prayer part down anyways it of course wasn’t as smooth or eloquent as I wanted but my companion said I didn’t conjugate anything wrong that was what I was freaking out about because it was ALL subjunctive conjugations, hence it changing every time, which are mega hard to remember... especially when you are the spot like that but hey I didn’t screw up too bad and even if my whole body was like seizing I was shaking so bad I survived.  I had this weird quiver in my knee that started out small but got bigger until this shake consumed my whole body so that was interesting but also our recent convert got a calling!  That was mega exciting because my first baptism in the mission is staying strong and already has a calling wooooooo!  Other than that though not much went down, and the other big point of the day that I’ve got to talk about before I run out of time was the transfers!  We were kind of freaking out, we got home early to do our area book updating and all of that stuff and well turns out they took forever deciding what was gonna happen for this transfer because we had to stay up until 11:15 to finally find out who was going where and what was going to happen!  Well here is the news, like I already said, my trainer is going away and I’m gonna miss the kid like crazy. I really learned more than I thought possible from him.  And I was really hoping we could get one more together but well apparently that’s no supposed to happen because he is off to Orquedario in Santos which is down by the beach so it’s the biaxada where is insanely hot and is exactly where he doesn’t want to go so that kind of stinks but he is finishing the training of another missionary so I’ll have a brother on the mission and I’m pretty excited about that.  I get a Brazilian companion.  I love you all and don’t ever forget that!  Keep the emails coming and I’ll talk to you all next week!

ELDER GUBLER