Bem vinda para Piracicaba

New Missionaries & Companions with Pres. Bangerter

Oi!

So I finally got out of the CTM last Tuesday!  We traveled about 2 hours to our mission. We had lunch with the mission president, President Bangerter! He is pretty awesome and his wife is too.  You can tell that he loves and cares for every missionary in the field. He is really tall, he actually played baseball professionally. After lunch we had interviews with Pres. Bangerter and then a presentation by the APs and the executive secretaries.  Then we got on a bus and went to the nearby church to met our new companions and find out our zone and area! There were close to 30 missionaries going home and only 14 new missionaries coming in so there were a lot of changes in the mission. My trainer/first companion is Elder Vieira. I will send some pictures. He is Brazilian, obviously. He is from Fortaleza in the northern part of Brazil. He has this transfer and one other one before he goes home –

Elder Vieira and Elder Davis

so only has 3 months left.  He is super hilarious and a hard worker – so a pretty good combination!  We get along great. My zone is Pirassununga and my first area is Porto Ferreira.

 So we didn’t end up leaving for our area right on Tuesday because my comp.

is a district leader and had to stay to attend a leadership meeting the next day. So we stayed in the staff house for the night. Man, I definitely realized how blessed we are with the small and simple things …things such as being clean.  You don’t realize how different you feel when things are clean until you don't have that.  This was not due to circumstance or ability- that is something different – it was a choice made by those living there.  Anyway it was interesting and makes you appreciate what you have.   So the leadership meeting was the next day, we couldn’t go in though, only the leaders (my companion and other district leaders) so I stayed outside

Elder Hainsworth, Vieira, & Davis

the meeting with Elder Hainsworth and Elder Christensen (the other Americans that came with me). We stayed at the mission office during the time of the mtg.  I got your package mom, thank you so much for all the stuff. The card you sent me was exactly what I needed to hear! So here is the mail situation. So when the mail gets here to the mission office they do not send it out to us.  The mission office is like 3 hours away from my area. They are supposed to give it to the zone leaders when they go to the leadership meeting once a transfer and then the Zone leaders give it out at the Zone meeting the next week. So that means at best I will only receive mail once every 6 weeks. That is if the

Front of their house in Porto Ferreira

mission office missionaries are on top of it. You can send letters but know that I will only be getting it every 6 weeks if I am lucky. Email is probably best when you really need to tell me something.  They tell us not to give our actual street address where we live because the mail is delivered during the day to a box outside our house and most likely will get stolen especially if it is from the States.
After the meeting we finally went to the train station to leave for our areas and then had the interesting experience of having a guy, who was thoroughly drunk, yell at us in Portuguese for like 5-10 minutes straight, about how we are terrorists.  We just tried to ignore him which seemed to make him more irate.  It was pretty funny honestly. . .guys in white shirts & ties with missionary nametags…just your typical terrorist! He was so totally drunk. So anyway, we left for our zone.

Pirassungunga Zone

 We couldn’t go to our area yet since we had a zone meeting the next day so we stayed at the zone leaders’ house for the night. That was pretty eventful too because they had scorpions in their house. We found like 6 during the time we stayed there haha. The next morning we had zone meeting, I got to meet all the people in our zone so that was cool. After that we went proselyting for my first time! It was super hard since the people are really hard to understand but it was great. We found a lady that had taken all the lessons twice and had the baptism interview but never got baptized because the missionaries that were teaching her left for transfers and the new missionaries never came back so she never had the chance. So that was cool, we had to stay another night because the zone leader needed an interview for baptism for one of his investigators. The district leader does those and my companion is that. So we stayed there another night and did some proselyting and the interview. The family was super nice. The food here is so good too. Letting you know there is a good chance I am going to come back fat!  I hope not but the food here is SO good. We left for our area on Friday morning. When we finally got to our area, we unpacked and that was nice to finally be somewhere that was home for a few months anyway.  Our house is nice. It isn’t too bad. I sent some pictures. We actually have a kitchen with a stove and also a washer & dryer so no washing clothes in a river like you did Mom. We do have the typical South American electrical water heater for the shower, in the shower by the shower head - water & electricity right there together haha.

Kitchen

Washer and Dryer 

Bedroom

Elder Davis'  Desk

Living Room

Shower 

Front room.

Purpose/Goal Board Signed by Missionaries that have served in that area

I am going to have a hard time taking pictures here since we can’t take our cameras with us while proselyting, we do not want to appear like tourists. Also it is dangerous to carry valuables with you – makes you a target.  I have already been robbed once. You just have to give in. I gave the dude the tiny amount of money I was carrying. It was like 7 reais. You carry a little so you have something to give them but not enough that it matters.

On Saturday we met the Bishop and had lunch with him. That was good, he's a good guy. We also got groceries  - which was great to have some food haha.  We went proselyting and that was the first time we got to go into our area! It was awesome. People here are very welcoming. We played soccer with some kids in the street and we met some great people.  Anyway, we met a guy named Ademir. He invited us in and we got to teach him the first lesson .  We invited him to church and he accepted! We kept going and knocked on another guy’s door  who talked to us for an hour about tithing and other questions but ended up sending us off after.  Sunday was the best. Got to meet all the people of the ward! The members are super great.  Ademir came to church and loved it! He noticed it was different from other churches. He invited us to come back and teach him more. So that was great! We had dinner at a member’s house that night and seriously that was the best brazilian food I have ever had! It was so so so good!  I think it is a given…I am going to get fat... That’s all for this week! Love all of you! Keep up the Lords work!

- Elder Davis