Semana de Viagem

Elder Davis' District

Oi!

I can sum this week up by saying we traveled a lot haha. My companion is the district leader so we have to attend a lot of meetings and do interviews, etc..this week there happened to be alot! Tuesday we had a district meeting so we traveled to Pirassununga. Wednesday was crazy. There was a baptism in Leme so we had to travel two cities down to Leme and interview a guy for baptism.  His name is Antoniô. He was super nice and loved to talk! While we were there we attended an activity with the members in Leme and the Sister missionaries there. It was called Noite da Amizade, “ Night of Friendship” It was basically a spiritual thought, some fun games, and then ate some delicious food (as always!). Thursday was crazy too! We had interviews with our mission president, President Bangerter. I seriously love him. He is pretty awesome! I feel like he is a long time friend that I have known forever but I have really only known him for 4 weeks haha. You can feel his love for you. He genuinely cares and makes sure we are all set and okay, always checking if we need anything.

Elder Davis with Pres. & Sis. Bangerter. (Pres. Bangerter is 6'7")

Friday was probably our hardest day. Estava quente! ( It was super hot). We were out making contacts all day. But we have 4 new investigators!! Woohoo! We met two families, the family of Franciana and the family of José Carlos, they invited us in and we were able to give them the first lesson. They have asked us back so we are excited to continue teaching them. So that is super exciting. We are still working with Rafael/Lucia and Ademir. We weren’t able to have lessons with them this week but will be contacting them next week.

Elder Davis &  his District at Talent Show

 Saturday, we had to travel to Pirassunuga again haha! There was a stake activity, a talent show,that we participated in as a district. It was super fun to see everyone get up there and show us their talents. We sang a song about what we do, it was pretty funny. It went kind of like this:

"Oi!" "Tudo Bem?" "Meu nome é Elder." "e meu Também!" "Somos da Igreja, Podemos Entrar?"

Just a little song - basically about making contacts haha. Although talent shows are not my thing it was fun! So that was basically our week last week. I am excited to be able to do a lot more teaching this week. Next Monday I will let you know how everyone is doing!

I want to share a spiritual thought with you. I have been studying the life of Christ a lot in the past few days in my personal study time. I love studying about Him. He really is the perfect example in all things. I was reading the parable in Luke 12:13-21 which is about a rich man that has a great harvest and is thinking about how he can store all his “fruits” so he can live a life of ease, eat, drink and be merry for many years. God then tells him that he will soon be leaving this life and his “things” will not be coming with him! I encourage you all to read it. But the meaning of the parable is in these two verses.

In verse 15 it says” And he said unto them take heed and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he posesseth.
And in verse 21 – “So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”

I feel like we find ourselves too often thinking about what other people have, how great it must be to have those things, and how we supposedly “need” those things in our life. Instead we need to be thinking about how much we have. We may not have a lot of possessions compared to the richest people in the world, but in reality, we are the richest people in the world. Want to know why? We have the gospel. It is the one thing in the entire world that will bring true peace and happiness. It gives us the opportunity to have eternal life, to return to our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. Through it we have the opportunity to live with our families forever, to know that death is not the end. We have the ability to gain faith which comforts and strengthens us so we can know that we can make it through trials and everything will be alright. Let us cherish our covenants, let us cherish our families, our testimonies and our lives. Let us treasure things that have infinite worth and not focus on material things which are only temporal. Our spiritual testimony and our families are eternal. It is important to remember that in our everyday lives.

I love you all! Have a great week!
Com Amor,
-Elder Davis


Note: We just received the photo of Cole and the Bangerters on his arrival day as well as a photo of all the new missionaries that day so we just included it with this email.

New Missionaries on August 2, 2016 in Piracicaba Mission

Segunda Semana em Porto Ferreira

Oi!
How is everyone doing? Hope everything is going well! Being here in Porto Ferreira is the best! I love it here.

So here are some of the highlights of my week! Our investigator Ademir came to church again on Sunday which was great. It was good to see him since we haven’t been able to catch him at his house in a while. We tried a couple times this week with no luck. His cousin Zelda has also shown some interest so we will start teaching her this week. We found two new investigators this past Wednesday! They are Rafael and Lucia (possibly their daughter too). We have shared with them the first lesson and it went well! They are great! This past week we have spent most of our time contacting. When I first got here we had no investigators so we have been doing A LOT of contacting. I took the lead in most of our contacting this week so that was super fun but also hard! We are going to start teaching an English class. We talked with the ward mission leader and he said it was alright. So we are excited! That will be fun, for the members as well as for everyone else! We have a district meeting every Tuesday so that's great to be able to get to meet all the missionaries in our district and get to know them. Had our first planning meeting which was good too.

To answer some of your questions, Porto Ferreira is small, pretty nice town. Not too busy and pretty laid back. The people are great, I love them. The weather has been great. Cold at night and hot during the day but not much rain just rained one day. The language is going okay. I seem to speak better than I understand so I am the opposite of what the norm is I guess. My companion says I speak well for only being out of the CTM for two weeks. I guess I am doing well speaking but I do not understand a lot of what is said. So I can start off a conversation pretty well but once it gets going and everyone is speaking pretty fast I get a little lost haha. But I know that will come with time. I have to be patient. I will keep going forward in faith. The Lord never gives us an obstacle without a way to accomplish it.

A funny story about language. The other night apparently I woke up in the middle of the night after my comp got back from going to the bathroom. When he came in the room I was half awake, half asleep and kind of out of it. I thought we were in a lesson for some reason lol. As he walks in the doorway, I ask 'Podemos terminar nossa lição com oração?' (Asking if we could end our lesson with a prayer.) He said ' O que?' (What?) and I then proceeded to start saying a prayer out loud in Português hahaha! I ended the prayer with Amém and then asked him 'Falou?' ('You spoke?') He was just like “dude you are weird”. And then I went back to sleep. Hopefully that is a sign my Portuguese is getting better if I am dreaming in it haha.

We also had a crazy experience this week. Unfortunately a lot of people here, like in many other places, turn to alcohol and drugs when things get hard. My comp says that many people here struggle with addiction due to a lot of things but mostly a lack of hope. Anyway we were on our way home from a less active member’s house and it was like 9 pm. To get home we had to go through a field to the street on the other side with lights. We start going through, trying to be aware my comp is looking left, I’m looking right, and this guy in front of us just stops for some reason then starts to go again. We finally get all the way through the field to the street with the lights, the guy is waiting for us and he has a gun. He is not speaking clearly but starts blurting out questions, mostly asking who we were and where we were from. You could tell he was on something. We told him “calma calma calma, nós somos missonários”. (Be calm we are missionaries.) After he calmed down a bit and we talked with him it turns out he was high as a kite on cocaine. He thought we were sent to kill him for some reason. He said he had stopped in the field to turn around and shoot us but decided to wait instead to ask us who we were. The Lord was definitely watching out for us and definitely blessed us by prompting him to ask who we were and then calming him down. Pretty crazy experience!

On a lighter note you know how much I love Brazilian food lol. I had some of the best ice cream I have ever tasted. It is called Bejô. It is made in São Carlos and is only sold there and here in Porto Ferreira. It is literally the best ice cream I have ever tasted! I love it. I am definitely going to put on some weight here haha. But I actually have finally found one Brazilian food/drink I do not like. I absolutely do not like Caju Juice! It is definitely the worst juice I have ever tasted in my life haha! But, I take one for the team and drink it when people make it for us. I just try to chug it so I taste as little as possible!

There were two articles that I read this week in the Liahona that I absolutely loved. The two articles are: Hold to the Rod by Daniel L. Johnson and Go Forward in Faith by Anthony D. Perkins. Read them! They are so good! In the article about holding to the rod he talks about the vision of Lehi and how we all kind of fall into 3 categories. Those who let go of the rod early on due to peer pressure or respecting the world's opinion more than that of our Heavenly Father. Then there are those who hold to the rod when things are tough (when they are in darkness). They seek God's help through prayer and scripture study etc.. but when things are resolved or things become more calm/ easy they then forget and let go of the rod. I liked his analogy where he compared it to "whitewater knuckles". When you are in the rough rapids you make sure you hold on tight to the rod but when you are in still waters you let go. The last group is those who hold fast CONTINUALLY, make covenants with Him and ultimately reach the tree of Life/the Savior and gain eternal life with Him. Christ ministered and taught for 3 years performing miracles and still few recognized Him for who He is. Let us recognize Him & His hand in our life as our Savior, and always remember Him and His sacrifice for us. I leave my testimony with you of the truthfulness of these things. I know if we continue with a steadfastness in Christ, have faith, immerse ourselves in the Doctrine of Christ, seek Him diligently in prayer - we will obtain eternal life with Him.

Love you all! Thank you for your support. Happy Fathers Day to Dad & all the fathers. Thank you Dad for being such a great Father. I owe so very much to you and your example. (Today is Father’s Day in Brazil.)



Com Amor,

Elder Davis

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

One Week Left in the CTM

Elder Davis' District with their teacher Irmao Louza

Oi!

How is it going everybody? I am loving it here! But I only have 6 more days in the CTM! Then I am off to Piracicaba! I know it will be challenging but I am super excited. My companion will most likely be a native speaker so it will be Portuguese 24/7 but that will help me to learn the language so much better than I already know it.

This week has been good! We haven’t really done anything that differs from the normal schedule of every week. Some guys that we became really good friends with, left the CTM yesterday for the mission field, Elder Louza, Elder Bodine, Elder Callhan, and Elder Hair. I  really miss them. They were the best and helped me a lot when I first got here to the CTM. The last three are Americans and Elder Louza is Brazilian. I took pictures that I will send today. We did the traditional “trading of ties” thing where we trade ties with them and write on the back of them so that we could remember each other. I wish them the best as they go into the mission field! It has been awesome to meet so many good people from all over.

Elder Davis with Elders Bodine, Hair,and Callhan

Elder Louza and Elder Davis

Random diversions at night in their room

Sorry you didn’t get those pictures last week. I am not sure what is happening with that. I will try to send them again when I get to Piracicaba. I did get some this week with our instructor/teacher Irmao Louza and the district and a lot of friends I have made here so I will send those today. Don’t worry mom I am taking a lot of pictures haha. I know how you love getting them.

Elder Davis and Irmao Louza

Elder Machado and Elder Davis

Elder Araneda and Elder Davis

Elder Candido and Elder Davis

Elder Davis and Elder Andrade

Elder Silva and Elder Davis

Elder Davis and Elder Vicente

Elder Luzo and Elder Davis

We went street contacting/ proselyting this past Thursday, and I have a pretty funny story to share. So Thursday is apparently a really busy work day here in Brazil. So as we approached people to talk to them we had a lot of people just shrugging us off. There were however, a lot of people that were willing to listen and were interested. It is amazing how you instantly know if they truly want to listen and are ready to do so. I love the people here and cannot wait to teach them but anyway, we felt like we should go talk to this 20-25 year old woman that had just gotten off the bus. So we went to go talk to her. We talked to her about the gospel a little and then introduced the Book of Mormon. When I told her that we had a gift for her and she didn’t have to pay for it (a lot of people here sell stuff on the streets as ´presents´), she spontaneously reacted. She was so excited and said 'A present for me!?' and then proceeded to full on hug me before I could do anything about it haha. She was super friendly and so nice. As we spoke to her about the gospel we could tell that she was ready and looking for something in her life. She was so accepting of it and was so willing to do what she needed to so that she could know of its truth.

Tell everyone thank you for writing. I love getting mail and hearing how everyone is doing! I am sorry that I do not have time to respond to everyone all the time. We only get 40 minutes or so to read our emails and respond so it is not enough time to answer everyone. I am hoping that in Piracicaba there will be a little more time to write people. But please thank everyone for me.

So next week we will take a 2 hour bus ride to get to Piracicaba but here is the thing. Our P-day (the day to email home) here in the CTM is Wednesday and when we get to Piracicaba it is on Monday. I leave Tuesday so I miss both by a day. I think I will be able to email you saying I got there okay but I am not sure. So do not worry if you do not receive anything next week.


Just a quick spiritual thought before I end this email. In Alma 26;27 it says,
“ Now when our hearts were depressed, and we were about to turn back, behold, the Lord comforted us, and said: Go amongst thy brethren, the Lamanites, and bear with patience thine afflictions, and I will give unto you success.”
When our hearts are depressed, when we want to give up and turn back, the Lord will give us success if we have patience with our afflictions and trust in the Lord/rely on Him. So remember don’t stress about what you have on your plate, the Lord will always be there to help you. Don’t give up. Success is closer than you think. Press on and He will bless you. I love and miss you all.



Until next time!

Elder Davis

Month Mark

Elders Christensen, Davis, Bodine, Hair, Callahan, Woodward, Dickson, Hainsworth & Simmons

Oi!

How is everyone doing? I hope you are all doing well! Everything has been pretty much the same for the past week except for few a cool experiences!

New Roommates

As I said in the last email, our roommates left this past Tuesday and thenWednesday we got new roommates! They are super chill and cool. I took a picture with them at the temple so I will definitely send that to you guys! They are great. They help us learn Portuguese and we help them learn English. We have been helping them learn to pray in English and it is great to see them learn.
For our physical activity every day, we pretty much just play some 3v3 basketball tourneys. One of the times we went out to play there

Elder Davis' District

was a massive dead rat on the court! It was so funny because all the sisters were super grossed out! I have to admit it was pretty disgusting but we just played around it. haha. We pretty much ball up every day. Elder Christensen is a pretty awesome player. He shoots threes like no other and can drive super well. That makes playing against him pretty fun!This past Sunday, our branch president President Sancho told my companion and I that we were going to give talks that day but I told him we were blessing the sacrament so luckily he gave us a 'get out of jail free card' on the talks. So that was sweet. I still get a little nervous about my Portuguese and I was already a little worried about saying the sacrament prayers. I feel my pronunciation is still somewhat bad. So I practiced a lot and prayed fervently for help and things went well.

Elder Dickson and Elder Davis

The words seemed to roll of my tongue, like I was a Brazilian. haha But seriously it is great how the Lord works. Have faith and you will gain a witness of a principle after the trial of your faith.

Pres. Sancho also told me about my new calling. Before this I didn’t have a calling but he called me as the new Zone Leader for our CTM branch! I’m excited! I don’t get to do as much as I would as Zone Leader in the field but I still get to help out with 9 other districts which is about 47 missionaries now and about 70 when I leave. So that will be such a cool experience to have.

That is all that really happened this past week. We are going to go proselyting again this coming week so that is going to be another great experience. I will let you know how it goes! Thanks everyone for writing. I appreciate all the encouragement, testimonies and updates. I wouldn’t send anymore letters to the

The Crew always smiling but never looking the same direction!

CTM though. You should start sending them to the mission home because I leave in 14 days and it takes letters about 11 days to get here. Thanks for the pictures of Raurc. He is such a cute little guy and thanks for all the other family group photos. I wish I could have been at that family BBQ. Aunt Adelle and Uncle Chad are the awesome. We actually eat a lot of meat here too and it is so easy to put on a few pounds so we play basketball in the mornings and workout every night before we go to bed. We do push ups, sit-ups, crunches, planks, and other core stuff - keeps us in shape a bit. Tell Uncle Kent I love him and pray for him always. I hope he feels better soon. I miss his jokes.

Love you all! Hope everyone is continuing to do well!

Love,
Elder Davis

Três semanas já

Oi!

So this week has been the same as the other weeks pretty much, just lots of class and lots of teaching 'investigators'. The one thing that was different was that we got to go into the center of São Paulo to proselyte this week! That was pretty cool!  They took us to one of the busiest streets of São Paulo (it was a street where one of the most famous museums in São Paulo is) and gave us 10 Book of Mormons per companionship to give to those with spoke with. We were supposed to share a quick message about the Book of Mormon, as well as talk to them a little about their life and how reading the Book of Mormon could bless their life.  If they were interested we got their contact information for the missionaries in that area so they could follow up and teach them more about the gospel. Before going I was worried about being able to communicate well in Portuguese. I was comfortable with being able to speak with them since I can form my sentences pretty well but the thing I was really worried about was understanding their responses and questions. In the CTM the teachers and everyone talk slow to you since they know you are learning and have only been here 3 weeks. However in São Paulo people generally speak pretty fast and slurred together. Anyway, I decided to prayerfully fast the day before we went.  I knew that if I asked for the Lord’s help then He would provide a way for me to communicate, share what I needed to, and have the spirit there to open the hearts of the people and help them understand. So, it started out pretty rough.  In the beginning as we started talking to some people, the majority kind of just brushed us off. They said “No thank you” or “Sorry” and kept walking. It was easy to tell they were not interested in talking with us.  Then there were the people who would listen but wouldn’t take a Book of Mormon no matter how much I explained how it would bless their life.  It was super frustrating but I knew this feeling was coming from Satan, trying to get us to give up so that we wouldn’t talk to anyone anymore and so we would not have the Spirit with us. So my companion and I stayed positive and kept at it! We kept moving along and sure enough things started to pick up. We got to talk to a lot of really cool people. One of the best experiences was when I had a feeling we should talk to this guy I noticed across the street. I told my companion and he said “Sure, lets do it”.  We started making our way over there but we soon noticed he had headphones in and was talking to someone on the phone.  So we decided to talk to the teenager behind him, who we hadn’t noticed until we walked over there. We went up to him and I instantly had the feeling that this was who we were really supposed to see and talk with. This guy was completely and utterly prepared to hear the gospel. We started to talk to him about where he was from, what he did and then told him we had a gift for him that would bless his life and many others, including his family and friends.  He was a little confused on what it was, so we explained that the Book of Mormon was another Testament of Christ and had him read Moroni 10:4-5. He then asked us who Moroni was. We told him who he was and the discussion segwayed into prophets and then onto Joseph Smith. We had just learned the First Vision in Portuguese like 5-6 days before, which was great timing, so we got to share the account of the First vision with him, which was super cool! He had some questions and we answered them and he was very interested so we got his name and number. Hopefully the other missionaries will be able to follow up with him.  He was totally ready to hear the gospel at that time and I am grateful that the Lord gave me that prompting to cross the street.

There is one other quick experience I wanted to tell you about. At breakfast one morning I was standing in line talking with another missionary in what I thought was total Portuguese, with some English words mixed in for the words I did not know. He is Brazilian and is learning Spanish. We were just having a basic conversation of how you doing, where you from and where are you going.  At the end of the conversation, he told me that I spoke Spanish pretty well.  I was totally in shock because I swear that I was speaking Portuguese with some English!  I don’t know if I remember my High School Spanish better than I thought, or my Portuguese is not as good as I thought, or it was the “gift of tongues”, or my mind is so overloaded  it’s just switching in and out of every language I know. haha  But what I do know is the Holy Ghost is definitely present in our lives and helps us communicate not only through words but the spirit.  The experiences I am having have been huge testimony builders for me.  I know the Gift of Tongues is real and if you live worthy of it, righteously ask for it, you will receive it.  

 Our Brazilian roommates left yesterday.  Brazilians here in the CTM only stay for 3 weeks since they are not learning a new language. I was definitely sad to see them leave.  We had some great times and became really close. 

 I didn’t send pictures last week and this week because I had only taken a few. I will send some pictures next week though! I hope everyone is doing well! Love you guys!

Elder Davis

Semana 2

Oi!

How is it going guys! How was your fourth of July? As you can probably guess they didn't do too much here for the fourth but the cafeteria put up some cool decorations for us and we had fries and burgers instead of the regular Brazilian food. Thought that was awesome of them! So we have an activity of physical every morning, whoops meant physical activity but in Portuguese you translate it that way haha. (I guess it is good my mind is starting to think that way and I have to stop & think how it should be said in English.) Anyway, every morning we go play basketball. We aren't allowed to play actual games but it depends on the instructor out there with us. We love hollering "cesta" when someone makes a basket- got to use the Portuguese everywhere haha. (Cesta means basket/bucket.) Too bad Wolfgang (aka Elder Schulthess) isn't here to tear up the court with me! There is an elder in my district, Elder Christensen, and he is pretty good. Probably the best player I have ever played with. So it is a lot of fun - we look forward to it everyday.

I got sick two days ago so that ISN'T fun. Everyone in the CTM is getting this bug that got spread around and I thought my companion and I were in the clear but I spoke too soon. I will be alright though! You know me nothing keeps me down too long.

I got a quad of Portuguese scriptures today at the temple. I am ready to spread the gospel! I am also getting this super cool leather scripture case today. They have a lot of leather things here that have CTM or gospel sayings on them! As you can tell I am pretty stoked about it. haha

This week was really pretty much the same as last week. The one thing you know in the CTM is that the schedule pretty much stays the same everyday, not too many surprises. It is just lots of class & study time with eating meals in between and physical activity in the morning. The only thing that was different from this week to last week is that we now have 3 Brazilian investigators that we teach per day so that is hard but fun. (For those who are not familiar with the term "investigator", that is what we call someone who is investigating/interested in the gospel and wants to be taught the gospel.) We are now down to two because one got baptized already. (Here in the CTM the investigators are just the instructors role playing/pretending to be people who are not members and are interested in the gospel.) Another new thing we did this week is that we went on splits. Two American missionaries with one Brazilian investigator. I got paired with Elder Woodward and that was fun! It was an experience trying to communicate, it was hard but super fun!

So something that I am super looking forward to this week is.......... we are going street contacting/proselyting!! That is going to be super sweet but hard at the same time. So they give us 10 Book of Mormons, 5 per missionary/10 per companionship, and they bus us up to the main streets of São Paulo to walk around and talk to people about the gospel & give out Book of Mormons to those wanting to learn more. I am super excited for it! It is three hours long so hopefully we will get some good opportunities to speak to people. I have to admit I am a little worried they will speak too fast but you just have to get out there and do it.

We went to the Police Station this past week to get all set up with our government ID´s. I felt like it was a good chance to go talk to someone so I left my seat and went and sat by this teenager. I could tell that in the beginning he really didn't want to talk to me but I talked to him anyway. I was nervous that I wouldn't know what to say but the Lord helped me! I talked to him about what he does for work, what his name was, how bad I was at Portuguese, who I was and what I did as a missionary, and where I was going for my mission! The more we talked the more interested he became. He ended up having to leave with his family since they were done but that was super cool to have that experience! I hope that I planted a seed that may bring him to be interested in the gospel later.

Thanks for all the cards and letters. I LOVE MAIL! I am jealous that you guys were at Hilton Head beach without me but more jealous that you ate tons of crab!! Makes me hungry just to think about it!  Good luck to Christiana on her teaching job in Utah.  Tell her I love her. And thanks Dad for sending me those pictures. Good times. Most of all thanks for sharing those scriptures in Mosiah with me. I have been reading in Mosiah too - it is one of my favorite books. I felt the spirit strongly as I read them and it strengthened my testimony so thank you for that. I want to share a scripture with you guys too it is Romans 1:16, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.." Do not be afraid to share the gospel. We all know how it blesses our lives and it will do the same for others. It can only benefit people and if you do it, the Holy Ghost will take care of the rest! You never know what that person is going through and maybe that is just what they need at that time! So I challenge you to just put yourself out there and share the gospel that has brought you happiness!

Love you guys!
Elder Davis