WEEK #87

Hey everyone!

I hope you all had a great week, we had a good week here in Lucas do Rio Verde! We didn't end up having Katias baptism, although she came to church on Sunday. Last Thursday we marked a date with her for next week and she came to church, but She left right before sacrament meeting because she had to go prepare lunch for her family. Before she left she told Elder Marstella that she wasn't sure about getting baptized anymore, so we will visit with her tomorrow and see what's up. 

Also, we went to a city that is about an hour from Lucas to spend the night with a member family that lives out there. The city is called Novo Mutum, it doesn't have a ward or a branch, just that family but they don't have the means to come to church here in Lucas every week. So once a transfer we are allowed to go there. We stayed the night there at their house on Friday and had a family night with them and another family that they invited. We had a churrasco with lots of meat and good food, it was super fun. We will be going back next month as well. We taught about the restoration and it went well. There were a bunch of kids though so me and my companion were kept really busy doing magic tricks and translating things into English haha. 

The sisters here had a baptism though of a 17 year old girl, it was really cool. After the baptism we had a branch activity at the chapel and had a decent turnout. Also last night we had family night with the whole branch at a members house, we do it every Sunday night. But we made visits with the young men during the afternoon on Sunday and brought some less actives with us to the family night, it was a lot of fun! We also played this game where you have to switch and compete for chairs a lot and run around, and I ended up basically tackling two people by accident haha everyone was laughing super hard! I felt bad though but its a dangerous game! haha.

Also our investigator Marlene came to church with Paulo who is a member, they are planning on getting married soon so we can get her baptized, hopefully before I go home in February! Marriage here is pretty expensive and takes a while so we have to see what we can do to help them. 

That about sums up the week, we just worked as usual and tried to strengthen the branch. but it was a good and fun week. I hope you all have a great week, I love and miss you all! 

Com muito amor,

Elder Kyle Payne

WEEK #86

Hello Everyone,

I don't have very much time today so I will get right to it! :) This week went really well, although we didn't have our baptism of Katia. Her birthday was Saturday so she traveled with her husband to spend the weekend in Rondonopolis. But we will try for this next week :)

We taught English on Friday night, we only had 2 people show up this week but we got their names and addresses so we will visit them this next week. Right now our focus as far as work goes is increasing the attendance at church on Sundays and helping the branch grow, so we are trying to find new families to baptize, as well as reactive less active members. Also we had interviews with President on Friday night, and he said that he wants Elder Marstella and me to really help the young men in the branch, right now there are about 7 who will be able to go on missions next year, so he wants us to go make visits with them, teach them, and help prepare them to go on missions next year. It should be a lot of fun though, the young men here are awesome! I will be really happy when they all go on missions soon.

We have a couple investigators who want to get baptized they just need to get married first, so we are trying to work things out and help them do that. Also we have been teaching Katia´s son, he is super interested and wants to be baptized as well, he just has a hard time coming to church because he has to work. So we are praying that all of our investigators and less actives and members we are working with will be able to resolve things with their work so that they can attend church on Sundays. We will help them as much as we can and keep encouraging them, but they still have to work and provide for their families so its a tough situation.

I have really been thinking a lot the past few weeks just how important it is for us to show love for our family members, friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc. Little acts of kindness make the biggest difference in the lives of those around us. When members or missionaries or investigators have helped me and shown me love even in the simplest ways, it has made a huge difference in my life and in my mission. I was reading the other day that love is not only a noun, but it is a VERB. If we want to feel more love in our lives we need to show more love for others. I hope this week that we can all take advantage of opportunities to serve, encourage, and most of all love those around us. I know that as we do so, the spirit will be more abundant in our lives and we will truly be blessed. "Do good, feel good!" :)

Anyways, things are going good, we are working with the members here and the work is going great. This branch has grown a lot this past year and I'm excited to be a part of it, hopefully we can make a difference here as well! I hope you all have a wonderful week, I love and miss you!

"Começar é para todos. Continuar é para os valentes. Terminar é para os heróis!"
(To begin is for everyone. Continue is for the brave. Finish is for heroes.)

Love,
Elder Kyle Payne

WEEK #85

Hey Everyone,

I hope you all had a good Halloween! They don't celebrate it here in Brazil, or at least where I'm at, so I didn't even realize it was Halloween until like 6 at night! haha. But its crazy to think about, I received my mission call 2 years ago on Halloween! Time has gone by so dang fast!

This week was really good for me and Elder Marstella. We still have Katia on date to be baptized this Sunday, she didn't come to church yesterday so it was a bummer. She had to work. We only had one of our investigators show up for church, even though we invited like 6 of them! It is so hard to get people off their butts sometimes! haha jk. But church starts at 9 am, and everybody here wants to sleep and relax on Sunday mornings. Most churches here have their Sunday services in the evenings, so some people think its weird to have it Sunday morning. We will keep trying though! We actually got a lot of references from members here though and taught some good lessons. Some members also brought their friends to church so we got some new investigators that seem really cool, we will go visit them this week and invite them to church next Sunday as well.

We had a pretty crazy experience though on Saturday night though, we were walking at night on our way to one of our appointments, and a drunk guy rode past us on his bike and called us over. We went over and he started saying I'm a drunk, I'm a drunk, you guys need to help me. Then he started saying how he is drinking again because his wife doesn't want to be with him anymore and that she has a new boyfriend now. Then he starts getting all mad and saying how he is going to kill her and her new boyfriend and anyone that is at the house! The thing is he was a little drunk, but he wasn't totally wasted either, so we weren't sure how serious he was haha. But then he said he was going to get an axe and kill everyone, so we just told him not to do that and that he needs to cool down a little bit and pray and ask for help. We told him that things would be much worse if he killed somebody so he shouldn't do it. But he kept on saying that he was going to, so we just invited him to church and said it would help him and change his life and we gave him a pamphlet about the Gospel. Then he rode off. he didn't come to church but I wish the best for him haha! We got his address and phone number so we will go visit him this week.

We also got some new beds finally, they are still really crappy beds and are super hard but they are better than the other ones we had. They got delivered on Thursday, we had to wait for 5 and a half hours for them to deliver the beds. They said they would be there at 2 but didn't show up until 7 30, so there wasn't much we could do but everything worked out. On Friday we had a meeting with our zone leaders Elder Nere and Elder Weeks, they slept at our house and had to use our old mattresses! haha. But then we did divisions with them and it was a lot of fun, good to see them again.
6 months to sexy program is still going strong! haha. I'm trying to eat as healthy as I can. I limited myself to only one coke per week, its hard though because we always have soda at members houses for lunch. But I'm trying haha.

Anyways things are going really well though, we should mark some more baptismal dates this week and if everything goes according to plan Katia should be baptized this Sunday. We are super excited! We also have 2 investigators who want to get baptized really bad and come to church every Sunday, they just have to get married first because they live together. But we will still work with them. But I hope you all have a wonderful week, love and miss you guys!

Love,
Elder Kyle Payne