WEEK #93

Friends and Family,

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! My Christmas was really good, it was super hot and then rained a bunch, a little different than the snow I'm used to but it was still good haha. I was able to skype my family so it was awesome. 

It was a bit difficult to find our investigators at home, most of people are traveling right now. But we did have a good branch activity for Christmas. Also we had a huge Christmas eve dinner with Paulo and Marlene (our investigators who are going to get married and baptized soon) It was us missionaries with their family, it was really nice.

This week will be pretty crazy as well because of New Years, we are expecting a lot of drunk people so we just have to be careful haha. But also for my birthday tomorrow we are having a big churrasco at Rafaels house, so it should be really good! 

I'm still doing the six month to sexy program, Ive been doing the Insanity Dvds for a couple weeks now, still going strong. We are also eating healthy and lifting a little with the weights we have at the house. I have mostly cut out Coca cola from my diet but occasionally I cant resist! ;) haha

This week we are planning on marking a few baptismal dates and getting people to come to church with us on Sunday, hopefully we will be able to encounter our investigators at home, most people are pretty busy this time of year but we will see. We are still working with Katia, she hasn't come to church for a long time but we are going to see if she is still interested or not. Also we have had a few recent converts who have become less actives unfortunately, so we are going to be visiting them and trying to rekindle their testimonies and get them to church. 

That about sums up things here, I hope you all have a wonderful and blessed week! I love and miss you all. Tchau 2014, FELIZ ANO NOVO! :)

Love,

Elder Kyle Payne

WEEK #92

FELIZ NATAL EVERYONE!

I hope you are all as excited as I am for Christmas! I love this time of year, even when I am on the other side of the world and there is no snow ;) 

We had a really good week, we have been working with less actives and our goal for the week was to invite everybody to the branch Christmas activity on Saturday, we had a really good turnout! there were a lot of people that showed up. Also the church attendance on Sunday was almost 100 people so it was great! 

We are also working with Paulo and Marlene, they are such an awesome couple and are planning on getting married at the first of the year then they want to get baptized. We have also gotten a lot of the references from the sisters, they have been doing a ton of street contacting and getting lots of peoples addresses and pass them over to us. Most of the people haven't been interested when we teach them but they are usually pretty nice to us haha. But we have gotten a few new investigators, none of them came to church though which is a bummer. We will keep trying though.

We have been focusing our lessons on Christ though since it is Christmas time, it has been a really cool experience for me. I feel like while we teach we end up learning just as much, it is hard to explain. I am so grateful for our Savior Jesus Christ and for his love, example, and sacrifice. I am grateful for my opportunity to share His gospel with others. I am grateful for my family and friends, and for the wonderful life I have been blessed with. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, I love and miss you all so much. 

FELIZ NATAL! :)

Love,

Elder Kyle Payne

WEEK #91

Friends and Family,

Sorry I wasn't able to email on Monday, we had to travel 8 hours by bus because we had the Christmas Conference yesterday. It was a lot of fun but I am pretty worn out from traveling, we got home at like 1 this morning, but it was good to see everyone again. Our zone performed a song that we wrote for the mission at the talent show, we ate some good food, recited memorized scriptures, all that fun stuff haha. It is still crazy to me that it is almost Christmas, it is so hot here so it doesn't feel like Christmas time but its all good :)

But last week was a good week, our investigators Paulo and Marlene started filling out their papers for marriage, so they are going to get married at the beginning of January I think. so then we will be able to baptize them. I'm super excited for them, I really feel like I have known them for a long time, plus they have a food delivery business so they always make us great food haha :)

Last we also did divisions with the zone leaders, they came to our area and visited our investigators with us, we had a good time. We taught a good amount of lessons, we also had our zone meeting which was pretty cool. Elder Veccho, my old companion, is going home this transfer so I said goodbye to him at the Christmas conference, its crazy that everyone is going home. After this transfer my group will be the oldest group in the mission, super crazy! 

We spent a lot of time last week visiting less actives as well, we are trying to get church attendance up. It used to be over 100 people at church every week but now its usually around 75, there were a lot of things that happened and some drama and gossip between families a little bit ago so the attendance fell, but it is slowly going back up and we are trying to bring as many people as we can to church. 

But overall things are going really well, I am so excited for Christmas! I hope you all have a wonderful week and enjoy the holiday season. I pray that we can all keep Christ in our hearts during this special time of year and remember the true meaning of Christmas. I love you all so much, have a good week!

Love,

Elder Kyle Payne

WEEK #90

Friends and Family,

I hope you all had an amazing week! So this week was pretty crazy, Elder Marstella foi embora and I got a new companion named Elder Rueda, he is from Curitiba, Paraná. He is super cool and we get along great. He started his mission in Cáceres which is in the Cuiabá Zone, so I met him at a zone meeting when I was still in Cuiabá. He has about 8 months on his mission. But my English has gone downhill really fast again haha since I have a Brazilian companion again, but its all good because my Portuguese will get better.

This week we have been taking care of some stuff around the house, we were faulting a lot of supplies and stuff so we have been buying them this week. I have been showing the area to Elder Rueda and we have been teaching all our investigators, it has been a good week so far! 

We got a new investigator with a lot of potential, she is the girlfriend of a member that lives in our area and he brought her to church, so we are going to teach her this week. Also we tried marking some baptismal dates but they didn't come to church or still don't have a testimony, so we will keep working with them. Our investigator named Eliete is progressing and believes in everything we teach her, but she has to work for a couple Sundays so she can take a break for Christmas, so she hasn't been able to come to church. Her daughter Vitória also ran away from home so it has been a really hard time for her so we have been doing our best to help her out. 

But this next week we will be visiting lots of less actives and marking dates, trying to get things going for this transfer. It should be really good, I'm excited. Its crazy to think that this is my second to last transfer! Time has flown by its insane! 

Also the zone leaders are coming to do divisions with us for a couple days so I'm excited for that, the zone leaders are my two good friends Elder Weeks and Elder Stevens, I'm excited! :) 

Anyways, I hope you all have a wonderful week, I love and miss you all so much. Talk to you soon!

Abraço,

Elder Kyle Payne

WEEK #89

Friends and Family,

Happy December everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! It was just a normal hot day for us here, it was pretty good though. We ate some pizza with a member so it was alright haha :) We had a good week here, we had the baptism of an investigator named Charles, he just moved here to Lucas do Rio Verde recently and is super awesome! Elder Marstella was able to perform the ordinance. Charles is also married and his wife wants to be baptized. So the goal is for him to get the priesthood soon so he can baptize her in a couple weeks! I'm super excited for them. They have a little blonde daughter named Natasha that is like the cutest thing on the planet as well haha :) Oh also I heard Philadelphia beat Dallas last week, so that's also awesome :)

So today is transfer day, hard to believe another transfer has flown by! We got calls at 11:30 last night... and I am staying here in Lucas! :) President said I will most likely finish my mission here so I'm happy about that, I really like it here. But Elder Marstella is getting transferred to Cáceres in the Cuiabá zone again! When I was a zone leader there he was serving in Cáceres, and now hes going back there again! haha pretty crazy. He is pretty excited though so that's good. Elder Watchman is going down to Campo Grande again, that lucky dog, it is a lot cooler down there in Mato Grosso do Sul than it is here. My new comp is Elder Rueda, he was in my zone a couple months ago when he started his mission so I already know who he is! he is super cool and I think he is from Curitiba but I cant remember. I'm excited though, he will probably be my last comp on the mission so we are gonna tear it up together! 

Katia still wasn't baptized, we are still going to visit her but she hasn't really been progressing as an investigator so we dropped her. She will get baptized one day but right now doesn't seem like the right time for her. We are still teaching Marlene though and they want to get married soon so we are still helping her get ready for baptism.

We also met a family last week and we taught them with the sisters because the wife really likes the sister missionaries. They are an awesome family and seem super interested, but we found out that they aren't married either. they say they are planning on getting married soon but who knows! They have a daughter who has 12 years though so hopefully they can get married and all get baptized together.

We visited a lot of less actives throughout the week as well, we are trying to increase church attendance in the branch. There are so many people that live kinda far from the church and don't have a car or a motorcycle so its hard for them to go, but we are doing our best to help them. We have a couple ideas, like with some of them we will give them our bus passes so they can go or we can set up a ride with a member, but we can only do that for so long before they need to start getting themselves to church. It has been frustrating though because sooo many people have to work on Sundays, so its tough. We will keep trying though :)

Today I start doing the Insanity DVDs as well, and I will stop drinking coke! I made one change though, I decided I will let myself drink coke only on p-days haha. other than that its just water for me! :)

But things are going really well here, I'm excited for the new transfer and for Christmas! I hope you all have a good week and remember our Savior during this special time of year. I love and miss you all, talk to you soon! 

Love,

Elder Kyle Payne

WEEK #88

Friends and Family,

I hope you all had a wonderful week! We had a good week here in Lucas do Rio Verde, it was really hot but it also rained almost every day during the afternoon so it helped cool off for a little bit... then it heated up again and got really muggy haha. Our area is just small enough that we don't need to take the buses everywhere because it wouldn't be worth the 3 bucks each pass, but it is still big enough that we have to walk a ton. But its all good! When its super hot outside and we have to walk far to appointments I seriously just daydream about diving into a huge pool of Gatorade...

But anyways we weren't able to mark a date with Katia, she also didn't come to church yesterday which is a bummer. Everybody says they will come to church on Sunday but only like 1 in 10 actually come here in Brazil. It is hard when they don't have rides and stuff, so we are trying to get people rides and friends to help them get their butts to church. 

We were able to reactivate a guy named Anderson, he is 17 and was baptized a while ago but hasn't come to church since and has had some hard times recently, but he has shown a lot of faith and humility and he came to family night last week and came to church on Sunday it was awesome!

Yesterday we had a family night again at a members house, there was a really good turnout, almost the whole branch came and there were several less actives and investigators. We then ate Salgadinhos (fried dough ball things with meat inside) and cake :D 

We visited a lot of less actives this week, trying to get them to come to church. We also talked with Paulo and Marlene, the couple who want to get married so that Marlene can get baptized, and they have plans to do it at the end of this year or first of next year, so I think I will be here when they finally get married! I am super excited for them though, they are an awesome couple. We also got a few references this week from some members, so we will be visiting them and teaching about the restoration, it will be good.

The 6 month to sexy program is still coming along, I will start doing the Insanity workout program on the 1st of December so I'm taking it pretty serious! haha. Also I will stop drinking soda as well, which is super hard here because everybody drinks so much Coke. But I just have to resist :) 

But overall things have been going really well, just a normal week as a missionary :) This is the last week of the transfer already so we are gonna finish strong! I think Elder Marstella might be transferred, he has been here for about 4 months already but we will see. Anyways, I love you all so much, and I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving. I heard the Eagles and the Cowboys are playing on thanksgiving day, I love the Eagles and my companion is from Dallas and a die hard Cowboys fan so it will be exciting! haha. Boa semana, abraço! 

Love,

Elder Kyle Payne