First baptism!!...well sort of

So good news, I HAD MY FIRST BAPTISM! Well kinda, I should say the first fruits of our labors because he actually asked Elder Goulart to baptise him which really surprised us both since he´s in love with the US and is always talking to me and asking stuff. Guess the language barrier still up, but no problem, what´s important is that he got baptised. Got some pictures of him and his dad+little bro I´ll try sending. The kids great, all the branch here loves him, especially the missionaries. He was honestly a golden investigator, teaching him and getting to know him has been awesome. He made me promise to tell him before we get transferred so he can say goodbye, then if I ever come back to Crato to come say hi. Very mature 16 year old for sure making big decisions. None of the rest of his family are members, I think they all kinda have their own view...that seems to happen a lot here. Guess when the parents are working all day and the kids play in the street and hang around doing their own thing it´s hard to stay close as a family, makes me really appreciate you all and how we always eat together and find time to stay close no matter what. I´m just beginning to learn the importance of that now.
So there´s a couple things I´ve learned here on the Mish, or at least in Brazil. #1; If your alarm doesn´t wake you up, the dogs, roosters, or extremely loud car music will. People have some ghetto sounds systems here, like literally enormous speakers strapped to the tops of small cars that just blast music loud enough to shake our house. It´s ridiculous, especially at 4 AM. Anyways, #2; The water you shower with in the morning is always colder than the water in your drinking bottle. #3; Matches become very valuable when you depend on them to cook meals. And finally, #4; No matter how many times you eat rice and beans, you don´t get tired of them. No serious, I´ve had them at every meal not cooked by yours truly and I can still eat them. We went to a members house for lunch last terca-feira (tues), and I ended up feeling sick (yet still working haha) the rest of the day until I finally threw it back up around 7 that night. Guess where our lunch was scheduled the next day? Yep, the exact same member´s house with the exact same food. Stayed down the second time haha. The Lord truly blesses missionaries.
Well I know as soon as I sign off there will be a million things I forgot to say, but I hope I answered all the questions, etc. Oh, last thought. This week there´s been a big fair that happens annually here in Crato, and we had a tent set up to answer people´s questions and get contacts all week. Yesterday was the last time we had to work there, and a guy came up and started asking some questions about the church, especially baptisms for the dead, temples, etc. Elder Goulart was busy talking to someone else so it was on me, and I´ll be honest I could only understand about half of what the guy even said much less how I could answer. I eventually passed him off to a member to answer since I couldn´t. I can´t remember feeling so frustrated because I KNEW I could have answered his questions and told him more if I just knew what he was saying. Goulart and I took a walk for a while and talked for a bit. He assured me I was doing great for only being out 3 weeks and this should be completely expected, the problem was I just didn´t feel like a missionary when I couldn´t help people. I felt like dead weight following Elder Goulart around, it really sucked for a while. But later that night I was able to talk to a member for a good 20 minutes straight, then helped another person understand some facts about the gospel! I´m starting to see that the way God makes us stronger and better is by making us give our all and breaking us down until we have nothing left but a prayer in our hearts, and cry for help to our Creator to give us strength to continue. And once we reach that point, and only then, does God bless us, and bless us beyond our understanding. I shouldn´t have been able to talk for 20 minutes, but I did. I couldn´t understand one investigator, but taught another one shortly after.
The church is true. A igreja e verdadeira. God lives and loves us. Dues vive e nos ama. I know that he wants us to grow. Eu sei que ele quer que crescemos. Only by exercising faith in Him by living the gospel and striving to be better can we truly obtain this growth. Somente cuando exercemos fé em Ele por vivendo o evangelho e esforçando melhorar nos podemos obter este crescemento. I leave this testimony and my love with you all. Eu deixo meu testemunho e amor com vocês todo. Know that I think about you often, and though I love being out here, I can´t wait to see you again. Sabe que eu penso sobre vocês muitas veces, and assim eu amo estando aqui, não posso esperar para ver vocês novamente
I love you all so much!
-Elder Wickstrum

June Email (sorry i forgot to post it for daniel)-HIS ADDRESS CHANGED!

Hey family, and happy father´s day dad! So answer to some of the questions real quick, yea my time stamp was off haha my bad, yes I drooled over what you cooked for dad, that´s ridiculous and totally unfair. I can´t even get peanut butter out here and you´re having steak...haha jk. Congrats on the tooth Hannah, I´m very proud, oh and I expect responses from those letters (they took me pretty much all day to write heh). Um not anything I can think of that would be good to give to the Brasileiros, I´ve been wondering about that a lot, and I suppose I can work out of my suitcase...not sure. NO PACKAGE YET! I have no idea what´s going on, really hope it comes this week so I can get pictures of my instructors. If not my comp has his, and since we´ll see each other in the field I can probably work something out with him, maybe take pictures of his pictures if I absolutely need to, though they won´t be as good quality.
PS, did you get the blog working yet? We´re taking off this coming Tuesday, so no email then, but the address will change. Elder Daniel Wickstrum, Brazil Fortaleza Mission, Caixa postal 72800, 60150-973 Fortaleza-CE, Brazil It´d be cool if everyone reading the blog knew that...I´m guessing that´s where my camera might have ended up, though I can´t fully explain the logic behind that assumption yet. Guess I´ll find out this week. Anyways, so this week was intense. They´re really preparing us to get out into the field by immersing in portuguese. We had a TRC (teaching experience) with a Brazilian where we had 10 minutes to teach a lesson which was recorded. pretty intense, but we did well enough. Starting tonight at 7 we´re doing something Brother lopez calls ´survivor´ which consists of tonight through Saturday of nothing but portuguese speaking, learning and memorizing 70 verbs a day, doing 2 grammar lessons per day, and filling out a vocab sheet every night. Bro Lopez does Capoeira (Brazilian fighting style, consists of kicking), so every time someone speaks English or messes up in any way he gets to kick us, which sounds amusing but is actually kinda hurtful...oh well. Oh! Also went proselyting for the second and last time on Friday. It was cool, not too different from the first time, a little less spiritual though since we knew what to expect. Downtown Sao Paulo is pretty amazing though, I thought I knew what sky scrapers were until I went there. WOW. Very impressive. We proselyted on this huge like strip mall almost, no cars allowed just people, but they filled it up. Got all the books given away, and one of the people we contacted even started reading right after we left, it felt great to see. The World Cup was going on that day also, Brasil was playing, so they had a huge screen right outside of a park for the whole city to watch it on. We might´ve seen about 10 minutes accidentaly *cough* while we were passing through. It was cool, but the Brazileiros take it to a whole new level. Every time Brazil plays the city shuts down completely, no one on the streets at all, and though we´re not watching we always know when Brazil scores because the city literally blows up. Fireworks are legal here, so for 10 minutes after there´s explosions and horns and screaming EVERYWHERE! We don´t get to sleep the night of or before because of all the fireworks keeping us up. Last thing, I had my first official Brazilian restaurant experience. It was like Tacanos in Utah, they come by with meat and keep filling up you´re plate, tasted so good after 2 months of cafeteria food and whatever candy we could scrounge from nearby shops (did I mention there´s no peanut butter here? Meaning no Reeses? yea. Or stick deoderant, go figure). It was awesome, went with Bro lopez, turns out I had my first weird food. Ready? Garlic chicken hearts. Oh yea =) I downed 5 of them before Lopez decided to tell me what they were. Still not bad, just a little disgusted that I liked them haha. Man I´ve been here too long. Well that´s it for now, talk to you in two weeks where I´ll tell you what Fortaleza is like. Please edit this so people don´t get tired of reading my emails haha. love you very much family, can´t wait to send you pictures and tell you about the first person I baptize. So excited! Love, Elder Wickstrum HAPPY FATHER´S DAY DAD!

Pictures!

So you´ve asked a couple times about what a day is like here, and it´s pretty much the same every day. We´re up at 630 (slightly comical since we all set our alarms, and they´re about 2 minutes apart from each other), the showers have stalls so it´s not like an open locker room. Go down 6 flights of steps to get to breakfast in the cafeteria (there´s a small pic on Sam´s facebook of that), then personal study for an hour. Class after that from 830-12 with our morning instructor, Bro Lopez, lunch after that, comp study for an hour, gym for an hour, more personal study or MDT (missionary determined time. Get to choose what to do), dinner, night class, snack, then bed. That´s pretty much the routine every day, just throw in a couple firesides every now and then. Today was pretty different though since it was pday. We couldn´t go to the temple this morning so we had a lot of spare time. Got up at 630 like always, then Elder Sturgis worked out on the track for a while before breakfast. We were way tired after though so we slept for another two hours haha. After writing our letters we got to go into the city which is pretty cool, like I´ve said it feels good to get out of the CTM. Our boundaries are small, but there´s enough there to keep us occupied. As of last night I can carry a conversation in Portuguese too, which makes it that much more exciting. You don´t feel too timid buying things, talking to people, etc. Oh that reminds me! Last night for class, during the last hour we practiced doing street contacts with a Brazilian district. There´s a garden area in the middle of the CTM, and by the time we went down they were all there waiting for us trying to act like people would out on the street.




I´m not gonna lie, it was straight up intimidating at first! Our Brazilian roomies were part of that district so they were the first we talked to, it was kinda rough but we got the point across. Then just like last week listening in class, something just clicked with the next person I talked to. Our instructor had actually just split me and my companion so we could work solo, so i walked up to this one guy and held a good 10 minute conversation. IT WAS AMAZING! I don´t remember the Elder´s name, but he asked if I was leaving next week because I was speaking well enough to be out there! It was incredible, opened my eyes yet again to how much the Lord is looking out for us as missionaries, and the blessings he gives as we do our part. I was honestly saying words I couldn´t remember the meaning to. Elder Adams came up to me after and said ´dude, was that just the spirit with you? Tell me that was the spirit or I´m punching your valle victorian face!´

Daniel's first!

Brazil is great! On my way to the plane everyone kept asking where I was going, good luck, etc. I talked to this one guy, while waiting for the last plane, who had served in Sao Paulo. There weren´t really any other missionaries though which was a little scary, found out there were two that I just missed somehow. When we got there we met up with about 10 other missionaries all going to the same place. Since we arrived at the same time we´re part of the same district, 18. they split us up into 18A and B, I´m part of the first with 6 others including one sister. The days here are pretty intense, it´s up at 630, do about 6-8 hours of classroom time all total, 3 hours of companion and personal study, 3 meals, then throw in random firesides and president meetings, etc. In rooms at 10, lights out at 1030, and that´s your basic day right there. Crazy times, but I´m learning a lot. Personal study gets split up between gospel study and language study, which gets tough since every time I´m studying the one I think about how I need to study the other haha, never ending cycle of stress and worry but I´m working on keeping it chill. Yes, our P days are going to be on Tuesdays, I get 30 mins to check mail and send emails, then all the time to write letters which I´ll be doing every week don´t worry. Apparently it takes a lotta days to get there, like 10 or so, but I´ll write faithfully to keep them coming. I liked how you sent me all those emails though, it was good to be able to read about what was going on at home without having to wait a week for one letter, so please continue doing that. Me and my companion Elder Sturgis went out into the field today for the first time with two other elders who showed us around. Didn´t get much, but it felt good just to be in the city instead of cooped up all day. The MTC is great and all but after a while the repetition KILLS! Being in society for an hour was like heaven. Sao Paulo is like a mix between San fran and China Town that just went through a minor earthquake, during which a lot of tropical shrubs and trees sprang up if you can envision that haha. It´s actually just what I hoped for and expected, and so far the people are really nice and patient. Can´t wait til I can hold an intelligent conversation. Ok, time´s running out, can´t wait to talk to you again next week. Tenho testemunho que a igreja de jesus christo e verdadeira, joseph smith e un profeta, e o espiritu santos abencoas nos vidas. I´ll translate next week if you don´t understand that. SUSPENSE!!! Love, Elder Wickstrum