Cake Night

Hey mom, glad to hear you guys had a good Thanksgiving, and I hope things dealing with Grandma's estate get better. This week certainly had its ups and its downs for me. We had a mission conference and I received mail there, just a letter from Sage Johns and one from Grandma G, sent October 9th. But I should receive more mail from the mission home a week or two before Christmas so we´ll see what is waiting for me then. It´s really tough reading these letters from Grandma, its clear she didn't know what was gonna happen. It is still so hard to think that she is gone when I am so far away, my mind is having trouble grasping the fact that such a big part of me is gone and wont be there when I come home. This week I also got hit pretty hard with home sickness. Up until now a lot of my problems were really language based, all my doubts and negative thoughts and things, but now with Thanksgiving passing and Christmas on its way I´m getting hit on the other side with some REAL homesickness.  This is the first time I have ever really experienced this. SO that kinda sucks a lot. I´ll explain my week really quick and then try to respond a little bit to your questions.

The scenery in Joao Pessoa

Circa, our investigator, was progressing great - she accepted Word of Wisdom, let us take the last of her coffee out of the house but then we couldn't get in contact with her the rest of the week. Just yesterday we finally caught her in her house, she didn't go to church, apparently a Pasteur from her previous church has been talking bad about us ´´Mormons,´´ as well as her catholic mom.We are trying to overcome these influences and get her to go to church to feel the spirit there, but we´ll see. Her baptism has been put on the back burner.

I got a backpack because it was more comfortable than a shoulder strap bag to carry all my supplies in, but this week in doing laundry I discovered that with my sweat, and the friction, the backpack has caused dark grey stains on the backs of 7 of my white shirts... so that made me pretty angry. And I forgot my stain stick in my first area, so now all my shirts are stained! :(((

The day before Thanksgiving we had ´´pie night´´ They don't sell pies here so it was really cake night, because Elder K´s family always has pie night the night before Thanksgiving. That was a nice little relaxing evening. Thanksgiving itself was a bust, we had a mission conference with the area president of Brazil, a member of the 70, Marcos Aidukaitis, and he quiemou (´´burned´´) the Elders here for being disobedient, irreverent, and a lot of other things. I didn't really understand much at all during the conference which was disheartening. We didn't have lunch because of the conference and no members were able to feed us dinner so we didn't even have a meal on thanksgiving. :(

Every Saturday Elder K does an English Class in the chapel, and very week no one shows up... but this week was a surprise and we had 10 people, both members and non members, there! It made me long for English.  I could do so much more as an English speaking missionary I feel like. It is so frustrating.

It's always a struggle to get pesquisdores to church but this week we fasted and had 7 investigators attend church! We are hoping for some baptisms both this wek and the next. Vamos ver!

Quick thought for this week, in Mosiah 2:18 (we always focus on verse 17 but I liked verse 18 in my studies this week)

I don't have the English translation but you can look it up later, this is my best shot at it: ´´Behold you have called me your king, and if I, who you call your king, work to serve you, should you not work to serve one another?´´ 

I like this scripture because it shows the power of teaching by example, and I related it to missionary work in my study. We can preach all day long, but it is just important to be living what we are teaching, to SHOW people what they need to do as representatives of Christ. This is super important for missionaries! And King Benjamin was awesome at this, at being a good example to his people, AND his son. If you read in Mosiah 6:7 you can see how King Mosiah learned from his Dad the importance of being an example, in that he worked along side the people of his kingdom to show them that what he was asking of them was just as important to him. 

I love you all, have a good week!

Your son, 

Elder Sork

Dreams

Hey Mom,

Here is the rundown of my week:

We met a woman named Circa and taught her the first lesson, and she was really interested and readily accepted baptism. It was cool because after teaching her Elder Kozlowski pointed out how it was similar to when Jesus taught Mary, because Circa sat on the floor and didn’t want a chair, and even though her kids were running around crazy and we had interrupted her washing the laundry and she had work later that night, she was very attentive and focused on our message. 

I had my first run in with a real ´´loco´´ here haha. I don’t remember his name, but he was a street contact. He made sure to make his beliefs clear to us... That we as missionaries have 46 chromosomes and aren’t human, and also that the US has technology called ´´spin´´ that enables us to travel back in time, which we did in the 80´s with two astronauts who went back to the time of Christ. He has 9 HUGE books reciting the ´´experiences´´ of these astronauts and these are his bible. The same day when trying to contact an ex- pesquisador, we also had panties thrown at us from the window... the message was pretty clear so we said ´´tchau´´ and left. That day was pretty interesting!

HEY MOM I HAD MY FIRST DREAM IN PORTUGUESE!! Now before you get excited let me explain, because this is kind of a joke. Yes, I had a dream in Portuguese... but not like what you think. It was really a nightmare, and in it everyone was speaking Portuguese and I couldn’t understand any of it! So at least my brain has made the connection that I’m clueless all the time. And now it happens in my sleep, too. Woohoo! Hopefully someday I can have the REAL dream experiences to tell you.

Speaking of dreams, here in Brazil they have these pastries called sonhos (´´dreams´´) for one real, equivalent of about 30 cents, they are like donuts filled with chocolate or cream or fruit, and they are very, very good. They also have pineapple here for the same price, one pineapple for 30 cents, (one real) so I´ve been buying fresh pineapple to eat! It is SO GOOD. While I’m talking about food, last night Elder Kozlowski of Idaho, the potato expert, made some homemade sweet potato fries with the batata doce they have here in Brazil.  I have pictures of that. Also we had lunch with a member yesterday and we had PARMESAN CHICKEN! Yours is WAY better but it was very similar to how you make it, it was a little taste of home!

A little more about our baptism, Enrique, last week - I baptized him.  We baptized him the same day we found him.  We couldn’t get the font filled fast enough so I did the baptism on my knees... not sure if that’s allowed or not but it happened, our Zone Leader was there and was okay with it so oh well! Enrique is a great kid.  He turns 12 soon, still hasn’t been to church because his dad is basically the devil and conveniently has Enrique doing things on Sundays, but he comes to lessons with us, and we found out yesterday night that he’s even been visiting some of our investigators and telling them to pray about our message and stuff like that. He’s gonna be a great missionary someday if he stays firm in the church! 

We had another baptism this week, Mateus, he’s a good kid but the family situation is really tough(his sister was the one that threw the panties, his uncle hates us, parents are dead) so I hope everything works out but I don’t know what’s gonna happen with him.

We also found a man named Paulo who was baptized 2 years ago but stopped going to church, and reactivated him, he’s going to church again and preparing to get the priesthood.

I play the piano in sacrament meeting but it’s a disaster every hymn. They are used to just singing acapella and some of their rhythms are incorrect, also some hymns are different then in English so I mess up, and they do NOT follow a beat and always sing super slow and it’s so hard to line up, so I kind of hate that but oh well. Language is a constant struggle, trying to stay positive is as well, but I’m trying!

My scripture to share this week is Jacob 6:12.   In Portuguese is ´´Oh! Sede Sabios! Que mais poderei dizer?´´ I don’t know the exact translation but basically its “Oh be wise, what more can I say?” This is a reminder to me and hopefully to everyone that we are here with knowledge, if we are older than 8 years old we have the knowledge to be able to choose between the good and the bad in the world. And we KNOW the good and the bad. So just be smart, don’t be stupid, it’s like Jacob said - be wise.  Use the knowledge you have to choose the good.  There’s not much else to it, it’s very simple:  make good choices and be blessed. I just liked how simple this scripture was. Hope everything’s going okay back home, enjoy your thanksgiving; I love you all and miss you all!  Elder Sork

Brazilian Bees

Hey Mom,

First of all, I love you so much.  My new companion is Elder Kozlowski.  He is a big burly football player from Boise, Idaho.  He´s been here for 8 months and is fluent in Portuguese, which is a blessing and a curse. You know how I compare myself to others. He has a strong testimony, teachers with power, and we work, work ,work!  I am very tired. I hated not doing work with elder Galdino, but now I hate ´´working´´ because it keeps showing me how inadequate I am, sitting through lessons and not understanding anything.  Seriously, I am not able to explain even the simplest parts. Kozlowski always gives me time to talk but whatever I say people don’t understand and he just has to go back and re-explain everything to them. I was hopeful with transfers, and my new companion things would definitely be better, but I expected everything to just instantly start improving yet I am struggling with all the same problems.  I still don’t have a grasp at all on the language, I am struggling to remember experiences I have had in the past that has helped me find strength and feel the love of the Lord.  I still think about Grandma often, she gave me a tie with her classic ´´XXGGOO´´ that I will cherish the rest of my life and I see it every morning when I get dressed.  I hope next week will be a bit better.

This week we had a fast as a companionship, and that day found 4 families to teach.  One of the fathers had the PERFECT thoughts and feelings about many igrejas (I thought this word was a typo but just in case, I put it into google translate.  Guess what igrejas means….CHURCHES!  I think he is so worried about not being fluent that he isn’t even recognizing the progress he is making.)  in our world today.  This was the perfect opportunity to teach about the restoration.  They were all open to the gospel, we baptized one of the kids named Enrique, but then Sunday NO ONE showed up to church!  Now it’s impossible to get in with them.  That’s SO frustrating.

I had my first run in with a Brazilian bumble bee, and that thing was FAT. It flew right up in my face.  You know how I feel about normal bees... this guy was about 3 times the size.  Scared me SO BAD; I took off down the street faster than I eat feijao e arroz! (There’s more Portuguese!  beans and rice) Elder Kozlowski was laughing pretty hard.

Elder Kozlowski likes to exercise.  Some mornings we wake up early and run to a little park a ways from our house.  They have a pull up bar and we do some exercises there, so that’s nice.  In my new apartment I get my own bathroom which is awesome!

Not the bumble bee but possibly another Brazilian native wanting to share his private bathroom!

Another thing, no one in the ward here plays the piano.  The Bishop says they haven’t had an Elder that plays piano for 2 years so even though I can’t speak for crap, I am able to play piano for them. Though this Sunday there was a draft that kept turning the pages during the rest hymn and it totally screwed me up. I was super embarrassed. Hopefully next week will be better!

Love, Elder Sork                       

My First Transfer

Hey Mom,

Today I got transferred to Joao Pessoa. My new companion is Elder Kozlowski, he’s an American from Idaho. I don’t really know him well because this is just the first day I have been with him. We have been talking in English just so that he knows my struggles and difficulties, but tomorrow we go to work. I really hope an American companion, THIS companion, is who can help me grow and learn to enjoy my time here.

My last week with elder Galdino was pretty crappy. We didn’t work AT ALL because it was his last week and basically we just hung out with all his buddies. We stayed up past curfew, even watched a movie with Wellyda (which they had a really weird relationship). I just felt like crap. I got fed up and finally talked to him and said I thought we needed to be better about following rules and that I didn’t feel god about the movie and things we were doing but he just said I would learn with more experiences and justified everything we had done. This first transfer will definitely be different.  I think one thing I did learn from Elder Galdino though is the importance of being not just a missionary, but a FRIEND to investigators and even just people in general.

Now, I hope to be more obedient and focused, Elder Kozlowski seems stronger in this regard.  I am hopeful. This last week was tough.  Emails will now be shorter because now I don’t get 2+ hours to email like Elder Galdino did! But I just have such a desire to truly connect with people, have real friendships, be able to joke around and have fun with the other Elders.  If I can get to this point, I feel like a mission would be so much easier! The language is ALWAYS a barrier. I have had no improvement this week with that.  You can basically just assume that I am always struggling, always frustrated, and doubtful of my abilities.

 I studied the premortal existence and creation like you suggested.  I had some good thoughts about it.  I have a study journal where I write it all down. It was cool to know that I was a real being before this life with attributes. I enjoyed thinking about how who I am today reflects those attributes I came to this world with versus  solely being shaped by the influence of the world and the experience I am having here. As I studied the creation I think of it abstractly. I believe that science truly plays a role in it, the two aren’t separate, the creation without science or science without God, but together. We don’t understand the process or timeline of God in the creation really, but I believe that the creation was divinely guided and God used laws of nature, (some that we understand and others we don’t yet know) to do this work.

Let McKenna know that even people here in Brazil think we´re twins! Lots of people cried yesterday when Elder Galdino and I left. Meny gave me a necklace to remember her.  She’s the crazy lady, spit fire I wrote about in the previous letters. I really hope that missionaries in the future are able to continue and to interact with her and eventually get her to church. I just wish I could have made true strong relationships with all these people, but when I don’t speak Portuguese that really doesn’t happen.

I hope Halloween went well. I forgot it was Halloween until the end of the day! They had a few trick or treaters here in Brazil.  Seeing them made me smile! Other than that there is really not much to talk about this week:  no work.  I am hopeful for a new start in Joao Pessoa (where. oh my gosh, it is HOT).  Next week I am sure I will have lots to say about my new area and companion! My new area/ward is Parque Do Sol. I got to see my friends Elder Allen and Elder Bradshaw from the MTC this morning during transfers.  That was nice but it also made me feel worse because they clearly are progressing a lot faster than me.

I love you mom, have  good week!

Elder Sork