Email 7-29-13

This week was pretty awesome. Remember when Elder () was sick!?   He’s kind-of better now because of the medicine he has been taking, but we went to the center today to talk with a doctor and we the doctor said it would be a super good idea to get his tonsils out.   We talked with Sister (), then she called the mission doctor who is in São Paulo and he said it’s probably not a good idea to get it done on the mission.   So, they will probably end up giving him some strong antibiotics, just to last until the end of his mission, then he can get them out when he gets home.

But that reminds me of when we went to the center.  We had to stop at the mission office to get some of the Lab results they had already done, but afterwards we went to the bank to see if our monthly money had fallen yet, it hadn’t.   But, when we found out that all of that money we spent getting the stuff for the new house, we got the reimbursements from that.   So, we went to the center center and bought a bag, like a big travel bag because mine broke on the trip here.   I’ll have to get another one towards the end of the mission, but until then, this one and the other one I have will be fine for transfers and what not.

Okay, this is all over the place so far but......

As for missionary work, remember that super awesome girl we met in the street!?   We went to her house to teach her, her dad answered the door and got super mad at us.   He has a super big problem with Baptisms for the dead.   He told us that ``His Bible`` doesn’t say anything about it.....  We showed him in 1st Corinthians where it does  . He was baffled and got even more mad at us. We didn’t want to argue with him, so we just invited him to stop us in the street whenever ( because we walk past his house like 20 times a day) and we would love to talk to him whenever he is ready.   :  ) It’s super sad, because his daughter actually has a desire to learn more for herself, but that opportunity was taken away because her dad is super closed minded :(

Another girl that has been going to church with all of her relatives for three weeks now, she just moved here from the ``interior`` (I don't know how it’s called in English..)   But she’s 12 and her name is () (with two l´s, she made sure we knew it, so I figured you all would like to hear it too)   :)   We talked with her one time with her cousin, who is a member, about prayer and baptism and we left the pamphlet on the restoration because we were pushed on time.   She said she probably wouldn’t read it, but it was okay that we left it.   But she did agree to pray.   So, we went back a few days later and asked her how she felt when she prayed.   The first thing out of her mouth was that she wanted to be baptized.   After she prayed, she all of the sudden had the desire to read the pamphlet, then she got the feeling to be baptized.   It was an incredible experience.

There was a little bit of drama with a member of the ward. She gave me a card, but nothing will come from it.   We talked to her, about how missionaries are missionaries, and that’s it.   She understood and agreed to stop.   That’s what happens when you’re an incredibly good-looking American in a foreign country.   ;  ) Just kidding.. but for real..

Like the past couple of weeks, this week was taken up by doctor appointments, and I got pretty sick like three days ago, but we’re all good now, and we’re excited to keep the work moving in the weeks to come.

I’m so glad I’m here, I’d rather be no where else but here. Good luck to the missionaries getting ready to leave!   It’s going to be great, I promise.   I’m so glad I’m here and that I have the opportunity to help others come unto Christ!

-Elder Kyler Blane Farr

****MORE FROM ELDER KY**** 

And, yeah I got all of the pics!   Everyone is growing up!    Everyone looks so good too!    :)

I forgot to even write this in my letter.. But we set up a baptismal date with () for Saturday!   So next p-day I should have some pics and what not from that!

That’s awesome! So () are all moved in and what not now??  I’m super happy they’ll be there when I get back.    And there are 2 brand names here of surf brands that don’t exist in the states.   I bought two of their hats today one for $R16 and one for $R15 that’s like 8 bucks, and they’re AWESOME!!!

She () lives with her grandma, and she’s like never home.   But EVERYONE else in her family are already members.  She lives in the same apartment complex as her cousins, an aunt, an uncle.. She’s set!  The reason she is the only non-member in the family is because she lived there in the ``interior`` remember when we skyped I couldn’t think of what word it is.. Like super far out of town.. like 10 hours. She lived there    ha ha...

(Him being sick)  It’s a funny story, I fell asleep one night with the fan blowing full speed in my face, so I got kind of a cold.. Which is weird here. But it’s getting better now, just a super sore throat which is almost gone.

I actually do have some garlic.. like a whole bottle from California that I still had in my bags!   Lucky huh!?    I’ve been taking it and I’m just kind of muggy now.   But I’m all good!   :)

(from Shannon - I was curious about what he meant by ‘feeling kind of muggy”  J  )  I’m just getting over being sick; just kind of tired and stuffy. I can’t think of any descriptive words!   With my comp, we speak half English half Portuguese..   We just use whichever words pop into our heads first!   And we speak more Portuguese, so the words I’m using are all mixed up.

And don’t even joke about selling the nova!!!! I’m serious! .. just kidding.. NOT!!!   (from mom - We had written him that as we tell people how happy he is over there and how much he loves it, I joke that he  may not want to come home after his 2 years are up.   But Blane figured out a sure way to fix that – put a for sale sign in the Nova, take a picture and send it to him!!  We’d never sell the Nova but it sure is a fun story now!!)

And, I was wondering, have you been saving any of the letters that I send home. I’ll have my journal but I’d like to have the letters that I send for when I get back too?  (We have been keeping them in plastic pages, a copy for us, a copy for him and the originals on the computer)   Awesome!   I bought a book with plastic pages to save all of the letters I have gotten too.   I only got it this last week so some of the old ones are all mixed up, but from now on I’ll have them all organized and what not.
I hadn’t even realized that I’ve kept them all, except for the ones I sent home from California and the MTC   (We have those saved for him here)

I love you guys!   Have a great week, and I’ll hear from you in a week!!    Love you though.   But you know that!!!   :)    Thanks for the updates on my cousins too!!   And will you send me a picture of my new Grandma!?     but anyways love you!!!! :)

Email 7-22-13 and mailing address

Hello errybuddy! ( spell check said I spelt that wrong, but I don't think so! )

This week was actually really good!   We taught some super awesome lessons and made some golden new investigators. Our one ward, is just one giant favela.   It’s super easy to just walk in and baptize a bunch of little kids, but we have set a goal of teaching men and women together.   That’s where it gets difficult there because there are many, many broken families.   We do our best to follow the spirit in teaching the people that are ready.   It has been very difficult to find people in the area though,  BUT on Wednesday at district meeting we received some references from the mission office of people that were contacted previously, and their names got passed on to us.   We were so excited to have pessoas that we were taught were ready to hear our message and have the opportunity to accept it.   So, one of the names it was literally the last house in the corner of our area. It ended up being in an apartment complex. We got there, and almost didn’t even go in. It looked completely abandoned. The door was hanging by a rope, and there was graffiti all over it. But we went anyways, all the way to the fourth floor. It was such a terrible feeling in there but we got the name and had to see what the situation was. We got to the house and the door was opened, we asked for the guy, and he came to the door... our first impression - he has a nose ring, ``chest`` ring ( you know where ) and a belly button ring. But we thought, okay! Repentance is real; we got this!   He told us how he talked with missionaries before and they only came three times until he told them that he is homosexual and they never came back.   He was offended, but it was because the others got transferred, that’s when we got there, and the name got lost.   Anyways, we kept it brief due to the strange feeling, taught a brief third lesson and were getting there right as his ``partner`` got there.   He didn’t want anything to do with us.   I think we all know why the other Elders didn’t go back there.   We invited him to church, kept everything cool, got to the stairs, and ran as fast as we could out of there! You’re probably thinking why I am writing about this situation.   It was kind of a testimony builder for us. When we got the weird feeling, when we first got there, we should have never even gone up.   Luckily nothing happened to us.   We would have had nowhere to go, only one entrance and exit.   But luckily we were blessed this time, and learned to make the right decision in the future!

We were walking home the other day and like 10 kids stopped us in the road wanting to see if we really speak Portuguese.  We showed them what’s up!  :)   Then some of them tried speaking English with us. That didn’t really work out, but one of the kids ran to go and get his sister who he said speaks English. She got there, it was hilarious; she was so embarrassed.   But we started talking, and she speaks perfectly, basically without an accent. Which is hard for the people here  because they never learn how to make the R sound.   It was awesome.  We set up an appointment to go teach her and her family about the church! We’ll pass by tomorrow, I’m excited, I think she’s one of the ´´elect´´ But we’ll see for sure tomorrow. :)

Everything in our new house is completely done!  It’s great!!

We’ve been actually cooking real food, and getting pretty adventurous.. kind of. :)_We just buy chicken breasts and cook it with whatever kinds of fruit we can find, so far we’ve done mango, lime and pineapple. I’m sure there will be more to come. :)

In the package (from his former YM’s leader and wife) was Jerky, ROOT BEER CANDY :) ,  The little fan, some little toys, gift cards I can use when I get home and you might think this is weird, but the toilet paper actually came in handy. The stuff here just isn’t as good of quality as it is there. It was good.

Yeah, that family we taught on the log eventually wanted nothing; they never fulfilled any of the promises.

I hope everyone is well!!   I love it here.    It’s the best!

p.s. I got the letter from everyone that wrote from the reunion. It was awesome!! Trunky definitely hit, but good thing I got it on p-day!

Have a great week.

-Elder Kyler Blane Farr

More from Kyler:

I’m so well!!! The work is progressing well, after we leave here we’re going to use our p-day and spend it with a less active family, playing games cards, maybe watch a Disney movie. It’ll be awesome!

I don’t know why I’m so interested, probably because the cars here are soo terrible!!! Ha ha  (our whole family has been having car issues lately.. that’s what this is referring to)    That’s (sienna) one of the mission cars they use in California, and the favorite . Some of the missionaries in our zone had a Malibu! They’re awesome. But they use different mission cars here in Brazil.. OH WAIT.. They don’t have cars. Ha ha ha just a joke that I think is hilarious. We joke about it all the time. 

I’m not the one to be asking about spelling! I don’t even know how to say my last name right anymore!! It’s Portuguese’s fault.. But I love it! :)

We (the 2 sets of missionaries) separated, because we are both taking care of two areas, so we got the new house so the areas can be split, and have one companionship in each area. So we’re alone right now.

Have an awesome week!   I love you guys.   Tell EVERYONE hi for me   :)

If you’d like to write Kyler:

Elder Kyler Blane Farr

Brazil Fortaleza Mission

Av. Santos Dumont, 1789 – sala 1612

60150 – 160 Aldeota – Fortaleza – CE

BRAZIL

Email 7-15-13

We´ve been having some strange things going on around here! We finally got all of the new furniture for our new house. It ended up getting here on Tuesday, so we slept in hammocks again last Monday night. Which is interesting.. haha. On Wednesday, some guys showed up to mount all of the new appliances. With district meeting and the time for them to mount everything we didn´t have a lot of time to go out and work. It´s first priority to get this house ready for more missionaries to show up, but I just want everything to go back to normal and work! 

Elder Briggs got super sick this week. He´s had the same problem before, a couple of times actually. He´s gone to the doctor a few times for it and they say it´s only a problem if it happens five times in a year. This is the fifth time. We called sister Souza and she set up an appointment. We´re waiting for the results. It has to do with his tonsils though.  Depending on the results, he might have to get them taken out. 

We went on divisions this week with the zone leaders. I went to their area with Elder Smith. They´re having some of the same problems in their area. They have good people to teach, but they don't have many. So we focused on finding new people to teach. We ended up going to a little hidden street with like five houses on it. We were just kind of winging it, not really knowing what we were really going to do. We just went to the first house, and asked the lady that answered the door if she knew any members of the church that lived near by. The first thing she did after we asked her the question was went and got us some chairs. :) She had seen the missionaries before.. ( of course ) but had never talked to them. We introduced ourselves and explained our purpose as missionaries and what we do, then we taught her a brief lesson on the restoration. It was awesome. She understood everything, had some good questions and we set up another appointment for them to go back and teach her and her family again.

 It´s funny, because i´m the kind of person that likes to have a plan, to know exactly what we are going to do every moment of the day. But with missionary work it is super hard to do that. We can´t let our own feelings get in the way of the spirit. Sometimes we just have to sit back and let the spirit guide us, with our words and our actions. 

In sacrament meeting a guy gave a super good talk on families. He talked about how no one in his family is a member of the church and never had an interest in it either. He was baptized when he was pretty young and always went, and always did what he was supposed to. When the time came to go on a mission he didn´t have the strongest testimony but just went, because it was the right thing to do. He talked a bunch about all of the wonderful experiences that he witnessed on his mission, and said the single most important thing he learned on his mission was, was how to make an eternal family. He talked about four things that he never had the opportunity to do with his family, but he will certainly make sure he does it with his future family. The first thing is to have Family Prayer. (A family that prays together, stays together) :)   Next, family scripture study. That´s why we are here on the earth. In preparation to meet god after our time is up here. We need to nourish ourselves with the scriptures and learn from them together. Next is Family home evening/Family time every night. This one hit me hard. One thing that I thought I would never say was that Family time every night was really a good thing. I hated it while it was happening, but looking back on it, I´m glad I was pushed to participate in it. The last thing was, to always to fun things together. Like recreational activities and what not. 

This was just a normal talk, but it just hit me. Looking back on all of the things I had the opportunity to do with my family. Some people don't have the opportunity. We need to look at the things we have, and be grateful for them. Don't take them for granted. 

I love being here on the mission! I love all of the opportunities that i´ve had so far. I have learned so much, and have so much more to learn, and I can´t wait! :)

I finally got the package too!! I don't even remember how long it took, but if finally got here! And i even found a use for everything in it! 

And, that picture. Elder B____ is in it! haha, he´s in the back. 

And don´t worry about my card, it wont expire until 2015.

 There´s a guy here that served in Ribeirão Preto that knows an Elder F___ from Arizona that served there. Around 2009 i think. His name on the mission was Elder I____.

And The Bishop in this ward served with an Elder F___ too. His name is T_____ K___ F___. I wasn´t sure if anyone knew him but i thought i´d just make sure! I´m not sure what year they served in, but the bishop looks about 40-45! haha i don't know if that helps, but we´ll see.

Have a good week!! 

-Elder Kyler Blane Farr