Week 67 - Giving Christmas Gifts to Jesus in Castanhal!

Hello!!!

This week was good. Tuesday we had our zone meeting. Our whole zone came together and we had a good meeting. WE had 90 minutes in districts, and 1 hour in the zone. Then we ate lunch and spent the other 4 hours interviewing everyone and doing all the needed practices with the new missionaries. It was a good meeting.

We had a cool idea to help our members work a little harder with us. Since Christmas is coming up, we got a Christmas tree and put it in the chapel entrance. But there were no ornaments. We gave a paper to every member and told them they had to put their name and the name of someone we could go by and teach. A referral. Each person that gave us the paper back with a referral on it got 1 ornament to put on the tree. Each referral is 1 ornament. The idea is to get the tree looking real nice and pretty, then we will start visiting all these members and get the address of the referral and go there with the member. If one of these referrals is baptized, we will put a present under the tree. We will put a sign over the tree that says, "Give a present to Jesus Christ". The present is one soul for Christ to save. Everyone got pretty excited and we got a bunch of referrals. We are also doinga puzzle for every family in the ward. The puzzle is a magnet and there are 9 pieces. Each piece has something for the member to do. Like bring a friend to church and introduce them to the missionaries. Or invite 2 friends to a family night and invite the missionaries too. Stuff like that. 9 pieces. Each time the member completes one, we will give them that piece to put on their fridge. And the goal is to complete the whole puzzle. They all got pretty excited about that too! I hope it goes well!!

This week we will have a big meeting in Belém so we will have to travel a little bit, but it will be super good. 

I am loving my mission. It is super hard sometimes, but we see tons of miracles everyday and are always having spiritual experiences.

Sorry I don't have much to write today, I will try and do better next week.

Love yall!!

Elder Green 

ELDER GREEN

MISSÃO BRASIL BELÉM

MISSÃO DE MACHO. NEM O VENTO É FRESCO.

Week 66 - Planning a Christmas Wedding and Baptism in Castanhal!

Hello!!

So this was a good week. We worked a lot to find new investigators. The members here are super nice. But it is a really big area!!! I got use to little small areas in the city so now it is a big change for me. Sometimes we have to get a bus for 20 minutes just to get to a members house to eat lunch!! There are 9 companionships in our zone. Our zone has  the most sisters in the whole mission!! Our zone is really far so we aren't able to meet every week, just once a month. We did a phone conference this week with the whole zone and we try to keep everyone excited to work. To loosen things up I decided to tell a joke that involved the Castanhal zone as being the largest womens organization in the world!! Everyone thought it was funny. But the sisters in our zone are super powerful. They put most elders to shame! So we are all excited! 

Our monthly zone meeting will be tomorrow. It will be a super long day for us because we have to interview and evaluate all of the missionaries in the zone and have an hour and a half of a district meeting and 1 hour for me and my companion... Should be fun. 

We are teaching a couple. Tiago and Nadia. They are super good and want to be baptized, but they have to get married. We went this week and we have planned to turn in the marriage papers on the 24th of this month. Then we have to wait 30 days before they can be married, so the 24th of December should be their wedding and baptism. MERRY CHRISTMAS!! We are praying that everything goes well.

I am loving the area. It is nice to be in a far away area but a nice city. We literally have everything we need right close to our house. We can look out of our window and see the chapel! This is the first area were I don't have to walk 30 minutes to get to church! Now it is 30 seconds! Our chapel has 2 wards. 1 ward is just us and the other ward is 2 companionships of sisters. So it is nice because when we get hungry or when a lunch appointment falls, they are usually willing to help us out!! But there is a lot of work to be done here. My companion goes home in January so we are running around like crazy! 

I am loving the mission. We figured out that I am the second oldest missionary in the zone. My companion is the oldest!! That freaked me out a lot!!

For my Christmas box I will ask for an english hymn book for my companion and more gatorade! I got my box on Tuesday and we already ran out of gatorade.... it had been awhile since I last had gatorade so I went a little crazy!!

Elder Steindorf called yesterday and said he expects a birthday present in return for the Curitiba shirt he gave me. hah. Don't send anything for him I can give him something here. We don't want to waste any precious space in these packages! And please send the same type of gatorade. Elder Steindorf is doing good. He said his companion is super shy and didn't like to talk much...but he's gotten better. But it scares me because Steindorf hardly talked at all when he was with me haha.

Sis Stasevskas called yesterday and said Elder Gann is in the hospital but I don't know. He has parasites. Elder Monzingo is super good and he will help him a lot.

Love yall!!

Elder Green  

ELDER GREEN

MISSÃO BRASIL BELÉM

MISSÃO DE MACHO. NEM O VENTO É FRESCO.

Week 65 - Tchau Marambaia!

Last pictures with Entrocamento Zone

Hello!!

SO this past week was super fast and stressful. Good news. We had a baptism Saturday! The family that we started visiting and brought back to church had a daughter that never got baptized so we baptized her Saturday. It was a super special meeting with a choir and everything!!

When I got to the Marambaia Ward, the attendance was around 50 people. Really bad. But we worked super hard! We didnt have many baptisms in this area. WE had very few. But we worked a lot with less actives. Along with the new leadership in the Ward, we were able to bring lots of people back to church. My last Sunday in the ward there was 139 people there!!! The Stake President was also there. I was asked to give my testimony in Sacrament Meeting because it was my last. Afterward, the Stake president spoke. I served almost 1 year in the Cabanagem stake and 6 months in the Stake President´s ward. So he gave me a shout out during his talk and thanked me for my time in his stake. Got me a little emotional!! 

So Sunday comes around and we got the transfers. I was moved to be the new zone leader in Castanhal with Elder Vilaça. Monday morning we had to be at the church at 9 am to do the changes. We got there at 9 but the van was late and didnt get there till 11:30. We drove around and finally got off in Belém. The van left to take other missionaries to a different building and I left my bag on the van!! So we had to wait for it to come back before we could leave for Castanhal. Castanhal is 2 hours from Belém. We got here last night kind of late so I wasn't able to write

Castanhal is super nice and we are excited to be here. Our zone is really distant and we only have zone meetings once every month because of the travel. But the city I am in now is super nice and organized. There is lots of work to be done but we are super excited!

Elder Monzingo - he replaced me in Obidos - replaced me in Marambaia too! I am pretty sure one day I will be his companion since we have had 3 of the same companions and 2 of the same areas! My much-loved son will now train so I will be a grandfather. And he will be in my same zone so that will be fun. 

I didn't get a chance to pick up my package during transfers but I think someone will bring it to me this week. I can't think of any special requests for Christmas - just whatever you want to send. My companion goes home in January so I will probably be his last companion. If you can send him something too that would be good.

I already wrote those essays for BYU. Pretty dang good I thought. But I left them at the house so I will try to send them next week. 

What's up with Trump?

Love yall!!

Elder Green

ELDER GREEN

MISSÃO BRASIL BELÉM

MISSÃO DE MACHO. NEM O VENTO É FRESCO.

 Clay's last Sunday in Marambaia

Clay's last dinner appointment at Nivia's house

 Clay and Elder Gann work together to set up Ana's Christmas Tree