It was a very merry Christmas 26 DEC 2011

Well my dear family,
This week was rather spectacular. We are extremely tired today, because we were running to and fro trying to close the deal on our baptisms for the week. Saturday we had one baptism, Francisco, but the others fell through, because they decided to visit family for Christmas at the last minute. No worries though, they´ll baptize on the 31.
On Thursday we had to travel to Uberlandia for a Christmas zone conference. We had a normal Brazilian Christmas dinner, which included: rice, beans, lettuce, turkey and chicken. For dessert we had ice cream. I saw Elder Wolsey and said hi. President Prieto spoke a lot about love in our work, and about how we have to develop a Christlike love with our companions and with those we teach. Sister Prieto talked about how we normally only look at peoples defects, but we can´t do that, because we ourselves aren´t perfect. She had her baby granddaughter in her arms and compared how the only perfect people are babies, because they came directly from the presence of the father. She said that when we treat God´s children badly based on their imperfections it´s like taking that precious baby and chucking it across the room. When she said that last part, she took the baby and chucked it at a missionary, who almost had a heart attack. That was when we discovered that the baby was a doll. I took some pictures. On the bus ride to another companionship´s house we sang carols with about eight other missionaries.
Saturday we had the baptism and bought a cake to celebrate with everyone afterwards.
Sunday we only had sacrament meeting and about only the usual number of people came.
I must confess that I gave into temptation. Christmas Eve I was thinking about how there wouldn´t be any time to do anything the next day, like open presents, so I opened them two hours early, at ten.
We continue to work a lot with the members, and hope to have a ton of sucess before the end of the year.
with lots of love e suadades de vos,
Elder David Short

Feliz Natal!...De Novo 19 Dec 2011

Dearest peoples,

These past weeks have been quite spectacular.

We are getting pretty anixous, because we´ll be having at least FOUR! baptisms this coming Saturday.

Our investigator who stopped smoking last week, has been able to give up cigarettes completely. Last week we tried to set a baptismal date with him for this last Saturday, but he wanted to get baptized on Christmas eve, so the baptismal will be this Saturday at 7.

The three daughters of a less active family that we´re working with, will also be getting baptized Saturday.

Our goal is to have five baptisms this Saturday, so we´re planning on having a miracle.

One of the members here has a lot of coworkers and this week we taught three of them and marked baptismal dates. The work goes so much smoother when you work with the members.

This Sunday we repeated our record of seven investigators at church.

I´m feeling really good about the coming month.

This Thursday we´ll be having a Christmas Zone Conference, so hopefully I´ll be getting all the letters everyone sent.

I don´t feel like writing too much since I´ll be calling on Sunday.

Until then.

Love,

Elder David Short

The end of another transfer 12 Dec 2011

Well my dear friends and family,
another six weeks has come and gone.
We got Elder Swenson´s replacement this Thursday. Our new Elder is Elder Santa Rita from the state of Bahia. He is also ending his mission in a month, so we won´t have too long to get to know him.
We still don´t know if we´re going to have anymore changes in our district. I´m hoping to stay for one more transfer. We were greatly blessed in our work this week. This Sunday we had seven investigators at church, which is the most we´ve had at church since I got here. We tracted down a less active family that we had previously last tract of when they moved. It has been nine years since this family has gone to church. We found their house and taught the first lesson. Saturday we returned to see if they´d be going to church the next day, and the dad said that it was up to the mom. I think it was the first time that I got down on my hands and knees and begged someone to come to church, but it worked! The whole family came to church yesterday! Our next step is to start teaching they´re three daughters that aren´t baptized.
We did have some disapointment. One of our investigators, who could be getting baptized this week, didn´t come to church, because his son tried running away from home. Everything got worked out in the end, but not until after church had ended. This week we started a program with him to stop smoking. In order to get him started on the right track, we bought him a ten pound bag of oranges, and stole his cofee. After we stole his cofee, we took it back to the house and disposed of it in the best way that I thought possible (picture enclosed).
That´s all I have for this week.
Write me a letter.
love,
Elder David Short

Finally! (received 5 Dec 2011)

I´ve been telling amazing stories of amzing people, and this weekend one of those people was baptized!

That one girl who had a dream about the missionaries teaching her was baptized and confirmed!

Now her younger brother wants to get baptized too.

Elder Swenson is leaving today and by this time thursday he´ll be with his family.

 I don´t really know what´s going to happen this next week, with transfers coming up and now we don´t have a district, or someone to play the piano at church, but all is well.

The only exciting thing that I can really think of that happened this week was the baptism, and now we have to work to baptize this week too.

I´ve only written about ten lines, but my mind is drawing a blank right now.

We made a pretty tasty cake for after the baptism.

I´ve have to go now.

ttfn

Elder David Short

Zone Conferences (recieved 28 Nov 2011)

This last week was pretty spectacular. We´ve been teaching this awesome girl, Graziely, who´s getting baptized Saturday. She´s really awesome and I think that she´ll be the example to getting the rest of the family baptized.

I´ve really been hoping to find an awesome family, but it´s not easy.

Wednesday we took a two hour bus ride to Uberlândia for a zone conference with president. There were about thirty-somethin missionaries. The main focus of the conference was about our ability to teach, and our effectiveness as the Lord´s teachers. One of the points that President Prieto focused on was our use of the scriptures in our teaching. We had about an hour and a half of practices, and afterwards we had a scripture memorization test thingy, where we had to stand and recite a scripture. It scared my tag off, because no one had told me that we were supposed to have memorized scriptures. Luckily I wasn´t called on.

Our Thanksgiving Lunch consisted of the traditional rice, beans and chicken (don´t misinterpret me. It was delicious.)

Our zone conference went a little longer than it was supposed, so we missed our bus. We spent the night at a district leader´s house. It doesn´t matter where we are, or what the situation is, there is always work to be done. We had about three hours before our curfew on Thursday, so we split up. I went to work with Elder A. Souza. We did some tracting near the house and we found an amazing family, that accepted all the commitments and a baptismal date. The only sad part is that I won´t be there for when the get baptized, but maybe I´ll get transferred to that area in the next couple weeks.

I had a weird dream last night that I got transferred to Uberaba, so we´ll see what happens.

Graziely´s neighbor came to church with her on Sunday. We´re hoping to teach her family this week. 

Family is aweome. I hope to baptize a few  daqui um pouco.

That´s all I´ve got for now.

Love,

Elder David Short

The Elect (received 14 Nov 2011)

First off, I must say that I am ashamed of myself. I felt like a doubting Thomas last night, and I felt like I got a spiritual slap in the face. So yesterday we to visit some people with a member from the ward. The visits that we had planned fell through, but we were able to find other people to teach. This member´s family isn´t baptized and has already been taught by the missionaries twice, but when we returned our member to her house, Elder Alvarez asked the mom and her boyfriend if we could share a message with them. I didn´t have too much hope in the message, but I thought I´d give it a shot. We taught the restoration and they agreed to come to church and to read the Book of Mormon. The mom gave the closing prayer, and as she was praying she began to cry. The Spirit was so strong; I wanted to spiritually defenestrate something. 

Our next lesson was with a kid whose whole family is baptized except for him. He´d also been taught by missionaries before, including me, but my companion was determined to set a baptismal date with him. We arrived, shared a lesson on the atonement and then my companion sets a baptismal date. I felt like a doubting Thomas at the end of the day, but now I´m excited for the coming weeks. 

Three of our investigators came to church yesterday! One is this awesome garota that been reading the Book of Mormon almost everyday, and she says that she feels that it´s true. She´ll be baptized at the end of the month.

In the coming weeks, we are going to accomplish things that no other missionary has ever accomplished! 

That´s all the miracles I have for this week.

Love,

Elder Short

Life is a little box of Surprises

Dear Family,
As you know, last P-day Elder Pimentel went home to enjoy the after mission life, and we were left in a trio for awhile. I never liked being in a trio, but oh well. We were stuck together in three until Wednesday morning when we got a surprising phone call. I thought that I was going to be transferred, so I went to pack, but it turns out that I was getting a new companion. We had to be at the bus station by 11 to pick my new companion, Elder Alvarez. Elder Alvarez is a 19 year-old Argentinian with 7 months on the mission and he has a strong desire to serve. So now that I´m not with Elder Swenson anymore he´s companions with Elder A. Souza. It´s weird having someone that was your companion live in the same house, but that feeling will diminish the better I get to know Elder Alvarez.
The work was a little slow this week as we were getting used to each other, but we have an excellent plan all set on how we´re going to work with the members. We´ve been doing a lot of tracting, but with little success, so now it´s up to the members to tell us where the elect are.
It´s decided to burning hot on us again, and everyone keeps saying that a whitey like me is going to turn red and crispy as bacon, but I continue to use sunscreen.
We have also been trying to tract down all the inactives here (it´s not easy). We were walking through a park and a guy started  getting all excited about a giant rat, but then it turned out to be a possum. Another animal encounter to add to the scrapbook.
Well I hope to report great success to you all next week.
Love,
Elder David Short

24 Oct entry

This week had its ups and downs. The week started out with us doing splits. I teamed up with Elder A. Sousa to do some teaching and I got to meet some of his investigators. We were held up at one investigator´s house, because his brother (who had been drinking) insisted that we have something to eat. He sent his brother out to buy us coke, but then he found that we don´t drink coke (after he had already bought it), so he sent his brother out again to buy us other soda.

One exciting thing that happened was that we had a branch cake/pie baking competition and our investigators were the judges. Elder Swenson and I made a pie thingy, but something went wrong and it became ice cream and then soup, but it was still delicious.

One disapointing thing was that we found almost no one new to teach. We were doing a lot of tracting, but after hearing the message of the restoration no one wanted to change, which is the most frustrating part of missionary work.

When Sunday came around, we went to go get all of our investigators to go to church, but no one was home, other than this really awesome kid, Luciano. It turns out that he knows the branch president´s son. We have his baptism marked for the 12th.

Elder Swenson likes walking more than taking the bus, so last night we walked an hour and a half to an appointment and then another hour and a little bit home, but at least today is P-day.

With all the things that happened this week it means that miracles are around the corner.

Love,
Elder David Short

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A test of faith

Well my dear family,
We went into this last week feeling really awesome about our work. The week before we had found a lot of awesome new people and we were making plans as to what our next move was.
The zone leaders came down Tuesday night, unexpectedly, to have exchanges. I got to work Elder Pires, from my first district in Anapolis. On Wednesday we worked in trios and Elder Swenson and I teamed up with Elder Boyne,
the other zone leader. I always feels that I learn a lot during exchanges, but that the work seems to slow down.
Thursday we met with little success, and again on Friday, but then Saturday arrived!
Saturday we were tracting out a street and we were finding a lot of soft people who didin´t want to keep commitments. After a horrible lesson, where the person just wanted to challenge us on everything, I turned to Elder Swenson and said:
Me: This is going to be awesome!
E. Swenson: What?
Me: All our lessons today have been horrible, so you know what that means.
E. Swenson: Sure do.....
Me: It means that we´re getting tested to see if we´re worthy of the blessings God wants to send us, so we´re going to find someone awesome today.
That night we taught a family of four that accepted all the commitments and a baptismal date. Now I just hope that I don´t get transferred before they get baptized. Sunday night we found two more families that accepted baptism. Milagres sao reais quando voce cre!
This last week we also started to teach two kids English.
With love,
Elder David Short

pics:
The caju fruit
Me eating the caju fruit
A stick bug that I found in our house
Me eating star fruit

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Training (Oct 3rd)

So this week, after three days of nail biting we finally had transfers. Elder Rowberry and Elder Brelaz were transferred to Goiânia and I got to stay in Itumbiara for a little longer. My new companion is Elder Swenson, who was in my first district in Anâpolis. He´s got a lot more time on the mission than me, so I´m learning a lot of cool teaching techniques. He´s the Elder who tricked me into saying that the food was weird. He´s pretty awesome. He´s a trekkie, and likes to make angry faces, so we get along just fine. I also found out that he likes Calvin and Hobbes and Lord of the Rings, so we´re officially the nerdy companionship in the district.

General conference was amazing. We watched it at the chapel (we still haven´t found a new location yet) on a projector. It was the first time that I watched conference in Portuguese, and it wasn´t the same. The translators don´t carry over the characterization in their voices, so the listening was a little bland, but Elder Swenson and I were able to download the audio file afterwards. Now I´m getting a feel for the true awesomeness of this conference. I was a little confused at not hearing any plane stories, or mention of the lack of plane stories this conference, but Elder Uchtdorf´s talk was awesome all the same. I really want the conference ensign now to study everything.

Well to say the least I was spiritually uplifted this week.
Love,
Elder David Short

Training ... Continued

This last week would have been transfers, but our mission president put it off until after the last Sunday of the month, because he didn´t want to interrupt any last minute baptisms. So we might be getting our transfer calls tonight. I´m hoping that I stay in Itumbiara for a little longer, but I´ll be happy with whatever the Lord decides.
We have been commissioned to find a new building to rent as our new chapel, but it´s really difficult to find a building affordable, well centralized in the city, with various classrooms, area for a baptismal font, and one big room that can fit 100 people. We continue the search.
There are two pretty cool occurrences that occurred this week. The first miracle we witnessed happened on Wednesday. We trying to contact some people and we passed by the house of someone we had previously tried to teach, about two months ago, but she said that she was an atheist and that if God existed that she wouldn´t be going through so many hardships in her life. She had lost her business (which had over three hundred employees), she had lost her car and was preparing to lose her house. She told us that listening to our message wouldn´t make a difference, but she accepted to read the pamphlet on the restoration. So this week I felt prompted to see how she was doing. We knocked on her door (we actually clapped at the gate) and she came out and told us how her life was turning around. She had read the pamphlet, but didn´t know where the church was, and that she had been looking for us. We set up an appointment to teach her at her office building the next day. She wasn´t in when we stopped by, but we slid the address of the church under her door. The story hasn´t ended yet, so hopefully I´ll be sharing the rest of the happy ending next week.
Yesterday we also had a pretty spiritual experience. We went to the hospital to give a member´s husband´s dad a blessing, but the nurse office lady person said that we could only visit one at a time. As a missionary, where you can´t be alone, it was a difficult situation. We were able to convince the lady to let us both go, but I´d have to wait outside the door. When we got to the door, the lady who gave us our protective hospital gowns said that her brother was a member in another city and that she didn´t have a problem with us both going. After our visit, the son said that before his dad hadn´t been able to talk yet, but that after the blessing he was able to converse normally.

Ran out of time so
Love,
Elder David Short

Cont:

 For the record I´d like the jury and counsel to know that I wasn´t the one holding the snake. That was actually my second encounter with a coral snake. The first encounter was outside our house in Uberlândia.

  I´m sad to report that I didn´t have any exciting encounters with animals this week, just the normal dogs and a couple owls that are always at the soccer field.

I did have quite the interesting experience when I went on splits with Elder Pimentel. We were walking on the sidewalk, on the way to a lesson, when the ground gave out from beneath us. We barely noticed and kept walking, but when we looked back we saw that we had made a 3ftx4.5ftx1ft hole. It looks like water had washed out the dirt under the cement, so when walked over it caved. We weren´t hurt in any way. I don´t think we even got dirt on our pants. To me it´s another testimony of how the Lord protects his missionaries.

We´ve been working hard this week, but missionary work is a difficult process of planning, finding, planning, teaching, planning, progressing, planning, and baptizing. The first eight steps are the hardest. We found a good number of people to teach this week, and we left our ´´mole´´ investigators in our area book.
Cool miracle this week! We were tracting when we came across a family of four( a mom and three kids). We asked if we could share a message with them, and they accepted. The mom told us that she and her daughter didn´t live in that house, but that they lived in Uberlândia, IN THE AREA WHERE I SERVED. I was able to give them the address of the church there and they said that they´d visit. Now we´re going to teach her two sons that live here. Que Milagre!

I think that that´s all I have to say for today.
Until next week.
Elder David Short

Training

So our week was quite fantastical. Tuesday night the zone leaders came to do some training in the area. They gave talks on focusing the work and putting all your effort where it counts most. We´ve decided that we´re only working within the area of the chapel. They spent the night and the next day we all went on splits. Wednesday was Brazil´s Independence Day, so the priesthood had a BBQ at the church. While Elder Brelaz was on splits with the zone leaders, he was able to set two baptismal dates and the next day we found a family of five that accepted the invitation to be baptized.
So now that we´re limiting our work to the area of the church, we´re walking a lot less and teaching a lot more. Our mission goal f referrals per week is 60 per companionship and this week we finally hit our goal. So now we´re going to see the promised blessing that come from it.
I feel inspired to share a story that the mission president´s wife shared. She gave an example of investigators. There exists two types of investigators: Potatoes and Shrimp. If you are to put potatoes and shrimp into two separate pots of boiling water the potatoes will get all soft and mushy and the shrimp will stay firm. Thus it is with investigators. You have the soft investigators that don´t progress and get mushy and you have the solid investigators that stay firm. The lesson was that you can´t wait for potatoes to get firm, because they won´t. Throw out the potatoes and focus on the shrimp.

Well I hope that all is well in your neck of the woods. Until next week.
Love,
Elder David Short

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Parrots, snakes and other cool stuff

So this last we had a lot of interesting things happen. On Saturday we had a service project out at a member's farm, where we helped clear some land and laid some brick for walls. When we got there I heard the familiar screech of the elusive parrot, and that's when I saw one sitting in a tree. This parrot was a pet of the family and they keep it outside, so I was finally able to get a picture of a parrot, and then I got to have him on my shoulder for a little bit. While we were clearing fields we saw a number of creepy crawlies that included some nasty lookin spiders, millipedes, and a coral snake, but the snake was just a baby. Our reward for our efforts was a freshly slaughtered goat for lunch.
We usually have a branch activity on Wednesday, but everyone forgot, so we didn't end up having one.
We had a pretty amazing experience while walking to a member's house last night. We were walking when a sixteen year-old kid stopped us and asked us if we were from the church of the prophet Joseph Smith. As it turns out, the kid's name is also Joseph and he had talked with missionaries over a year ago. He was so smart. Most of the time when we teach someone they don't remember what we said in the last five minutes, but when we talked with Joseph he'd ask questions like "And that's when the priesthood was restored, right?"
I'm really excited to teach him.
In celebration of our baptism last week we went out last P-day to eat A'i (editor: not sure what this was). It is so much better in Brazil.
Well everything I think would take too long to write, so know that we are working hard and seeing the blessing.
Love,
Elder David Short

Exciting news

 

 

So this last week we were preparing for a very exciting Sunday where President Prieto, Sister Prieto and some other guest speakers came to do some training in the branch. I don´t remember if I explained, but we don´t have a real chapel here yet. We rent a house to use as our chapel, and we need an attendence of eighty people for three months and then they can start construction on the real chapel. We worked our shoes off this week trying to arrange rides for people who have difficulty coming to church and were also trying to teach our investigators as well. We worked hard and at the end of the week we had 85 people at church! Now we just have keep up the work for the next three months and this city will finally have a chapel to call their own. To makes things even more awesome we had a BAPTISM before church on sunday. His name´s Alisson and he really likes americans, so I might have to teach an English class here for Alisson and his friends. It was pretty sweet to have the mission president at our baptism. We have two more people that we´re planning on baptizing this week and hopefully we´ll find more of the elect this week.

Love you all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love,

Elder David Short

Zone Conference (August 22, 2011)

David with his Nose Flute (birthday gift)

Another week has come and gone.
On Wednesday we had a partially expected surprise. President stopped by to drop off our mail and to have interviews with us, but our phone was broken and the assistants couldn’t find us, so Elder Brelaz and I didn’t  get our interviews. We were told that we would be leaving the next day for zone conference in Uberlandia. We packed our bags and headed out. The bus ride was terrible, because its only a one and half hour trip, but it took us two and a half hours to get there.
At the zone conference we learned a lot of important things. President Prieto talked about being obedient and having a pure heart that isn’t muddled with things outside the mission. Sister Prieto talked about keeping the houses clean and about teaching shrimp, not potatoes. She shared an example of when you boil potatoes they get soft, but when you boil shrimp it stays firm. The moral of the story was that we have to through out our soft investigators who aren’t progressing, and focus on our firmer investigators that we can baptize in two to three weeks at the most.
Elder Grandy was there, so beforehand we got to catch up and share some mission stories. Elder Grandy said that my grandchildren are going to have his girlfriends eyes. I’m glad that we’ve decided to have our children marry each other.
The night we got back from our zone conference, we went and set a baptismal date with one of our investigators for this Sunday. The problem has been that he works on Sundays, but we were trying to everything possible to make things work so that he could get baptized Sunday moring before church. He got his baptismal interview Saturday, but he still didn’t know if he’d have work or not until seven-thirty in the morning. We got up extra early to fill the font, we gave him a call to see if everything worked out, but we couldn’t get through. We found out later that he got called in to work. So that was lame, but we’ll baptize him this week instead.
We had a couple who were at church for the second time so we can baptize them this week as well.
I’m praying really hard that everything works out this week.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. I’ll see you next time.
Love,
Elder David Short

Can´t complain about paradise (august 15)

So the week started out really slow. We weren´t finding people at home to teach them and nothing seemed to be going right. Saturday we hit the pavement hard and we were blessed. We found a family that others missionaries had taught, years ago. We taught them the first lesson and set baptismal dates! The only bummer is that they couldn´t come to church this week.
I´m getting really anxious to baptize. It´s been awhile since we´ve baptized here and I want to get the wagon train a movin´.
This morning the shower commited suicide, by sparking at me when I turned it on this morning, so it´s cold showers until we buy a new head.
Everything continues to improve, we just need to baptize.
We had a service project on thursday, where we cleaned out someone´s yard so that they could pour cement. It involved a lot of raking of dirt and some very weak axes. Parrots and owls seem to be following us everywhere. I have never seen so many different birds up close like this before(other than the zoo). Right now I´m just waiting for them to land near our house.
We should have zone conference this week.
Time continues to fly. My ability to speak and teach continues to improve. Lunch continues to have beans and rice. I continue to be happy.
Until next week
´´good night and good luck´´
Love,
Elder David Short

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Moving day!

Well we have a change of address as of today. Yesterday we had our bags all packed, and this morning we got up at five-thirty, ready to get the moving van a going. It was going to be really expensive to make the trip in two loads, but we a had a sort fish and loaves miracle, and we were able to make everything in one trip. Much of today was spent reassembling beds and unpacking clothes. I was able to find some time to take a nap in the middle of everything. Our new house is really awesome. We have a lot more room and a rooftop view of downtown.
We were going to have a baptism Friday, but our baptism´s dad didn´t think she was ready, and that she needed to visit the church at least for four months, but she works most Sundays, so we´re trying to find her a new job.
This last week some pretty awesome stuff happened. We contacted an elderly couple, and the wife said that she had always seen missionaries walking the street, and had always wanted to know what it was they did, but never had the chance. She and her husband came to church on Sunday, and I´m praying that they´ll get baptized next week.
Someone tried to baptize me this week. We were sitting at a bus stop, talking with a girl, to see if we could teach her, when a pastor of another church comes up and invites to get baptized on the 14th, in the name of Christ. He also told the girl we were talking to that she could get baptized too, but that she´d have to give up adultery. We tried to ask him about how his church had authority to baptize, but he just ignored our questions and snapped at us to pay attention, when we´d look down the street for our bus. It took everything I had to keep from laughing.
We heard that our mission President might be visiting soon, to have interviews with some of the men in the branch, so that they can receive the Mel. Priesthood.
I think that that´s about all I have to share week. More exciting things to come.
Love,
Elder David Short