28 April 2014

Thanks for the picture of the new house! I remember that house now!  Pretty nice house, does it have a deck out in the back?  Happy Birthday this week Mom!  Congrats!  Exciting that Marching Band is starting up again!  I  can call a bit later on Mothers Day, I think I´ll probably try and call about 5pm your time, about 6pm here to talk.  I know a few members here who have Skype, but I try to get something arranged. Q and U got married?  Thats a bit different,  I haven´t heard of that before. Mr. Fassold and Mr. Sturgeon, two of the most teachers in the world.   Its been a while since I was in their classes but they were awesome teachers.  I loved both of them. I don´t know if you remember Mr. Fassolds thing with the box .  That the first day of school we all wrote our names on a piece of paper and he put them all inside of a box.  Then on the last day of school he decided who that year had been able to prove that they were able to think out side of the box! I was one of them!   Sturgeon was the biggest star wars nerd ever.  I want to know if he still has the 4ft model of a starship hanging from his ceiling. If you could send their emails to me I want to send an email to them.

  So my week has been a bit different than the usual. Monday was the normal p day.  We did a companion exchange where I went with Elder Alvorado from Bolivia for the day and we ended up buying a whole bunch of junk food and watched the Testaments. We both discovered that we are also both addicted to Sprite (one of the few American drinks that they have here).  Tuesday we had a Zone training which was super good.  Talked a lot of about the Key Indicators that we have and how we need to be using them.  Super good, and afterward we tried to do companionship exchanges, but my companion recieved a phone call from the assistants and was emergency transferred to Manaus, so Tuesday was mainly just staying at home while he packed up his bags to be able to leave. Wednesday morning we dropped him off at the airport super early in the morning and came back home. That day I got to spend the day in Teixarão with some of the other elders.  Fun to be able to go into another area and be able to work there for a day. Thursday, I was able to leave with a member so I was able to do some work in Tancredo Neves.  Right now its mostly just trying to find people to teach. Friday was mainly the  same thing going on.  Left with a member to be able to teach for the  day.  Saturday was the same that day.  We managed to find some really cool people who live pretty far away from us but are super excited to hear our message.  Their names are Isais and Jailson.  They´re neighbors and are excited to hear about the Book of Mormon and our message.  We were able to find them through a reference from some of the other elders here in Porto Velho. Sunday was super exciting.  80 people came to church that day and many were people that its been a long time since they´ve been to church and its super exciting to see them becoming more and more excited.   This branch here in Tancredo Neves is starting to become excited about missionary work and its really cool to see them becoming so.  Pretty awesome day to say the least.

 Thanks for the pictures! Its cool to see whats going on back at home. Hope you all have a great week this week and Happy Birthday one more time Mom! Miss all of you and have an awesome week!

Love
Elder Battraw

21 April 2014

Thats super cool that Uncle Michael and Aunt Becca came out to visit for Easter.  Sounds like a fun Easter, getting to go out play in the park, do easter eggs along with dinner.  Here Easter was pretty normal, but I´ll talk about that later. So its final now that we will have a new house when I come back.  It better be a nice apartment.  I´m thinking along the lines of a 50´tv with surround sound. laptop, you know the basics.:)Cell phone too, that would be cool! Sounds like a super cool week. 

  Here was pretty much the normal week.  Monday, I got to go to the hospital with my companion  because he woke up with a high fever and after talking to Sister Klein, she advised going to the hospital.  The hospital though was completely packed here when we got there with the branch president(who had given us a ride).  Took an half and hour to get admitted and he got a test done to see if he had malaria, but came out negative.  By this time the fever was going down so they let us go back home.  Got home at midnight and still had to wake up 6:30 the next day. Ugh. Tuesday we got a phone call from President Klein telling us that we were not to move houses but the mission would pay to fix up the house we are in now.  Right now we are in the process of buying all the nessecary items like new stove refrigerator to be able to get the house up to code. Fun stuff.  We get new beds and everything.  I hope we get everything down before the transfer so I actually have time to be able use the new stuff. Wednesday was pretyy darn normal, nothing extroadinary We tried to do a visit with a member to be able to visit one of our investigators, but when we got there, they were there. Total time round trip. 1.5 hours. Pretty far away to say the least. Thursday, lets see. Normal as well. Friday, was interesting.  We got to learn some of the traditions of Easter here in Brasil.  One, the friday saturday and sunday, depending on how a religious a person is, depends on how much beef they eat.  Generally people eat only fish and pork those days here.  You can definitely tell in the streets because people had pickup trucks full of fish in the back along with ice and were selling them out in the streets.  I think there is a health code violation in there somewhere. We had fish for lunch as well friday but I decided not to ask where they had bought it. That night I also recieved my first easter egg here in Brasil.  Here they look much more like a present than like an egg.  Made of the same chocolate as crunch bars and they´re hollow, usually with a small little candy inside of it. Saturday, had our meeting with the Ward mission leader for the last time.  He got released Sunday and now we have a new WML.  Sunday, went to church, but was completely normal. Nobody talked about Easter or anything .  When we were walking home from lunch that day though, we went buy a stand that was selling easter eggs. That man that was selling them knew me and ended up giving me a free egg! Pretty awesome!

  Thanks for the letter! Hope you all have a great week this week!  I do have a few questions for you though about this doctor working with the national guard.  do you know how much a cardiac surgeon makes in a year, how long is the schooling, what hours do you work every week, just the details about being a cardiac surgeon and if you could be really awesome, what schools offer this type of degree or certification and is there someway of doing this like that doctor was doing with the National Guard?  Thanks, I was thinking a lot about it this week. Thanks for the letter and I miss you all!

Love

Elder Battraw

14 April 2014

Way to go for Tom, thats a pretty good idea to use for prom!  Too bad you didn´t find all of the eggs.  You´ll probably find it in about five months!  What does the house look like? Could you send pictures?  Thats weird to think that I´ll be returning to a different house. Everybody here is taking really good care of me.  Our branch president said to us one time that nobody in the church will only go hungry if they chose to. People here are always ready to help us here so its pretty awesome. Marching is starting up again soon? Thats super cool.  Tell Sam to send me all the details and pictures especially.  National Guard?  I´ll put it under consideration right now.  Theres a lot of things that I want to do right now!

  So this week, where to begin.  Monday, the normal pday.  The new elders of Teixarão got here this week, Elder Gardner and Elder Alvorado.  They´re pretty cool and we spent a lot of p day showing them around the area.  Tuesday was District Meeting!  Super cool as usual. Had one of the assistants there and was fun to have him there.  Had a cool little miracle that night.  We´d stopped by the Relief Society presidents house that night to find out who would be giving lunch the next day (was 8:00pm)  and she didn´t know.  She started to cool people trying to see who could give lunch the next day for four elders and after an hour, somebody agreed.  The only problem was that it would be fairly complicated to be able to get to her house.  We´d have catch a bus that passes only once an hour to be able to descend at a location that we didn´t know. Her husband(who is very less active and doesn´t like the missionaries for some reason) butted in and said, Èlders this is really complicated.  Heres some money to buy lunch tomorrow.  And that was that.First time that hes spoken to us in the 3 months I´ve been here. Super cool.  Wednesday was normal, rained a lot. Thursday was pretty darn awesome. We got to teach an investigator whose name is Jehovah, and hes super cool and is interested in the church.  Friday, normal.  Saturday that night we had a baptism of  22 year old who is currently serving in the Brazilian Army as an engineer. Super humble and super prepared to hear our message.  We also found a new house that we can move into now! Don´t know if I´d mentioned it before,but we are moving from the house that we are in now and we´ve finally found a house that we can move into!  Its an apartment that is actually in the same apartments as the Branch President and is right across the street from the Relief Society President with the chapel less than 100 ft from our house.  Perfect. Sunday was normal.  Had church as normal and lunch was really good.  The wife gave us all advice on how to find a spouse after our missions.  People here really like to talk to elders about how to find a wife. It´ll be awhile before I use the advice. 

   Thanks for the email and all the pictures!  Hope that you all have a great week this week! Miss all of you! 

Love

Elder Battraw

7 April 2014

Exciting for Tom that he is getting ready for to start his mission paperwork.  Thats super cool that the Bishop took them out for the priesthood session this year and helped them out!   Priesthood session here was pretty cool, went out for Subway (I know that you are all jealous).

  Here this week has been pretty cool.  Monday, the pday norm, just só de boa.  Tuesday we got to have our District meeting here in Tancredo Neves which went awesome.  District Meetings here are always a bunch of fun.  Tuesday I got to spend the day in the Zone Leaders area as we did splits,so I didn´t end up spending my birthday in our area.  I did end up eating lunch in my area before we split up and ended up getting a birthday present.  One of the daughters there when I told her that it was my birthday got really excited .  After lunch when we were preparing to share a quick message with the family, she asked my companion how to spell my name and then emerged quickly after with a present and card.  Super nice of her, but the present was a large bottle of womens perfume.  Water and breezes if you translate  the name. I don´t really know what I´m going to do with it. Wednesday, we got to leave with a member of another ward to do visits and they´re going great.  We have one investigator who is super prepped to hear our message.  He went to church this past week, I guess two weeks ago now, just because his friend in another STATE told him that he should.  Didn´t get a chance to teach him this week but super exciting. One of the investigators made a cake for me as well and had a quick party (Brasilians are super awesome). Thursday was normal, just working and going and teaching everyone.  Friday didn´t get to leave the house b/c my companion was sick.  Saturday was General Conference! Which was super awesome!  We all went to the Stake Center here and I got to watch it in English with all the other American missionaries.  Super cool.  Before priesthood session Saturday night, all the elders went out to Subway.  Only american restaurant here in Porto Velho except Mcdonalds which is all the way downtown in the shopping mall ( which we´re not allowed to enter).  Sunday was General Conference and transfers! My companion and I are staying here in Porto Velho, but we´re going to be getting another companionship in our house so we need to get everything ready!

  Hope that you all will have a great week! I miss all of you!  See Ya!

Love

Elder Battraw

31 March 2014

Poor Tom, did they use the same medicine that they used on me, the one that makes you forget everything that happened or was it a different med? Zach had a concert? super cool.  What music did they play? Matthew looks a lot older  than I remember him, its kinda of weird.  Campout was where this weekend, was it nearby or was it a bit farther away.  Thanks for the money.  I´ll make sure to spend it all:). I still have some cookie mix that I saved for my birthday so we´ll probably make that tomorrow to celebrate my birthday.

  So this week, monday/ pday was normal.  Just did the normal things, email, buy food the usual.  Tuesday we left for Marcus Feiries which is quite a distance away to have lunch with a member, but when we were returning, my companion wasn´t feeling too well so we ended up going home and staying there the rest of the day.  He has problems with eating salt, here salt is basically the only seasoning that they used so sometimes he leaves lunch not feeling too well.  That was my tuesday. Wednesday we left and were able to spend the day talking to investigators and the normal people.  Thursday was pretty normal as well.  We´ve started contacting all the recent converts in the branch here to ask for references for people to teach.  President Klein has challenged us to do so.  Our list is extensive so it´ll take a while to talk to everyone. Friday we almost had exchanges with the zone leaders.  They´d marked for 2pm for us to be there and do the exchange.  Well, got there about 2:20 b/c they´d called to say that they would be running late and started to wait.  2:40 called them and they said it would be arriving (phrase doesn´t translate to english, but it would take awhile to get there).  3:15 they called and said it would be 30 more minutes.  4:32pm, called and they said to return back to area b/c it would be a little while.  Found out later they didn´t get home until 6pm.  Reason why:  They were doing a service project and at the end, the member they were with starting lecturing them on marrying in the temple and eternal marriage.  Kinda of difficult to do that when you are a missionary.   Exchange will be tomorrow now.  Saturday we went to a pre-marriage party that they have here in Brasil. The members had invited us b/c there were lots of non members there and we now have two families to teach!  That night was also the night where the ward/branch had a kinda of party with our investigators! Was pretty cool.  Had an awesome message and then afterward we had trivia, in Portuguese.  Was a little hard for me, but I held my own.  Sunday church as usual, but it was raining so it took a little bit longer for everyone to get there.  And that was my week. Today was my 8 month mark on my mission! Super pumped.  Time is passing really fast here!

  Thanks for the money and the letters!  Thanks for the pictures as well!  Next week will be transfers and general conference and I´m super pumped .  Will hopefully get to watch in english, but we´ll see!  Have an awesome week! Miss all of you!

 Love

Elder Battraw

24 March 2014

Thanks for the packages! Got one this week with chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter cookies as well.  Made peanut butter cookies today! Super good.  They don´t have peanut butter here in Brasil, at least the north doesn´t.  Found out this week that São Paulo and some cities in the South have Walmart so I think they have it down there.  Giving away the Mac?  If you could get all the music off of t first I wanted to get some of it, but never had the chance.  Its located in the PirateX icon up in the top right corner if I´m remembering correctly.  If you don´t its okay.  Congrats for Sam on making life. Just eagle for now, has Tom finished up his Eagle?

  This week started with the normal p day.  Just normal, nothing really special happened.  Tuesday had District Meeting here in Tancredo Neves, but some of the elders who were coming got lost on the way here and we had to relay instructions to them to be able to make it here.  Made life just a little bit more interesting. They´d descended at the wrong bus stop and had to get back on the bus. But everything turned out okay in the end.  Was a good meeting.  Wednesday we had a huge long list of people who were less actives that we had to go visit.  Only managed to pass 7 houses out of the 20, but it was still pretty good. That night we had 4 other elders who were arriving at our house to stay the night for the zone training/conference the next da.  They got there about 11:00pm that night and our one room with a/c wasn´t working and had only one fan.  Nobody slept really well that night.  The Zone Training was really good Thursday.  Was a lot of information about how we need to teach our investigators.  Had lunch and then interviews with President Klein.  My companion found from president that his fiancee who was waiting for him, turned out to have married 4 months ago. Friday was normal, just keep on keeping on.  Saturday we had a baptism of the cousin of the Relief Society President and that was really cool.  Gots lot of pictures taken that I´ll try and send.  She´d been investigating the church for 4 years on and off b/c she´d had lots of people always saying to her that the Book of Mormon wasn´t true and were putting a lot of pressure on her, but she made the decision this week to be baptized and it was really special. Sunday we had two sacrament meetings.  One in the morning and another that night for a group who live right next to our area.  We were there to help with the transition to this chapel.  Doesn´t have a lot of people yet, but its going well!

  Plans for general conference will be heading to the stake center to watch the sessions there.  Not a lot of people here have internet and if we try and watch conference in one of the computer cafes I think we´ll crash the server (internet isn´t very good here).   I´ve acutally been putting the conference talks on a speaker that I have, (little speaker that has a usb port that they sell everywhere here) to be a ble to listen to them. Its really nice!  Thanks for those cds as well!  Got to go now! Have a great week! Miss all of you!

Love

Elder Battraw

17 March 2014

You ran into Brother Rodda!  Hes pretty awesome!  He was the one who gave me the scripture in DC 9:8-9 about how answer of the spirit come.  He helped me a lot getting my papers ready.  Oh, it was Pi Day this week.  I didn´t really realize that. Forgot. 5th place at the pinewood derby!  I do think thats the best that our family has done yet. Working at the hospital sounds like it is really busy. Switching around all the patients and getting everything ready to go!  Here things are starting to cool down a little bit. We are in the middle of the rainy season here and its definitely been raining.  Almost everyday will rain at least one time. A little crazy.

  So this week, monday, p day, did the normal routine, rested, played cards the norm.  Tuesday my new companion, Elder Macário got here.  Elder Housley (old companion) and Elder Green stayed with us for the day working and helping get everything in order.  Elder Greens new companion, Elder Nordgran, showed up later that night so he left. I actually already knew Elder Nordgran because he was my District Leader back in the Provo MTC!  First time I´d seen him in 6 months!  Wednesday I managed to get two packages that had shown up (took 3-4 months to arrive).  One of them had a whole bunch of birthday stuff in it, so Elder Housley and his new companion, Elder Mount, grabbed the box and took it to a members house to bake cake and had a surprise birthday party for me, even though it was 3 weeks early.   That was pretty cool.  They left Thursday for their area. Thursday was pretty nice.  A missionary of the branch here returned from his mission in Brasil so we got to be there when he returned! Kinda of weird to see a missionary returning from his mission while I´m still on my mission.   Friday was working, going from door to door. Saturday was basically the same thing. I teach an English class right now for people here, to anybody that shows up and this week we had an investigator show up with his daughter, so we gave them a quick tour of the church that they really liked and then taught some quick English. Sunday, was crazy.  We have a family of investigators who live pretty far away who needed a ride to church, so when I tried calling them to get a ride, our cell phone credit ran out! Got some more credit Sunday morning so I managed to get them a ride, we helped another family get to church as well. We had lots of other people show up as well.  All in all, 15 people were visiting the church, almost all for the first time.  Was a bit of a race, when the first hour was over, it was more or less running down the hall, asking how people were, directing them to the correct room, and then running to the next group of people to help them out.  One of the ladies was 95yrs old and had to be helped wherever she went.  It was really great but a little tiring.  One of our investigators didn´t show up until 20 minutes before church ended, and needed to be confirmed, so we got him inside, asked the Branch President if we could confirm at the end of sacrament meeting and got him confirmed. Was a little crazy to say the least. 

  This week President Klein is flying out to Porto Velho to have a meeting with all the missionaries so we are all super excited for that!I got 2 packages this week.  One had hot chocolate, 2 cds (MOTAB and Piano Guys, A Family Christmas) and the other birthday materials and a CD of BYU Mens Chorus. I think everything got there. Thanks for sending those packages! It was really awesome to have a mini birthday party, even if it was a bit early!  Thanks so much! Hope you all have a great week !  Miss you all!

Love 

Elder Battraw