26 Aug. 2014

Hi everyone!

Sorry this is getting to everyone late and that I don´t have time to do personal emails to everyone, but the internet here in Itacoatiara died as off yesterday so I don´t have much time to write!  

So this week was pretty normal here in Itacoatiara.  Monday, Elder Rodriguez and I built bunkbeds to put up into our rooms.  We took our two beds which were the same and drilled holes in the bottom and top of them to put in pegs of wood and then stacked them up.  It took a little bit longer than we thought b/c first, the drill bit that we borrowed turned out to be a concrete drill bit, not really built for wood at all, so we ran back over to the members house and traded out the drill bit.  Finally as we were finishing up drilling the holes, on the second to last hole, the drill it broke in half. It was a little discouraging to say the least, but using the two broken halves we managed to make the last hole and finish up the other, so it all turned out okay.  Tuesday was district meeting so I got to give a District Training about how to invite.    Wednesday was normal, didn´t have any huge that happened that day.  Thursday was divisions.  I got to spend the day with Elder Vergara who is one of the Zone Leaders here in Itacoatiara out in his area in Novo Horizonte.  It went well, nothing huge happened but it was cool to leave my area and see a little bit more of Itacoatiara. That night the assistents got to our house at 2am after making a 4 hour bus ride out to Itacoatiara from Manaus.  On the way their bus had broken down, and they managed to bring their bad luck with them when they got to our house.   The moment they got here  the power went out which has actually been happening quite frequently here.  Energy is not something that you can depend on here. It has a habit of leaving for about half an hour to an hour.  This time it was for about an hour and a half.  Saturday was the all awaited Interviews with the President and Zone Training.  It was one of the best trainings that I´ve been to on the mission and I really liked.  Talked a lot about the Atonement and the importance of our investigators understanding the importance of  the Atonement in their lives.  I´ve been able to do a little bit of study about the Atonement and it still blows me away of the importance of the Atonement in our lives.  It is incredibly important in the lives of everyone of us.   Super good training.  My interview with Pres. Castro went really well and he is a really good Mission President.  The Training went until 4:30ish so the rest of the day was running around to get everything ready for Sunday.  Sunday was pretty normal except for the Pres. and Sister Castro visited our Sacrament Meeting and each one gave awesome talks.  It  was an awesome week!  

  Hope that everything is going great for everyone back home.  Hope that everyone has a great week and hopefully next week everything will go right!

Elder Battraw

18 Aug. 2014

That sounds like things are going pretty cool back in IN!!! That sounds like fun that Matt has finally started up going to school!  Hopefully everything goes all right with Toms papers! Maybe I´ll be home before he leaves on his mission at this rate!   Thats cool !  Why is he applying to BYU-I?, I thought that he was already accepted there?   Did he apply to BYU Provo as well or just to Idaho?  Steak and Shake sounds like a lot of fun.  I miss steak and shake a lot.  Anything fast food american I´ve been missing a little bit.   I got the package this last week with the cookie mixes.  Those were super good.   The root beer cookies were a hit here in the the house.  We made them at night and by noon the next day they were already gone.  All the american missionaries were missing the taste of root beer!

  So this week in Itacoatiara was a little bit dull. Not too much happened.  P day we actually ran into 2 americans who were passing through Itacoatiara selling little trinkets.  It was really weird to talk in English again, like it was kinda of hard.  The americans were just traveling around Brasil so it was cool just to be able to talk to someone who speaks English and knows a little bit of whats going on back in America.   Wednesday morning, my companion started feeling sick and had a fever so we ended up spending a few days in the house while he was recovering.  We would leave the house a little bit, but it always had to be short little things b/c he wasn´t able to stay out of the house too much!   Mostly I cleaned up the house here, there had been a mountain of dirty dishes that I tackled and managed to get them all cleaned up and ready to use again.  So the house is really clean right now!   Friday was the first day that we managed to leave for a substantial amount of time so were able to make a few visits but we had to take a bit slow.  I did so baptismal interviews for some of the other missionaries here in Itacoatiara.  Saturday was normal, just going around doing visits.   Sunday as well was pretty normal.  When we got back . we got to see my companion firebend with light sticks.  Apparently he learned how to twirl fire before his mission using Youtube and apparently he was pretty good at it!  That was my week!

 Hope that you all have a good week this week ! Have fun with school starting up again!  Miss all of you!

Love

Elder Battraw

11 Aug. 2014

That sounds like you all had a pretty busy week out there.  Thanks for all the pictures of the band and the construction.  Its really weird to see the school changing so much since the time that I´ve graduated.  Its super weird to say the least.  I always thought that the school we just stay the same:) Exciting for Tom, lets hope that he passes all the interviews now so that he can send in his call!  Why did Liam faint? Did he lock his knees or something.  Payne will be driving Sam to school...........  okay.  I haven´t been getting any letters from Jake so thanks for sending them to me!  Its cool to be able to hear from him.  Hope you get all your hours in!

  So this week has been pretty interesting here.   So to finish out from Monday, after i sent that letter from Manaus, a little bit later me and two other missionaries boarded a bus to be able to get to Itacoatiara which we found out from the long trip that is about 4 hours on the bus to get there.  Itacoatiara sits on the Amazon river and literally is a city in the middle of the rainforest.  If you look out the window, usually can see the rainforest not too far away.  Its pretty cool.  I´ll send pictures.  We left manaus about 3:00pm and got to Itacoatiara about 7:30ish.  We were all pretty tired when we got there.  The other missionaries picked us up shorty afterward and took us to the house.  The house where we are living in has 4 elders living there including me. My new companion is Elder Rodriguez from Ohio, who actually lives about half an hour away from one of the zone leaders here. Hes pretty cool.  This week was my first week as District Leader which meant that Tuesday morning after traveling all of Monday I gave a training on how to work with recent converts.  It went pretty well.  Itacoatiara is pretty nice, but its pretty darn hot at times.  From about 11:00am to 3:30pm you don´t really want to be outside b/c its gets HOT (and there is lots of mosquitoes) .   This week was really just going around getting to know the new area which is pretty nice.  The Branch President here is pretty cool and the other members are pretty nice.  Highlights from the week are that we, and when I say we I mean my companion made pizza with some investigators which was awesome.  Sunday was Fathers Day here in Brazil so the Branch here wanted to do something original so at the end of the three hour block they called all the fathers together and gave all a mug with a pen and then to top it off, a pizza with soda.  I thought it was a brilliant idea! Sunday night we also got to have a baptism of a girl whose ´uncle´ (he is only 5 years older than her) was baptized the last week.  It was super cool!   Hopefully this week will be pretty awesome as well! 

  I hope that you all have a great week this week! Have fun with school starting up again!   Have an awesome week! I miss all of you!

Love 

Elder Battraw

4 August 2014

This week was pretty nice here in Tancredo Neves.  Nothing really major happened except this Thursday was my 1 year mark out here in the mission field which was pretty cool.  Saturday we managed to have a baptism of a girl with 9 years of age.  Her family is less active except for her sister and brother who will always go to church.  We dropped by their house to see how they were and found out that Brenda hadn´t been baptised and this week we managed to arrange her batpism.  It was pretty cool, and afterward her mom told us that that she wanted to be baptized as well, but that will have to wait a little bit b/c they need to get married, were living together without being married.  Its super cool to be a ble to see the progress of this family. 

So the big news is finally out! I´ve been transfered!  I´m going to Itacoatiara which is located in the state of Amazonas, about 5 hours of bus riding to get there.  Yesterday I got the big phone call about 3:00pm.  Yesterday was a pretty good day, I got to say goodbye to a bunch of people back in Tancredo Neves and took some pictures with some of the members there.   It was a pretty cool day and it was a little weird to be packing up my bags after 7 months of living in that house in that area.  This morning I left the house about 6:00am, well, we tried to leave the house at 6:00am.  The Elder Quorums President had volunteered to take us to the airport and had managed to find our house just fine, the only problem was that when he went to start the car, the car wouldn´t start at all.  My flight was leaving at 7:20 so we kinda of had to get going.  He ran to a nearby gas station, got some gas and still the car wouldn´t.  He made an emergency phone call to his wife which got another car and drove up to pick us up, while she stayed with the broken down car.  The following 15 minutes of my life were some of the scariest.  First while we loading up the car (It was already 6:30) the  Elders Quorum President glances at his watch and with a determined look on his face said to me, Elder you will make this flight, I will drive like its Formula 1 to get you to the airport.  When we got going, I don´t think that the speedometer dipped below 60 km/hr.  To get around cars he would serve into the opposing lane, gun to get around people (try to remember that this is rush hour in a city), Red lights, no problem.  He would serve around the line of cars to get to the front and if nobody was in the intersection, gun it to get across.  He made the usual 25-35 minute trip into a trip of 13 minutes. We managed to ge to the airport in time and ran to get checked in and through security.  Thankfully I didn´t have any problems there and managed to catch my flight with the other missionaries to Manaus.  Right now I am waiting to catch the bus  to be able to go to my new area.  I´m pretty excited.  I am going to be the District Leader there which will be a new experience for sure.

  How is everything going on at home?  Anything new and exciting happen this week?   Hope that everything is going okay! Have an awesome week! When does school start?

Love

 Elder Battraw

14 July 2014

Thanks for the pictures! Super cool that Jake is leaving for a mission as well right now! Hope that he has a great time on the mission!  Saturday is the big day huh?  Have a great day!  I´ll be cheering you on from here in Brasil.  I´ll get to the dealings of the World Cup a little big later into the letter.  Thats no fun about the bike tires, we had the happen a lot in Boise.  Lots of stickers there as well, so it wasn´t unusual for every week to have at least one flat tire.  You get pretty fast at changing a flat tire.  I did know one of Roses companions here in brasil.  His companion is a member of the branch here in Porto Velho, Tancredo Neves.  He came home briefly b/c of medical problems and i got the chance to meet. They even had a picture of him and ross up on the wall of the chapel.  It was super cool b/c one day i was talking with him after sacrament meeting and he mentioned that one of his companions was from IN as well and after a few questions we figured out it was Ross.  Super cool.  Shout out to Ross, Elder Cruz (jackson) is back in the mission field in São Paulo!

   So this week was an interesting week here.  i´ll get the final report of the world cup out.  So this Tuesday was the Brasil vs Germany game.  This game entered the record books to say the least.  Within the first 29 minutes of the game, Germany had made 5 goals, 4 within 6 minutes.  It was fast enough that people here were still thinking that they were replaying the last goal when Germany had already made the next.  To say that day was a day of sadness and mourning and understatment.  In the house where I was watching we had people crying and others sitting in stunned silence as they watched Brasil team get destroyed.   The game ended with Brasil making a goal in the last 2 minutes of the game to bring the final score to 7-1.  It was a very sad day here in Brasil.  The game was basically repeated as Brasil competed for 3rd place against Holand and the game ended with the score being 3-0 to Holland. This was not a very good time to be Brasilian.  Sunday, the World Cup was brought to an end with Germany vs Argentina, which ended with the German victory of 1-0 making this the 4th time that germany has won the World Cup.  

  So I´ll tell my viewpoint. Monday night we had 4 other elders from other areas staying with us to be able to participate in the get to know your president conference with President Castro.  Super cool to have 4 more elders in the house. Tuesday we all got to know President Castro.  Hes about 55 and hes super cool. He speaks both Portugese and Spanish.  Super cool.  I think that it ´ll be super fun to have him as mission president!  Tuesday we also got to watch the brasil vs germany game.  All of the elders (2 bolivians and 4 americans) were rooting for germany and it was interesting to watch the reactions as the game progressed.  The first goal everyone went crazy, 2nd goal was still really animated, 3rd, what, another goal?, 4th theres no way this is happening, 5th i can´t belive this is happening, 6th again!?! 7th where is brasil!?!.   By the end of the game everyone is the house was rooting for brasil to make at least one goal which they did do in the last 2 minutes.  It was really sad to watch Brasil lose this way b/c they were a very strong team.  Wednesday after all the elders had returned back to their own areas were able to get back to work.  We´ve been talking a lot with less actives here helping them return back to church.  Its been really cool, we´ve been meeting a lot of new people.  Its always interesting to talk with these people.  Never has one ever told me that they do not believe that the church is not true, many of them still have very strong testimonies that the church is true, but haven´t a chance to come back yet.  Its been really awesome.  We met a new young man named Fabío who is super cool as well.  He is pretty awesome and has a strong desire to learn about the gospel which is super cool.  Hes getting ready to be baptized this coming Sunday and we are super excited for him!  We have a couple other investigators who are really excited to learn about the gospel and watching their testimonies grow every day makes everyday here in Brasil worth it! 

  Hope that you all are having a great week this week! Have a fun time with everybody there in house! have an awesome time at the wedding! Miss all of you!

Love 

Elder Battraw

7 July 2014

Tom won a 32 inch TV! Wow thats super cool! Is it his own personal tv or what?  Super cool and super lucky.  Thats sounds like there is going to be a lot of people out there in IN!   Thats great that the house is all finished up now except for the bathrooms!   hopefully everything will be moved over there quickly.  Sounds like a good week anyway! 
  So this week here in Brasil.  Tuesday was pretty normal.  District Meeting as usual all the way out in the downtown of the city.   Good Meeting.  When we were coming back on the bus, we almost got pulled over by an ambulance b/c right in front of us an accident had happened  with someone on a motorcycle and a car.  Yikes.  Accidents are always happening here with motos (theres some portugûes for you!)  b/c everyone here has a moto.  Pretty sad to see.   Wednesday was pretty normal along with Thursday.  Friday was pretty cool b/c that night the branch here had what is called an Arreal.  Basically its a Brazilian country dance night.  Everybody was dressed up as cowboys and cowgirls (which is suprisingly popular here) and there was music. Pretty fun night, but we only got to stay until 9:30, which is no fun at all.  I have a few pictures that I will have to see as well.  Friday was also BRASIL VS COLÔMBIA.  Its was a pretty intense game, but Brasil won out in the end.  The only problem was that their star player Neymar, got a vertabrae broken during the game and is imoblized for the next 6 weeks and the captain of the team is now banned from playing in the next game against Germany b/c he got two yellows card in this World Cup.  This Tuesday against Germany will be interesting to say the least.  The World Cup is pretty crazy here.  Missionaries are not allowed to wear any kind of sports jerseys out in the streets b/c it can get pretty crazy.  To say that Brasilians are supportative of their team is an understatement. Brasilians are crazy about football/futebol/fussball.    As investigators goes, its been okay this week.  This week has been a lot of knocking on doors trying to find people to teach and hasn´t lead to a lot of sucess.  This week we had ward counsel and we reiceved a list of less active families to work with for this week!  This will be an awesome week!  Tomorrow our new mission President is coming out here to Rondônia so we´ll be able to meet him! I ´m super excited!

  Hope that you all have a great week!  Have an awesome time with the wedding and moving everything from house to house!    I miss all of you! Have a great week!

Love

Elder Battraw

30 June 204

The house is looking pretty nice! When are you all officially going to move on in?   I can´t wait to see the house when its all done!  Phil is back now as well with Adrienne coming back this week!  Wow, it does feel like everyone is coming back!  Super cool.  I´ll still be waiting one more year, today was 11 month mark here in the mission field so that was super exciting.  Band looks like a lot of fun.  How did the parades go?   Those new clothes are pretty nice!

  This week was pretty normal here in Brasil.  Nothing extremely exciting happened this week.  Tuesday was District meeting with two districts which was cool.  Wednesday was pretty normal, just walking and talking.  Right now we are trying to find more people to teach along with reactivate a lot of the less actives here .  The branch here just needs a few more priesthood holders along with 30 more people to be able to turn into a ward so right now we are trying to do a lot of reactivation!   Its been going pretty well so far and hopefully we´ll continue to have success.   Thursday and the rest of the week were pretty normal. Not much happened out of the ordinary.  Saturday was Brasil playing against Chile which turned out to be really really intense.  To give you a good idea of how the World Cup games work,  There are two 45 minutes halfs, with a 20 minute break in between.  If you reach the end of the 90 total are the scored is still tied, there is 30 more minutes added on to the game to give the teams a little bit more time to rest and make a goal.  If by the time those 30 minutes are up and the score is still tied, they start doing penalty kicks to make goals which simply is one player and opposing teams goalie.  The player has one opportunity to kick the ball and make a goal and the goalie has to try and save it.  Each team has 5 penalty kicks and the team with the most goals at the end wins.  Brasil and Chile didn´t manage to break the tie of 1-1 until the very last penalty kick which Brasil managed to score and win.  We were with a bunch of other members and their families and when Brasil made the final goal, they all started jumping up and down screaming they were so happy.   Pretty darn funny to see.    This week here as well Saturday night I think it dropped down to 68 degrees and everyone the next day was all bundled up with long sleeves they were so cold.  Its kinda of weird of you get accustomed to the heat so much that when it drops it can feel a lot colder than it really is!   

  That was my week in short.  Hope that you all can have a great week this week! Miss all of you! 

Love

Elder Battraw