Week 74

well hello family!

so this week was an awesome week for our district. there were lots of good things that happened. so i laughed really hard in the internet cafe when i figured out brodie got destroyed on the tube. its also nice to have a little excitement before the wedding :) 

so the coolest thing was the baptism of somebody named andréia. she is a woman in the the other groups area, but i was able to teach her a couple times on divisions and she has brought us to some of her friends houses. she is was cool and the best part was that she chose me to baptise her! i was super thrilled and it was such a spiritual moment. she will be a very strong member here in araguaína. 

so another awesome thing that happened was our hammock sleepover! we all put our hammocks outside one day and slept. it was super fun and a great bonding moment :) the new missionary has already bought one so he was able to participate also. im sure this will become a tradition of ours.

ANOTHER awesome thing (this week was just great) was an activity that we planned! we planned 'night of the desserts' - everyone needed to bring a dessert and there was a quick message, then we all ate! it was cool because the people brought the recipes so you could learn how to do some new stuff. me and elder johnson both made some pretty good ones. it was a great activity because there were lots of visitors; i think more than members. everyone bonded great! 

so michelly's family has progressed alot. we brought a family over there that are members and we were able to mark a baptismal date with the whole family! so there are the two parents, and two kids. it was so great and i got super happy. i want to baptize a family so badly! i set it for dad's birthday (july 13th). i thought it would be a good way to celebrate :) sadly the whole family had to travel over that weekend, but they said that they will go when they get back!  

so the new missionary almost died because his second lunch here in brasil was the farthest lunch in our area. its like an hour and a half walk. it was funny because when we told  him we were 1/4 of the way he thought we were already there, then 1/2 he REALLY thought we were there. it was funny because we were telling the truth the whole time. he got lucky because during the dessert part we were able to hitch hike a ride which cut half an hour off the journey. welcome to brasil elder lott :)

photo- big leaf

on wednesday, we had a contacts contest. we could see who could do the most contacts in the zone from after lunch until 6. we talked to every single person who passed us on the street and  alone i was able to fill out 100 surveys! i was pretty happy about that :)

I learned that i have a very big mouth :)

well, sadly my time is up. BUT i was able to send some pictures! i hope all is well in zion!

love,

-Elder Lambert

Week 73

so family

area: araguaína

companion: elder bisognin

so i realized that i had kind of failed on describing my area here... so this is the area that is most like home to me. still everything is different, but alot more the same. there are traffic laws here which is nice and the feeling in the streets is better. here its super safe and the people actually use normal clothes. normally the guys walk around in swimsuits without shirts. 

me and elder johnson matching 

photo:the 3 year old bed sheet i finally gave up :'( i burned it!

our watermelon!

so our week had some ups and downs....

one of the downs was that my comp got pretty sick one day. we did a fast one day to have more people go to church and we had to walk alot that day. the next morning he woke up throwing up. we went to the hospital so that he could take an IV. we were there for 7 hours.... public health is an awesome idea. so funny story though, i had to use the bathroom there while we were waiting. i went into the stall and there was no toilet paper! i opened the stall door and walked over to the sinks with my pants down to grab some paper towels... luckily nobody was in there :) i love brasil! 

another cool thing that happened on friday night was that we participated in the young womens activity! we gave the message and participated in the games. i really love helping out the branch and participating in all the things. im super excited because i planned an activity for this week! we will have a dessert night at the church. it will be sweet! i learned a new dessert that i will make :)

one cool thing is that this week was awesome! we were able to teach alot of lessons and find some good, new families. we had been teaching a girl and gave her the book of mormon to read a bit. when we went back she had already read half of it and said that she prayed and got an answer! she also wants to be baptized. she has been sick for the last two weeks so she hasn't been able to go to church :( it was cool because the other day we got to meet her parents! the girl had talked to her parents about the answer she received and the parents were super excited about it. we will teach the whole family during the week. 

our last pday lunch with elder de los santos.

we also have another cool progressing investigator named f******  he is really liking our visits and we will try to mark a baptismal date with him during the week. we were really excited because he invited us to have lunch at his house and have a BBQ! but... that was the day my comp was sick. i will keep you updated on his progress!

well, i love you guys super alot and wish you a great week!

-Elder lambert

Week 72

so my dearest fam, one more transfer has come and gone! i will stay here with my comp, and elder johnson will stay and be the comp of a new guy! 

so i will tell some funny things that happened during the week, then some awesome things that happened.

first story. so one day, all of our plans fell through so we started to knock on doors. we went to richest part of the city where everyone has intercoms. after alot of people rejected us, we started to try new things to get the people to come to the door and talk to us. one way was that i would say that i am american and will only be here for a short time visiting the people. amazingly, it worked! the people would get so curious just to hear me talk that they would come to the door sometimes without just hanging up the intercom. another funny part was that i asked one time to speak with the owner of the house and someone responded that nobody was home, i asked him if i could speak with  'nobody' - he didnt like that too much and hung up the intercom :) i love knocking on doors because i like to turn it into a fun experience. 

we had a zone meeting on tuesday which means leaving again at 2 in the morning to get there on time. the meeting was fun and it was great talking to elder rais some more. we returned home at 12 at midnight which kind of made me tired the rest of the week... 

another day, we had lunch super far away and we found a truck selling watermelons! i was on a division with elder de los santos and we decided to buy some and bring them back home. they were just 2 for R$5 (super cheap). what we didnt really pay attention to were the rain clouds, and we had to walk 40 minutes to our house with two huge water melons :) it was a really funny/fun experience. 

on saturday we had a service project at an investigators house that was super cool. she got super excited and she was telling all of her buddies about it. she will be baptized on the 22nd (shes from the other area). we then went home and did a deep clean of our house because it was the saturday before transfers. i dont know if i have said much about the house, but the roof is broken so everytime it rains, it fills the house with water and dirt. lets just say that when we moved some stuff around, we found a lot of dirt. it was a long day of working, but at least the house is clean!  

so we are still having a difficult time finding investigators who really progress. we keep finding people who have lots of potential, but it never works out. however, we met someone named fernando this week who seems really cool. he is a good buddy of a member and visited the church on sunday and really liked it. we taught him sunday night and he was amazed at the plan of salvation. it was really cool watching his reactions as everything started to make sense to him. on the way home he bought us a coke and told us to call him some night to eat pizza :) he said that he also wants to be put on the lunch calendar for the missionaries! we will work our hardest with him and i will pray that everything will work out!

i am excited to stay here another transfer because i dont want to leave here yet. i feel like i need to do alot more work before i leave. i want to baptize a family!!

i love you all so much and wish you the best!

-Elder Lambert

Week 71

hello my fabulous family!

so i never heard anything more from president about my release date. i will see if i can follow up with him about it. im nervous for you too mom! i hope that everything gets ready super fast so that you can run in ragnar! one thing that i learned in the mission is the power of priesthood blessings. you should ask for a health blessing from dad. people in the US never really ask for them i realized, here people ask for one whenever they are sick. i think its super cool because it shows that they have faith that it will work, and it does! im excited to go kayak riding when i get home with all the other fun adventures i have planned! im glad you liked the pictures, sadly, my memory cards are getting kinda funny, it has all the stuff there, but sometimes doesnt let me send them, today is one of those days. i have so many things that i want to send but it doesnt work! and if you would like to send me some more syrup, you are more than welcome :)

so this week was an incredible week of miracles! working with our contacts that we had done and some other things we were able to find a bunch of new investigators. this was very needed here and i am super excited about it! we passed almost all of our goals for the week and just fell short of three of them. we are starting to work pretty well together. i hope the Lord will continue to bless us this next week! 

on tuesday, the zone leaders came and i was able to do another division with elder rais. it was really awesome working with my trainer again. a funny thing that happened was that we taught a super rich lady and she had a bear skin rug on the ground. i commented on how cool it was and thought that she would like if i told her that we have an antelope head on our wall. so what happened was that she got really mad at me and thought it was a very wrong thing to do; i got a bit confused... 

on thursday, i did a division with elder johnson which was super fun. we work really well together and it was fun giving him a couple tips. he and i are like the exact same situation as when i was with elder spackman.

on saturday we did a service project which was pretty cool but some hard work. 

tomorrow we will have a zone meeting in imperetriz, maybe i will get mail!

sorry this email was super short, i had alot of other things to respond to.

i lvoe you all!

-Elder Lambert