Week 79

hello family and friends!

so the most exciting thing ever happened!!!! MY SISTER GOT MARRIED! im so happy for her and so proud also. i loved all the pictures that people have sent to me, so thanks everybody. i was able to send off a couple of pictures this week so i hope y'all enjoy!

so with transfers i got a missionary who lives here and is waiting for his call. he is doing a preparation for his mission. he will stay with me for probably 6 weeks. im really excited because it gives me another chance to train somebody! its cool because he has no experience yet because he never passed in the MTC. he is learning really fast and im excited to work with him. elder lotts new companion is really cool also. his name is elder antônio. i think our district will be able to work alot this transfer and im really excited! i think i will stay here in araguaína lots of time which would be awesome!

we were supposed to have a baptism on saturday, but we had to remark it for this saturday. the guys name is leandro and he is progressing so much! he has a testimony of the church and the book of mormon and is excited to be baptized, he already passed the interview and said that i could baptize him! im really excited for this. you will recieve the pictures next week!

we will have a zone meeting tomorrow that im super excited about because we will recieve letters! elder Johnson and i are having a competition to see who can recieve more. he sent me an email saying that he recieved 11. i hope i can beat him :) 

so, i made 1 year and 6 months on my mission! that was exciting and i was able to burn some pants! i had snagged a pair of pants from somebody who went home a while ago and have been saving them just for this very moment! i cant believe how fast time is going by. it really amazes me. my date that i will come home on is december 27th i think. thats the soonest the president can let me off. do you have any updates on those other things that will determine when i get home? 

sorry that this email is a bit short, but there were a lot of pictures to look at and things to respond to. i hope all is well and im so happy for my family! a lot of things have changed while i have been gone, but just things for the better! i love each and every one of you and you are in my prayers ALWAYS! :)

-Elder Lambert

in the presidents car. it had 8 people (i was in the trunk)

 names that we carved in cement! i will always be in brasil!

 me burning my pants at 1 year and 6 months

 me elder johnson and elder lott

Week 78

hello my dearest family!

congrats on the race mom! im so proud that you ran well and am happy your leg did well! send me some pictures!

so we already know about transfers! my companion was transfered to campo maior! he is pretty excited because i told him it is a super good area. Also elder johnson was transferred which is really sad for me. we were really good buddies and i will miss him alot. i will be receiving a local here who is preparing to serve a mission. i don't know what you call this in english. he is a member of the branch and is super awesome :) his name is Michael. it will be super fun to work with him here.

so the most exciting thing that happened was the baptism of saturday! it was such a cool moment and she was confirmed sunday. i know that she will continue strong in the church and be an awesome member. during the baptism the spirit was super strong and we had an investigator there that is also rearing to be batized and it helped him out a lot to see how it is. we are hoping to baptise him this saturday. his name is Leandro. 

another cool thing that happened was that we went to an old folks home two times during the week! i was really fun talking to the people because they all have so much experience in life and so many interesting stories. there are some people there who are so cute! i want to be just like them when i am older. we liked the visit that we did during the week so much that we went back on sunday. Raimundo was one of our favorites so we took a picture with him. we will try to go there on a weekly routine!

something that happened that was a little scary:

we had a little party yesterday for elder bisognin at a members house. it was really cool because lots of people were there and it had really delicious food :) everyone talked about what they liked about him. the scary part was that when we were outside of their house talking, two guys stopped in front of the neighbors house, pointed a gun at him and took his wallet and motorcycle! that was something a little unexpected and shocking. everyone got a little scared after that...

Sunday this week was pretty funny again because a lot of people are traveling still. i feel like a swiss-army-knife missionary. on sunday i said prayers, prepared the sacrament, passed the sacrament, led the music, and gave a 15 minute surprise talk at the end. the last speaker didnt show up so i was called on in the moment. its a little stressful at times, but also really fun to help out so much in some of these things! 

just a random note... can you look through my pictures on my laptop and send me the picture life guarding with the senior water aerobics class? thanks!

sadly i havent gotten letters for a while because the last month the leaders didnt go to Teresina for meetings. at the beginning of August they should go  so maybe i will get stuff then!

i had two more pictures to send, but sadly they uploaded too slow :( i love you all and wish you a great week!

-Elder lambert

hello family!

 so transfers are coming up! they will be next monday, maybe by the next email i will already know whats going on so that i can let y'all know. i hope i stay! i am really liking this place and the people here. we have some really awesome people that we are teaching, and also the members are super fun and loving. its starting to hit me that my time is slowly coming to an end! i will make a year and a half in the mission in 10 days! i am still far from coming home, but this time will pass by really fast. whenever im not working or studying i start to think alot about home. its exciting that i will be able to see you soon!

this week was another great week of work and miracles. one big problem is that everyone is on break right now. usually its not too big of a problem, but in little cities like this one, almost everyone leaves to visit beaches or family. just to top things off, the branch had a temple trip. almost all the members left saturday and wont get back until next sunday. it was so funny in church because the missionaries were doing alot of the work. everything went well for who was there, but it was a little more stressful. 

one thing that was really confirmed to me this week is that my thoughts are not the lords thoughts and my ways are not the lords way (scripture in isaiah). we had alot of things that we planned to happen during the week  and none of these plans worked out, but because they didnt work out other miracles happened! it was really cool to see how the Lord works. sometimes something has to go wrong so that something more important happens. 

before lunch one saturday we were able to watch the USA vs Brasil volleyball game! that was really fun and exciting, but a little bit sad because we lost :( its the random things like this that make me happy in life!

we are excited for the baptism this weekend of alana! she is really progressing and it is so cool to see. her mom says that she always sees her reading the Liahona now and the scriptures and that she has already changed a bunch in her behavior. she is excited to be baptized and feels really good about it. 

well the internet went down. i hope i will be able to send this bfore leaving!

i love you all and wish you a great week!

-Elder Lambert

Week 76

hello my dearest family!
 

so this week was the best week in my mission i think. we were able to teach the most lessons i have ever taught in a week and a TON with members. we have some super awesome people here who love to help us out :) we also had 10 people at church and one of them was michelly's family! random funny thing: there is a guy singing very horribly next to me :)

the conference was good, sadly i was a little tired though so it was hard for me to stay awake. it was only 6 hours by bus because it was at the church of the zone leaders. the president forgot to bring cards and supplies so sadly i will have to wait another month!

pday was so fun today! we went with one of the members to a waterfall! it was super pretty, but it was so hard for me to not jump in! i brought my huge knife and my slingshot and we went iguana hunting :) we had a good lunch there with some sandwiches, oranges, apples, and bananas.

this week we were able to mark two more baptismal dates. it has been a little bit of time since i have baptized, but i think that will come to an end soon. this transfer is already coming to an end so i hope i can baptize before its over. the time is starting to go by so fast!

Glad you had a good 4th - I missed being there. Time is up - love you all!

Elder Lambert

Week 75

hello my dearest family!

well i am getting excited for the 4th! i will have to buy some stuff to make pancakes or something... theres nothing better than a good breakfast on the 4th! 

so, just to start out commenting on the confederations cup. yes, the brasilians watch it. i dont think there were even animals in the streets. it was seriously a ghost town during the game. luckily the game fell on our night of monthly planning, so we didnt have to teach at night. if we did, we wouldnt have taught anybody... 

so just some random cool things that happened: last monday, we did a contact with an old man outside of his house who looked really nice. he invited us to come in and talk a little bit about ourselves. he then gave us dinner! it was just a little bit of rice with some meat, but it was so delicious! i could tell that it was made with 100% love :) i think its so cool how nice some of the people are here. he wasnt that interested in the church, but he was a great friend to us! 

another fun thing was that we did some visits with andréia (the recent convert). she is so cool because she really understands how important the gospel is and how it changed her life so she has the desire to share it with EVERYONE! she has been giving us all kinds of references and has been teaching a bit with us. she has been a great help.  

miracles: so we recognized that we are all working really hard in the district, but we arent baptizing very much. i was doing some studies on how we could do better. one thing that i studied was Mormon chapter 9. i realized that we need to have more faith and ask for miracles! we always pray to have the spirit with us and find people, and we are doing that! but what we really need are some miracles. i really learned that prayer is meant to ask for EVERYTHING that we need. we dont need to feel ashamed to ask help from God. it was cool because we had a little meeting in our house and i talked about this. the first day that we started praying for miracles, somebody stopped us in the street and asked us what he needs to do to become part of our church! this is for sure something that doesnt happen every day. this helped my faith grow a lot and i will for sure start to depend on the lord more in my mission. the guy that we met is named Ramon. he went to church on sunday and brought his girl friend! we will follow up a bunch with him during the week.  

on friday, there was a church activity at a members house called quadrilha. its a party that all of brasil has in june. there was alot of fun games and some food. me and elder johnson participated first in a dance contest. there were 5 couples (me and him being one of them) and you had to keep an orange on your foreheads while dancing to fast music. he was the girl and i led because i know the brasilian dances. its called forró. lets just say we were the first ones to lose sadly :( we participated in another one which was a relay race. someone had to blow up a balloon and the other person had to grab it and run down the yard to pop it on the chest of another person waiting. then you had to do the same thing going back. it popped great the first time, but the second time i ran into the man and it didnt pop! we sat there hugging each other trying to get it. we had to back up and chest bump. i won a screw driver, elder johnson won a calculator, and irmão rocha won an apple :) lets just say it was lots of fun :) 

 

well, this week we will travel to imperatriz for a zone meeting. i hope i get letters! i'll be sure to keep y'all updated on the news!

i love all you!

-Elder Lambert