Week 11: Sao Luis

Hello friends and family!

Area-São Luis    Companion-Elder Rais

So i am trying to upload pictures, but these computers here are super super bad, so i dont think i can upload many (or any, we shall see) This was yet another great week in the mission field! just some random happenings... we have been without water since last saturday or sunday i believe. going over a week has been kind of difficult needing to shower and wash clothes and such. every morning we have walked about 15 minutes to a lady´s house who is in our ward and we fill up buckets and carry them back for the day. this water is used mainly for showering and flushing the toilets :) More about my area: my area takes about 30 min.of walking to get to and from our house and it is some really nice houses at the beginning where nobody is outside so we dont have anyone to talk to, then goes into the ghetto style stuff. at night we have to be really careful of which streets we go down. the area is humongous and we do lots and lots and LOTS of walking everyday, but hey, its good for you :) lunches here have been pretty darn good so far! there have just been a couple where i have gone away a bit hungry because they didnt have much. but on the other hand, some have been absolutely amazing! the portuguese is tough. its still really hard for me to understand much of what people are saying. i can talk pretty well, but because i cant understand i cant respond to questions very well. i have been speaking a little more in lessons, but not too much. this week i will start talking more. the package that i got at the beginning has been soooo nice :) its fun to munch on some american candy while i study, so thanks so much! now about my week:

monday-monday was pretty good. the thing that set it apart was that we almost got robbed! i guess you can say that makes it pretty interesting :) a drunk guy came out of his house and told us to stop because he had a quick question. when he got closer he asked if we had any money and we said no because we are missionaries. we started to walk away and he started to follow us and was yelling asking if we were scared. it was kind of weird, but we got away :)

tuesday-i had my first district meeting! haha it wasnt anything too exciting,  but it was interesting. we just had some thoughts and talked about investigators and had some more training etc...

wednesday-me and elder rais had a cool spiritual experience this night. we had been teaching an investigator who has been progressing way fast. his name is ediberto (the one who went to conference). he was supposed to be out of town for a week and we were kind of bummed because we wanted to talk to him about baptism. we got the feeling that we should stop by his house anyways on our way home, so we did! it turned out he didnt leave because he was sick, but our cell phone doesnt work so there was no way that he could contact us about it. it was a way good lesson and he asked for two more books of mormon so he can tall some of his friends about it :) way cool huh? 

thursday-we challenged ediberto to baptism and he said yes! it was cool because i did the challenge. he wants to learn alot more so the earliest date we could set with him was april 11. hopefully as he gets an answer about our church he will want to get baptized a little sooner. 

friday-This was an amazing day because previously alot of our lessons had been falling through and such, but this day we taught three lessons with a member with us, 3 other lessons, and got 10 new investigators! this will help us alot because nobody has done work in our area before, so we started with 0 people when we got here... also we taught a woman named Tássia and it was such a spiritual lesson and we challenged her to baptism and she said yes! i know she knows that what we taught her is true. however, she is unmarried and living with someone so we taught her about the importance of marriage. she really wants to be married but her guy doesnt. she said she will talk with him about and we will check up with her to see how it went tomorrow! i hope he said yes! it takes exactly 30 days to do all the licensing things, so i hope we can get to work so she can be baptized soon.

saturday-very cool things happened this day. a woman named Mayara got married today! she was someone who the elders had been teaching for a while and the day finally came where she could get married. she was sooo excited and so were they. her baptism is set for the next day. she was living with a guy who used to be a member and he is reactivating too. it was so cool to see how big of an influence missionary work can be.

sunday-we had to leave super early today for church because mayara had her baptism at 7. the church is about a 30 minute walk from our house. im so happy for her because she came such a long way :) church was good but i got way tired because it was hot and i didnt understand anything, BUT we had 4 of our investigators come!! im super excited about that!

monday-today we woke up and cleaned the house and did some studying. our water has been back on for a bit! i hope it stays on... later we will take a bus to the city and go to all the cool stores and such :) 

i am doing great and having a blast and i know this church is true! i know i got some emails with questions, i cant remember them, so i will look at them again and send another email with answers. i hope everyone else is doing well!!  i attached 4 pictures, i hope they send! they are of my companion, the airplane, mayara and andersons wedding, and my awfully red/sunburned arm :)

here are my answers to the questions...

being closer to the ocean makes it a bit cooler because there is a breeze here. in central teresina its just dead and super hot. only my companion is brazilian. the other two are americans, so there is still lots of english in the house. he is 18 because only the US restricts boys to be 19 to serve misisons. anywhere else they can be 18. he said here alot of boys cant serve because they get drafted into the military, but he was lucky! i will buy some better food this week too :) it was great to hear from everyone and its too bad that there are some things people are struggling with! i will keep everyone in my prayers! i love you all!

Com amor!

Elder Lambert!

Week 10: Sao Luis

Hello family and friends!

week: already cant remember, companion -- Elder Rindlisbacher/Rais

i am officially sending this from a computer in são luis! i did arrive here safely and i have soo much to say because i traveled on my last prep day! its wierd typing on these computers because it underlines everyword in red because i am spelling them wrong according to portuguese :) i will briefly sum up two weeks ago...

i dry cleaned my suit before leaving because it had gotten pretty gross between traveling and being worn in the heat for temple days. it was more expensive than i was hoping so that was kind of a bummer... we had orientation for all the leaving missionaries (americans and brazilians) and it was all in portuguese. it was also the entire day, so my brain started to feel like it was exploding. it also made me realize that when brazilians talk for real, they talk alot faster than when they talk in class. so, pretty much i learned that i dont quite know portuguese yet :) for the last TRC, we had local members and we taught a family! it was soo cool! we taught a dad and three little girls. it was way fun because it was a little more like the real deal. it was also our last day for gym which was kind of a bummer because i will miss playing volleyball! because it would be conference the following sunday, we found out that we needed to start fasting saturday afternoon during our lunch. i stalked up good, and it was another great fast :) at the sunday night devotional, we had the mission president of the são paulo north mission speak! he was such a great speaker and he was the first black missionary for the church!! crazy huh? afterwards, i was able to talk to him for a bit and asked if he knew tanner paxman because he is serving there. he said he had just had an interview with him and made him a trainer! he said he was doing super well and that everybody loves him. it was really nice to hear that he is doing well. for my last day at the CTM we got to go proselyting in downtown são paulo. it was sooo cool! it was way different than anything else i had seen so far, but it was much tougher too. everyone was in a hurry and didnt want to talk much, but we were able to give out three books of mormon in the hour we were there. we also got to experience the joy of public transportation:) we had to say goodbye to all of our teachers which was way sad. i will miss them lots. irmã pozete said that she would try and be the teacher for nat :) we packed that night and got to bed pretty late. the next morning, we were to be downstairs packed and ready by 4:30 am. it was pretty stressful because our alarm never went off, but luckily i woke up at 4:15. we hurried and made it in 15 minutes, but i realized i missed the tiny drawer under my desk... hopefully they will send me the stuff. there were 11 other missionaries that traveled to teresina that day, so that was fun. we met some missionaries on our layover in brazilia and i think danny gessel was there. i never remember seeing his name, but everyone said he left that day so i would have seen him with the others. too bad i wasnt looking out for him. there was also a nun on our flight who kept looking at me funny, im sure she just wanted to hear about our great church :) now i will start my experiences in teresina.

tuesday: we arrived and met the mission president and his wife and went to a chapel for lunch.the coolest part about lunch was that we got to have guaraná Jesus :) its sooo good and you can only get it around teresina. we went proselyting with some of the mission presidents secretaries which was super fun because we literally talked to every person we saw. it got me very excited for when i get my own area and companion. at night we went to the mission home to sleep. there i met elder smoot which was way cool as well. the room was super funny because we had 10 people sleeping there and the showers were just a shower head over the toilet pretty much which was a hole in the floor for the drain.

Elder Lambert with Elder Smoot (we've been reading his blog since Derek got his call to learn more about Teresina)

wednesday: i got my companion, elder rais! he is 18 and only has been in the mission for 6 weeks :) we will be learning together, but we get along really good and i think we can be a really powerful companionship. later that day we took a bus to a city called timon and did some proselyting there. we taught a family there that was really interested and it was so cool! being a missionary is one of the coolest things ever! i still am no where close to understanding everything, but i listen to what i can and throw in a testimony here and there. i want to start communicating with the people so bad so i can help them!

thursday: we woke up at 5 am to get ready and leave because at the last minute the night before the mission president needed us to stay at another location. we got back to the mission home at about 7:30 after taking the bus. we had a 5 hour training for how to plan. it was super long, but it was good stuff to hear. at 4 pm, we got on the bus and took our 8.5 hour ride here to são luis!

friday: we bought some food in the morning and did all our studying and such. later we had lunch at a members house. it was SOOO GOOD! we had to walk about an hour to get there though :) we went on splits with the other two missionaries we are living with and me and elder iverson had some cool lessons. one really cool experience was that we were trying to find an address and we felt prompted to ask this one guy. he didnt know so he called over a girl with a child and asked her. she didnt know either and elder iverson asked if they were married, they said no, but were living together and have two kids. he asked if we could teach them about the blessings of marriage and how the church of jesus christ blesses families. surprisingly they said yes and we walked over to their house! he taught the law of chastity lesson and we challenged them to get married. they were super interested and said that they would! the spirit was so strong and we knew it had to be there, otherwise people wouldnt make this change in their life. they said they would not be able to afford it because it costs R$150 for a marriage license. we found out he had a smoking addiction and spends about R$30 a week for smoking. we challenged him to stop and save the money to get married and they said they woulld! it was such a neat experience!

Saturday: we had conference which was way cool! we have a stake center about an hours walk from our house, so luckily we could go there. they had a small room where american missionaries could go to listen. i was with 5 other missionaries. later that evening our water randomly turned off, which apparently is normal. we have been showering from a storage of buckets filled with water the missionaries have for when this happens. its pretty fun :) 

Sunday:we had the same conference schedule which was yet again fantastic! also, we met someone there who is an investigator who just saw our church and people going in so he wanted to see what was going on. he listened to the second half of the sunday session and is very interested. we found out he is also in our area so we get to teach him! he is such a cool old guy and asked us to tell him about the Book of Mormon. he is such a golden investigator :)

Monday: so today is pday! we woke up and cleaned the house and bought groceries for the next week. stuff is pretty expensive, so i eat butter sandwiches for breakfast, and ramen for dinner :) later today we will go out and teach our new investigator! im super excited :) 

i love all of you and miss you tons! this church is so great and has blessed me so much in my life! remember not to send anything to ctm anymore because i am no longer there... i will keep you all  in my prayers! i hope everything goes ok with amy and the baby! i didnt figure out how to send pictures today because i had so much to type so i didnt get time, we have an hour now. next week i hope i can figure it out!  i need to go though. I LOVE YOU!

Com amor,

Elder Lambert

Temple Trip

We just got this photo from the Mission President of the missionaries last trip to the temple before entering the field

Week 8

Olá minha família e meus amigos!

 

Week 8! Mais uma semana!

Companion: Elder Rindlisbacher

 

So i didn't have time to send an email yesterday as you will hear about later in this email, so i am sending one today...

 

I cannot believe my time is almost up! its sooo crazy to think about! it went by so so fast. i cannot call from the airport. The thing i will miss about the MTC so much is probably unlimited soda :) its way good.

 

Tuesday: so last week pday was fantastic like normal! i picked up my custom leather scripture case and it is sooo cool! i love it so much. the front has a picture of jesus, the back of moroni, and the side has my name and mission on it. i will take a picture and send it to you once i get out into the field. i also accidentally drank out of a drinking fountain in a local store without thinking, but then realized the water may not have been purified. i was thinking that i had a chance to get sick, but then thought, ``there is no better place to get sick than a building that has two bathrooms on every floor,´´ so i continued to drink a lot more :) i would much rather get the sickness out of the way here than in the field. sadly, there was no effect. i guess the store was nice enough to have purified water.

 

Wednesday i decided to get my haircut again! this time I buzzed it just to see what it would look like. ive never had it cut this short, but it doesnt look to shabby! now i only have to use a dime size dot of shampoo :) shampoo here is about 15 reais... Also, something really funny happened this night. Elder adams was in his room and right before going to bed he picked up his pillow and screamed super loud. we all looked to see what had happened and there was a piece of poop on his bed! it was hilarious. it took about 30 minutes to realize it was actually a Cliff bar, but it looked very very real.

 

On thursday we went to the federal police station to do some things with our visas! that was kind of fun to have a surprise trip outside the CTM. We did all these cool fingerprint scans and prints and attempted to talk to the people there. There was some lady who trapped my buddy and was talking to him for 20 minutes. none of us knew what she was saying because she had no teeth so he just nodded his head the whole time and luckily she never asked him a question!

 

Friday i got my second bloody nose! isnt that amazing?! im so happy that i have only had two here, and neither of them have been bad at all. i guessing burning my nostrils was a very good idea because it is working great :) i also started reading the Book of Mormon in portuguese. its hard because they use really formal words that we dont learn and they write differently, but after a while i started to figure some things out.

 

We had TRC this saturday again and it went good! our afternoon teacher (irmão victor) told us some very interesting stories of where he grew up! he told us about this thing that everyone would do at parties called `body suspension´. its where you put hooks through your skin and attach them to chains and people lift you off the ground and you just hang there. I have no idea why people would ever do this, but apparently its a common party activity here in Brasil.

 

Our church talk subject for this sunday was desserts! once again i was not called so i didnt have to give mine, but i fit it into my talk really well if i were to be chosen. One elder in our district (elder Kamalu) wrote a really nice note because i was having kind of an off day for some reason and it cheered me up and i felt alot better after. We have s0me great guys in our district :)

 

MONDAY WAS THE BEST!!! we got to go proselyting! we had an hour and a half, which is short, but soo much fun! It was such a spiritual experience. i was so nervous and had been praying to be calm while i talked, but i was still so so so nervous until i talked to the first person. as soon as i started talking, it just snapped and i was perfectly calm and my portuguese was flowing perfectly! it was way cool! me and elder rindlisbacher gave out 7 books of mormon! we were on fire and talking to everyone about it. One of the coolest ones was when a guy in a truck called us over and asked if we were missionaries. we said yes and i talked to him about our faith and the book of mormon. He was locked in the whole time! it was soo cool because he was super interested and i swear he didnt blink the whole time i was talking to him. as we talked more the driver began to look a little interested too, so my companion asked him if he wanted a book of mormon to and he was soooo excited and thanked us multiple times. SO COOL! and everyone who we placed a book of mormon with promised us that they would read the introduction and ask god if our message and what they read was true. we promised them they would get a response and i felt so powerful while talking! it was so cool :) ALSO, we talked to some guy who looked like morgan freeman. he was super cool and we gave him a book of mormon. afterwards a sister came up to me and told me that she saw me talking with this guy and gave him a book of mormon and after a while she looped back through the park and said that he was reading! i felt sooo good to hear that! she said that he looked like he was intensely pondering what he was reading! that was just the icing on the cake.

 

So p-day yesterday was very interesting... so we left early in the morning for the temple, but our dirver took a different route which was wayyyy slow. so we got to the são paulo temple later than usual, AND it was closed! i guess the driver forgot or something, so then he drove us all the way to the campinas temple! im super super glad i still got to go to the temple because its my last time for two years, but its kind of a bummer because by the time we got back we only had 1 hour for p-day. i think the president took a huge group photo out front of the temple, so you should get a picture of that i think. the one hour of p-day was crazy because i was doing so many things! i bought some soap, a shake, cookies, a scripture marking pen, candy for my travels next week, and withdrew some money at an ATM. i took out 100 reais so can you check my debit card record and make sure something crazy didnt happen? it should be around 60 US dollars. Our distirct sang at devotional last night and it was sooo good! everyone said that they loved it and it was awesome. ill see if i can record us singing it again so all of you can hear it. also at devotional the speaker asked a question to the audience and i gave a response, so i got to have an interpreter again :) coolest thing ever.

 

Pretty much this was an awesome week and the days are starting to go by sooo fast now! I'm so excited/nervous to leave in less than a week! i love what i am doing, and it was soo great to get a taste of real missionary work on monday. i know this is where i am supposed to bed and i love this gospel.

 

i love you all so much!

Com Amor,

Elder Derek Romney Lambert

Week 7

olá!

 

Week 7 -- Companion: Elder Rindlisbacher

 

Here are answers to all of your questions! we have not sung the hymn yet, but i talked to the music lady so are now performing it during the tuesday night devotional! it sounds sooo cool! this last weeks theme was common household objects for our chhurch talks and i was assigned a love seat. i fit it into my talk perfectly, but was not called :( i am nervous for next week because we will probably have a really crazy topic. I'm glad that i am on the 9 week program here. the people who have been arriving here for the 6 week prgram are doing really well and learning fast. i know the lord will get them nice and prepared in 6 weeks, but i like having the extra time anyways just for practice and comfort. my departure date is the 27th. i am not sure if i can call from the airport, i will try to find out and there are two americans going with me, but i do not know about brazilians. Also because i only have two weeks left here, sometime you should start sending letters to my mission home instead of here. they will be forwarded on if they come after i leave, but just to be safe i guess. maybe in a couple days. and also can you change my address on the blog, my facebook, and the church bulletin so people get the new one: thanks!

 

Last tuesday was a great day. we had a big pizza party in our district because it was someones birthday and their mom ordered some pizzas through mr cheney´s! they were soooo good because they were actually like american pizza.

 

on thursday we had a really intense volleyball game that kept going on because nobody was winning by 2, but then i got a really good spike and ended the game :) it felt way good and everyone is getting really good. gym time is definitely my favorite time of the day and i dont think only an hour is enough time. later that night was kind of a rough night. i got a little discouraged because i was having some difficulties understanding portuguese. its really wierd because i can speak better than most of my class, but i dont understand it as well as others. it doesnt really make sense to me because usually you can understand more than you can speak, but mine is the other way around. hopefully that will change soon! i also made goals to be more positive so i could learn better and have a better time.

 

friday was way fun. i was alot happier and we did some fun things in class. in our afternoon class we did a fun question game where we had to respond only in portuguese (they were long responses) and they were nothing gospel related. i can teach lessons really well, but i have no idea how to talk to people really outside of church stuff, so it was good practice. Later that night we also learned a fun portuguese childrens game that was really fun to play and stress relieving.

 

We had TRC again this week like always and it was one of our better lessons. we taught my teachers husband who doesnt speak any english, so that was way fun. they threw us a curveball because they give you the situation of the investigator so you can prepare for it before hand, but this time the people who we thought were there had moved, so we were just teaching on the fly. instead of preparing somebody for baptism, we taught about the restoration and book of mormon. He couldnt read but was really interested so we said that we would come back and read to him and his family because he was really interested. we also invited his family to church and he said no at first, but after asking some questions we figured out the only reason why he said no was because he didnt have clothes for church. We said that we could get some clothes for him and his family for church and he got really excited. during our feedback he said that he could feel the spirit and that we taught everything really well. Also that night during my personal study and ran into a verse that i liked and it was in 3rd nephi 18:20 and after high-lighting it i noticed something that was way cool. the scripture was really similar to james 1:5 like joseph smith read and prayed in the year 1820 to know which church was right and the reference to this one was 18:20! i thought it was cool :)

 

Church was great yet again. sunday is by far one of the best days of the week. i love it so much! sacrament meeting was really good and during priesthood i bore my testimony about the holy ghost. we had no interviews that day so we were able to go back to our room and sleep.

 

Monday was both a great and sad day. We taught good lessons and were having a good time and had a great time at night. It was sad because it was our brazilian roommates last night with us :( we took lots of pictures and joked around a bunch but it was sad knowing that they were leaving soon. i also finished the book of mormon that night! i just had a little bit left so i stayed up a bit late and finished it. it felt so good to finish it and i know that that book is true. it took me two weeks longer than my goal, but i was super busy for two weeks and didnt really read much so im not too upset. now i will start over but reading back and forth between the portuguese and english! fun fun...

 

Today has been awesome! we go to the temple every P-day, but today the São Paulo temple is closed becuase they are cleaning it, WE WENT TO THE CAMPINAS TEMPLE! it was soooo cool! it is so so pretty outside and is in alot prettier area of brazil. there were dense jungle areas on both sides of the road and it was such a pretty drive. on the way there we passed huge colonies of favelas (colorful houses that are all stacked on top of each other). It looked like something out of a movie and the trees were all so pretty. you should look up pictures of a favela. they are in the poorer areas.

 

i hope everyone is doing great at home, school, and work and i miss you all! i have been keeping you in my prayers and you are all so great! i really wish we are allowed to send photos so i could send some to you!

 

I LOVE YOU ALL!

 

Com muito amor: sue irmão, filho, e amigo,

Elder Derek Lambert

Week 6

Olá Família and meus amigos!

 

week 6 -- companion: Elder Rindlisbacher

 

Of course this was another great and fantastic week here at the CTM. 

 

All the days are becoming the same here, so i have less and less written in my journal for everyday unless something really different happens. The cool thing that happened on wednesday was that i recieved a letter from my parents and at night i showed it to one of my brazilian roomies. together we read through the letter and then translated it into portuguese. it was way cool because my portuguese still isnt that great and neither is his english, but between us both we were able to make it so he understood everything. Just last night, i read one of his letters from his girlfriends (which was super funny) and we did the same thing. He helped me understand some of the randoms words i didnt understand, but i could put together most of the pieces myself and understand what it was about. IM LEARNING!! :)

 

Thursday was kind of a miserable day... not because i was having a hard time or because of the language, but because it was super SUPER hot. here in the very sunny country of Brazil, it decides not to rain for multiple days on end occasionally. This is when it gets really really hot and I (a fellow from washington who has never seen the sun) die from the heat. What was also very inconvenient was that our AC unit was broken in our class room :( everyone was super hot and sweaty and i almost died. it was close. That night, the brazilians found my photo album and were all pleading with me to let them marry natalie. Apparently brazilians LOVE freckles. they were all offering me ties and stuff if i promised that they could marry her. Luckily for her, i never broke.

 

Friday was not such a good morning for me. Previously, i had gotten maybe 1 bug bite, but when i woke up on friday i had about 15. they massacred me in my sleep. I think the bugs here think ``where can i bite him that will be the worst place ever´´. they bit my feet like crazy! wearing shoes around would always rub them so i had itchy feet for a while. im a lot better now though :) Also on Friday we decided to start a king of the court 2V2 volleyball tournament. Elder Adams was my partner and we did so awesome! we had really good spikes and we set the record for staying on kings court :) i will for sure play on an intramural team when i get back home!

 

On saturday we had TRC again. in this scenario it was someone who had been to church for a while and loved what we teach but didnt want to give up drinking. They werent addicted, so they didnt see it as a problem. My companion and I taught a really good lesson about how our bodies are given to us by God and that we need to be careful with what we put in them. I found some really good scriptures relating our bodies to temples and explained them to her. After our lesson she understood the importance our bodies are to God and that she needs to stop drinking. Since she already had been to church alot, reading in the book of mormon, and all sorts of things, we challenged her to baptism. it was a fun lesson :) it was also that time when fast sunday rolls around! so we had our last meal at 12 for lunch and i ate so so so much. it was great :)

 

Sunday is always the best or second best day of the week. Because it was fast sunday, we have a big mission conference in the morning instead of breakfast and a bunch of meetings. All the branch leaderships attend these and also church leaders from around the CTM attend it. its a pretty big deal. The MTC president (president Degn) was giving a talk and asked someone in the audience to answer a question. The question he asked was ``what does a broken heart mean?´´ referring to it in the biblical way. i got a microphone and answered it with a cool analogy relating it to a horse that is broken vs a horse that is wild. Someone with a broken heart is somebody who is submissive and listens and follows the commands of their master. After i sat down the president said my answer was really cool and he will remember that. Also, I GOT MY OWN TRANSLATOR! it was way cool. Because there are a bunch of brazilians there, a translator said it in portuguese :) Also i had an interview with my branch presidency and i spoke in portuguese and one of them commented on it saying that my pronounciation was super good. he said that he bets that after a year, i will speak without any accent and that people whould think im a native brazilian if it werent for my hair.

 

Yesterday was a good day as well. The thing that started it off so well was that we got cereal for breakfast! not the ham and cheese we get everyyy singleee dayyy. also during our service time, we played roach hockey. elder adams and i would get a bunch of live roaches in the dust pan and tip them out and they would all go running. we would then chase them and sweep them all back in before any could escape too far. i have gotten pretty creative here :) the best part of yesterday though was a lesson that my companion and i taught, our investigator is super close to baptism but her mom wont let her, so in a previous lesson we shared a bunch of scriptures with her about how the lord will give her strength and only gives people commandments they can accomplish. this last lesson she said she had some doubts about our church now because her friends had told her some wierd stuff about it. i was able to find scriptures to answer all her questions and it was such a cool experience! we built up all her confidence again and destroyed all her friends comments. when she talked to her mom, she said no still, but we reassured her and said that sometimes god tests our faith. i used a scripture in ether that describes how god blesses us after a trial of her faith and i told her i know she will recieve permission to be baptized if she keeps doing what she is supposed to and puts her faith in the lord. Afterwards our teacher told us she felt the spirit so strong and it was just a way cool experience :)

 

i need to go, but i love all of you so much and thank you all for supporting me while i am halfway around the world! you are all the best :) this church is oh so true and i love so much;

 

Com Muito Amor,

-Elder Derek Romney Lambert

Week 5

Olá meus amigos e minha família!

 

week 5 -- Companion: Elder Rindlisbacher

 

This was yet another great week here in the beautiful country of Brazil! They do have valentines day here, but it is on a different day, and im not quite sure when it is because we wont be doing anything special for it! congratualitions mother on all your running! thats so awesome that you are running so far now! i have also shown all the brazilians the pictures that i have of snow. Its so funny because they think it is so crazy and get all wide eyed when they look at it. I definitely miss skiing alot, especially when dad talks about how you guys got 3 FEET!! its also super crazy that 5 people died there not that long ago, it really shows that you need to stay inbounds (like that mormon messages video). I´m glad that Dylans farewell talk went well and its super exciting that he is going off to south Africa! when i mailed him a letter today, the lady was surprised and asked me if i was sure it was supposed to go to south africa :) its so exciting that all my buddies are leaving on missions and such. today i bought a cookie shake :) my taste buds were on overdrive because i have not had anything close to that in over a month now. its crazy to think that i am now 5/9 of the way through my CTM time!

P.S. i found out today that the way i have been sending letters is super slow, so if anyone has sent me a letter, i promise i have replied. if you havent gotten one and you are waiting it should come eventually!

 

Wednesday was just an average day. all the days are starting to blend together and not much is different that i can talk about. the thing that i wrote down in my journal was that it was exciting because Carnival was over so we could recieve mail again! those statistics that you sent to me about carnival were crazy! its a wild holiday here in brazil. We also got two new brazilian roommates who filled in for the ones who left of tuesday. They were really quiet at first, but one has started talking to us alot. its way cool because they only speak portuguese, but can understand a tiny bit of enlgish. this is SO helpful because we talk in portuguese alot more and the one who talks helps us out a bunch. This sunday he said he was going to help us alot during our break from meeetings!

 

On thursday we found out that we were getting a new teacher for our afternoon class. it was super sad for all of us because we all LOVED our teacher (Irmão Romeu). he was super fun and he loved our class as well. Another bummer is that because we got a new teacher, we had to start our lessons over with them as a pretend investigator. My companion and I had already taught Irmão Romeu a ton and challenged him to be baptized a week ago and were almost done preparing him, but now we are back to the beginning! this will be my districts 7th teacher...

 

Friday morning i signed up to get my haircut. it was getting pretty long and because it is so hot here i wanted it shorter. the barber was a brazilian member from the area who spoke no english, so that was pretty interesting! he was super funny because he used all this old fashioned stuff and was whistling the whole time. he reminded me of a barber from an old movie or something. also that night my district was running through random videos of people teaching to see different techniques and strategies. the practice rooms for teaching have cameras that record so you can watch them later. we found a couple groups who are on their 7th week here and everyone in my district felt as if our portuguese was alot better than theirs. Its kind of mean to compare ourselves to them and say that we are better because we are 2 weeks behind them, but it was really comforting to watch :)

 

Saturday was a pretty spiritual day for me. the first cool thing that happened was that Irmão Romeu came into our class during our personal study time and asked our class for a blessing. He was feeling really sick and because were his favorite he came to us. the coolest part was that he asked me to do the second half so i got to give the blessing! i love blessings so much because i can feel the spirit really strong and they are just super awesome experiences. in our evening study time we worked some more on our song that we are going to perform sometime. we got all the parts down so we can sing more than just the melody. its sounds super duper cool and its fun because its mixing songs and languages! look up hymn 321 in the english hymn book. we are using verses from that song and verses from if you could hie to kolob all to the if you could hie to kolob music. it works perfect and is all about misisonaries! The last cool thing was that we got to give another blessing right before bed! one of the elders in my district sprained his ankle during volleyball by landing on my foot trying to block my spike. it was swollen pretty bad and it was bothering him so he asked us to give him a blessing. he asked me to give the first part and his companion to do the second part and blessing. it was awesome do both parts of a belssing for the sick in one day!

 

Sunday was awesome like always! i love sundays because they are relaxing and we just get to take a break from all the studying. my district came up with a really funny idea while writing our church talks. each week we will have a theme, and each of us have to include something in our talk that someone else assigns them within that theme. this week was animals, so everyone assigned someone else an animal. i chose elder adams to do three toed sloth, and he was chosen to speak that day :) it was super funny. one other guy had to speak that day too. ill let you know how this next sunday goes. during all the breaks i wrote some letters and just talked with my buddies.

 

P-day was awesome like always as well! we got to go to the temple again and what was really cool was that i got to go through for someone with the last name lambert! it didnt have a date on it, but he lived in France. we polished our shoes and went out and cruised around town.

 

I am still going strong and love it so so much! i know i am doing the right thing and i want to thank everyone for helping and supporting me. you are all the best :) Eu sei que esta Igreja é verdade! (i know that this church is true)

 

I love you all so much and ill keep you in my prayers!

-Elder derek Romney Lambert

Week 4

week 4 -- companion: Elder Rindlisbacher

 

Another week down here in the MTC! The temple was great yet again today! it is air conditioned and in english, so if there are brazilians there they use the translation headphones. My Book of Mormon reading is still going well. i read all of Mosiah in one day, it fried my brain i think. i havent been able to read barely anything since then though because we have been super super busy with other things. And carnival is going on here and its a really big deal! everything is closed so this pday may be kinda boring... i heard that in one city they broke a record by cramming 2.5 million people into a one block area and everyone did the samba dance! Again, thanks for everyone who sent me letters! i love getting mail :)

 

this week i began to get a little discouraged at times because we are starting to move on pretty fast and the teachers only really speak portuguese. one night was especially hard and i got really down so i whipped out an Enos prayer and just let out all my feelings. i was up until about 12. i felt better after that and talking to my one of my really good buddies here, elder adams.

 

we had TRC again this last week! this one was very interesting because we were teaching a drug addict who was looking for help in life and strength from his church. me and elder rindlisbacher taught a really good lesson and we were told that it was good. it was something way different from anything else that we have done so far. this same night i stayed up with all the brazilians and taught them some really fun games to play. They are all so so so fun and the funniest people i have ever met. i love them all so much.

 

Saturday was one of my coolest nights here i think. on saturday nights we have 4 hours of study time and everyone loses focus and we end up playing games for a bit, but this time we did something different. we got onto the church site and watched the Joseph smith restoration video. this time it was way different than any other time ive watched it. i felt the spirit so strong and i have really developed a stronger testimony and love for joseph smith. at the end i had a really cool experience. After the martyrdom of jospeh smith it shows a clip of his mom addressing some of the saints and she says something along the lines that she has no doubt that the true church was restored and will stay upon the earth for the rest of time. Ive really been looking for a solid answer that this church is without a doubt true, and that line pretty much punched me in the face. it really stood out to me and i felt the spirit so strong when she said that. when the movie ended, us 8 elders sat there with the lights off, all crying, and just pondering. IT WAS SOOO COOL! the spirit was there so strong, elder adams said he could cut it with a knife. i said a prayer about what i had just experienced and everything just felt so right and good. this church is definitely true! after about 5 minutes, we stood up and turned the lights on and we went back to studying. later that night, me and elder adams and rindlisbacher just talked about the spirit and church for about an hour while leaning out the window looking over the city of Sao Paulo. it was a very spiritual night.

 

Sunday was pretty normal (church and meetings and such) but today we got a 4 hour break! it was awesome :) usually we have been doing interviews and such during that break time.

 

last night we kinda started joking around during class and we wanted to get the spirit back before teaching, so i asked if we could sing an english hymn and if it could be ´if you could hie to kolob´. our teacher loves this song because its super pretty and it is not in the portuguese hymnbook. after singing it we decided we are going to get all the parts down and mix in a portuguese verse from another song about missionaries that fits in perfectly. it is going to be sooo cool! we will sing in sacrament meeting maybe next week. the other song has the same rhythm so it works perfect!

 

Last night was pretty tough because all of my brazilian friends left early this morning :( every single one that i was friends with left. i got so close to all of them and loved playing games and talking with them as much as i could to the best of both our abilities. they are all going to do so great and they were all so excited. i woke up at 4 this morning and got out of bed to say one last goodbye to all of them as they were heading out to go to the bus. Last night there was also a super awesome storm outside! it was in the distance so it wasnt raining where we were at, but we could see lightning everywhere! it was the coolest thing ever because it would light up all of sao paulo! it makes me excited to go to Teresina because it is the 2nd highest lightning prone city in the WORLD!

 

One draw back of last night was that one of the american elders saw a pair of his shorts that he had been missing on one of the brazilians bed who left this morning. quite a few elders have gotten stuff stolen so it turned into a really big deal and the president got involved and a whole bunch of other people. i dont really know the outcome of it because i had to stay in my room, but i know that they were interviewing them and having them unpack their bags from instpections until about 1 in the morning. i really hope that none of my friends did steal anything because i would be so heartbroken. ive come to love alll of them so much and it would kill me if one of them was sent home the morning he was supposed to leave. i always keep everything i have locked, so i have not had any problems yet.

 

Our room now has two empty spots, its really sad :( hopefully it fills in with some awesome brazilians!

 

I hope John and Dave are doing well! i will keep them in my prayers and i hope that they get better quick! keep me updated!

i love you all so much and thanks for all the support and prayers! i will keep you all in mine!

 

Muito Amor!

-Elder Derek Romney Lambert

Week 3

week 3-companion-elder rindlisbacher

 

once a week to send emails is not enough!!

i got two mission ties letters the night of last pday, so right after i sent the email pretty much. that might happen today also! i also forgot to bring them, so i cant respond to any questions : ( i will for sure bring them next week! i also got a letter from grandma and grandpa, dylan parry, and andy! it was so fun hearing how everything is going : ) thanks so much guys! i got one from you also with the addresses of the missionaries and some other things, but i cant remember if that was before my last email or not...

this has been a pretty good and bad week. so at the devotional last week at the end of our pday, we had a devotional by the mtc president. halfway through a huge strom rolled in and we could hear the rain just pouring down and lightning right outside the building. it was so intense! the power went out about 5 minutes later, so the generator kicked in and got that on, but then all the fire alarms started going on, but we just started singing hymns until they got them turned off. it was super crazy but cool. i feel like that message was super important for us to hear and thats why there were so many problems.

on wednesday i got a companion of my own! his name is elder rindlisbacher and he came from the provo MTC. its nice to have one of my own because working in a group of three is kind of hard. we get along really well so all is just great!

on thursday, i started to do a challenge for myself to read the Book of mormon in 4 weeks or less. so i started all over! ive been reading around 20 pages a day and broke the 100 mark yesterday. i really want to do this because i want to read the book of mormon all the way through just for the sake of reading it. not for seminary or school or anything.

i got really sick around wednesday or thursday with a sore throat and just felt really weak. it lasted up until today pretty much. it made it really hard to focus in class and to stay positive, but im just glad that i am better now :)

we had TRC again (where you teach volunteers) and i feel that it went better this time! me and my new companion taught pretty well together and the person thought we did pretty well!

later that night, me and my companion made a catapult out of an exercise band and a chair. we launched bars of soap down the hall. all the brasileiros loved it and it was super fun :)

we made a goal as a district to have english fasts for this week. we did it on monday, we will do it tomorrow, and friday. the first day went pretty well! we definitely did not talk nearly as much, but it was all in portuguese! hopefully we will get better and better as the days go on.

me and my companion taught a really really good lesson last night. it was something i really needed because i was beginning to become a little discouraged with my teaching. we had previously invited our pretend investigator to church and she had been really the book of mormon. so yesterday after teaching her about the spirit and how it was the spirit that she was feeling while at church and while praying to know if the book of mormon was true, we asked her if she would like to have this all the time and work with us to prepare to be baptized. she was hesitant and asked a bunch of questions that me and my companion were able to answer together. at the end of the lesson i could feel the spirit so strong and she committed to work with us and be baptized. i think the teacher was feeling it too because it seemed as though she was tearing up a little bit. it was so nice to feel the spirit during that lesson because she was asking tough questions and its something that hasnt really happened to me yet while teaching.

last night i had a really fun time with the brazilians in my hall. i have grown sooo close with alot of them and love them so much. even though its really hard to communicate with them, between my broken portuguese and their broken english, we are able to talk pretty well. i was showing them all the pictures that i have and they loved seeing our family and the snow. i played soccer with them all in the hallway last night and it was super fun. they are amazingly good so it was really fun : ) they always come in and talk with me at night about the church and their families and my families. i just love them so much : )

my stomach is doing great so far! definitely a little gassy, but life is more fun that way. the food has been a problem for some of the guys here, luckily not me though. visas arent too big of a problem now i dont think because the big push is over. now its kind of an awkward time, so most of the missionaries will be coming from provo. my companion said that there is one more missionary in provo who is in our week, so we will see when he joins us. the pants fit as well as when i left! i havent washed them yet because i have been wearing all of them so they dont really get dirty. the nights have been sooo hot though recently! until two nights ago i would fall asleep and wake up in my own sweat every night, kinda gross huh? today for P-day i was able to go to the temple again which was fantastic! then i went out and bought another soccer jersey, some crayons for my scriptures, and mailed some letters.  i have also sent you a letter before and another today with one for you and dad, and one for nat. i hope you have gotten the first one!

everything is still going pretty well. the language is as tough as ever, but i am still progressing! i just want to get out in the field and teach for real even though im incapable of teaching  in fluent portuguese yet. how is everything going at home?! how are you and dad, amy jeremy and anne, mel and dave, and nat? i still cant explain how excited i am that she is going to brazil for her mission. she will absolutely love it here! if you ever see any of my friends, tell them hi for me! i love you so much and i am so thankful for everything that you guys have done for me! its so great to have a family that is so strong in the church. i am a blessed child : )

 

Eu Amo Voce! (i love you)

-Elder Derek Lambert

Week 2

Dear family and friends,

 

Week 2: São Paulo CTM -- Companions Elder James and Elder Sanders

 

Thats so awesome for Micheal and nat!!!! im soooo excited for them that they are going on missions. i have been waiting to hear where they would be sent to for ever!  thanks for sending me stufff! its so exciting getting mail here :) one question i have for you is who won the superbowl? and also when are the report dates for nat and michael?

this last week went faster here than the first, but some of the days still seemed pretty long. my first Pday last tuesday was great! it was so much fun just roaming the streets and exploring. its so pretty here, dad would love it! i bought a soccer jersey and sent you a letter, i dont know if you have gotten that yet. also i have been using your flash cards alot alot alot, so thanks so much mom for making them! all my friends are jealous and say that i have the best mom (which is obviously true). something sad that happened was that our district got split in two :( we got two new elders from provo (elder benalli and elder kamalu) and ours was too big so now there is 7 in each. i was in the half that had to split, so we had to change classrooms and get new teachers. also we had to move out of our room into another hall which stinks because we just had gotten moved in, but its all good now! now i have two brasileiros in my room so they are super fun to talk to and we help each other with english and portuguese. one only speaks portuguese though so its kinda tough to understand him. one of the new teachers we got is really funny, but the other was really really hard to teach. he didnt help us out at all with our portuguese while we were teaching, so it was difficult, but it will be good in the long run! i just have to keep everything in perspective :) he actually had to do something else so we dont have him and we now have a sister teaching our class and she knows the Gordon´s! she was companions with Stephanie a while ago. small world huh? she recognized me from a picture that Stephanie got when me and elise went to homecoming together and asked me if i know them. on thursday we did something called TRC. its what nat did with her friends where you go to the MTC to be pretend investigators. this time it was just teachers other than ours, but next time it will be locals! the language is coming along pretty well. its still hard to express myself the way i would like to, but im improving! hopefully living with the brasileiros will help some. on sunday elder kamalu was chosen as our district leader and i really like him. we all planned some really good goals for our group. also sunday was fast sunday, i thought i was going to die. we fasted for 24 hours! i have never done a fast for that long before. i ate as much as i could for my saturday lunch and weighed myself before and after and i gained .80 kilos :) i think my fast was made easier though because i was really fasting with a purpose this time and i think that mde it easier for me. for our sunday night devotional we had a giant CTM testimony meeting which was super cool because both brazileiros and americans were bearing their testimonies. It was cool hearing them in both languages and having the translators so everyone could understand. OH! i also wore my tie from dad because it was fast sunday! i hope he remembered to wear his! as of sunday i had also gone through all my ties once and i restarted on monday. today i am wearing the tie from amy and jeremy. my district has a really awesome personal study yesterday (we didnt keep it very personal). it turned into a group discussion about really cool topics that people were reading in the scriptures. we started talking about some super cool stuff and it just made me realize that their really has to be a God because we have such cool stuff in this world! i was able to go to the temple again today which was an amazing experience yet again. its so so pretty and i can feel the spirit so strong when im there. this time i went to town first before writing this email. i bought another shirt and some pens, mailed some letters, and bought some cookies! they were so so good and it was a plus that i didnt have to pay for them :) i also bought a grape milkshake somewhere that was fantastic as well. yesterday here in São Paulo it was 40 degrees Celsius which is equivalent to 114.8 degrees F. imagine how hot it would be in Teresina! its so crazy how hot it can get here. it will definitely take two years to almost become used to it. Im still trying super hard and staying optimistic! i think staying optimistic is one of the most important things here. its hard to not get down on yourself, but if you do, everything falls apart and you stop learning. its surprising, but i think i am actually getting used to waking up at 6:25! i dont know if its because it is so hot that i cant sleep very well, but i usually wake up before the alarm goes off! i wake up in a pool of sweat every morning. yummm right? :) and another random thought... yesterday during our service hour, me and my buddy elder adams were sweeping the basketball courts and volleyball courts and swept up 20 roaches! 5 of them were still alive and kept crawling out of the bucket. it was super super funny. i heard there is alot of bugs in teresina, but im getting used to them which is good. I cant wait to hear from you next week! tell nat and michael congrats for me!! i love you all sooooo much! <3

 

Muito Amor

-Elder Derek Romney Lambert