CASCITINHA!!!!

so this week I literally only have bad news.... But this week has been the best most fun week of the mission yet. how? I really cant explain so ill just tell you all what went down this week.

 

so it started at the bus station when my bus arrived late and so I missed the bus to Cascitinha with my whole district so the assistant to the Prez said that I will be traveling alone... and the sprinkles on top is the fact that I had to wait. all alone. in the bus station. for 2 hours. alone. for my bus to cascitinha. (*side not to my parents the 100 reais i sacked out of the card was for a little cart for my luggage that I strap everything to. its literally impossible to make it through transfers without this cart. ill send you a picture next transfer)

 

So I get to Cascitinha fine and my comp Elder C is waiting for me with Elder S (americano) and Elder F (chilean? chilliean? hes from chile, also from my group in the ctm). So we take a bus to the house and when we get there I see that the house only was made for 2 Elders but since this area is difficult it has 4 missionaries... In a 2 missionary appartment.

 

So my luck is that we live right next to the chapel!!! which is currently going under reforms which will take 1 year to complete so every morning at 7 we hear them drilling away and hammering. Well I hear it cause im normally the only one up at 7.

 

So since this chapel is under construction we have to go to a chapel in Correas which is a 50 minute walk from our house. so the members are trying to work something out where we have people giving rides to our investigators and to the people who dont have cars cause by bus it is 30 minutes and costs 4 reais. 

 

So our area here is straight hills. No joke. We have these cement stairs going up the mountains in all different directions and thats pretty much our area. like 4 cement stairs per mountain and we have like 5 mountains in our area. sometimes it takes 20 minutes just to climb up to the top of a mountian to visit a recent convert. It is a pain. ill send you a picture. The view though is to die for. 

 

And our house, you ready for this? the faucet is like a broken cap to a water bottle. you just keep twisting and twisting and twisting and the faucet never stops so we had to replace that this week without turning off the water cause there no way to do that. needless to say it was a wet experience... but we did it! Then I went to open the bathroom door a few days later (which only had 2 working hinges to begin with) and ripped it off the wall.... so we're trying to fix that as well. and the freezer was literally all ice when i got here so we defrosted it this week and it was like i was ice picking for buried treasure but instead of treasure it was raw frozen meat and yellow ice... yeah. 

The water comes out of the faucet a yellowish tint but I havent died yet! Me and my comps beds are the original beds in the house so to make room for the other 2 beds they ordered 1 bunk bed and just kinda put one bed on top of the other. So really my comps bed is secured ontop of mine with 3 bic pens we stuck in the holes we made in the bed so yeah... Im kinda just waiting for the bed to fall on me but its whatever. 

 

so yeah thats my week so far. Its freaking awesome and If I told you all the stuff me and Elder C did this week it would take up like 3 huge emails! and I dont have time. But this is by far the best week of the mission yet. Hahaha Im excited to work with elder C and yeah love you all. ill write down the stuff that happened this week and send it in a letter! Its awesome! love you guys miss you all so much. AYE AND when josh comes home I dont want none of this prodigal son has returned! you better call him kemosabe for at least a week, which mean wrong brother.

 

haha te amo,

 

Elder Hamm

Transfereeeddd

Dad's questions: 
Where you are now, what do people live like?  people here live fairly well. im still in tres rios but I am being transfered tomorrow to Petropolis, I forget the name of the city but its like Cascatinha, im pretty stoked

Are their homes nice?  they have nice homes and they have really really bad houses.

Do they have running water?  Do they have electricity?  For the most part yes they have all of this. I have yet to see a house without water and electricity. Electricity here is sketchy though its like a wire entering your house that goes to a few appilances

Do they have warm showers? Yes but when its a constant 30 degrees you dont want to use warm water. 

Do people have carpet?  Do they have windows? Do with windows have screens on them?  No. No one here has carpet its all tile or cement, ive seen one house with a rug but thats it. Windows yes. Its like Hawaii - the houses here are very open to get that good breeze rollin through the house. Screens no. You have to buy screens and no one uses them.

Do they have garages? Do they have garbage disposals or microwaves? Few houses have garages, and they dont have washing machines for dishes, dryers, or garbage disposals. Its funny I actually had this conversation with a memeber the other day. She was saying she saw this thing in a movie about some american things and she was like what is this? haha so yeah they dont have any of that stuff here. microwaves yes, washing machines for clothes yes. but thats it. 

soooo this week we had 3 days without water in our apartment..... You might ask why, so what happened was we live in an appartment. this apartment has one tank of water above it. Its fairly large its about 3 feet tall and 4 feet wide. so when you start to use water the tank automatically starts to refill BUT if you use all the water in the tank, it needs to refill fully before anyone can use the water.

So its been freakin hot this week so everyone in our appartment was using water so the water just stopped flowing. so we wait a day and on tuesday we still have no water so we went and asked and he explained what was happening and said we should have water by tomorrow night  and at like 9 on wedsnday night we finally had water.

Soooo dont worry we still showered. haha we have a spigot out side of our house that still had water -____- so we filled a bucket with water and use that to shower. it wasnt pretty but it was less smelly.

I also will be transfered tomorrow to the area of Petropolis! so im pretty excited but at the same time im super sad to be leaving Elder L. He is the sickest dude ever and ive had so much fun with him here. But all good things must come to an end. its a way I can learn from other people and become better. Im excited

so it rained the other day and the sewage system here is supppperrrrr bad so it doesnt have to rain much to flood. so this picture is the road to our appartment... this isnt the only road to our appartment but the other way was more flooded. so yeah we had to just keep on truckin. 

To be honest I took off my shoes which might have actually been worse but I took off my shoes and walked through this water that was like knee high. it was not fun wading through sewage. 

But I love you guys!! hope you all are doing welll! love you"!

Elder Hamm

Feliz Natal! e Feliz ano novo!

So its crazy but the mission is just FLYING BY!! Its funny cause my comps at 1 year mission time and im like man thats like forever. But right now Im almost half way there! 

So dads questions

Plans for New Years – do they have fireworks or parties etc? Yes there will be the works but there are always fireworks going off somewhere in this city.

Any other Christmas festivities there that were new or different? Did I tell you guys yet? They celebrate christmas on like the 24th cause at midnight on the 24th they have a dinner to kinda welcome in the birthday of Christ. I tried to explain to them that if they stay up this late, santa claus wont come but they didnt believe me!

Are most people you meet able to read? No. Literally, its impressive. The generation above this generation here is illeterate. Im not sure if the pattern will continue with this new generation, but in almost all of our lessons when we ask people to read from the bible or to read something they say, oh no you can read it. Or they pass it to their kid to read. So right now just off my own perception, it looks like most 20+ year olds here cant read-especially in certain parts of town. While their kids who are 13-17 can read so mabye this is a generation who want to learn to read I dont know. Theres the study of Elder Hamm for you all.

So this week something interesting happened, and I would like to try and relate it without offending any other religions. So if you are of another religion please dont take offense, but use this as an opportunity to reflect on yourself and learn a little more.

So me and my comp were walking down the street on the way to an appointment when some very brave guy started yelling in our faces and telling us all the things that are wrong about our church.
He didnt get very far since he started with, ``you teach with your mormom bible.´´ At which point I unzipped my bag and pulled out my Holy Bible that all the churches use in brazil. I said ``this one? We use the same bible as you, the same one all the prophets of God wrote in, do you have a different one?´´

He responded ``is this the one that Joseph Smith wrote?´´

We said no, but we use this one too. Then we went on to explain The Book Of Mormon and how we use both books to testify of Jesus Christ as it says on the front cover. Another Testament of Jesus Christ. 

Long story short he continues screaming at us and my comp kindly tells him that he doesnt really have a good spirit around him but if he would want to learn about our chruch we would love to give him a lesson some day in a more calm enviorment. at which point he kinda ended the little respect I had for him by saying ``no I already know about your cult, my church gave a class about it.´´

At which point my comp kinda lost it, im gonna be honest. He's like ``oh the same one that said we dont use the bible? And all the other things we showed werent true?´´ At which point he whipped out the scripture in Ephesions 14:12-15 which talks about having apostles, prophets, pastors, doctores untill we all reach the unity of faith.

So my question for you is the same one my companion left with this man. If we´re not all here at the unity of faith, where is this church with apostles and prophets and everything else? Im here to testify that this is that church. The Chruch of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is that church. It is the church that Jesus Christ built and established and Joseph Smith restored this Church in these Latter Days in the exact form that Jesus Christ left it. The proof of this is the Book Of Mormon. Read it. Pray about it. Its the main way you can know if this church is true or not.

I love you guys and hope you all have a good new years!

Elder Hamm

Wow 5 months already!

This is my family on the mish. third from the left is elder GS hes my grandpa and the Elder inbetween me and him is my trainer who GS trained and the rest are people who GS trained and their kids or people they trained. hah its kinda cool to think about

Did you have a special Christmas tie you wore today?  umm I bought a few ties the other day cause we needed a red and green tie for the mission christmas confrence so the red one is pretty sick and the green one is a zip up tie so thats cool. haha

What is the sacrament meeting before Christmas like?  Dead. we had 20 people show up -__- and my comp had to give a talk cause there was no one there.

How was your mission Christmas gathering?  Awesome. literally so cool to see the whole mission, people from the MTC, old companions, other missionaries. man it was awesome!

these are my boys from the CTM. Original crew (minus G -RIP)

 

What have you most enjoyed about Christmas on your mission? I really like getting away from all he traditions, like we have about 20,000 traditions for christmas in our house, so its actually really good to just get away from it all and focus on the real meaning of christmas. Serving others and trying to bring people to the knownledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ is aweosme and there is a special feeling here during christmas. Its nice.

So yeah this week was good pretty normal, working hard handing out cards with the christmas video ``Ele e o Presente.´´ The mission is really pushing for the missionaries to use these cards with the link to this video on them. The video is really powerful and really special, so if you havent seen it you should definitely watch that video.

The confrence with all the missionaries in my mission was CRAZY! It was crazy awesome. This was pretty much our christmas cause there was food, friends, and the mission president and his wife gave us all a few little gifts. As for Christmas day itself, it will be work as usual with a little special twist.

Elder W!!! hes from my stake in virginia! small mission world

but yeah nothing really new to talk about sorry. next week will hopefully be a bigger email. LOVE YOU GUYS!!! MERRY CHRISTMAS

Elder Hamm

WOOHOO BATISMO

The sister who we baptized and her daughter

So for my dads Q´s

I also got a bag of this fruit from a member which
is DANK but I forget the name of it

Do they have candy canes there? 

They have sugar cane, does that count? you can buy a stalk for 2 reals or a cup of the juice for the same price. its sweet they stick this stalk of sugar cane into this little moter that squishes it and the juice comes out into a bowl. Its like the color of your shoes after you mow the lawn, a kinda foggie green. I like it, its really sweet. You can also just chew on the stalk and spit out the wood after you suck all the sugar out of it.

What is your morning routine? I wake up at 6:30 every. single. day. Say a prayer with everyone in our house, (this is mainly a rule made by the president to make sure everyone is up and awake) then say a personal prayer, excersize for 30 minutes (and try not to sleep inbetween my pushups) then shower and eat till 8. Thats when personal study starts, then at 9 I normally make popcorn to eat during companion study, and at 10 I start language study for 30 mintutes and at 10:30 we´re out the door...... in theory. 

Do you recite D&C 4 every day? What about reciting anything else? No I dont read that every day, but I do have verces 3 and 4 memorized which we recite at all of our meetings, we also memorize our purpose as missonaries to recite in our meetings.
This week we went on splits with our zone leaders! I was with Elder S.L. who has 2 weeks left on his mission. (splits are where we switch companions for a day) I learned so much from him its crazy. Theres a huge difference between missionaries with a few months and a missionary about to go home. 

One of the main differences is, the missionary about to go home doesnt really put up with a lot of crap from an investigator. Haha this one guy we contacted was saying how his pastor doesnt like him to read pamphlets or hand outs from other religions. So S.L. says ``what, does your pastor not like Jesus?´´ Then after a little bit he's like, ``looks you guys are nice and all but obedience is pretty important right? so i cant accept your book.´´ S.L. responds ``ohhh no thats fine we understand, senhor lost his agency when he joined this church created by man. Thats fine´´ It was all I could do to not bust out laughing. 

Members

I also learned how to trade things, this week I traded 3 pamphlets for 3 boxes of cigarettes! Haha this is my favorite thing to do now. I have the pamphlet of the Word of Wisdom and go up to someone I see smoking and start talking about smoking and his health and if he has a desire to stop smoking, if he saids yes I talk about Joseph Smith and the Word Of Wisdom and the power of god. Then I say,
``This pamphlet talks a little bit more about our message, and its a present for you, but I do want to ask something of you, a kind of trade. I will give you this pamphlet if you give me the rest of your cigarettes. You dont want them and lets call this your first step to improve your health and show God you really want to change. hell help you if you really show you want to change.´´

Haha and normally they give me their cigarettes which I throw away at the end of the night.

Sooo good news! WE HAD A BAPTISM THIS WEEK!!! She is honestly just an angel. She pretty much asked to be baptised too haha. So I got to perform the ordanace in all white and I think I was as nervous as she was... It was definitely an expierence I will not forget. Her name is T.M.F.L. I'll send the pics too

So next monday I have to go to Juiz De Fora again for a confrence of all the missionaries in our mission. Im not really sure this plan was thought out too well. Haha, we have 120+ missionaries in this mission and we all know someone so everyone will want to converse with everyone else and it will be so hard to get anything done but im excited. But im not sure how christmas will work so ill try and call you or email you this next week to set up our skype of phone call.

but I love you guys! miss you all lots and lots!!

Elder Hamm

Santa also speaks Portuguese!!!

Brazil countryside after the rain

DAds questions first, What principal of the gospel do you enjoy teaching most?

the plan of salvation hands down. it is about questions everyone has and our gospel answers! What principal of the gospel seems to be most difficult for investigators? 
You know here in brazil it is rare to see a cute 17-18 year old girl without a child. its really sad but thats the truth, i know a girl here who is 32 and she is already a grandmother. its sad so i would have to say the law of chastity.   No one really has a problem with joseph smith because we have the Book of Mormon, which is the word of God, so if they feel the Book of Mormon is true, Joseph Smith must have been a prophet called of God. 

What is your favorite beverage in Brazil? oh this one is easy, Guaraná!!! but the real question is what brand. the main brand that they have in every state of brazil is Antartica. that is the most well known but every state kinda has their own brand. my favorite here in northern rio is It. It, Guaraná. its just good. we have it with almost every meal. And, as all of you know last week was fast sunday, and going 24 hours without water and food doing the work of a missionary, literally makes you play catchup with your health for the next few days. so on saturday i bought 3 liters of Guaraná Antartica and my comp bought 3 liters of coke. we make a quick stop at home before lunch today... haha

This week we had a zone confrence in Juiz De Fora again and interviews with O presidente!!! hes literally the best ever. at times he can crack down on a group of missionaries but when you talk with him one on one, you can just tell this man was called of God.

So we took a survey the other day on the computer about all the rules and we were suppose to put a 1-5 on how well we actually follow them. my comp took the survey first and and was obviously trying to influence my numbers since after every question he was like, oh we do that mostlyyy... like... im wit' you 24 a day who you trynna kid? haha so i decided to be brutaly honest with my responses.

so when i got to my interview with the prez he pulled up his tablet and looked at my numbers... to be honest it wasnt pretty. we have a slight problem with a lot of rules that are easily fixable, we just have to have a desire to fix them. so after going over every question i didnt put a 5 for (which was probably 3/4ths) he hands me a paper and i circle the ones i need to work on and he ends with, youre young, youre learning right? that what the mission is for, to better yourself and if you have a 5 or even a 4 for all of these, you would be a perfect missionary so thank you for your honesty. 

MAN it felt good to just tell the truth! it wasnt easy when he asks, what do you mean you have more than 1 hour for lunch? well sometimes lunch isnt ready and we talk for a while. You use more than 1 hour and 15 minutes for internet? yes sometimes we email for a little longer. but at the end it was good to just get it all out. 

my comp on the other hand was pretty, well, lets call it unexcited after the interview he had with the prez after me. this is why its always just better to tell the truth and if youre ashamed of the truth, change who you are so you can be proud of the truth.

well we might actually have a batism next week! were definitely seeing miricales in our area because of the hard work we've been doing. we have been working our butts off to teach lessons, contact people, help people progress, were leading the zone right now with lessons and contacts. its pretty sweet but at the end of the day its like all we can do to just make some rice for dinner and then pass out in our beds.

So I can pretty much understand everything and talk with out thinking but if you ask some random question using like strange vocab, i wont understand. the other day we visited a member at work and he was trying to tell me how to print a newspaper and im like, yeah i dont know any of these word, i must have skipped over the printing press part of my vocab booklet. sorry brah.

Capybara

You guys arent going to believe this butttt SANTA ALSO SPEAKS PORTUGUESE!!! I know what you're thinking, ``I thought santa clause only spoke english and broken German´´ but no. I saw him on a float this week and I tried to shout out to him in english but I dont think he heard me... but I heard him speaking Portuguese! Man that guy really is something ya know? 

So these photos are of a animal that lives in Juiz De Fora, he looks like a giant Nutmeg (our pet guinea pig) they are one ugly animal. and the other photo is of the Brazil countryside after it rains for a week. nice and green. and the last photo is probably the most important part.

Its a scripture in the Book of Mormon I came across during my person study. its in Mosiah 20:11 if you google translate exactly how it is you will read that they were fighting WITH dragons....  its funny that one little mark in pen can make this scripture mean something different. haha

love you all hope you have a great week.  

Abraço,

Elder Hamm

A mighty pirate with holes in the soles of my shoes

This is M.  He's a recent convert that my first trainer baptized and we're working on him and his whole family.  

SOOO to start of the wonderful questions from my dad,
Questions of the week – So how is your Portuguese coming – you understand most of what folks say? yes. it is nice i can finally understand, so close, to everything people say. its pretty shweet portuguese. and its nice to have a little ``wiggle room`` during our lessons where i can say what i actually feel like i need to say instead of the same ol thing over and over again cause i didnt know how to say much

 What is a typical door approach or contact?   normally, we say ``Ola, (boa noite, boa tarde, bom dia) como senhor(a) se chama? they say their name and i try and repeat it. (normally they have to say it 2-3 times but its funny for everyone) then we say nos somos Missionários da igreja de jesus christo dos santos dos ultimo dias, sou Elder Hamm e este e meu amigo, Elder Lucena, voce ja teve de oportunidade para falar com missionários?
if they say yes, O que senhor(a) achou?  if they say não, tao, a gente temos uma mensagem bem especial sobre O Evangelho de Jesus Cristo  e como O Evangelho pode abençoa as famílias, podemeos compartilhar este mensagem com você e sua família um outro dia? and boom we get that address.

Anything that you took with you that hasn’t held up at all? yes, my shoes. my good tracting shoes have a hole in the bottom of them right underneath the middle top part of my foot. but no its cool, i feel like Guybrush Threepwood, a mighty pirate with holes in the soles of my shoes, dancin across the street trying to avoid the puddles. haha im in the process of fixing them but shoes here cost like 45 reals so im thinking ill just buy some new ones. haha

Our Christmas Tree!!!

so this week was rainy again. but that couldnt dampen our spirits, cause...wait for it.... WE GOT A CHRISTMAS TREEEE!!! and its beautiful. haha ill send a picture of it. but yeah everytime weve had a tough day, we come back home to see that christmas tree and it lightens up our mood. haha 

so this sunday was kinda crazy, so im in northern rio, which is pretty much like the city right above h***.  so no one really wants to do anything. me and my comp teach like 30+ lessons a week and no one comes to church. its really sad actually. haha our ward has 30 people more or less, and only 7 males so last sunday i lead the music, offered the opening prayer, and passed the sacrament...

oh and for the music, we dont really have anyone who can play the piano so the person who leads the music has to sing the first line so people know what hymn we are singing, so i had to sing the first verse and everyone laughed at my american accent, and the fact that Elder Hamm was leading the music was just the funniest thing in the world to everyone.

ALSO! i recieved my first present from a snakie today!!! it was a polo shirt she bought me and my comp for christmas! haha so we both put it on and took a picture with her. shes actually really awesome

so this whole, tarantula situation is getting out of hand, i lost track of how many ive seen and they are all super big and super ugly and i can tell they want to hurt me. haha so my comp saids he knows how to pick them up so i think im gonna try to snag a pic with one in my hand for you all back home to show you that all fears can be conquered. haha or maybe not. i dunno. 

so ive been here for 4 months without a baptism... 4 months in brazil, without baptising is like a record. my comp said the other day that ill probably be the next prophet. when i asked why he said, cause Gordan B. Hinckley went 6 months without baptising and then after that he baptised por cu rumba. 

so yeah, we have the number to show were working our butts off, but the people here are pretty stubborn. but we made a goal this transfer and said no less than 4 baptisms! so we are working extra hard to hit that goal and my comp said he wont leave or be transferred until we get a baptism haha Elder L is a straight G

SO yeah baptism this week will be sweet and ill send you guys some pictures in another email because i cant fit them all in this one. 

But i love you guys! miss you all

Elder Hamm

This bird reminded me of the bird in Robin Hood that yelled, ``4 O´CLOCK AND ALL IS WELL´ haha the one that guarded the jail its like a vulture here and it was eating i think a dog. it was a dog used in an animal sacrafice so its head was like on the other side of the road. it get nasty out here. haha