Woo Hoo

Questions from Dad: President H asked me what you did for breakfast and I’m pretty sure I have asked that but I didn’t remember the answer so here it is again – what do you eat for breakfast? Soooo for breakfast what they call it is cafe da manha. Which is really like chocolate milk and some bread with cheese or just bread with butter. sometimes I make barley. its actually really good, I bought it for one of my investigators who was addicted to coffee and ended up liking it so I drink that every so often now.  


Do all the LDS churches there have basketball hoops outside? No. But most of them have a court to play soccer and theres always a hoop on top of the goal post so yeah. 


But this week was pretty sweet. Me and C are working suppppper hard. We had some good times this week. 

So we visited this lady who was baptised 7 months ago but since then has kinda left the church and she shows me a picture of her daughter who is like 22 and I start casually asking about her family and stuff like that and she's like, oh my daughter moved away she doesnt live with me anymore, and then she's like, "shes pretty isn´t she?" And I didnt think anything of it, I was like yeah shes pretty. So she kinda laughs to herself quietly and that's when I kinda got that, "oh dang it" thought. So a few days later we come back and lo and behold her daughter in that photo lives in the house above her mom and she says, lets go meet my daughter! So im thinkin sweet another lesson and another person we can invite to be baptized. When we get up there and Z, (the mom)  calls her daughter and says, "This is the Elder who liked your picture so much and called you cute." I literally got this stale face -__- and look over at my comp who's cracking up. And I look over at Z and im like "So this is how your gonna be, eh?" And Z starts laughing so hard she almost dies and the daughter has no idea whats going on hahaha. And I was just like, pleasure to meet you, Im that Elder. ahaha But she was really sweet.

Hahaha so my comp Elder C is new on the mission and has a fear of talking to people on the street like making contact, which is normal everyone has this fear at the beginning of the mission. But one night we were doing contacts on the street and I had like 20 and he had 5 so I kinda said a prayer and I just started receiving some MAD revelation and Im like, lets get on the bus C. And he had no idea what was going on. So we get on the bus and he sits down and I go talk to the guy who takes your money as you get on the bus and I said, "do I have to talk to the bus driver if I wanna make a announcement? like about our work?" And hes like, "I dont think so..." Sweeet. So I go to the middle of the bus and I just start talking in a super loud voice. "GOOOD NIGHT PEOPLE OF BARRA MANSA! (C looks embarrassed for me) My name is Elder Hamm and Im here with Elder C and we´re missionaries from the church of Jesus Christ. I have this card with our number and a photo of Jesus Christ that im gonna give you guys WHILE my buddy Elder C explains a little about our work." And C just stays quiet.... Hahah im like "Pode falar C." hahaha and he gets super red and stands up and starts talking. hahahaha.  He still has a little fear of stopping people but now he knows that if he doesnt I´ll get on the most crowded bus I see and just to do this again. haha

But yeah the work is great. I love the mission. I´m living with the ZL´s so thats a little different but I love them to death and they are super chill. Theres 4 of us in this house and the house is pretty sweet. Its gonna be even sweeter when I build a barbeque pit. Haha a really ghetto barbaque pit with like 8 bricks and the oven rack. But im psyched. Our house is really open like most houses here in brazil so we have like a patio and stuff where ill put the bbq grill. bbq is a little different here they get slabs of meat and put seasoned rock salt on it and and cook it over charcoal. Its pretty good. They also have linguesa which is like chicken or pork packed inside of pig intestines. its good. haha Love you guys!!!

Elder Hamm


ps. SUNDAY MARKS JUST ONE MORE YEARRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!! dont get trunky on me guys. BUT IM COMMIN HOMEEE. in a year seriously guys stay calm. haha

Barra Mansaaaaa

Where is your companion from?  My comps from freakin São Paulo!!! I freakin love Paulistas man!! I love their slang, I love their accent I just love it man so Im supppper excited to keep working with Elder C. He is awesome!

What is a big difference between your new and old areas? weelll in my new area the members here actually really help with the missionary work and you can just tell that there is a HUGGGEEE difference when your working alone and when your working with members. That and my area here is flat. There are no hills or mountains here so thats a blessing.  Its like 20 degrees (Celsius) here at night but during the day it can be 34 or 20 so you never really know.  haha

Sooo I dont have a lot of time but just to sum it up. I went to a training on how to train with the pres so that was cool. Then I got here on wednsday? (I think, it was quarta feira) and we just went to work. Elder C is sooo sick and its hard to go from an area where you know everyone and everything to a area where you know no one and nothing. But C kept pushing me along it seemed for the first few days and now we're just at a dead sprint. We have been working like crazzzy!!! Our numbers for 4 days were as good, actually better, then a week of working in my last area. But I wanna tell you about this woman we were teaching this week,

So my comp, who im training has the responsibility of inviting people to be baptized. Yeah, the newbie on the mission has the sole responsibility of giving the most important invite that they will receive in their lives. That just shows how crazy the mission is. But we were teaching this lady and she had some doubts about whether she wanted to really take our lessons or not cause she has a 4 year old son who she loves a lot and her mother in law hates her and is trying to destroy her relationship with her and her son and she said she was worried that if she took our lessons and got baptized her mother in law would say something to her son about the church being of the devil and stuff so I just went IN bearing my testimonry saying, "I dont know what your going through, and I dont know about the situation you're in, but as a representative of Jesus Christ I can promise you that this church will only help your relationship with your son." And about the importance of families. man it was so crazy. The tears just started flying as her and I, and everyone present felt the spirit and the love that our Heavenly Father has for each one of us. It was really, overwhelming to see my words touch someone with such force. I know that this work Im doing is really important and that this church really can bless people with more happiness and peace in their lives

I love you guys! ill try and write a little more next time but I love you guys sooo much!!! miss you all

Elder Hamm

Barra Mansa

This is how big the avocados are here! 

Dad´s questions: 

Do they eat popcorn there?  Yes. Its like the same as the U.S.

Do they have shave ice? Not that I´ve found... but they do have a syrup that you put in water to make like a juice and I found that if you put a little extra of that juice in a bottle with a little less water and stick it in the freezer it´ll be like a slushy... That, and our freeze is kinda broken so it doesnt really freeze things...  

What is the best thing about your current apartment? Hands down its the chairs. Yeah, Sister spent a shinny penny on the chairs that we sit in to study. They are black and are wheely chairs and they have a spring in them so they recline and if you put your feet on the desk and lay back you can literally sleep there perfectly. Ive done that about 5 or 6 times. I was just too tired to make it to the bed sometimes and i fell asleep in the chair with the lights on and Howard did the same thing. I woke up at like 3 in the morning and went to my bed to grab a blanket and then went back to the chair haha. its sick

Sooooo yeah, This week is just full of stuff. So first, I got transfered!!! I will be going to Barra Mansa where I will finish training a new missionary. Its kinda funny cause out of the 9 zones only 3 are here in the state of Rio and as of now, Ive served my whole mission in the state of Rio. Im not complaining cause I like these grumpy people, I like the weather, I like the scenery, I even like the kids who look like they wanna rob me just cause I look american. But yeah I leave tomorrow at 10:15.

The rat came back! But this time, me and H were prepared... We boxed off the kitchen and I entered the kitchen and killed him. He was hiding behind the stove and it was super hard to get him out cause he was like stuck and pretty well boxed in. Buttt we killed him and then I took pictures. (which his mom did NOT post)   OH! I´ll also send you some pictures of a shirt I bought that is literally the sickest shirt I´ve ever bought in my life. like seriously Im in love. 

So this week we did a service project for a family that is investigating the church. So really theres this servidão (which is like a stair case going up a mountion with houses on each side) and we´re kinda teaching 3 families on this servidão and the one who lived at the very tippy top said that he needed some help moving A FEW sacks of dirt and stuff. 

So just a little background of Brazil life, If you do construction on your house, you have to haul everything down the stairs to the road so that a truck can come pick it up. So if you want to re-build a wall in your house, you first have to take it down right? Well in these servidãos theres no way for a car to enter or anything else, so you have to put all that cement and all that dirt that you are taking from your house in sacks, (sacks like potato sacks or dog food sacks) and haul it to the road so someone can come pick it up. 

So this guys literally took down like 4 walls in his house so when we get there its 4 in the afternoon. and we look there and he literally has something like 80-90 sacks of just straight broken cement and bricks that we have to haul allll the way down this servidão to the street. Each of these sacks could weigh anywhere from like 40 to 50 pounds, so the easiest (pretty much only) way is to get someone to help you lift it up and put it on your shoulder and then just kinda bear the pain of 50 pounds of rocks on your shoulders, untill you hit the street. So we decided to make a firemans line and move everything to the middle of the stairs, then after make another firemans line from the middle to the end. So long story short we finish at 10 o´clock at night and I am literally dead tired. I literally could not stand afterwards, my shoulders were all bruised and my legs were dead so we grabbed a taxi to go home cause its late and I cant walk and when I get home, I literally grabbed a chair and put it in the shower cause I couldnt stand up... 

That was saturday, today is monday and my shoulders are all brown and blue and I can still hardly stand. It just makes you think about how different life is here. They buy groceries in bulk cause its such a pain to haul up the stairs so they normally buy like 2 weeks of food at a time. Just kinda put my life in perspective about how lucky we are in the united states.

I had to say some goodbyes this week that literally broke my heart, but thats life. At some point or another, youre gonna have to say goodbye. Not all good things can last forever.  I´ll attach the pictures here
! Love you guys!! Glad our families can last forever! 

God will never abandon you

 Q´s from Dad for the week:

In what ways do you think your relationship with the Holy Ghost might have changed since you have been on your mission? hmmm good question. 

What was your favorite testimony that was born in Fast and Testimony meeting?

hmm another good question. Someone this week bore their testimony about prayer, and something Ive really 'bettered' on the mission is my relationship with our Heavenly Father, or God. When you think about it, He will never reject you. He will never turn a closed ear. He will never abandon you. Us, as missionaries aren´t perfect, we just try to appear perfect, but fall short, sometimes wayyy short. Ill tell you about it later but God will always want you to come back to the fold, always with arms open. Sometimes it wont be easy to come back but there will always be your Father in Heaven, The God all mighty, cheering you on to REAL eternal happiness. 

Yeah so saddly Chuck E. Cheese never came back to our house (even though we waited up til 3 am on several occasions, and made preparations for war). Maybe he found another place to eat that wont cost him a arm and a leg... or hopefully less then a paw cause now he only has 3. But yeah other than that 2 different light bulbs in our house burned out with in 5 minutes of eachother at which point me and Elder H immediately blessed the house again. But the rest of the week was pretty calm and nice.  

The other day I got a little mad at ward council when they accused me and my comp of abandoning our investigators at church because there was no one to pass the sacrament. So we had to pass and our two girl investigators (one 16 the other 18) were kinda lost and sitting alone untill Howard got up and told them to sit with a member in the ward and asked the member to help them.  So I kinda really just start going in on everyone, starting with the women who accused us, then with all the brotheren who have the same preisthood as me who could pass the sacrament, then on the women there who had the same fellowshipping duties as me. And that's when I realized that I kinda went a little hard on everyone and kinda apologized and we came up with a game plan of how this will never happen again. 

But yeah, I only have one more week here in Petropolis and its gonna be realllly realllly sad leaving cause I have such good friends here and I literally know sooo many people here. Its crazy. Im gonna miss this place a lot. But its all part of the mission expierence! itll be good. 

But yeah sorry fokes but not alot happened this week. I love you guys! Misss you all so much

Love

Elder hamm

Close Call

Dad's Questions:  What are your thoughts about seminary and have they changed from when you were attending?  Yeah id say theyve changed pretty dramatically. So seminary is super important and even if you dont understand why you are memorizing these scriptures, later in your life, on your mission, or when someone says something, you can use them to defend the faith or to help you keep the faith. I was always wishing that I had still memorized the simple scripture masteries of the bible and book of mormon cause they will seriously help you on the mission. 

Are the kids there just getting ready to start school since it is fall?

no they are in school right now. The school system here is super difficult to understand, like i dont even know where to begin. you can study at 3 different times during the day, morning, 7am-12pm 12pm-5pm 5pm-10pm. and its like you do different years and stuff its weird so really I have no idea I think they just took midterms. 

Me, G, M and H sucking on some sugar cane.
You cut it up and suck on it to get out the sugary juice. ahha

But yeah this week was pretty chill, we started working with our references that the members are giving us now so that's helping a lot. We normally try to track down 2 or 3 references a day and when we dont find them, or they dont want to hear our message, we start knocking doors. I actually realllly like knocking doors cause its cool to think that I have 30 seconds to try to convince this person that what I have really is their salvation, their peace of mind, something that can only help them. And the best part is I have to try and convince them to work for their own salvation! Its like Im going door to door giving away free candy and people are like, "yeah no thanks." So I think the irony is pretty funny. And you always get really weird people answering the door or saying something stupid so with Elder H, we joke around with a LOOOOT of people.

So yesterday i was dead tired so I went to bed at like 10:30 and H said he was gonna write in his journal and then go to bed. So at 2:33 in the morning Howard wakes me up and is like, "dude Im hearing noises."​ and im like, "Oh I KNOW you did not just wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me you believe in ghosts." And hes like, "No its like comming from the oven bro you have to check it out with me." So we go over there and sure enough every 5 minutes there´s a noises comming from the oven. So we close off all doors in the house so this thing doesnt have anywhere to go and H grabs a broom and I grab a knife (from a macumba which a macumbeira gave me and we use for nothing because im convinced that if this knife cuts something it will be impregnated with a demon) and he starts beating the oven and literaly a rat the size of a cat falls out from underneath the oven. And im not sayin like Rizzo the rat jumped out ready to do some song and dance. I´m talkin R.O.U.S.´s - A Rodent Of Unusual Size came out of that oven and was coming to bite my shoulder like he did Wesley. So we're literally chasing it around for 20 minutes trying to kill it and this rat is literally doing damage to the doors he's headbutting. So we finally corrner him in the bathroom and just when we thought we had him, he jumps like a puma and starts scaling up the freakin wall like spider man. The rat runs up the wall jumps from one wall to our toliet pipe and from there he makes a clean jump to the window and runs away. BUT not before I cut off his right front paw! I think im gonna stuff it and hang it on my wall or maybe use it as a glove man cause that thing is huuugggeeee. so Im literally like wellllllll great. So now I dont feel safe in my own freakin house. needless to say we will be calling sister C today cause its big game hunting time here in petropolis. 

but yeah thats about all the excitment for this week. well see if we can catch this sucker and send you guys a picture cause he is literally huge. but yeah Iove you guys! miss you guys!.. and the United states... haha Love you guys

Elder Hamm

We ate hamburgers 3 times this week cause lunch kept falling though with the members... so were on our own when that happens. so we made hamburgers 3 times the way they make them in the resturant the H's have in Texas. 

Pics

Avocados

Where do you shop for groceries?  Bramil. Its like harris teeter of Rio de Janeiro and its right next to our house so its super convenient. 

Where do you get your hair cut?  Me and Howard are the only two white clients of this hair cuttery place in this little allyway of the street Q. The first time we went there I saw 4 black dudes cutting hair and like 50 fotos of their clients who are also have that black curly hair. Me and H were like, "I'm not even sure they cut white peoples hair..." So I asked. And they all kinda laughed and so we always go there cause they give us that good shape up. Haha

What is your favorite thing to eat they have served you? hmmmm I dunno. There´s a lot of things here that I freakin love to eat. The food here is pretty much all around good. 

Sooo yeah. This week was pretty good. Nothing really out of the ordinary. Me and H tried to make mack and cheese the other day! needless to say, we ended up with a hugggge pan of cheese and about a handfull of noodles to put it on. And it still wasnt as good as krafts. But yeah. 

So here in brazil they have a lot of avocados. And right now is the time to eat them. But here in Brazil, they are a little different. So the avocados here are about the size of a football. A slightly smaller football, and they stay green! So literally everyone is giving us avocados right now. Haha we have like 12 inside our house and I dont even like avocados that much! 

So here in Brazil no one eats avocado with salt. Its more of a sweet fruit. You can put it in the blender with a little milk and sugar and make a vitiman shake or you can just put a little sugar on it and eat it with a spoon. Its really good if you put sugar on it and lemon or lime juice. But my favorite style is still guacamole. So we wil make a bunch of guacamole and give it to all the Brazillians who are giving us avocados cause no one here knows what guacamole is.

So this week we also Baptised 2 of our investigators!! G who weve been teaching for about a month now and also K who we´ve been teaching for two weeks! Ive never seen anyone with the faith that G has, if I had half as much faith as G I could probably walk on water. But seriosly she has incrediable faith in Jesus Christ and the power he has. K is 10 years old and she is the daughter of a part member family. The whole family was less active in the church so we decided to visit them. After a while we learned that the whole family but the dad and K was baptised so we challenged her to be baptised and she accepted! As for the dad and G's husband... We´re still working on them but I know they´ll come around. 

Thats about it for this week! I love you guys! miss you guys sooo much!!! Give everyone back there a big hug for me!!

Love,

Elder Hamm

P.S. - Just a shout out about a mission.  Seriously the mission is the only time where you´ll truly depend on other people, go to bed hungry, wake up with nothing in the fridge, go out in 45 degree weather wearing a shirt, tie and long pants, get rejected over and over and over again. spend 24 hours 7 days a week next to someone you literally cant stand. Let someone spit in your face, throw rocks at you, and not have 10 cents to your name, AND STILL, after all that, call these 2 years the best 2 years of your life.