Festa Julina

Hey everyone this week went by super quickly!! nothing really crazy happened this week. we had this party this Friday that's called the Festa Julina and we had so much fun! there was even a mechanical bull there. hmmm what else happened. We have been working a lot with less active members because they usually have a member of the family that wasn't baptized. I´ve been having a lot of success with that thankfully! this Saturday we had the opportunity to help with a house change for our foot lady haha and she said that we wouldn't have to pay for the services she did for my companion which was awesome because it cost like 150 reals. Then she took us out to lunch where we ate shrimp, fries, and chicken. It was super good haha.

But anyways nothing else really happened. I love you all and hope you all have a great week!!! thank you for all your thoughts and emails!!

-Elder Whelan

{Editor's note: if you have a weak stomach for surgery-type stuff, you may not want to watch the last part of this video.}

Email and picts

Hello everyone! How’s it going? This past week absolutely flew by for me! So to start off my summary of the week we had a zone conference on Tuesday which is awesome! It was a multi-zone conference so there were a ton of Missionaries. I got to see some of the elders from my group I got into the mission, took some pics. I found out I am an “uncle” to an elder that has more time in the mission than I do (ha ha) because we do this kind of genealogy thing in the mission if you all don’t know, ha ha. So my “dad“ Elder the Santos trained Elder Jackson and train other :-) so I’m Elder Smiley's “uncle” ha ha. But anyways we left the zone conference spiritually uplifted and with a brand new microwave! Woo hoo ha ha we got the microwave because ours is broken.

On Wednesday and Thursday nothing really happened. Just lessons but one cool thing did happen. So Saavedra has had an ingrown toenail for a super long time so we went to the foot Doctor who was this creepy lady whose right eye twitched when she talked ha ha. And not to mention her foot clinic or whatever it was was inside her house, that’s not sketchy at all ha ha. But Saavedra got two big chunks of nail taken out of his foot which was cool ha ha I got videos. On Friday I had a sad experience. A family that we have been teaching decided to separate. Why? I was super sad so if you guys can please pray for this family.

On Saturday we played sports to integrate and bring more investigators to the activities, that went really well. After that activity our lunch fell through so we went home. I grabbed my baptismal clothes and we went back to the church because we had Adriel‘s baptism at four! Andriel was super timid and nervous because of the clothes we give him ha ha. He’s 12 years old and is super awesome he just gets nervous when there are a lot of people around him that he doesn’t know. But anyway I had the privilege of baptizing Adriel. It was such an amazing experience. After that we had cocoa and sweet bread and soda then we messed around for a while longer, then went back to work ha ha.

On Sunday we had eight investigators at church and manage to get a ton of references from the members! There was even a lady who is there who said she was on the bus, saw the church, got off, and decided to go in. Wow! So we got her address and we’re going to teacher this week but nothing else happened. On Sunday I was able to read the Book of Mormon with Saavedra a couple of hours when we got home at night. We only read the first part of the testimony of Joseph Smith because he was reading in English and I was reading in English and I was there to help him pronounce the words and translate the words he didn’t know. It took forever but I loved every moment ha ha. But anyways that was just a quick run through of my week.

love you all!
And I hope you all have an amazing week full of happiness and spiritual experiences.

Baptism and a handful of snakes

So this week went by super fast for me!! this week I had the opportunity to hold two snakes in my hand i only took pictures with one sadly but they were super awesome haha. This week we had a baptism of a boy named Henrique!!! it was super amazing!!! The water was super cold because the heater is broken but the baptism went really good!

I also gave a talk on Sunday! I was supposed to give my talk for 15 minutes but ended up talking for almost twenty minutes haha and when you talk to long the bishop puts a paper on the pulpit saying that your time is pretty much up haha so i was pretty happy when that happened because I was able to talk for a good while. Also, I thought I would be more nervous than I was but I gave my talk without being nervous haha it was crazy. Oh and this one member had a ton of lasers and a smoke machine in his house so i took a video of that haha and another member had a Thor hammer so of course I had to take some pics haha Anyways nothing much else happened this week. 

I just gotta say Love you all and hope you all have an amazing week!! and congratulations Ty for your first week in the field!!!

Elder Whelan

Motorcycle Crash!

Hey everyone hope you all had an amazing week!! and happy fourth of July for everyone!! this week went by super quickly for me. So what I'll do is explain a little about what the pictures i sent mean. So on p-day we had churrasco which was super good. After that we had a district conference and we were doing the "death of Elder Estrada." This guy is super cool and funny by the way haha i took some pictures of the city because we had to walk up this huge hill to get to lunch one day. 

after that here's the picture that I wanted to talk about. The picture with the motorcycle is super funny because my comp was being dumb and decided to learn from the investigator how to drive a motorcycle. And he ended up pulling the handle super hard and the motorcycle rev'ed its engine super loud and the wheel started to spin and my comp lost control and the bike landed on top of him. I was dying of laughter hahaha the investigator was dying also. My comp wasn't hurt or anything so don't worry about that. 

Anyways that was pretty much my week. We have two baptisms ready for this Saturday so I'm super excited for that!! 

But anyways love you all and hope you have an amazing week!!!


Elder Whelan

Tranferred!

To start off I’ve got to say sorry. I have been horrible these past few weeks with my emails. But I promise I’ll be better from now on :-) so 14 days ago was a pretty good day. Me and Galthama taught this amazing family a lesson and interested to know if there are questions. Everything that went up to a teaching this family has been a sign from God they needed the Gospel in their lives. While back me and go to we’re tired from a lot of hard work we decided to stop by so ice cream. We bought some and headed out and waited under cover because it was raining. The owner then closed the shop for a little while (we don’t know why) then he drove off. Then came Anderson. He walked up to the ice cream shop to buy some but it was closed. So while he stood there I decided to talk to him. We ended up getting his address and everything. He decided to leave because his family was waiting for him. Right when he drove off the ice cream person pulled up and re-open the shop. Back then I thought nothing of it. We just walked off into the rain to continue working. But now that I think about it everything adds up ha ha. Heavenly father has plans with his family. Anyways.

19/6/19 (that's how they write the date down here, the day then month, then year).
Today was a slow day but we managed to get a baptismal date for a woman from. After we taught her with several other people as well. Nothing really different happened today ha ha. Something I can say about this area is it is so amazing! But just to get to our Area we have to walk for an hour. Which sucks because we have to work pretty much two hours every day without working. I mean we make contacts on the way boo we aren’t actually teaching ha ha.

20/6/19
Today was good we had our weekly planning today and since we plan instead of eat at a members house if we finish planning early and eat our lunch at McDonald’s which is super good here. We then left and went to an area called Três Rios do Norte and we cut some old investigators that didn’t have interest anymore.

21/6/18
Today we “killed” Galthama. If a missionary is leaving the mission we set up a table and decorations And pretend like it’s his funeral because he is “dying” in the mission ha ha. It was pretty fun. All eight of us and Jared were over there to participate. I took some pics so I’ll send those as well. After that we had lunch at 10 and mouse house then me and got him a tough Fernando a recent baptism. Later for dinner as Missionaries met up to eat pizza at this pizza buffet which was so good! I at least 10 pieces all elder Pereira ate 17 ha ha.

22/6/19
Today we try to teach a woman called Christiane but she wasn’t home so we walked back home because Ghaltama  needed to put all of his stuff in his luggage. Ghaltama bought a new white shirt for when he gets home ha ha. Ghaltama and our president and his wife love you talk to sacrament tomorrow so that should be good.

23/6/19
Today was awesome! This Sunday we had five investigators a church got him to give his talk President Gonçalvez and his wife gave their talks we get Fernando to get to the logos! After church go tell my finish packing we headed off to an activity that Pres. Gonçalvez was doing in the church and we got a call asking if my bags are packed! What?! I’ve been transferred?? No one told me anything ha ha we got to the activity which was super good fun. I asked Presidente where I was going he said he didn’t know how. What? He then told me 30 minutes later I’ve been transferred to an area 20 minutes away from Florianopolis called Forquilhinas in São Jose. The area is so small it’s literally one section of the city or one bairro.  My companion will be Elder Saavedra from Spain. After all this information we drove to the apartment got Ghaltama’s bags and he drove off with Presidente. I’m gonna miss that guy.

24/6/19
So today was payday but not really. I got all of my stuff packed and left for the bus. Sister Silvano and those Rodrigo were there to say goodbye! Man I’m going to miss that I go out. My bus was supposed to be three hours were took six hours because we stopped in every flippin city on the way. Anyway I got to flow deeper, way to get my companion then we got an Uber and we got to Forquilhinhas and we got to the house it was Sue or dirty! It was gross but it was sleep time so I decided to wait to clean it until the next day.

25/6/19
So I woke up and immediately started cleaning. I skipped my studying and everything because you can’t study or feel this. If you are surrounded by field ha ha. In the beginning everything alone and I reorganize all the furniture parentheses bed closet table) and the apartment is looking worlds better. I didn’t take before and after pictures which I mad about but I’ll send some pictures of the place. After that we left the house and we talk to some people first lesson in this flippin' area we talked to this woman who kept repeating the same thing over and over she started to cry so we give her a blessing and ended up explaining his spirit from her ha ha. I deafly was amazed because she kept saying after that she was surrounded by darkness and now she can see clearly.

She looked around the house and wonder like she’d never seen something like it. Well… That was it experience for me ha ha. After that we went to the church I introduced myself to some people there and we close the day oh and we marked a baptism date for that woman. Her name is Marcia.

26/6/19
Today we went to several peoples houses to teach. One of the investigators had her birthday so me and Saavedra but her and the whole family and we celebrated her birthday all together. That was fun. We then taught this other family that I swear they never taught the children manners because they would throw things spit and punch him in the face. I was wanting to put them in timeout but I don’t think that would have gone down very well ha ha. After that we got home because it was 9:10.

27/6/19
Today I made some pancakes and I use some of the maple flavoring I got from other Searle because he got maple flavoring in the package. The pancake and syrup or so good! We had our weekly planning to do as well. Saavedra taught me how to play dominoes and even Pokémon. I’m not the kind of person who plays Pokémon when you got nothing else to do at night Pokémon is pretty fun ha ha. I’ll say some things about Saavedra now. Saavedra is a really cool dude in there to mess around but work also. He also loves to eat ha ha he weighs 110 kg or around 220 pounds and he’s about 3 to 4 inches shorter than I am ha ha. He’s from Spain. He’s been on his mission for one year. I’ll make sure to send you pics of him.