First Week Of New Transfer

The transfer was quick and somewhat easy other than my new companion had 2 bags to take without wheels so we had to carry the whole way home. Also the mission office brought all the packages and I got the package mom sent and had to carry it home with my companion's bags, but the contents were way more than expected but much appreciated! 😁 I shared some stuff with Elder B. Costa before he left and took a picture of everything at home. I though my picture of the nerf gun was a nice touch, so thanks mom (and maybe jonathan)! We didnt really do anything "super cool" this week but we have plans for praia do forte next week week. My new companion is Elder Barros he is from Paraíba which is like 2 states up from Baiha, so he is like native (used to the heat and food). He was a district leader in the last transfer but not anymore; he is somewhat quiet and on the other hand doesnt like to follow all the rules with to which they shoud be followed. He thinks more independently as to "I'll buy what I need" comapred to "lets split the cost because we both will use it"; and the same with lessons, I do my part and he will do his part. I think we are going to learn a lot together, firstly because he doesn´t speak any english except for the word "money" so I've been having to practice my portuguese a lot more and last night I had portuguese thoughts and dreams aswell, so we're making some progress here. I'm at the 4 1/2 month mark on mission so in about 2 months I should be good with the portuguese. General conference is coming and missionaries are only allowed to watch the sunday sessions? Didn't know, and with the time difference they are in the afternoon at like 3-5pm I'm told. I took a picture of a picture that was put in the church building and thought it was funny so I wanted to share; it had 3 pictures of jesus and one of missionaries on the moon, just random and casual. Not much more, Have a great week!

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Elder Benjamin Barton

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Third transfer

This week was great, we didnt baptize or anything, but I´ve made some great progress. We have a transfer tomorrow and I will stay in Abrantes but Elder B. Costa is leaving to another area. We really wanted to get to the mission goal of 100 boas conversas and I did most of them this week to achieve the goal, my portuguese is really improving. I can converse pretty well now. Hopefully I can speak well enough to converse well with my new companion, Elder Barros who apparently doesnt speak any english, so I´m excited for hat to see how I will do. I´ve loved having Elder B. Costa with me in Abrantes, we´ve had some good memories and I look forward to making more. Elder B. Costa is doing fine other than being sad of having to leave Abrantes; I know he will do good work wherever he goes because he is a fantastic missionary and I´m glad to have been trained by him, he is truly the model missionary and follows all the rules to the dot. At first I was annoyed at how rule stickler he was, even the little things, But then I decided to try to follow all the rules exactly with "exact obedience" and you really can see the difference! The day that I started doing this my portuguese improved tenfold with speaking and understanding, its amazing, plus we encountered more poeple that were willing to recieve us. So there is something to be said about EXACT obedience, and I hope you all realize this with the commandments of God and council of church leaders because they truly for out benefit.

It rained briefly (some roads flooded because they dont city plan well) and we had "arco-iris" or "rainbow" so I took a picture. Also we made coxinhas for seminary. We recieved candied ginipop from a member, ginipop is a fruit that smells terrible and the candy isnt much better 😅. We made goiaba juice and ate bananas with it and we submitted the picture for the mission journal because they asked for pictures of our breakfasts for fun. The fruit in the picture with our nametages called Jamelão which is really good and is like a semi-tart grape and it was addicting to eat. And lastly is Elder B. Costa and I with our last selfie😫   Oh, and also I took a picture of all the book of mormons of all the languages that we have in our house; there is english, portuguese, Italian, spanish, german, and japanese. The Italian and Japanese books are Elder B. Costa´s and the spanish and german are for some people we are going to visit and we have portuguese of course and an extra english in case we run into someone who speaks (which we have twice already).

Also very notable, we were recieving R$130 every 15 days (so twice a month) which is like $40 US which I think is amazing; and this week the church bumbed it up to R$180 which is like $60-ish US I think. I just thought it was so amazing we are living on so little but not going without or anything. Maybe move to Brazil and be rich after mission? lol probably not.

I think that is it for this week, so... amo vocês! 😎󾓦

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Elder Benjamin Barton

Finished four months of mission

Just another week of fasting, prayer, and miricles! First of all, we liked the bananas so much we cut some more for later.🍌 Some would say its stealing but I say the the Lord is provinding for his missionaries. We were working with Estêvão this week and he had a date for baptism on the 25th of march but he recieved his answer that the church is true and expressed his desire to be baptized. So we played hard and taught him the last of the commandments and moved his date to "tomorrow" on him and he was baptized this week on the 11th. He was tried of his desicion the day of his baptism when his adult son went missing but he stayed strong and was baptized and the next day was his comfirmation and he was late to sacrament meeting to reciece the gift holy ghost because he was still looking for his son but he showed up right when the bishop announced it was time to confirm him. It was perfect timing. And directly after sacrament meeting they went home and his son was their, he was just went somewhere and just didnt tell anyone; but this fulfilled our warning that once someone decides to be baptized "the enemy" sends a trial to test their faith and that we need to remember our desires even when it gets hard. We said this before his son went missing and he realized that what we said was true and it only made his faith stronger. And that fulfilled the scripture in Ether 12 that says you will recieve no witness until the trial of your faith. It was just such an amazing story/experience. This is the last week before the next transfer and I will probably stay but my companion, Elder B. Costa will probably leave, but anything could happen really. And also we got água de coco again as shown in the picture with my companion🌴Have another great week!

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Elder Benjamin Barton

Week before Carnival

This week has been pretty relaxed in that is was fairly normal. Although in Brazil, its never really normal... Carnaval on the calander starts the 28th and goes until the 29th but what they don´t tell you is that in some areas it starts a week early, so I´ve been seeing sneak peaks of what is to come tomorrow; although I´m in a smallish town so the partying wont be to big as in salvador which is party central. Yesterday I saw a bunch of men walking down the street dancing wearing dresses and wigs while drinking so I can only imagine what is to come... I actually asked what the purpose behind Carnaval is and peole have said "to drink, to party, to have November birthdays..."I´ve also heard from my companion that "Carnaval can be compared to Halloween, because all I see are monsters. But we are going to work through it. We were told by president that we are to work but if the partying gets to bad then we are supposed to go home. We probably won´t have that bad of a problem with it because it is a smallish town, but all of our appointments are falling because people have parties to go to or are leaving to salvador; its the same with street contacts, there are less people to talk to because so many people are gone. But we are making good progress with out investigators and we have a couple getting ready to be baptized on the 11 and 25 of march which is right in the middle of our next transfer so we are working to get them baptized before, in case we leave. I want to say more but my time ran out, so, Love you guys!

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Pictures from Brazil

Bananas harvested from the chapel grounds.

 It looks like star fruit to me, but they are eating it green, so I don't know.

 Tapioca flour pancake type food.

March-first week

Short letter last week because the computers we were on last week were iffy and we ran out of time, so this letter should be better. For last P-day we were with the youth for their activity for carnival, they did teams and played vollyball, soccer and other fun games and slept overnight at the chapel. We only stayed or the vollyball, games, and lunch; because we arent allowed to play soccer because appently too many missionaries get hurt and have to go home so its a rule for all of brazil that we cant play. But it was fun anyway. And we came back the next morning to drop off treats we made for the youth and with the help of Bishop harvested bananas from the trees by the chapel (pictures included). The sap was super sticky and would hardly come off with soap. And after a week of ripening, they are the most delicious bananas ive ever eaten, they were truly amazing. Carnval wasnt anything in my little town so work was normal. I tried more weird fruit, in the pictures the green thing that looks like a pepper is called "carambola" and kind of tastes like a current berry that we have at our house (in the US). I also tried tapioca in pancake form? It was good with ham and butter. The truth is no one actually uses butter, everyone uses margarine, so it makes me feel better calling it butter. We got to eat McDonalds the other day (pics included even though my companion wasnt as sad as he looked) and the food tastes the same, except for the soda and ice cream with is way better for reasons unknown, except the sodas all have real sugar :P. There is a thing about being an american elder here in brazil with blue eyes, it attracts a lot of attention, especially the "snakes" (teenage girls and women). So we are looking for people to teach and people dont want to talk to us sometimes but when they people want to talk to us they come us to us and start talking about my beautiful blue eyes "that are like the sea". Its kinda annoying but mostly funny. So me and my companion joke about it quite a bit. Teaching I think is fun because its conversational and normal and most people like to talk about religion, not always to be converted but like to talk. We encountered this youth in the street one day and he came up to us and said "you guys are missionaries from my church!" We didn´t know him but it turned out that he recently moved here from a different area and was less active there and didnt know we had church here. We were so excited to know him because we are always looking to strenghten the young men section of the ward. And so one day we found him at home with two of his friends and we started to teach them. So we have big plans to reactivate the less active young man and teach his friends so when the day comes he can baptize his friends! I dont know if it will work but thats our goal! We are working hard and are greatful for a fun week.

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Elder Benjamin Barton