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

Week 15?

I never know how to start my emails. But I can say that is true that Sierra changed her mission to Pennsylvania, she used to live there so she had a concern about going there and when she bought it up they felt prompted to change it. And you are right, I don´t miss carrying the pruned branches through winter wonderland at our house but glad the missionaries could help, I guess I will have to do some more service here to compensate. I will just do my best to get my own portuguese hymn book because everyone has one and I´m always the one without at meetings so its kind of an essencial. And dont worry about the english book of mormon too because I can probably get one through the mission. I only asked because we´ve encountered now 3 people who speak english that we wanted to teach but didnt have books of mormon to give them; usually we cant teach in english but since my companion speaks english we could, but dont worry about it. This week we had the confirmation of the lady we baptized last week and it was really cool because now their whole family is baptized and confirmed and in 1 year they will all go to the temple to be sealed, its just so cool! And after church they (the family that we are now friends with) invited us to her baby shower, but its funny because the name they have for the party is translated to "diaper tea" or sometimes "baby tea". And they had some good cake and dulce de leite and other treats, so missionary work is really rewarding! (pictures included) :) We had the fantastic experience of getting our apartment reformed for the next mission president who will be arriving in July, so they are just prepping all the houses for missionaries so the new president doesnt have to deal with it, plus its just time for it. So our house got painted, curtains installed, a new sink, new kitchen cabinets, new beds (that feel amazing to sleep on), fixed the doors so that they all can shut properly and the front door to lock right, and best of all a new shower unit with hot water installed which is a huge deal and feels so nice compared to freezing cold showers that we´ve had for the past 8 weeks. Havent seen any cockroaches the past 2 weeks but we´ve seen lots of lizards and one day we saw a huge toad, and because my companion loves harry potter, and I yelled "TREVOR" and attempted to pick it up, lets just say he thought it was hilarious. :) Elder B. Costa got an endoscopy and after he was high on the anestetic and still taught lessons the rest of the day and he was much easier to talk to because he physically wasnt able to talk fast, that was in interesting day. We will keep working here and will make a list of things that happen this week so that I can really share what happened next week. Amo vocês!

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Elder Benjamin Barton

Another baptism this week

Another great week! We´ve been working, praying, studying, walking, fasting, and teaching. We didn´t get to talk with the family that fell through last week, we are giving them more time to read, think, and pray about everything. So we devoted time to visiting other people and we had a baptism this week! We baptized the older sister of the two brothers that we baptized the first week I arrived here; he was the pefect investigator, she kept all the commandments and invitations and read the BOM everyday and she really was an elect because we were able to do it mostly in 1 week. She came to church the first time last week and we baptized her after stake conference yesterday. It makes me so happy to see their whole family baptized and how much happier they are with direction in their lives by finding (and living) the truth. Elder B. Costa did the ordenance and I lead the service (in portuguese :)  We took pictures of inside a bus, the family outside of the stake center, and of our celebratory baptism nutella and chocolate breakfast.

Also I can´t forget Isaac´s Birthday, can´t believe he is 17 and half way through junior year, that was me just last year it seems! If you want to know more, ask more, because now i´m used to most of the stuff here so I don´t remember what was extraordinary this week because everything feels he same now. Amo Vocês! até mais!

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Elder Benjamin Barton

First transfer time. He is staying with his companion!

This week has not much to report but work, work, and more work; but couldnt be happier doing it. We finished our first transfer and found our both of us are going to stay in our area for another transfer, big news for me, not really excited for you guys; its like hot gossip "oh who got transferred? who is leaving? who is ZL?" and so on. No pictures because I didn´t take any because we didnt do anything cool :( but next week I think we will go see all the monumental places in salvador and then i´ll take some cool pics. We had a baptism for saturday that fell through so we are going to work more with them this week, and we have a for sure baptism next week, she is so excited and its going to be great! Greatful for the email this week and excited to have more to say to you for next week :)

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Elder Benjamin Barton