Week #11 Nov 10, 2014




The church at Francisco Beltrao




Inside the church




Early morning hill run overlooking Pato Branco

Where everyone here goes to church...haha.  And guess what? There's actually 3 more the same size.

The view of the 7th Day Adventist Church from our apartment

Elder Hess making our "pancakes"

Alright, well this week was totally awesome! When i said missions arent fun i had no idea what i was talking about! I was just being a big baby. We went on splits with Elder William and Elder Manoel and it was so awesome! They are brazilian so i wasnt worried about anything! But i went with Elder Manoel who is only has 6 weeks left on his mission so it was such a great learning opportunity! I learned so much in just that one day. The guy has that fire that EVERY single missionary should always strive for. He's probably 5 4 at most but he is so awesome! every contact he did was perfect and he testified and we even went up to these guys dealing pot and totally freaked em out and taugh them about the gospel for 15 minutes! hahahaha one of the funniest things ever! But it really was a great opportunity and im glad i got the chance to go on splits with him before he left.

We taught two lessons that day, one to Candida who ran out of cigarretes (i cant remember how to spell) thank goodness! And we also taught this one family the restoration. Dude Elder Manoel knows how to teach with the spirit. There was no way i could deny that i was feeling the spirit right there in that lesson. It was so cool! What stinks is you just wish that the people your are teaching would recognize the same thing. Its frustrating haha! But anyways getting candida to quit is hard! Elder Hess and I were teaching her earlier this week and she's been kind of beating around the bush when it comes to smoking so we finally just told here to get all of her packs she had left so she went and got em and she had three left or like 60 cig's. so we said, look were gonna take these and man she totally flipped!!!! hahaha we just wanted to see where she was with smoking and everything and then she started to open up more about it. she smokes three in the morning and 4 in the afternoon. so we said ok look were gonna take two. she flipped again. so we said okay just one. flipped again. so we didnt know what to do and then the quote that aunt sarah used all the time totally popped into my head! "faith can not exist with fear" she kept telling us she was scared of what would happen when she ran out because she does have some pyschological problems and health things and she didnt want that to happen soon. So i asked here if she had faith and if she had a testimony. she said yes and so i asked if i could take one. again she said no! so i finally said candida, youre sitting here saying your have faith in jesus christ but you dont have enough faith that hes gonna help you when you run out of cigarrets. and so she finally let us take one which was a big win haha but she ran out the other day and has been doing good!

But things went awesome this week! we started teaching a 16 year old kid who is dating a girl in the ward and started coming to church. so we asked him if he wanted to take the lessons and he answered with the question how can i be baptized? so that was pretty great! haha but his parents are hardcore catholic as usual and dont want him to be baptized... Dang catholics are frustrating sometimes! But we actually figured out what was going on with denilsen. Elder Hess heard him wrong over the phone, he like totally messed up his back and has been in another city for the past 2 weeks! so hopefully things will pick back up again with him. theres a ton happening and i always want to right more every week but i never have time. But Im just gonna end with my testimony of a mission. Yeah they're stinkin hard but they're amazing! EVERY single able young man should serve a mission. And if you're not worthy then get worthy because i've only been out for almost 3 months and its totally changing me for the better. Ive got a long way to go but a mission is speeding up that process for sure.

Eu amo vocês e espero que tudo seja bem.

Elder Keller