Elder Keller & Elder Phillips in Sao Paulo

Elder Keller & Elder Phillips in Sao Paulo

Monday, April 27, 2015

#34 April 27, 2015 Camila & Camille Baptism

Well this week was absolutely crazy! First off I will finish up last weeks email. So this fourth missionary talk is totally awesome and talks about the four kinds of missionaries. First is the one who goes out and does what he wants and is not obedient and goes home. The second goes out and is the same but sticks it out and just lies to everyone. The third is obedient and does what he is supposed to but his mind and his heart are at home and his will doesnt become the lords. The fourth missionary "consecrates" himself in everything on the mission. He accepts that the Lord will turn him into something way better than he could turn himself into. The talk is awesome and its super long but the point that he makes about the fourth missionary is awesome and can be applied to any member as well. It is simple, when we accept the Lords will everything will just become better and easier. Clearly we will have challenges but we accept and have faith that what Christ has in store for us in worth it all in the end!

But we have been working with this family of less actives the whole time we are here! Miriam and Antonio are the parents and the kids are Douglas, Dalton, and Dennis. They are all about 20 years old already and the first two are married and all got baptized about three years ago. Miriam has been a member her whole life but is coming back to the church now along with her family getting baptized. The kids all fell away from the church though after the baptisms and stopped coming. But they are the coolest family ever! They are all huge fishermen and totally tatted and the last people you would ever think would be baptized! But they are amazing and I love working with them! Anyways we had an awesome lesson about the temple and the sealing power Miriam and Douglas and his wife Camilla all decided to makes goals to now get to the temple and we are super happy! And now they are coming to church every week! Douglas and Camilla have two kids, Andre and Maria and its so awesome to have the family at church every week now! I know without a doubt that we cant do anything without the spirit and its in those high spiritual moments when you can help people feel the truth of this message! I love my mission! 

But anyways Guaratuba blew up this week! Willy, Helm, AND Blanchard are all leaving! And im staying. I dont know what happened but the Lord has got other things in store for us! It will be interesting! Helm is going to Blumenau, an all german city here, blanchard to são jose on the other side of floripa, and willy just became my zl haha! but im gonna miss them! This last transfer was the most spiritual, fun, happiest transfer i have had on my mission! it was such a blast! But we have to learn new things now. So i found out i am gonna get two companions and im gonna have to serve in a trio during this transfer! Im going to florianópolis tomorrow to get the other two elders and I dont know who they are so it will be interesting! All I know is that one just came out of training and one is getting here right now so this transfer i feel is gonna be a lot of prayer and guidance from the lord because i still dont know what I am doing haha. But I am excited for this transfer and i think its gonna be awesome! Im definitely gonna miss those guys but it will be good. 

Willy and helm left yesterday so i get to be comps with blanchard for a day and its so awesome! We hope we become comps because just in this day we are figuring out really how to do things right! And we have such an awesome spirit together! We have the same time on the mission and we feel like we have been on the same exact track! So who knows maybe in the future! 

But this week was great! Camila and Camille got baptized and it was awesome! (: I baptized Camila and Willy baptized Camille! They are gonna be such awesome members! (: 

The work now is gonna be sweet because now I have to take all the work from Blanchard and Helm as well so it will be interesting to see what happens! We are going to be working our tails off! 

But anyways I love and miss everyone back at home and I hope everything is going great! The gospel of Jesus Christ is true! And the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the ONLY church that has the fulness of that gospel today on the earth! And through obedience to the commandments we can be happy! Always obey! I love and miss you all! 

Love, Elder Keller 

Monday, April 20, 2015

#33 April 20, 2015 Birthday Pictures

Elder Keller's 19th birthday




I LOVE this house!  

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! 


We told Ian to take the Elders out for a birthday meal.  This was not on his bday
 because they were too busy, but later in the week 



Elders Keller, William, Helm & Blanchard 

Looks like 1/3 is banana nutella

I'm pretty sure this is the view from their apartment 

Chimarrao- a traditional drink in southern Brazil made from the plant erva-mate.  When asked if they drink it sweetened one guy wrote, "Don't kill me dude.  We don't drink it like that.  That's only for little kids.  You gotta be strong and fierce to drink Chimarrao"  :) 


Opening birthday packages 



This week was awesome! I dont have a lot of time today but im gonna try to type fast. We went to Itapoá this week to do splits and it was awesome! We went with Sierras and Mendes. They have a Branch there and it is really sad because branches here really are super weak. They are thinking about closing it down! That is why it is so important that every member is a missionary and also knows the doctrine of the church! You cant just really on missionaries to do it all like a lot of the times it happens down here unfortunately.

But anyways Blanchard and Helm baptized giane this week, the girl that had the awesome dream of her mom in the temple! It was awesome! Camila and Camille are gonna be baptized and I'm super excited! Its gonna be awesome! Her husband hates the church but he is letting them get baptized. So maybe in the future his heart will be softened more! Camilla is 24 and camille is 8 years old and Camilla has such a strong testimony! She got pregnant at 15 but then totally turned her life around and is super awesome now and is even studying preach my gospel to be able to talk to her friends about the church at work hahah it is great!

The work here is amazing and we had a super cool lesson last night with a less active family! Im super mad cuz i ran out of time this week already but next week i will write about this fourth missionary talk as well as the experience that happened with this less active family!

The church is true and the spirit is the only way we can truly help people to be converted and truly touch their hearts! I love and miss you all! Hope everything is going great!
Love Elder Keller 

Monday, April 13, 2015

#32 April 13, 2015 Linda's Baptism

Linda's Baptism 











This is back in his last area of Pato Branco at Bishop Vivian's house




At first glance I thought this was just a tiny little rock, but then I noticed the teeny tiny person
standing out there on the rock in about the middle.  Look carefully. 




This week was especially awesome because we had interviews with president silva! And they are always totally sweet! before the interviews we do a study together of a talk or chapter in the scriptures that he has given us a month before and it is totally awesome! we are learning a ton with him! The talk we read was called Principles by Boyd K. Packer and it totally rocked! He talked about the better we serve on our mission the better we will become in eternity and in our lives as parents and leaders in the church! It's an awesome talk. It also talked a lot about how we really have to know the principles and the the doctrine of the gospel. The church is in danger when the members dont know the doctrine, especially the leaders in the church! And that is a really big problem here in Brasil. Where you have lots of leaders that make mistakes and they are really big ones. Im not saying its like crazy apostasy here but unfortunately at times it happens because they dont know the doctrine and principles as taught by Christ in the scriptures. The talk tells us that the most important time to learn about these things and really study is on our missions. And it is so true! Afterwards we have so many other things that we will have to worry about and you wont have 3 hours a day to easily study the scriptures! But it also talks about that when we do become leaders we still need to make time to truly personally study the scriptures. We cant just be comfortable with the excuse that we are serving in the church a lot or that we dont have time. We have got to study our scriptures every single day of our lives! Thats so important!

But also we learned a totally awesome principle from President Silva this week. A missionary asked the question, "why do we hear of the cases where a missionary disobeyed a rule and because of that he got a lot of baptisms, or a missionary who never was obedient and had a ton of baptisms on the mission?" Silva just burned the heck out of everyone! He just asked, "Was it that missionary that really baptized those people or was it God? Because if he thinks it was him than he is gonna have a really great time on the day of Judgment." It was a total burn! and it is so true! If we get a baptism it is because God let us be in the area when that person was baptized. And if we arent doing what we need to do on our missions than we will suffer for that! Or we will have to truly repent. We have got to give everything that we have on our mission and we can never make excuses for disobedience! The other night we got home late but we didnt really say anything about it... It was all four of us and we had just gottten done with a group lesson at a house where we had dinner. Then we got talking and we realized that that is huge! We cant ever treat breaking rules lightly! And then Elder Blanchard showed us an awesome talk called the fourth missionary. I havent read the whole thing, its huge but it is totally awesome. Basically it shows there are 4 kinds of missionaries and we have to be the fourth! And I was so ticked because I thought I would be in the fourth but then we all sat down together and read the characteristics of the types of missionaries and we all realized we are the third! I was ticked! But we all decided we need to buckle down and become that fourth missionary! So we are gonna study the talk this week so we can become that fourth missionary. I will probably talk about in next week!

But anyways everything went great with the baptism of Linda on saturday and it was awesome! (: Super happy for her! I sent pics to MOm and DAd. But i love and miss everyone and hope you guys are all doing great! Until next week!

Love,
 Elder Keller

Monday, April 6, 2015

#31 April 6, 2015 General Conference

Got to eat Subway in Joinville!! It's very expensive though so they only
go there when the mission pays for their meal, if they are traveling or whatnot… 


Quick meal in between conference sessions


I guess this says that this is the first chapel built in South America 


Sooo HAPPY to get mail & packages from home! 




Cool view of the chapel in Guaratuba there on the left 



Elders Arine, Keller, & William 

Reunited with Elder Hess, my MTC comp 












Every missionary in the world is probably going to talk about conference in this weeks email but I am too because it was so dang awesome!!!! Dang I feel so dumb for not actually listening and taking notes in every single conference since I was 12 years old! Conference is the best thing ever!

Anyways we asked Bishop if we could watch conference in English downstairs and so he let us watch it in the Secretaries office and it was so much better! I was able to understand it in Portuguese now but listening to the voices translating when you want to hear the actual voice of someone like Uchtdorf or Monson really changes things! Those who speak english are so blessed! It is way better in english! So Helm and I watched it downstairs in english and blanchard for some reason wanted to stay portuguese so he stayed up with william and watched it in the chapel.

But I cant even begin to decide what my favorite talk was from this conference... As always Uchtdorf and Holland rocked it but the seventies that spoke were all acutally super awesome as well! I feel like I got a lot of answers to not necessarily questions that I have but doubts in my mind, things that I have been trying to figure out on my mission and I was so thankful for that!

I also feel like I got put into place on a lot of things and that they were specifically for me! Especially when they talked directly about companionships and feeling like you need to change other people. The story was hilarious about the Elder that heard the voice say to him that to Heavenly Father we are pretty much the same lost people on the same path trying to get back to him. That was so awesome! I know I have always known that we all sin and that each of us sins differently but now I feel like I actually get it! President Silva has been teaching us a lot about how to have an effective scripture study and there are 5 key steps: First we must understand the context and what we are about to read about, second we must find the principles in what we are studying, third understand those principles, fourth feel the power and the truth of those principles through the power of the Holy Ghost, and fifth actually apply the principles in our daily lives. I feel like I was getting the first two with that principle but in conference I hit the last three!

It made me realize that really no one is better than anyone here on this earth! Jesus Christ is our true leader and that is the only thing that matters. We don't get or even deserve any glory here because really we don't do anything. The only reason we can get anywhere is through Jesus Christ and obedience to his commandments. Without his Atonement we would all be done for. And I have a HUGE problem with trying to find the errors in others when Im still an idiot 18 year old kid and have a ton of errors of my own.

But I love conference and Im super pumped to go back and read the talks! This week we will have interviews with President and Im sure it will be totally awesome! This week we went to Joinville for a zone meeting and it was great! We also went to subway and we felt in heaven haha! The work here is awesome and just getting better and I love my mission!!

Love and miss all of you guys!! Go back and study conference!
Elder Keller