Elder Keller & Elder Phillips in Sao Paulo

Elder Keller & Elder Phillips in Sao Paulo

Monday, August 31, 2015

#52 August 31, 2015 The Arizonans & The Rivals

Alright well this week was great! Elder Moore is awesome! He is from Surprise Arizona and mom and dad you already have pics of him because he is from my group and I was in the MTC with him.

I am super happy cuz Moore loves football! Just in time right? Only problem is he roots for the devil... (ASU) But he is gonna be an awesome comp! I am super excited. He played football and basketball in high school and grew up on the west side. Mom and Dad you guys should try to find his parents! Chad and Mari Mar are their names. His mom is from Spain! 

But the beginning of this week was a little crazy... We have 6 elders in the apt and our ward had four. But the other companionship had one elder that was kind of problematic and doesnt like obeying and we came home one night to him provoking the other Elder and then one hit the other, President was called, they got emergency transfered, and now we have a huge area and a ton of people to cover alone! Kind of a bitter sweet blessing! It all happened super fast so they had a couple hours to tell us about their investigators, show us where they live and then they were out.  So Moore and I have been running around like chickens with our heads cut off this week. But at least were busy! 

The other Elders had been at a lunch with members who had invited their non member sister over to hear a lesson and the family loved the idea of the church and have been coming for three weeks now and totally solid! So now we get to teach them and they are awesome! The parents are Lucas and Eli and their kids are Barbara 15 Bianca 12 Gabriel 11 Brian 6 Lana 2. Lucas was in a motorcycle accident about 6 months ago and has been a wheel chair since then and is having to learn how to walk all over again. It is going to be really cool because he talks about that as his humbling experience given to him by God to make his focus more on his family and come back to church. They are amazing and love everything about the gospel and the Book of Mormon. We had a really cool lesson about revelation this week and Lucas asked how the leaders in the church were called and we explained about revelation. The spirit totally touched his heart and taught him the rest and he told us about awesome answers he has received in his life from God. 

But really the family is amazing. We could give them Preach My Gospel and The Book Of Mormon and they would go convert themselves. We wouldnt have to do anything! The plan is for the whole family to get baptized in november because they have to get married first and he wants to be walking first for the wedding. So please pray for Lucas so that he can recover on time! 

Sonia is awesome! She has a date marked for September 26th and is coming to church every week and the members love her (: 

The stake here is really awesome! President shared the talk "The power of the word" by president benson with us. Then the missionaries here started sharing it with the leaders and now the stake is going back to the basics and trying to get all the members reading their scriptures. It is the simple key to everything and I know I talk about it in every email but it is because no one here does it except for investigators! haha But it is the truth, and it is what my parents have always taught me--if we do the simple things like prayer, scripture reading EVERY DAY like Elder Pearson taught us in last conference, temple once a week for those close to one and go to church we will prosper in the land both spiritually and temporally! We wont have to worry becase Heavenly Father will literally put us on his path and will help us Prosper! And it is as simple as that. It is like two plus two equals four! It is the equation to success as a member of the church and a person in this world! 

But anyway I am out of time! I love you all! Take advantage of football season! Haha jk but have a great week! 

Love, Elder Keller

Monday, August 24, 2015

#51 August 24, 2015

this isnt the general! i am just updating you guys. But President called on tuesday night which is super early for transfers so we thought we were in trouble haha but reid got sent to itapoá and is gonna be a senior already! he is awesome! Elder moore who is from my group and was with me in the mtc is gonna be my comp! its gonna be awesome! We are going to be the zone leaders of the joinville north zone but that doesnt really mean anything now because president called 18 assistants! how crazy is that? haha there are two for each zone and there are 2 zone leaders for each zone. so there is one companionship of ap's and one of assistants in each one. we have 9 zones and no one has any idea what is going on haha. as soon as i got the call i knew for sure elder william would be the ap because we joke about how he always is going to be my leader and sure enough william is the ap of the joinville north zone haha! how crazy is that? so i am staying where i am at, moore was in guaratuba and only stayed there one transfer.. crazy huh? so that will be really cool! reid just left this morning and moore is getting here in about 3 hours. but yeah this week was awesome! elder andersen came and he speaks portugues!!! crazy huh? ill talk about it in my letter this week. we only got to watch him because it was for the stakes in this mission not just missionaries but it was really cool! 

but i love you guys so much and hope you are doing awesome! 

General Letter :

Well this week was just awesome! First off Elder Andersen came to Florianópolis to speak to the stakes of santa catarina and so we got to watch a transmission of him and I'm going to talk a little about that later. 

But first off Elder Reid is getting shipped out to Itapoá. He will be awesome there! My companion is going to be Elder Moore and I am really excited! We got here together and were in the MTC together so I think it will be a really good time! I will miss Elder Reid because we got really good at following the spirit together in lessons but I know Elder Moore and I will get the same thing and it's gonna be great! 
                        
But anyways about Elder Andersen... It was way cool! I didn't know this but he speaks portuguese too! Cool huh? So he was in the chapel in Floripa so we didn't get to see him but it was cool because it was a meeting just for these members down here so he told a bunch of cool stories about the temple down here and past general authorities and things like that. 

But what I thought was the coolest was the fact that he had a really strong accent haha. Let me explain. So he served his mission in France and then later went back as Mission President there. Then right after he gets called to be a general Authority of South America and had to learn spanish. And in that mix he learned portuguese but he started out the meeting saying that it had been a long time and he was going to do his best. 

What really stood out to me was that it showed a very humbler side of an apostle. Sometimes I think that they are these crazy powerful god-like beings that could call upon the spirit and speak a language perfectly at any time they wanted. But it's not like that. He spoke really well but you could also tell that he was working really hard at it and he was mixing in a lot of spanish haha. But it shows that every leader of the church is just a man. But a man called and empowered by God. And you know what, we are not perfect! And we cant expect perfection of others. I don't know how it is in the states because I didn't pay a lot of attention but here everyone goes less active because they say "the bishop is doing his calling right", or "the stake president said this" and ya know maybe they did mess something up but we aren't perfect and we gotta realize that! An Apostle of Jesus Christ was struggling with a language that he hadnt spoken in a really long time. It is normal and shows how they are just like us and have problems they have to work out as well. 

But he talked about a lot of things but the biggest that stood out were gaining a personal testimony of the book of mormon and his testimony of Christ. 

Elder Aidukatis of the seventy was there as well (and he is awesome) and they invited his wife to tell her conversion story. She said Elder Aidukatis met and baptized her after his mission but she wasn't really converted for a few more years after when we went searching for her own testimony of the book of mormon and studying it every single day! It is just like Elder Pearson's talk says from this past conference and that counsel that we hear ALL the time. Read and study the scriptures every day! And like Nephi says in 1 Nephi 19:23 - 24 we need to apply the scriptures and the words of the prophets to our own lives! And that is how he taught his own family and his own people! We gotta do it! 

To wrap it up he talked about Jesus Christ and how he knows for himself that he lives and he bore very powerful testimony of the truthfulness that Christ leads this church and it is the same one he established on this earth 2000 years ago. 

But I am out of time but I love and miss you all! My mission is the best place ever and I am so thankful for it! 

Love, Elder Keller 

Monday, August 17, 2015

#50 August 17, 2015

Alright this week was great! I dont have a lot of time this week cuz we ended up getting a lunch appointment with a member on p day which is awesome but doesnt ever happen! So we have to leave soon. 

But this week was our best week so far teaching wise! We got in to a more houses and we are finding lots of people. President Silva just wants us to find new people all the time so we can just cut at will if we want. The theory is that if we make a goal to find news every day you will eventually get to have such a big teaching pool that it will be easy to weed out the ones who really want it and those who dont because you wont have time to teach all of them and you are going to find the elect. And it is going great! 

So sonia came to church this week which was awesome but there are two wards in our building and because lunch here is like super important one startes at eight thirty and the other at 9. It is weird and really confusing so when she got here early a member was the first to see her and just grabbed her and threw her right in with the other ward! Haha so it ended up working out alright. We were in a PEC meeting so we just thought she didnt even come to church haha. Then after we find out she was just with the other ward and the other missionaries. But it all worked out in the end! 

Last week Elder Reid and I made a goal to talk with WAY more people because our pool is really tiny so we literally talked with everyone last week and this week also and the Lord is definitely blessing us! Out of the blue we found some less actives we can now teach and hopefully get back to church and we are finding people who are letting us come in at least wich is great! One thing I am learning here is that obedience and hard work, however painful it may be in the exact moment, in the future you will be able to look back and see how it payed off. The long weeks of knocking doors in the beginning have now totally payed off! We started out having two people to teach and that was it but now our pool is getting big and we spend a lot more time teaching and not as much just knocking doors. Yeah it took five weeks but it payed off! And in relation to anything with the Gospel it is the same way. We always have to be diligent! This whole life seems like a long time to work hard and be diligent but when it is all over we are gonna look back and think how crazy it is that time is passed by so fast. 

But everything is going great and i cant believe i hit my year mark in two days! That is insane. I didnt even know how to say hi in portugues a year ago haha. The mission is amazing! 

But I love you all and hope this next week is awesome! 

Love Elder Keller 

Monday, August 10, 2015

#49 August 10, 2015

Alright well I don´t know if we can have favorite companions on our missions but if we can Elder Reid is the one so far! He is so awesome and every day we learn something new about the spirit and how to follow him! The work doesn´t progress as fast as we want it to here in Joinville but I know when we are working we are doing the best we can and the Lord blesses us in so many little ways during the day! 

We found a really cool family a few weeks ago but they had to go on a trip so we got back there this week. We took a member there in the first visit and taught the restoration and invited them to be baptized and gave a lot of emphasis on the book of mormon and we basically said it just as Elder Ballard says at the end of his book "Our Search for Happiness" look either its all true and it can immensely bless your lives or its all a lie and we came 12 hours by plane to stay here for two years preaching a lie. And the lesson was really awesome! We came back the next time and the daughter who is like 21 had read everything we left and explained everything perfectly and had tons of questions and even asked if she could buy the book because we told her we only lend it out haha. It was awesome! So that was a big blessing to find this family and we are excited to see what happens! The parents are Carlito and Lenita. Then there is leticia the daughter and mateus their kid who is probably like 9 or 10 ish. And leticia lives with her husband in the house Jonathan. So we are going back this week to teach a part of the plan of salvation! 

Thats another thing we had interviews with President this week and they were awesome! As always we study a talk together before hand and this time we studied "Power of the Word" By President Benson and it was awesome. We talked all about the power of personal and family scripture study. President Silva knows the scriptures like no one i have ever sen before. An Elder asked if he could leave a set of his scriptures with us while he does interviews (he has three that he carries around in a big briefcase) and he did and we got to look through it. We were only able to find like 5 pages that werent completely marked and didnt have references to church talks and other books and other scripures. All his sets are super fat because he puts so many things inside of them! The guy is really awesome and uses the scriptures in every aspect of his life! And he taught his kids to do the same thing! His son just became a Bishop and the kid just turned 29 haha. 

But my interview with President was awesome like it always is! He always knows how to help people out in the best way possible. 

So he also instituted the 20 minute rule which I love! Lessons from now on should be twenty minutes. Thats it for every single one. And it is super hard to teach the first one and invite the person to be baptized! But it is working! He said we should never be teaching a whole lesson. But like one or two points each time. And it totally works! He also wants us leaving cliff hangers at the end. Like after apostasy saying so we lost the power and the church so could we come back later to explain what happened after? and then the person really wants you to come back! and you arent there for very long and so they are thinking that it will be quick so they invite you back the next day or the day after that! And it works! One Elder who was already doing that was teaching the plan of salvation and he had taught so many quick lessons with a family that when he ended the mom got up and locked the door and said no, this time you have to stay and explain the whole thing to us haha. So I am excited to see how it goes! It has been working so far! That family I talked about in the beginning were super surprised when we ended early and told us we had to come back the first day after they got back from going to visit their grandpa. 

But things are going great here and Joinville is a really cool place! And I love my mission! But I hope everything is going great back home! Family I love and miss you guys so much! You are the best and I could not have been blessed with a better one! Have an awesome week! 


Love,
Elder Keller

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

#48 August 3, 2015

So it got hot this week! It wasnt super hot degrees wise but because it is so humid here you just feel like you are melting haha! I miss dry arizona heat. Joinville is one of the hottest areas in the mission and the members said last year there was a day that it got to be the hottest place on the planet! So if i stay here for summer sounds like thats gonna be fun... They have something here called thermal sensation which shows the degrees of heat that you are feeling because of the humidity and so that is what they go by because the normal gauge isnt accurate at all.

But anyways Joinville is really great! I really love the ward here! The members are all just super cool and really down to earth. So there are two wards that go to our building. It used to be one ward but was split a year ago. The other one has a bunch of richies but ours has really great people so im glad um here! There are a lot of returned missionaries as well so that is really cool! And the food here is actually amazing. Like the other day we were at the Godinhos house (they are an awesome family in the ward who was baptized two years ago but are some of the best members i know know) she made parmesan chicken and it was so good! So i dont have a lot to complain about! 

The work here is like a said a lot different from Guaratuba. We just basically find and cut people every week so that we can try to find the elect and those that really want to be baptized. The best we have right now are Gabriel and Sonia and Sonia has been to church once. But it has been really difficult because she doesnt really understand our purpose there. Right now we feel like she kind of thinks were just the walk around pastors and it is really difficult to change that attitude in someone. The thing is that she loves the book of mormon and believes its true and reads it every day. But this week we are going to use that to try and motivate her more. I feel so bad for her. She is probably 55 years old and divorced so she lives alone. She doesnt have too much contact with her kids and i just feel like that would be so miserable staying couped up in that house all day! So we want to show her that the gospel can offer so much more! 

But gabriel is really awesome! We have been slowly trying to change into the missionary attitude with him and show our real purpose there because the other elders who started teaching him six months ago would go over there and stay for hours watching tv with him... Really frustrating but he is a good guy! He was living with an inactive sister in the ward who used to be really solid but just made some bad decisions. But now they have been going to church pretty regularly and they just need to get married now. So I think our greatest hope is with him! 

But I did an exchange with Elder Malkum the other day, one of the kids in our apartment and I love that guy! He has a few problems with rules and stuff but he serves everyone as much as he can and loves helping others. He is a great example of Christ when it comes selflessness and being humble. He definitely forgets about himself in that sense. But they gave a really good idea for lunch messages to try to help members and what they do in their ward is go to the members house and then after ask the member to share with them what they studied personally in their scriptures the day before. And of course most of the members say no which I was a little surprised at first. Then they talk about the importance of reading their scrips and then say the next lunch we are gonna ask the same thing. So we started doing that with some in our area and it is crazy how many members dont have the habit of personal scripture study! They are great awesome people but it shows really how hard it is to put that in first priority during our lives. It is something so simple but also so difficult for us as members to do but really will make all the difference! 

Im so thankful for awesome parents I have who I always saw studying the scriptures! That is probably one of the greatest examples I always saw from them as a kid. And I know that is one of the biggest reasons that I am out here on a mission today. Thanks mom and dad! 

But anyways I love and miss you all and hope that you are all doing great! Have an awesome week! 

Love, Elder Keller 

#47 July 27, 2015

Well this week was totally sweet! On thursday we went down to Itajai and had a big mission conference with a seventy names Elder Leal who is just a powerful guy. He was so awesome! He is from são paulo and was baptized at 17 years old and then served a mission in a time when very few brazilians were serving. And he went to Portugal!

But anyways he is an amazing teacher. He spoke really quietly and soft but the spirit that he used was so strong! He talked to us about how to be real messengers of Christ and better teachers. He put a bar graph on a white board and numbered it 0 through 10. On one side he put teaching techniques and on the other he put attributes of Christ. Then he went through one by one asking us what we thought the mission used more or where we were on the scale. Five being a perfect balance of what we need between the two. we came to the conclusion that we were a 2 or 3 mission because we rely more on the ways to convince a man by ideas that came from man than on the spirit. He taught us that we still need to use techniques but we also have to rely on the spirit and be the examples of Christ so we can teach with more power and then the people will be convinced! 

One big thing he talked about was knowing that our President was called by God. In our mission unfortunately we have a lot of missionaries that dont like President and think he just makes up rules to make it so that we cant have fun on our missions. It is kind of ridiculous but Elder Leal talked about that. He talked about how revelation really exists! It isnt some made of thing that they tell us to try to keep us in line but that our Presidente receives revelation for us! He was closing one of the meetings during the day when he was talking about this and so he bore his testimony and it was powerful! He said that he knew for himself that president silva was receiving the correct revelation for us because he knows that president did the last transfer one hundred percent correct, that every single one of us was in the exact area with the exact companion at the exact time that we needed. He said he has been to missions where presidents have messed up with that and he has to talk to the mission president. He said he can see and feel when a mission president has done it right because of the power of the spirit! How cool is that? The guy is so in tune with the spirit that he can feel when someone isnt in the right place! Plus that day was the first day he ever met President Silva! haha So that was a big addition to my testimony about personal revelation! 

But one big thing that was reaffirmed at that meeting was the importance of finding a really powerful wife! Sister Silva and Sister Leal actually spoke a lot and they taught with awesome power and they are smart women! Elder Leal talked about how we have to train ourselves to be good husbands as well and that is why we have comps out here. Because marriage is hard and we have to learn how to use the spirit to work it out! And seeing these awesome couples on the mission really helps put it into perspective! 

But anyways i love the new ward! The members are super cool and joinville is awesome! i have some cool picks including alligators in the middle of the city haha pretty sweet! But i probably wont be able to send them until next week because the church is so far away. But I love and miss you all so much and hope everything is going great! Read your scriptures every day! 

Love, 
Elder Keller