#77 February 27, 2016 The Drunk Physics Professor

This week was really awesome and filled with great experiences! 

We have had no time lately because we have to plan for Elder Zwick coming into the mission but the Lord has been blessing us a ton to always have people to teach! And it is interesting because we have beeing really trying hard to work right in the area by the church because that is what Elder Costa and Presidente Silva want us to by doing. 

Originally with the 3 Km rule we tried always working right on the border because we knew right by the chapel had been all tracted out. But in these last couple months we have literally beeing working in 1 or 2 bairros right by the church and the Lord is just giving us tons of people, but not only people but families to teach! And our group has grown! Are investigaors right now are: 

Rubens and Flavia, Family Odair and Denise, Family, Maria and Angela, Couple, Rodolfo and Suelen, Family (we started teaching Suelen!), Luciana and her RM fiancé ( soon to be Couple!) ,Léci, Vitório and Fernando (Mom and two sons) 

The best ones for sure are Rubens and Flavia! All of those investigors have gone to church but for now that only ones that are really progressing towards baptism are Rubens and Flavia. 

But they are doing good! Satan is working hard to break them up as a family but please keep praying for them to get better! 

But a cool thing happened this week! An appointment fell through so we decided to go to a different place on the other side of the neighborhood and we passed by a bar and an old investigator comes out of the bar totally drunk and had beeing taking some drugs and pulled us off to the side of the road asking for our help. 

This guy is super intelligent, very wealthy and successful as well. He is studying to be a physics professor here in one of the universities and an all around good guy. I had never seen him like this before but the guy was just trashed! 

He was supposed to be baptized a year ago but right before the baptism decided that he didnt want to pay ten percent tithing to the church because he is a Mason and has to pay five to them. So he wanted to pay 5 to the mason and 10 to our church. But clearly the missionaries said no so he wasnt baptized. 

So we end up taking this guy home and on the walk home it was just like the films! As we are walking home and he was drunk and miserable it was like there was an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. Some of the things he said were, "if i had been baptized i wouldnt have gone back to my addictions" and then he said "but joseph smith cant be a prophet, it doesnt make sense," then, "i should have just decided to pay tithing, i was just prideful and selfish but 10 percent is nothing" and then "there cant be only one true church!" 

We brought the guy home and now he is doing better and we are going to start visiting him again but it was funny to see how he said that he knew that what he did was wrong! But he chose to not keep the commandment! And we all have to choose! 

But i am running out of time! But this week was awesome and everything is going great! I lvoe you all so much, have a great week! 

Elder Keller 

#76 February 13, 2016 The 1st Great Commandment

Alright this week went great! It was the week of the transfer and everyone got to their areas safe and sound so that is always a big relief! 

The first week is also up with Salomão and things are going awesome! He served there for 6 months in the beginning of his mission so he knows the area and the members better than i do haha! It is like a huge homecoming for him coming back now so it is really awesome! And the nice thing is that the members loved him a lot so i think it will help a lot here! 

Elder Hull and Nascimento who were living with us were both transferred as well and we got Elder W. Silva and Elder Larsen. W. Silva is from São Paulo and Larsen is from texas but his family just moved to Mesa right when he left on his mission. Pretty cool! He was part of the first group of new missionaries that I got to go pick up at the airport and it is cool to see his progress! W. Silva came from serving in Pato Branco and so it was nice to get updates on everyone! Gabriel and Candida are still active and they were even able to baptize Candida neice Jessica as well! Super happy about that! 

W. Silva has a year out and Larsen has about 4 months in the field. 

But this week I really got into this months ensign and it is so awesome! It has some great key advice for our lives! There were 3 specific articles that i really loved! 

Pg. 7 Marriage Is Ordained of God - No im not getting trunky haha but what was super interesting was the story about Larry M. Gibson that his wife said "i love you because i know you love God more than you love me." That came from the Visiting Teaching Message of the month.

That really hit me. It is the first and greatest commandment as Elder Hollands amazing talk talks about (The First Great Commandment) we must love God above all other things, even our own wife! At first I thought that is a little strange but its true! We gotta love God more than anything else in this world! And I really dont think I have hit that point in my life yet. That is something I am gonna have to work on in these last few months and probably when i get home as well. 

But we have to put God before EVERYTHING. Before school, before football, before our families, before freinds, before work, all of it! If he comes before the wife than he comes before everything else. 

But one interesting thing is that if we put him first than all the other things are going to come together and work out for the best! 

We went and taught Rubens and Flavia this week and really had just an AWESOME lesson. Flavia had been really quiet in the lessons and so our goal was to really see how she was feeling about all of this and what her needs would be, and it was a little hard but the Spirit helped it all to work out. 

We found out she stil didnt want to come back from Fortaleza but she feels like God made her come back. She misses her family there a lot cuz she has a family of like 9 siblings and all live up there. And so she had made up her mind to stay! But then God brought her back! Thanks for all the prayers! (: So the Spirit helped her recognize inthat lesson that God loves her and has a purpose in her being there, in us being there, and in her meeting the church in  this crucial time in her life. So i pray that she can find the great beauty of the gospel as rubens has and apply it in her life! 

Rubens is just a champion and studying the scriptures and everything he can get his hands on and when we teach he opens the book of mormon and goes and finds a scripture he likes to share with his wife! So cool! 

But keep praying for them! 

Maria and Angelo are so so. Their biggest problem is the Sabbath Day. And I know a lot of people back home are trying to follow the advice from this last conference and do better with the sabbath day so if you could send me advice on what you guys did to make the sabbath day a delight and how you made that change that would be awesome! 

Maria and Angelo come from a family who Sunday is party day. Everyone gets together and its just festa, festa and more festa. And so they dont go to church! So if you guys got any ideas send em out here! 

Odair and Denise are also in a rough situation with the marriage but said are coming to church again tomorrow! So we will see what happens. 

I am out of time but things are going great! I love you all so much and hope you have an awesome week! 

Love, Elder Keller

#75 February 6, 2016 Transfers! Elder Salomão

This week was pretty weird without Élder Fernandez. We had to get the whole transfer set up without Fernandez so that was pretty stressfull but so far so good! 

This transfer was interesting! President "transfered" us over to the ward in the center on this one. he explained to us that he wants us to find a mission home that we can have in case of emergencies, transfers, people going home, leadership councils etc,... so we are going to change wards. We are going to stay in our area until we get the house so who knows how long that will take. 

I felt bitter sweet about it because if it happens fast then I wont be able to teach these great families we have! 

But the cool thing is I am gonna be back living with Élder Moore and the rest of the secretaries! We were pretty psyched about that! The mission is just getting so fun! We are out here serving the Lord, learning from an amazing and very wise Mission President every single day, and getting to know and teach awesome people! I love teaching! There are very few other feelings that give as much satisfaction as the feelings you get from teaching a great lesson! 

So my new companion is going to be Elder Salomão from Cape Verde! The Elder is a stud! And I love the people from Africa because they just have powerful spirits! Super excited to serve with him and it looks like we could be together for a long time because he only has 11 months out on the mission. So he came over here super early! 

Our investigators are doing awesome! 

I dont know if I have already talked about Odair and Denises family. But they are an awesome family that we actually found about 3 months back. 

We taught them about 3 or 4 lessons and then we went back and found out that they decided to seperate because there were tons of marital problems and some pretty serious situations that made it so that we couldnt go back to teach them. 

They live way up on a huge hill with very few people living on it so after we stopped teaching them we never really went by the house. One day we were walking by the hill and Elder Fernandez out of the blue was like lets go by. We were super worried about going by and finding them still in this bad situation but we went back and found them back together! And they invited us back in and were totally more open to the lessons! 

This week they came to church with us. Them and there 8 year old kid Mateus. They have two more (Sabrina 16, and Bruno 11). But they loved church. And the members totally dominated this sunday!!!!! Every single member was going by and talking to them saying hi! Members went and sat with them and showed them how to sing the hymns. Then it turned out that Denise was great friends with a member of the ward and so that all worked out great! 

They said they wanted to come back this sunday and we visited them on tuesday and Moore Cardenas and I are in three and gonna visit them tonight! And they were excited to go to church tomorrow! Super happy about that!!!! 

They are a very simple family but I think they are starting to understand how the Gospel will bless their families! 

FLAVIA CAME BACK!!!! (: She got here on Wednesday. And Rubens is pretty fired up about getting baptized and getting married. To the point where I think he kind of surprised her haha! But now the key to getting Flavia interested is the members. So we are just going to use the members as much as possible to get her integrated into the ward! 

Maria and Angelo are great! They are coming to church tomorrow. But all these people need to get married! It is not so much a question of money but of time because it takes a month here! 

Rodolfo went to church as well so things are really awesome! 

I love the mission and I love you all so much! Hope you have an awesome week! 

Elder Keller