#86 April 30, 2016 Playoff & Turkey Bowl Weather: (It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year)

This week has been the best week ever! Because it got cold! Well Brazilian cold. It went form an average of 100 degrees with the thermic sensation to 50 degrees thermic sensation in 2 days! So awesome! I love the cold! It was hilarious because now that Stahn is here there are three americans in the house that played football before the mission and when we all got home that night after the weather changed we all got home and said it felt like football playoff weather.. haha

We are all really psyched out because it feels like christmas is finally coming and so I am super happy all the time but its only April! I feel like I am going to start seeing a bunch of blow up santas in home depot and lowes! The southern hemishpere is tricking me out! But one good thing is I am finally drinking all the hot chocolate mom sent me! Land O Lakes is the best thing in the world! There is nothing like good hot chocolate after coming inside from the cold!

But anyways the new house is really awesome! There are a tons of things that we are fixing and making better but its coming along! Mom i promised i would take pics of the house but it is such a mess that i couldnt send them...

We have been living out of our bags for a week and a half now because we havent gotten any furniture and that means no dressers, (they dont have closets here), no kitchen cabinets, no desks, no beds etc.... but it has been fun! Just our house is full of our unorganized stuff!

This week was transfer week and our mission only received two sisters! They arent sending anyone out here! But it seems like in the next two transfers a lot will be coming here.

Elder William from Guaratuba went home this week! Nuts! It was really weird seeing him go. He was an awesome comp! He was my leader for a year and 11 months on the mission! haha

It is funny because every transfer a bunch of things go wrong. Moore and I were talking about this this week. Everything starts to go wrong in the moment and we get all stressed and worried but in the end everything works out great! For examples a sister and anothers elders flights were cancelled! When we were at the airport saying by to them! Another Elder lost his flight in São Paulo and his family called us asking where he was... But luckily Elder Moore is a stud and can fix it all!

But we were looking at it and it is just like life. We freak out because lots of things happen and in the moment we just cant see the calm waters that come after the storm. But it always ends up working out it the end. And I think when we figure everything out in the end it is all gonna make perfect sense.

So starting up a new area is super interesting! We leave the office everyday and go knocking on doors! We also try to visit less actives from the list but most of the members live across the bridge which is outside the 3 kilometers. In the center there are very few places to try to tract. But we are talking to everybody we can! I think i have heard more "no's" in this past week than in a long time!

But what i loved from this last transmission, and i talked a little about this in last weeks email, is that we are here to invite. That is our purpose! So we are inviting everybody! If they dont want it thats fine! We will go to the next one. And any percentage of fear that i have of talking to people is going down a lot because everyone says no. The no's arent what matter and you dont lose anything from rejection! I think it actually makes you a lot better!

It is like when Christ invited the young Rick man. I kept studying that this week and it is really interesting. Christ tells his disciples shortly after that it would be very difficult for any rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. And then i was thinking, what does he want to say by "rick". Because there are a lot of blessed rich members. But the footnote that is given is 2 Nep. 9:30 which says where your treasures are, your heart is also, and there you find your God.

So it isnt necessarily rich people. But its people who believe that their happiness is found in the things of the world. Who are those people? The people that arent the elect. The people that wont accept the gospel. He says that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one of these to enter into the kingdom of God.

So why are we going to sit around wasting our time trying to convince someone of something they are not going to believe in that moment when we could be out trying to find someone else that is praying for us to get there?

We have found 1 new investigator in this week and a half and his name is Moises. He is from Belem Para, one of the new temples announced in conference and accepted the baptismal invite in the first lesson. We go there tonight for the second so we will see how it goes.

But I love my mission and I love you all so much! I hope everything is going great, and family treat mom like a queen this week! Well you should always treat her that way but it should be even better this week considering mothers day!

Have a great week!

Elder Keller 

#85 April 23, 2016 New House in Florianopolis

So we had transfers again this week. A lot of things changed! Salomão and I moved into the ward of the center here in Florianópolis so now we are with Moore again!!! Super fun! We are going to be with all the secretaries now and i am going to live in an actual house again after a year and 8 months! 

This next transfer moore and saenz will be training new secretaries so we will be in a house with 8 missionaries! Its gonna be awesome! 

I am pretty sad to leave all of our awesome investigators but it is always good to start fresh. We are going to start from scratch now. We have 0 investigators haha. We moved on thursday and have been fixing the house up since then. Tonight we are going to go and find. But we saw rubens in the market that he works at. he works right by the office so we will be able to see him soon. 

Larsen and Gomez will be the only missionaries in the Saco dos Limões now. But they are good guys and i trust them! 

But we have been studying this training that all the missionaries in the world received in January. President printed a bunch of little booklets of the training and they are super good! 

We have been studying Elder Bednars training lately and it is awesome. It is about the role of the Spirit in conversion. And ya know a lot of us say that we trust in the spirit to convert someone and touch the investigators hearts but if we really stop to think about what it means i think our confidence in that changes a little bit. 

When we teach we sometimes think that our words will do something, or help someone understand better. We sometimes think that if we can present all the information to the student in a perfect manner then they will feel the spirit and want to get baptized. But that is all wrong! 

If we trust in the spirit we would understand that our words dont make a difference. 

For a while in the mission we have had the 20 minutes rule. Get in, teach a principle, leave the spirit and get out. When Zwick came to the mission he heard about the rule and said, "10 minutes is even better" haha. 

but what i do a lot is i think that i have to use my words to explain things to people. Clearly the missionaries have a crucial role but the spirit is the teacher and we really forgot that a lot. 

Zwick talked about Simplifying and part of that is less words. The spirit will confirm the truth to people. 

Another key point is that we are here to invite, not to convince. We cant force these people to believe. One thing i want to do better is find the elect. Moore found a non-married couple with a kid and they got married and baptized in 2 months! That is super fast! It takes a month to get married here because of the legal process. So in a month they were completely ready to get baptized. They just accepted everything.

That is the difference between inviting and convincing. When Christ invited the young rich man he didnt stay there for a few more days trying to convince him to leave everything. He left the invite and said follow me and i will promise you everything. The man didnt want it so Christ left. 

Sometimes as missionaries we get emotionally attached to people and dont want to leave them behind even though they arent fully accepting things when we could be out finding people that really do want it. The Elect will recognize the voice. So we have to be simply inviters and conductors of the spirit. 

But it is really an amazing opportunity to learn how the spirit works with you on a mission. Ever since I have been trying to write down a spiritual experience once a day in my journal it has really changed my view on how the spirit works with us and talks to us. And I love that moment when you realize that you followed the spirit and something good came of it. 

Like yesterday I was with Elder Mendes when we were moving, he is a new secretary here and is awesome! I had a nagging feeling like i had to ask him what i could do better out here on the mission. I love asking people that but last night for some reason it was really hard. At the end when we were walking back to the house i asked him and I was super surprised because he gave me a huge answer to a question i have had for a while! 

It was one of those awesome moments when it paid off to follow the Spirit. 

But I hope everyone is doing awesome! Congrats on teh boston marathon dad! 

Family i love you guys so much! have an awesome week!
Elder Keller

Family Letter: some big news this week! we are in the new house! it is awesome! It is on the same street as the office, litterally about 6 houses up from the office on the same street. we moved in 2 days ago! So awesome! The next transfer is going to be sweet because we will be living in 8! haha 

also President took out all the field assistants so we are back to just two. I dont know exactly what will be happening or how it will work yet. President said for zone conferences we will travel with him right now which will be super sweet! but conferences arent until june. but really cool! 

also thank you guys so much for the box! i didnt thank you enough last week! it was so awesome! i loved everything that came, yeah i got the garments and the husky socks were totally awesome!!!!! those things are sweet! new p day socks haha! and the nerf basketball is sweet! now that we are in a house and not an apartment we can mess around more. in apartments you cant make any noise! 

i will try to take pictures of the place. we are in the middle of the move so it is still super messy and disorganized but really awesome! 

But i saw really quickly in the subject title that you guys are back to fairview! that is sweet! i was thinking that we couldnt be out of fairview! but so awesome that we are back! 

but i love you guys so much! gonna go write the general and read the rest! 

p.s. skype we will have an hour and will be just like last time. we will skype from the office so it should be pretty easy to set up the call. 

#84 April 16, 2016 Member Work/ Butterfly Parable

This week was really awesome! I was reminded of the importance of working with the members. Lately we have been focusing a lot on the Mission Plan which is each family in each ward only has to bring one person into the church each semester or every six months. So jan to june is one person for one family and july to dec. one person for each family. Sounds simple right right? Well it has been really hard and not a lot of people really wanna do it... So we were giving the members time to do that and start participating with us in Missionary work and then we found that we would be teaching a ton of people with out members. But this week we changed that. We tried visiting all of our most progressing investigators with members and it helped out a lot!

The first cool thing is we took an R.M. Andressa who is the same age as Rodolfos wife more or less to a lesson. Suelen, Rodolfos wife always stays in her room and will never come out. Rodolfo doesnt miss a week at church and is reading the book of mormon every day and knows it true. The only things is his wife (girfriend) refuses to get married. 

So we get there with Andressa and she totally rocked! She got her to come out and participate in the lesson and it went super well! She opened up about some things and it was a great experience! 

And in all of our other visits the members bore powerful witnesses of the truth of the doctrine found in the lessons. They are a huge part of missionary work if not the key. 

One thing that President Silva always teaches us is that as Leaders in the church we can not have fear to ask for sacrifice. And sometimes as missionaries we feel afraid to do that to the members. Clearly we cants ask them a day before or the same day to do a visit with us but sometimes here it is hard to visit someone because the member doesnt have a car or the place where a person lives there is no access by car and its hot and peoples have babies they have to carry around, or no member lives near the place so we get a little scared. 

But some awesome members made some awesome sacrifices this week. This morning we visited Rubens and Flavia with a couple in the ward. We planned with them a week back and last night the wife got super sick. But they still got up early this morning and climbed the huge gill with their 10 month old girl and the wife was really sick! We told her when she got to the bottom of the hill that she didnt have to go if she wanted but she did it anyways! Super awesome! And the Lord will bless them for that. 

Our Bishops wife just found out an old Cancer came back. That is hard! But still the Bishop took time out of his day to go visit a family with us that is needing marriage help! 

President shared an awesome parable with us this week called "The Parable of the Butterfly". 

I dont have enough time to make it all nice and pretty but the story is basically this: once there was a man that came upon a cacoon. It had a tiny hole through which he could see the poor butterfly struggling and fighting to get out. The butterfly got to the point where he just couldnt go anymore. So the man thinking that he would help the butterfly opened up the cacoon so the butterfly could get out. 

The man waited for the butterfly to take off but nothing happened. He then learned that the butterfly had to struggle to be able to get out of the cacoon. The struggle made the wings stronger and therefore enabled it to fly. But now without the necessary strength that butterfly would never be able to fly. 

And it is the same thing with us. Sometimes we think about all these difficult things we have to pass through and we dont want it, but our Heavenly Father knows us and knows  what we need to pass through to be strong enough to handle his presence in the final judgement. 

And that was a big answer for me about Rubens and Flavia this week. We found out that the website they used to order the marriage papers was a scam. And no papers are coming. It was that same couple that we visited them with that had sent the money to do it and it all worked out wrong... And i was just mad! And thinking why do there have to be so many obstacles? And then i read that awesome parable. And ya know maybe thats what they need to be more converted and stay firm after they become members of the church. The Lord knows them and knows us and knows what he is doing. 

But my birthday was awesome! I live with awesome guys! they bought some awesome pizza for me and we had a pretty wild missionary party which consists of sitting around the table for thirty minutes eating pizza and talking about the gospel! 

But this week was great and hope it was for you guys too! Dad good luck in the Boston Marathon! You are gonna dominate! Love you all so much! 

Elder Keller 

#83 April 9, 2016 Crazy Day!

So this week was awesome! First off conference just rocked! I loved President Monsons talk about the priesthood and how we have the pówer. Sometimes I feel like I really gotta up my faith! I believe if I really could understand my purpose and who i am as a child of god i would be a lot different! Like we really have the power of God! And in D&C 50:26 and 27 it says that if we are pure are things are subject to us just like they are to god as we learn Mornin 7:29 through 30. 

But anyways yesterday was pretty crazy. Cool mission experience though. So we are in a District meeting in the morning and the other district was coming to the same chapel to have a meeting. I got a call twice so the second time i went out to answer it and some sisters from another area in Floripa had called and were telling us we had to run to go help them because something had happened to a sister. They explained were they are and so I went back in and was thinking of grabbing Elder Salomão my comp because that is what would make the most sense but then i just felt like i had to take Elder Sierras. It was really weird and really fast so I grab Sierras and we ran to were the sisters were at in the center. Luckily it was super close so we got there fast. 

But anyways what happened yesterday was there were a series of events that happened that you could clearly see how God was totally prepared for what would happen to help us out. We get to the Sister and she was on the ground and had had some kind of brain attack. She had high blood pressure which caused something wrong in her brain and then basically started shutting her body down and she couldnt breathe. She was all stiff and shaking a long. 

So we get there and I am just thinking, what the heck are we going to do? Give her a blessing in the middle of the road here? There were quite a few people around. And my mind was just kind of like shut down. 

But I love Elder Sierras because the guy can get anything done. And looking back i see why that prompting came to grab him. Sierras has been working since he was 9 years old and really gotten everything he wanted in life for himself. He payed the water and energy bills at home since he was 15 and is just a total stud. He is going to stay in the office for a year and 3 months on his mission! haha. 

So we get there and i am just mentally shut down and sierras saw a police car passing by that i hadnt even noticed. He jumps out in front of the car grabs the cops and tells them we gotta get her to a hospital. (the sisters called an ambulance and they told them that there werent any at the time to come help her so we just would have to wait, that is free health care for ya people). So We get in this cop car and they got us to the hospital really fast! 

So think about that, the lord put cops there at just the right time! There are not a lot of cops here. That isnt normal. So we get there rush here in there and she ended up being okay. 

We later find out the the best cardiolagist (cardiologista heart doctor dont know in english) in brasil, very famous guy here alexandre cury was at the hospital that day because he is moving down here but he is from são paulo and he was the one that treated her. Another huge thing!

So we called president and sister and they were leaving for Videira which is 6 hours away from here. So they run back here and luckily they hadnt gotten far to be able to help out with everything. 

Then while we are waiting in the hospital a few hours later a similar thing happens to another sister and a member rushed her over to the same hospital while president and sister were still there. Both these sisters had payments that werent accepted by our deal we have in brasil so president and sister had to be there to pay or i dont know what would have happened! 

But I am out of time. A lot of other crazy stuff happened this week including a big gun fight were two drug trafficers were shot on the road we had planned to be on but we ended up getting there late.

But God exists. A crazy cuban man found us this week and tried fighting us telling us god doesnt exist. So we testified that he did, Elder salomão testified to him in his awesome african way that if he one day did not repent he unfortunately would have to live the rest of his days in hell and that we didnt want that. But the guy was totally nuts. 

But God exists. Christ is our saviour! He lives and i have no doubt about that. I love my mission for being able to teach me so much about Christ! But i love you all! Happy Birthday Grammie! love you so much! Have an awesome birthday and all of you an awesome week! 

#82 April 2, 2016 Conference Rocks!

I love General Conference! I have been super excited all week long! And we have just been going around telling everyone that God has a living Prophet on the earth and that we are going to be able to hear from him! 

But man the spirit of General Conference is absolutely amazing! I dont know what it was like in the States but did you guys just feel the Spiritual power that came from the last hymn right now Come Thou Fount?? That was so awesome! You cant deny that the church is true and that God exists when you feel that right there. The MoTab is great! And the Holy Ghost always testifies of truth and that right there was just pure power. 

I am so pumped for all of the other sessions! We are watching it right now in the chapel that the mission office is connected to so we came back up really quickly to finish weekly emails because today is p day. But best p day ever!!! 

I loved Duncans talk right now on Forgiveness and the power of the Atonement. That is one thing i have to change. In my prayers I always say sorry and ask for so much forgiveness because I do so many dumb things yet I cant even forgive other people for things they do to me! How ridiculous huh? But the craziest thing about it all is that the Atonement covers it all! Every little bit of it! Even the stuff that people dont repent of, the Savior still suffered it. 

I loved how they said that the Atonement will make everything just no matter what! I always think when something has happened to me, "ah but no one is going to know? How am i going to get justice?" And its simple. Through the Atonement. 

One awesome thing I learned this week came from Elder Ballards book search for happiness with the story i am sure everyone has heard of about the firefighter that died saving a toy doll. He saved 2 kids from a burning house and thought he saw a third. Even though the people outside told him that no one else was in the house he went in anyways just because he thought he saw one more person. After the flames went down they found his corpse protecting a baby doll. 

The first time I read that I was like, "that is the worst story ever!" I didnt get it. The fact that it was a doll doesnt make the story any less heroic. But the Analogy that is done here with the Atonement is  really spectacular. 

That firefighter died saving a toy doll. When we choose not to repent of our sins we turn the sacrifice of the savior into just that! Because he is going to suffer for all of our sins and sorrows no matter what. And sometimes we dont want to change and accept the atonement. So we become like the doll. There was no need for that sacrifice but it happened anyway. 

But I really just love this week and I cant believe I didnt like conference before my mission. It is the best! Watch it and cherish it! And then go study it! All of it! 

This week was kind of hard investigator wise. Suelen said she doesnt wanna get married anymore because they dont have money to do a big fancy party marriage. And Rodolfo is devastated! Poor guy. He wants to get baptized so bad but cant do so until he is married with Suelen. So please keep praying for her! Rodolfo is coming to church every week and really working hard to help his family. He is studying in the local college here from 6 to 10:30 at night and works from 8 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon. But the work doesnt really earn him anything. And Inbetween 5 and 6 he receives our visits 3 times a week. What a champ! 

Rubens and Flavia have been fighting a lot because they just wont pray together! We got to the point of just establishing the goal to pray together every day and they wont do it. They are coming to church together but ITS ALL ABOUT THE LITTLE THINGS. So in our last lesson we basically had to ask them how they expect God to bless their relationship and help them out if they refuse to pray and ask for that help? 

Rubens has a gift of understanding the scriptures and dominates with them! But he is having difficulty to be patient with Flavia because for her it is a lot harder to understand everything. But she has a desire to know more and to grow spiritually. So please pray for them as well! 

Things are going great here and I absolutely love my mission. Elder Moore and I were talking this week about how much different it is going to be at home. The mission is the best! We dont have to worry about anything! We think sometimes we are stressed but afterwards we have school, callings, work, build a family, and so many responsabilities! Here it is just preach the gospel and do it with all your heart might mind and strength. 

But I have gotta go now! I love you all so much and hope you have an awesome conference weekend! It is the best time of the year! 

Elder Keller