#97 July 16, 2016 The Best Two Years

Well this is it... the last time I will be emailing as a full time missionary. I feel like yesterday I was on a 12 hour bus ride going to Pato Branco, Paraná! And now my parents are in São Paulo waiting to catch a flight down to Florianópolis. Weird how things end so fast. 

I have been trying to think about what I would write in my last letter but there are so many things that I could write right now that I gave up on planning. So I am just going to write what I feel.

Just to update really quickly, Daniel and Deborah are absolutely awesome! I love those guys! They made a goal to try to read the Book of Mormon before their baptism without us there haha. And they are reading and loving it all! 

James is doing super good as well! He helped the sisters in a neighboring ward baptize another haitian. He basically taught the guy everything in Creole. He is going wild with missionary work! He tells everyone about the gospel! I think i already wrote this but we went by the place where he works and his nickname is "shepherd" / "pastor". He is doing awesome and goes on visits with us all the time! I feel like the Lord left him so much time without the Gospel in his life just so that he could know what life is like without it. He isn't afraid to tell anyone that this is Christ's only church. He tells everyone about the answer he got about that. He is a great example of what a converted person is like. He felt the song of redeeming love and sometimes i ask myself after seeing james, can i feel so now? Am I that excited about the Gospel, about making sure that everyone on the face of the planet knows that we have a living prophet, that the Book of Mormon is true? 

We also found another awesome guy named Joelsio who is awesome! He is 19 and just like Daniel and Deborah. He is hungry for the truth! 

After finding him I was talking to Elder Sierras and we both concluded that one of the best feelings you can have in this life is the feeling you get when you see that someone discovered the truth! When the Spirit teaches someone that this is the truth, the joy that comes from that is immeasurable! And I think that is why missions are so amazing. Because that is your constant goal! I am going to miss all this time we have to immerse ourselves in this work and just teach the Gospel!

Anyways this week as always was awesome! We learned a really good lesson yesterday. We woke up and found our house flooded. Everything was soaked! I had just picked up my suit from the dry clean the day before and it was totally filled with dirty rain water. Same thing with all of our clothes, lots of books, letters, study desks, shoes, etc... The roof had caved in on a part of the house and so it basically rained inside just as much as it did outside. And of course we were all pretty angry. 

But we cleaned up the mess and went on with the day. We ran home last night in the rain, and it was pouring! When we got home the leak had started again so we started grabbing everything and trying to put it all in dry parts of the house. 

Again we were all pretty frusterated! 

Then out of the blue, Elder Salomão, white shirt, tie and all, jumped in the 2 inch pool of water and started pretending he was swimming! In this gross water that was seeping in from the attic. So we all jumped in with him! Then we started playing soccer with missionaries, we set up a desk as the goal and then you had to get a missionary in the goal. And it turned out being a super fun night! It reminded me of all the fun days I had back home in the irrigation water. Just this time we had white shirts and church pants! 

But thinking about it, our missions, well not just our missions, our entire lives are full of moments like that! Moments where we can see the cup as half empty or half full. But sometimes it is hard to see that it is half full! Really hard! Like last night, no one was thinking that our house being flooded would be something really fun. But it turned out being awesome! And Salomão decided to make the most out of it in that moment and that is what we gotta do with everything in our lives! 

The scripture that I believe I most used on my mission with people that I taught was Mosiah 2:41.

 "...ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual." 

So many people in my life have been such amazing examples of that, especially my parents. Before my mission I knew that was true because I saw how it happened with my parents, through their experiences. But now I know that scripture is true for myself. 

It is impossible for us to be truly happy in this life if we are not striving to always keep the commandments of God. ALWAYS. But if we keep them, we are blessed in ALL THINGS. That is pretty awesome! He is going to bless us in everything! 

Sometimes when the problems and challenges come we forget about that. We start to murmur and lose track of whats going on because we think God stopped blessing us but that is a lie! We have to go through challenges but we can be happy while they happen. Just like the water became a fun thing yesterday. 

This was an important lesson that I learned on my mission but the most important lesson that I learned of all is that Jesus Christ lives and his Atonement was real. If Moroni decided to end the Book of Mormon, the truest book on the face of this earth, talking about this sacred Doctrine with the powerful verses that he wrote in Moroni 10:32-33 than I think there is no better way to end an email than to talk about the Savior's Atonement.

I learned on my mission that we must CONSTANTLY depend on Christ's Atonement. If we don't we begin to fall. Even in the little aspects of our lives. That is why the dumb little primary answers that we all gave our whole lives are so important! Prayer, scripture study, going to church, etc... We all know the answers but we don't all really do them. 

The keys to getting access to the power of the Atonement are the ordinances and the commandents of the Lord's Gospel. And that is why we have to follow them. And when we follow them we will be extremely blessed! 

I have seen  that time and time again on my mission! Every day we see that out here! Every day we can see that in our lives. You can see the difference between people who are using the Atonement and people who aren't. There is a different light! 

I am going to miss my Mission so much! I have learned more in these past two years than I ever imagined could be possible! And I was scared to come home because it is going to be different. But the Atonement isn't just for missionaries. It's for members to. In fact it's for everyone that wants it! And really we are all missionaries. We can all feel that warm spirit that accompanies us so constantly on our missions. But I know that I have to keep doing what I do out here so that I can have that right. 

I love my mission. I love the friends that I gained on my mission! I love so much my Mission President, President Silva and his wife Sister Silva. They helped me to go through such a big transformation and taught me so much. But most of all I love Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. I am so thankful to be able to know that God loves me and that Christ suffered for all of us so that we could return to our Heavenly Father. 

I know that He loves us. I know that Jesus is the Christ. The only one that could save us and he Atoned for each one of us. I know the Holy Ghost is the greatest teacher that exists. He can teach us the truth of absolutely anything if we seek to know for ourselves. I know this is Christ's church. His ONLY church. I know that he calls imperfect men to lead this church so that they can learn and grow. But it is His Church, and He is in control. When we follow those leaders, especially the Prophet, we will be happy. And that joy is greater than any other joy we can possibly experience in this life.

I love you all so much and thank you all for your love and support! I hope you have an awesome life and that all can constantly strive to come unto christ through the ordinances and the commandments that the Lord has established! 

See you all in a few days! 

With love for the last time, 

Elder Ian Ward Keller 

p.s. Go Huskies! 

#96 July 9, 2016 Family Letter Can't find General?

Alright I saw a few questions. Yeah you are going to want adapters. Not the big energy converters but just the simple plug ones because most apple products can adjust. There are those little ones just to be able to plug into the wall. But there are a ton here for pretty cheap if you need to buy them here. 

About the MTC, i spent most of last p-day looking all into that. It sounds super awesome but REALLY difficult as well. It isnt like a normal application process. They give you tons of material to teach you how they want you to teach and then you get only ten minutes to teach two people live, in my case being far away i have to make a video teaching two people. And it isnt a role play. The videos that they give you as examples are amazing! The guys teach really well. You have to teach the two instructors as they are, members with kids, or students at BYU. And you only have ten minutes to invite them to listen to the Spirit and find for themselves something that they need to do to get closer to the Savior. Man they are awesome! And the example videos arent set up. They are live and the instructors being taught dont know what the other is going to teach. 

But you only get those ten minutes. And you can only apply twice in a one year period. Next entering cycle would be november and after that April. I would absolutely love to work there! There is a Sister here in the District in Rio Tavares, the ward and chapel that you guys will be right next to, who went to BYU for a year before the mish and she said everyone loves the MTC job and they are super flexible so I would absolutely love to work there! 

But my question is if i should apply now in july with the little time and preparation i will have and take my chances or wait till november? They have a bunch of things you can study to better your teaching abilities and a ton of awesome teaching videos. They even say at the beginning many applicants think that they teach well and that way of teaching will be enough, but it usually isnt. So they literally give you everything they look for in a teacher there and tell you the more you practice and study, the better your 10 minutes lesson will be. But I dont know if a have sufficient time right now. What would probably have to happen is i would have to make the video teaching you guys. I cant tell you what i am going to teach but i have ten minutes to try to teach you guys something. And they can tell if it is planned out or fake. They want a very sincere lesson. Then i have to make this video, put it on youtube or something and then send them the link and they evaluate there. 

But also mom argentina side is better. I cant remember if i told you. That member Ariane knows a little. 

Also i need a recipe for really good cinamon rolls for a sister in the ward here! You can bring it next week if you want. 

Also Sister Silva said that she wants the ear muff things for her two sons. And I thinks she wants some for herself but she just doesnt wanna be inpolite and ask for too much. 

But i gotta get off for a little bit. But i love you guys!

#95 July 2, 2016 Last Zone Conferences

Well this week we finished up the last zone conferences! These last 3 weeks have been really tiring! President said we travelled over 1,500 km's! Every time we got home we would just crash!

This week we went to the Tubarão Zone on Wednesday. Tubarão isn't too far but for some reason that day was super tiring! President was totally falling asleep on the way home and sister was always trying to get him to let her drive but we ended up making it back in one piece! That night Elder Stahn had to call him for some reason and he said President answered the phone and sounded like he was totally out of it! haha we crashed when we got home.

The trips have been super fun! We would always stop to eat at these really cool restuarants on the freeways here. Brazil wins when it comes to restaurants that are at the gas stations. They are super nice here! In fact usually nicer than the ones in the cities. Why? I dont know.

But the trainings have been way fun. We had the Rocky trainings and it was pretty legit because President went out and got a real pair of boxing gloves for us to use! We wanted to have real fights but that probably wouldnt have gone down super well.

Anyways we started off the training with one outside of the chapel dressed up as Rocky and then the other was at the Mic. We made a big presentation with rocky music and parts of the movies to go along with each part of the training.

So the one at the mic would tell everyone that Rocky came to visit us in the mission and then did the whole pre-fight presentation saying the weight and all the things he has accomplished and then introducing him. Then we turn a clip on and the music from "gonna fly now" starts playing and then "rocky" would come running into the chapel and do a whole warm up.

The opponent were a bunch of wrong ideas/lies that are going around the mission right now that President wanted to get rid of. There were five being:

We don't need to invite people to be baptized in the first visit.

It is impossible to find new people to teach every day. 

70 contacts in the week is good enough. 

Here is too difficult to bring people to church. 

We don't need to obey all the rules.

So we would get to each topic in the presentation and talk about it with the missionaries and discuss the dificulties they were having with each subject and what we needed to do to change it. Then when everyone was decided that we had "defeated" that bad idea one person had to come up with the gloves and beat the heck out of a homemade punching bag with the face of one of rocky's opponents on it and the words of the lie on it as well. Then we would pass a knockout video after each one showing that Rocky took it out as well.

I think everyone is going to get home and watch Rocky again when they get home haha. I will bring the presentation with me when i get home. I have in on my external drive here.

So we had the morning part of each training and President had the afternoon part. Presidents part was passing a video of Elder Bednar that has completely changed the way I teach here on the mission. President showed Elder Fernandez and I the video back in Dezember and always talked about a training he would like to do with it.

The video is Elder Bednar doing a worldwide CES training. And it is awesome! He talks about, "jumping out of the boat" which seems to be a reoccuring theme in a lot of the trainings he has done. There are a ton of things that we learn from the training. But the biggest thing is how to jump out of the ship, or get out of the comfort zone when we teach. Do things things that we have never done before, or things that we have fear of doing to let the Holy Ghost be the true teacher.

He says that Christ as the teacher invited his students, being Peter, to jump out of the boat and participate in the classes. And we have to be like Peter and be willing to get out of our comfort zones following the Spirit and letting him guide the lessons. The church is really trying to change the way that we teach because it has really been a "show" as President likes to say for a long time. People just create a class that they know will fill up the time. Sometimes we are afraid to really let the students guide the class and use their questions and opinions and input to make a great class because we dont know what it is going to be before hand.

Preach my Gospel was the first sign of the change. Now the Sunday School presidency is talking about the new manual, (i think i am translating it wrong but something like this and its purple) "Teaching in the Savior's Way". We have to teach people. That is something that Presdident has always taught us.

But anwyays found out that Daniel and Leilane here in the ward are the Brazilians that Tyler was telling me about when I was in Pato Branco! What a small world! They are a cool couple here in the ward and loved Tyler so much! I told Leilane the other day that I was Elder McCreadies cousin and she went nuts! haha she said how awesome of a missionary that Tyler was. Way to go TY Ty!!

But love you all so much and hope you have an awesome week!

Love,
Elder Keller