Well no there aren't a whole lot of pretty girls here but the area is super awesome! Oh my goodness it is literally the dream area of any missionary without doubt!
So to start, leaving Pato Branco was kind of sad and I'm gonna miss those people a lot but Guaratuba is totally sweet! So the area had sisters before and president took them all out and he whitewashed the area with 4 new elders haha! so we have no idea what the heck is going on here! its pretty great! So I am with Elder William and he is totally awesome! I feel like our companionship is gonna be totally sweet especially in this area. The other elders are Elder Arine and Elder Helm who are both totally awesome! Elder Arine went zone leader after 7 to 8 months on the mission and then was a secretary for about 7 to 8 months as well and this is his last transfer. He is training Elder Helm who is from guess where... Washington!!! haha sweet!! Arine is a brazilian from são paulo and a really good missionary so I'm super glad that I'll have this time to learn from him!
So we got here and waited at the bus station for Arine for an hour and then realized our apartment is right across the street haha. That never happens! Everything is super centered and Guaratuba isnt a super huge town. The church is right down the street, the ocean is 200 yards in front of our apartment, and we never have to walk far to catch a bus! Its sweet! So we had no idea what the work was like in this area or what was going on so we just started by picking apart the area book and trying to visit people but the numbers on the streets here have no order! haha so it is almost impossible to find anything! But we are totally in luck because the members here are on fire!!!!! 8 years ago they made their record of baptisms, 105 in 3 MONTHS! haha they knew they needed to grow to get a chapel here so they worked for it! They are so fired up about missionary work, like thats all I've heard them talk about haha! The first week in church we showed up without doing a whole lot and we already had 6 investigators there all brought by members haha. We marked a baptism with a 15 yr. old kid who is totally ready for two saturdays from now on like the third day here. We went over to talk to a member because all the young men in the ward told us to go over there and meet him (75% of whom were all baptized in the past 6 months because of the MEMBERS). So we went there and found out one of the kids wasn't baptized while we were over there so i said to William in english (he is learning english and catching on super fast!) "you want to leave a message for this kid?" and he said yeah. so then we were like alright what do we teach... and then at the same time we just said baptism so we pulled out our scrips and went with it! then at the end he said he felt like he needed to invite him so he did and Bam we got it marked! It all happened so fast! But we have a ton of other people ready to accept the gospel here and its awesome because now president says that if there is more than one companionship in a ward, you just share the ward. so its not divided and we both teach each others investigators and just work together. Its sweet!
It is so awesome when you realize that the spirit can work with you and your comp and help you teach together to help people change their lives! I'm super excited to learn from these guys here and work with these members. They have a goal to split their ward this year and they have about 100 active people right now because tons of people move to Curitiba and theres a lot of less actives! so the bishop wants us to visit a ton of less actives and everyone is trying to help us! This area is totally awesome!
The only downside is that every time i see the water i just wanna jump in... haha but luckily we arent actually close to the beach. We can see the water from our apartment but its not the area of the beach. Its a closed off dock area but its still gorgeous and awesome!
Elder Keller
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