#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 

#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

#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 

#46 July 20, 2015 Following the Spirit

Alright this week was totally awesome! Im not gonna lie it was hard and we are starting with nothing but that forced us to turn to the Lord in everything we did and it turned out super great!

Alright so numbers wise this was the worst week of my entire mission! Like it was horrible... haha everyone is German here and we get a lot of no's but the lord also blessed Elder Reid and I to find new people who were willing to listen to our message. So for you guys to have an idea we taught seven lessons this week. One a day. Thats never happened on my mission! Haha Normally three a day is a bad day! In Guaratuba you could like convince the people to let you come in for fifteen minutes so you could share a little bit about the restoration but here people want nothing to do with you! But it was awesome because every day we would talk to members but of course they dont have anything so we knocked doors, and every day at the end of the day the Lord helped us find someone who would let us in! And with Elder Reid I feel like i am learning how to listen to the spirit like never before. Just this week alone I have had so many experiences where we both catch eachother thinking the same exact thing and then realizing it was totally from the spirit. In every lesson as well we really realied on the lord and in the times that we got stuck, we would pause (which i absolutely hate doing and elder reid is helping me get better at that) listen to the spirit, and then respond! And the lessons are turning out awesome! 

We had a really awesome example of how to follow the spirit in one of our lessons this week. This old lady let us in and it was her and her daughter and the daughters husband and we got talking to them trying to get to know them a little better and because it would be the first lesson we were just thinking we had to share the restoration. but we knew the people didnt have a lot of time so we could only share a part. And i wanted to start teaching the restoration but there was something just yelling dont do it! And so I was like then what the heck are we supposed to teach??? Then I thought we have to go with the last part of the plan of salvation. So we taught the spirit world and the kingdoms of glory. The ladies husband had died five years ago and it was awesome to use that in the lesson to help her and afterwards reid said he felt the exact same thing! that we had to teach spirit world and the degrees of glory. I thought that was super awesome to see that we had each gotten in tune enough with the spirit that we knew what we needed to teach without even talking! It was awesome! And we had multiple experiences like that every single day this week! I love knowing that we have the spirit with us. 

Reid is totally awesome because he is the first comp i got that loves analyzing the lessons and thinking back on what we could have done better with everything and we get along great because we both love the gospel and we want to get better! It is really simple when it all comes down to it. Good companionship is just a desire to follow God and not our own ideas. He has only been in Brasil for 9 weeks but is speaking awesome so that is really great! 

Also I learned a huge lesson this week. In our district I knew there was a certain elder that would be with us. I was in the MTC with him and lets just say he wasnt too focused on his purpose. So of course, good ol Elder Keller is already judging this guy before he even gets to the apartment and thinking am probably gonna have to fight with this guy to get him to do what is right. So then he got there. And i learned a super awesome lesson this week! We have to really strive to get to know the people that we lead or who are in our care because then we start to learn how to love them just as Christ does. It is super hard sometimes but we have to remember that Christ and Heavenly Father love every single person no matter how bad they may be! I tried really getting to know this elder this week and turns out he is a really good guy! Sure he has some problems with president and rules but when I really learned about his past and how he got out on his mission i learned to see his potential and not what he is like right now. And he is a totally awesome kid! So we always have to remember to get to know someone and their story before we just write them off. 

But anyways joinville is totally awesome and is stinking huge! haha we walk like crazy and the 3 kilometers doesnt do much because our church building as well as where we live isnt even in our area! haha We have to walk ten minutes just to get into the area and from their the church is already like 2 km away so pres said we could expand our radius to be able to work. But it is super cool here and they have really cheap really unhealthy hamburgers that we eat all the time so im happy (; Haha but the ward is really cool! the bishop is a great guy and the members flat out told us that they cant convince anyone to take the lessons but they are willing to go with us and do splits and stuff so that is really good! now we just gotta find people! 

But I love and miss you all so much and hope your week goes awesome! The gospel is true! 

Love, Elder Keller 

#45 July 13, 2015 Transferred to Joinville!!

Wow Im in Joinville now! pretty crazy! so last week president called and told me i was getting shipped out of guaratuba and sent me to joinville which is like 100 times different than guaratuba haha. but i am super exicted to serve here! the city is gorgeous and has a lot of german influence and is the biggest city in santa catarina! im already lost... but we are in a house with 6 elders and there are 8 in our district.

Im not gonna lie, leaving Guaratuba was super hard. I really feel like a created a special bond with a lot of people there and grew to feel a little bit of the love that Christ really has for us. I think it was most difficult saying by to miriams family because we were so involved with them and on getting them back to the church and to the temple! But Elder Moore who is from my group is totally awesome and is gonna take my place there so they are in good hands! I was the only one transferred out of there. 

But now I am with Elder Reid who is just awesome! I just had one comp study with the guy and I can already tell that the companionship is going to be really great! He is from Daines group. Served in the usa for two transfers and then came over here! he has been in brasil for about 9 weeks but is already speaking super well! 

Not gonna lie this place is a mess, because the apartment we have is huge so we are not gonna have a lot of time today or this week i think cuz we are going to have to clean up everything and change the house up a bit but I am really excited to get started here in Joinville. 

The other Elders in the house are going to be Elders malkum, dos anjos, soares, mueller, and reid. Malkum is from my group and he gets here today, dos anjos has been in Joinville like 8 months out of 14 on his mission! i think once you go to joinville you dont leave! But its a great place so im excited. 

I was thinking about it a lot when i was transfered and it was hard saying bye to guaratuba and i feel like i left it in good hands! We even got a return appt marked with that awesome couple luciano and ana lucia for next week who went off the radar because of phone problems! Also i realize i love change! We have to go through change so that we can grow! There is a big banner with a quote by Elder Bednar on it that President carries with him to all meetings with the mission that i think in english says, if we always do what we have always done, we will always have what we have always had. 

And it is so true! We have gotta leave our comfort zones to be able to grow as missionaries!  But im sorry it was short im out of time but i love you guys and ill get more out next week! 

Elder Keller 

#44 July 6, 2015

Alright so this week was great! We had to go to Joinville to get Elder Sulivans results for his knee and we found out he is fine he just has to do some at home physical therapy cuz there is water bunching up in his bones that causes pain but the exercises should be able to help him out.

Also while we were there we had to do some vaccination for the flu cuz president wanted us to take it so we had to go to a mall because that was the only place in joinville that accepts our plan and woah it was crazy! I know it doesnt sound like anything but it was like being back in America for a second! haha Joinville is actually a pretty nice town so it was pretty sweet getting a nice little american experience on fourth of july week! They even had a mcdonalds there! But mcdonalds here is like nice food so it is SUPER expensive! Forget the dollar menu. Haha. But i did buy a good ol' real american ice cream sundae and i almost died cuz it was so good! haha (ice cream here at least in all my areas is different). 

But the work here is great! Now we are just waiting on people with dates for baptism so we have been trying to find new investigators this week and we have found a few good possibilities but the book of mormon shows really quickly if they are going to be good or not so we are probably going to try to find a lot more this week! Bruno has been smoking one cigarrete a day for a while now so we have been focusing on studying the book of mormon with him so he can stop! But im sure with your prayers and his own he will be able to (: 

Vinicius is great and we taught all the big commandments and he doesnt have any problem and just said he knows that he needs to follow them so that was awesome! We are just waiting to find a problem but so far he has been super great (: We moved all of our baptism dates to the 25th because the whole ward is doing a temple caravan on the 18th so no one would be there! Transfers are next week so we will find out in this one whether i stay in guaratuba still or not! But either way I know the Lord is gonna put me where I need to be!

I love the mission because we learn so much how to trust in the Lord! we have got to learn that Heavenly Father has more power than any man so if we obey the commandments we will be blessed. I was studying the hymn A Poor Wayfaring Man Of Grief this week and I love that song so much! And its principles are so true! When we forget ourselves and help others we will be happy. Why? Because when we help others we are helping Christ. And I love it out here because we just get a tiny glimpse of his life. As small as it may be it helps us to understand at least a tiny bit more. And every time we help our savior we will be helped in return! It put a lot more meaning behind mosiah 2:17 for me. Thats why on our mission we have to study for our investigators and not for ourselves which has been something that was kind of hard for me in the beginning but now ive been applying it and in the end i get more revelation during my studies because of it! So we have always gotta be looking out for others and trying to help them. 

The relief society pres here is the hardest working member and visits everyone in the world! She is awesome! No one in the ward works that hard. She was called 2 months ago as there family was struggling financially because they had just opened up a fruit shop and didnt have any time. But she didnt complain about how it was hard, she went to work and now her family is being super blessed because of it! It is so awesome! And she doesnt have a car yet she will visit people super far away still! And I think about myself in that position and i probably would have done the opposite because I would have been thinking about myself. 

But anyways im out of time but I love and miss everyone so much! Family you are so lucky to be in washington! Have fun and take a ton of pics for me! Have a great week everyone! 

Elder Keller