#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 

#81 March 26, 2016 Zwick- Establish our Foundation Now!

Alright so I promised I would tell more about what Zwick talked about with us. 

The 2 biggest things he talked about were SIMPLIFY, INTENSIFY AND TESTIFY with respect to teaching and then ESTABLISH OUR FOUNDATION NOW. 

He said we have been complicating our teaching for a long time. And a lot of words doesnt let the spirit be the teacher. To really let the spirit be the teacher creates awkward situations at first. We all have this curse of the natural man so spiritual things sometimes are very different to us. 

For example something simple silence in a lesson. You think it would be easy but in the moment it is so awkward! But when we let silence happen in a lesson we let the spirit teach. 

We also cant be afraid to let the investigator discover for themselves the truths by the power of the spirit. And sometimes that is hard. It is way easier to tell someone that they are feeling the spirit than to create a great lesson and do good questions to help them recognize that in fact they really are feeling the spirit. And the spirit doesnt testify when we teach in a complicated and confusing way. Christ was the simplest teacher. He taught in the most simple way. 

Now that doesnt mean that in order for him to teach that way that it was easy. He could teach that way because he knew the doctrine. 

He also talked about foundations. He talked a lot about how we can make sure now that we will never become less active after the mission. Because tons of returned missionaries come home and then just let go of the iron rod. And this visit was 100 percent for me because it made me realize that just saying that i am going to keep reading my scriptures doesnt mean that i am going to keep reading my scriptures. 

His visit made me reflect and think what do i need to be doing right now differently to make sure that i stay strong at home and i got some really great answers! 

One thing that came to my mind is study the scriptures more. That sounds funny cuz I am on my mission. But there sometimes passes days out here when we never had a personal time with the scriptures. 

For example on transfers we usually go to bed at 11:30 and then wake up at 2:30 or three to take missionaries to the airport and then the whole day is super busy and then we get home and just totally crash! And then the next day it hits me that i didnt do a personal study of my scriptures. 

And at first there are the excuses of "i read them in the training" or "we were doing mission stuff and so we didnt have any time" but that is all wrong! After my mission i am going to be way busier and way more stressed out! So if i give into those excuses now i am going to give into them in 6 months as well. But it cant be that way! If there is no time, then make some! 

They have a great saying here, "quem não tem cachorro caça com gato'. Meaning "whoever doesnt have a dog hunts with a cat." Wanting to say, make the best of what you got and get done what you need to get done! 

So on those days with no time it doesnt matter, i am not an exception, i have to make time to study! 

Zwick also talked a lot about true virtue. He testified that president is a man of true virture and that is what we need. If you are a virtuous person it means you are really just a good person. You do all the things that arent seen or given glory by man. And it is the same way with the foundation of a temple. It is the most imortant part but is the part no one can see. The work that was put in that no one can see. ]

But i gotta go! I lvoe you guys! have an awesome week! 

Elder Keller 

#80 March 19, 2016 Elder Zwick

Alright I dont have a lot of time but Elder Zwick is just a powerful man! It was so awesome having him come here to visit the mission! He and his wife are just really great examples of Jesus Christ it was so good to have them here! 

I will write more next week about them because we have to go because our meeting was today on p day! So we aready have to go back to the area. But he talked about one big thing that they as the missionary department are trying to change. 

SIMPLIFY, INTENSIFY AND TESTIFY. He says those are the keys. We are really just complicating things out in the field and we gotta change that! It was really great! We did practices of how to simplify and one comp could only use one short sentance from preach my gospel to introduce the principle, then the other comp tells a very short and quick personal experience that backs up the principle and then testifies of it. Then it goes back to the first and he/she could only read one little part of one verse of scripture and wasnt allowed to try to interprety or explain any of it to them, you just had to immediatley testify of the truth of the scripture to the person. 

The point was to let the spirit be the teacher. Use less words and take yourself out of the picture so that the Holy Ghost could be the main part of the act. And as a weak human I am horrible with that! I think i can teach more than the spirit but that is a lie! The Holy Ghost is a God! He knows everything! So he definitely knows the people I teach a lot better than I do and will teach there spirits that are confined to these mortal bodies and have passed through this veil forgetfulness. There was a lot of other stuff that he talked about as well that was really just great but I am totally out of time! 

Anyways simplifying is the key! I love and miss you all so much and hope you are doing great! Have a great week! 

#79 March 12, 2016 Rodolfo & the Soccer Parable

This week we have been super busy! I am writing super late cuz we literally cleaned our house to the point where i dont think it could get any cleaner! Next week Elder Zwick will be here and said he is going to come visit the houses so it has gotta be super chique (nice)! 

Here in Brasil everything is concrete. Carpet or wood floors are very rare and only with the richer class. I have seen carpet here three times until now. Wood is a little more common. But the floors are usually just concrete. So the clean here just flooding the house with water, soap and bleach and then scrubbing everything with it and then pushing all the dirty water down a drain that all the houses have. 

So that is what we did today! And it worked out pretty well! So now our house smells really good (: 

We had a really awesome lesson with Odair and Denise. We took Bishop with us there and he is awesome! He is a convert and a really good guy and really studies his scriptures. And he testified very powerfully of how the gospel blesses families which is what we are really trying to get all of our investigators to see! And Odair and Denise liked it a lot! Denise came with all the kids this last week except for one. Odair stayed home to make lunch so we are going to have to teach a little bit about the Sabbath day haha. 

Rodolfo is doing really good! I had a really cool experience that taught me a little more about how to listen to the holy ghost this week with him. So we are climbing the big hill to get to his house and i am thinking about how we are going to teach him and help him really understand dispensations. Adn that day in our district meeting we talked about parables and president invites us to alwasy be trying to make up modern parables and anologies to use with our investigators to help them understand better like Christ did. 

So I am thinking what could be a way to apply it with Rodolfo? And I think, "Alright he loves soccer and is really good at it. So maybe we could do something with dispensation being like a soccer team. Sometimes they are really good and sometimes not so good..." and it was way more complex than that but I ended up thinking no that is just a dumb idea lets just try teaching him because that parable wouldnt make any sense! 

So we get there and we get done explaining a part and ask him what he understood and he says, "so it is a lot like soccer and a team when they are good..." And then continued to explain and compare it to exactly what I had been thinking about! hahaha... I really gotta learn how to better recognize and follow the spirit! 

But it was a cool testimony that the Holy Ghost really knows all things! (Alma 7:13)

But things are really going great here! I dont know for sure but this week or next week we could already be moving over to the center which will be a little bitter sweet! But we are going to see if God really wants us to move right now and if he does we will do it! 

I love you all so much and hope everything is going great! Have an awesome week! 

Elder Keller 

#78 March 5, 2016 Discipleship isn't Easy

This week was really good. We were walking home last night and Rodolfo found us on the road and yelled for us to stop. He came running over and told us that he and his "girlfriend" had sat down and talked and she decided that they could get married! 

The problem with him was that he is living with this girl Suelen who doesnt want anything to do with the church but they a little daughter names Lindsey who isnt even a year old. Rodolfo really wanted to get baptized but his wife didnt want to get married because getting married here is really complicated and no one believes it will last more than a few years. He has been being taught for eight months on and off and it came to the point where we had to say we cant keep coming by if there was no more progress. We told him we didnt counsel him to seperate from his wife just to be baptized but at the same time he couldnt be baptized living with her while not being married. But his prayers were answered and she agreed to get married! So in a month or two he should be getting baptized! (: 

Rubens and Flavia are doing alright. They are really struggling still in their relationship but we are going over there on monday morning with a member family who are their friends and we are going to see if they can help them out. 

Odair and Denise are all starting to really read the Book of Mormon now and doing good! They just need a little extra push to have everyone go to church together! Last week Odair went alone. But what is interesting is that in the beginning he was the least interested and now he is the most progressing! He is ahead in reading and understanding the best! He really wants to prove that he wants to stay with Denise and the family so that was really cool to see this past week! We are going over their tonight and they said they wanted to make a big cake and food tonight for dinner so i am pretty excited for that! 

We were teaching this less active the other day and the poor guy has had a lot of trials in his life. And so he tries to say that it is just too hard and that is what is keeping him away from the church. 

So the next day Elder Sierras comes up and gives me a great talk to read called "The Inconvenient Messiah" by Elder Holland as Byus president in 1982. It is on LDS.org and a really awesome talk about how it was never easy for Christ. And Elder Holland uses the examples of Christs life and then applies it to our own to show us that we are gonna have it rough at times and that is just how it is gonna be! But that is why we have the atonement! And we gotta use it! 

He talks about in discipleship we cant just take the easy or "convenient" path. We always have to take the harder one just as Christ did. He gaves a few examples of when Christ could have used his Godly powers to make things easier for him but he knew that that is not how it works. Life has gotta be hard! 

But anyways everything is going awesome here! I love you all and hope everything is going great! Hope you feel better Luke! Talk to you next week! 

Elder Keller