Jan. 26, 2014

A linha de assunto...

yep! i´m creative...

so hey everybody! sounds like the life is good! Dad its pretty cool that you were able to visit one of the temples. i´ve always been really curious about what its like with non cristian worship. Everyone here in brazil is cristian. just a different denomination... hope all is well there at home too mom. yes i remember very well the max face hair baths too... he´s just a little lonely. hahaha!

so I live in the middle of the hill. when we leave our house we either kill our knees to descend the hill or destroy our legs to climb it. they do have the bus but unhappily it costs 1.50 $R. being slightly poor on the mission we just walk up the hill every day. yes my legs are beautiful now. feel free to imagine my beatifully carved legs of marble. =) haha! and yes Recife is pronounced Heh-sea-fee. R´s are usually Prounounced how we pronounce "H" or a soft "D"

So we had divisions this week. two actually. the ZL´s came and evaluated my work. they gave me some pointers of something that i can improve. then we just had a meeting with the mission leader. the next day we did a different division with the LD and and it was just about the same thing we went and worked till we had our ward activity night. we brought a few people to the activity and said they liked it which was great. we sang, played and just had a good time. it was really a pretty awesome activity. people were just loose and had fun.

we also did a service project this week. we moved a bunch of dirt onto the property of the owner. we had to move it all with buckets and wheel barrows... then after we had to mash it all to make it flat. but we had to mash it with this strange metal pipe with a flat metal slap on the end. it was incredibly tiring but I felt good at the end of the day. however my hands did not. I got some pretty beautiful little bubbles on my hands.

but hey I think that my time is just about up!! thanks again for all the news. I really pretty thankful to be here on the mission. its quite a blessing for me. i´m learning so much and i´m grateful for it! till next week! love you all! até mais!

Elder Cornwall

p.s. i gave a few pictures and a found one of me with my shaved legs for ever ago. yes... indeed.. my legs are white...

Jan. 20, 2014

Oh my gosh....

So I said "oh my gosh" on day and my new hispanic son decided that it was pretty much the greatest phrase ever. Elder pepper and I havent stopped saying it for about a week now. just about every thing new or wierd we say oh my gosh...

So we had a miracle baptism this week. one of the members had a grand daughter that was ready to be baptised. but her parents werent really for the idea. so we were able to talk with the grandma and the grand daughter and work out that she was able to be baptised. she was one of the smartest girls i´ve ever met. she blew just about all the other people i´ve taught on the mission out of the water. we taught her about Joseph Smith. apostosy, the plane of salvation, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the word of wisdom and by the end of one week she had everything memorized and could recite everything back to us from memory. it was quite incredible. and she was 8 years old (we had to teach her the lessons because her parents arent members.)

Also we´ve been finally having a lot of success. we had the baptism on saturday and we had 3 other people come to church yesterday. it was great! the other Elders living in our same house are doing well too. they are working on establishing a new branch and also working in our area too. I dont know who i´ve told you about but our investigators that are doing well are, alexandre, bruna, vão and barbara.

Alexadre went to church and told us that he wants to be baptized and even serve a mission. he´s just a little bit older then me. he turns 21 this month. and hes way awesome. he´s been really religious all his life but just separated himself from just about everything recently. one of the recent converts of the ward talked with him and passed him as a reference to us and now he will probably be baptized soon. i´m super excited for him

Bruna lives next door to one of the members too. she´s very curious about why our church is "different then the rest" she told us yesterday when the meetings were all over that she was very suprised how we were very quiet. we explain things very will in the classes. and just that the church is "different" then the rest that you find on the street. I was very happy to hear her say that she liked the church.

Anyway I loved the the christmas packages and yes all the candy is gone... already... I only have the gum left. which is really hard to eat because i cant chew it in public. i can only chew gum in the house. all is well here. I´m still happy. we are working hard and finding people to baptize. anyway! i´ll let you guys go! till next week! good luck in india! and thanks for the pictures jodi! few things make me happier quicker than a few pictures of the chuck! buh-bye now!!!

Elder Cornwall... Not Alexander... very ugly....

Jan. 20, 2014a

Jan 13, 2014

Happy late Christmas...

yep... I Got the package with all the christmas goodies. I got it on friday and i´ve already eaten probably more than half of the candy. Yes i´ve been sharing but i´ve eaten the most of it. =)

So its great to hear that everyones well. hope all goes well in india again. let me add to the list of things that you need to bring back from india. =) I would like a new car, perhaps a motor cycle and a couple iPads too. I think that will be all for now. =) haha!

so things have been going well in the area of São miguel. I can say that i´m happy and healthy. like always! we had a couple cool new investigators this week. so let me tell the story of how we found him... and also her. (two different stories)

So when we first came to the area we found a recent convert and he was just having a little bit of trouble coming to church. his name is Sandro. we starting meeting with him just once a week and giving him the after baptism lessons. he starts turning into a self proclaimed missionary. which was cool. he gave us a name of one of his friends that he found while talking with people about the gospel. he told us to go to Alexandres house. so we went their and alexandre is way cool. he feels very strongly that he needs more god in his life. we gave him two lessons throughout the week and he was way firm on going to church. sadly when sunday came around he didnt show up. we passed by after church and found that the door was locked shut. (the just use padlocks here) he told us that his mom left and locked the door. so for the whole day he was trapped inside his house. I chuckled a little bit but understood why he couldnt go to church.

also we had another cool story happen this week too. we where knocking doors early in the week and found a woman who said she wanted to talk but was really busy at the moment. (usually this means they just want us to go away) so we marked a day that we could pass by later in the week and left. later we passed by and we told her about the restoration. told her how it was possible that she could know something with absolute certainty. and that is which church is true. she became slightly quite but she was paying attention. so my companion starts doing the invitations. (pray, read, church, baptism) and when he tells her about baptism she started to cry. (these where the first tears of joy i´ve seen on my mission) she told us that she wanted to be baptized. sadly she was leaving for the weekend but she wanted us to return the next week. =) its always great to find good stories to tell during the week.

but hey this is about all i got for now. I´m super happy that things are going well at home. good luck with the calling kev! hope the testing goes well too mom! anyway i´m off to conquer the world! till next week! buh bye now!

Jan13,2014a

Jan. 6, 2014

I've never heard the word Hie outside the hymn...

yep... anyone who can show me a text that has the word Hie that isn´t the hymn "if you could hie to kolob" I´ll give them a cookie when i get home...

So this week was pretty good. we had a barbaque for new years day. we have this really crappy barbaque stand in our apartment and we decided to put it to use for the new year. we all pitched in and bought some strange meat and throught it on the grill. it turned out really good. we had the barbaque with a little bit of rice and made a salad too. =) and to think that i´m on the mission. i´m eating chicken. barbaques... I thought you told me the mission would be hard to find good food haha!

during the week we´ve been working hard. we had quite a few lessons this week and were able to find two people whom we will prepare for baptism in the following weeks. Its been pretty good the past couple days in the field.

We have this one investigater that is really cool. He served in the brazillian military or something to that effect. sadly he was hurt during his service and has a really hard time walking now. we planned a family home evening to do with him and some members. he really liked it and has found the desire to be baptized. He will be interviewed this week and perhaps baptized in the week to come. =)

so I feel that i must thank you all again for all the prayers you´ve said on my behalf. I want to let you know that i feel the power of these prayers. I thank you for all the support and words of encouragement that you´ve given me throughout my mission so far. i´m very grateful for it. i´m happy to be serving a mission. I´m happy that i´m part of this gospel. I´m happy I have the opportunity to give my small sacrifice to the lord too. I´ve learned so much about myself and about the gospel. and I know that its all true.

So the next week we have a zone conferance. I hope that the christmas package has arrived. i´ll let you know in the next week if i got anything.

but thats all the news i´ve got for this week. remember how much i love you all and miss you. stay happy my family!

Elder Cornwall

p.s. I loved the picture of max´s little hotel. =) it made me smile.

Dec 30, 2103

If you give a Mouse a Cookie...

yep... great childrens book... (random...)

so it was great talking with you guys too. I got a little bit trunky when i hung up on skype but it passed quickly. =) no worries.

So hey everybody!! hope all is well! cause all is well here too! not much to report this week. it was the hollidays and so we had a lot of random christmas church parties to go to and a lot of random meetings.

So i´ll start with the best news i can think of the moment. me and my companion have a lot of tools now to try and get people to get to know the church. because i speak english, he speaks spanish, and we are both musical. so we decided to start up a class of english and music to see if we can get a few people to casually go to the church and learn a little bit about where and how the church works too. so we started doing a few classes this week and not very many people showed up. so our next plan is to invite members and ask them to invite a freind.

We are also starting to schedule a bunch of family home evenings with people. just trying to help the members help us find people to teach. this ward is a very small ward and they dont have a lot of experienced people to help with the work. they baptize a ton here but the problem is retention.. I hope that we can make a little bit of a difference here.

So for christmas we made that chicken right! and well it was pretty much amazing! I loved it! it makes me happy that i didnt die. all it was was the ramon seasoning packages butter and then cook it for 5 hours... I didnt die so i´m pretty sure that we cooked it well! =) it was a good christmas. slightly lame without the family but I got to see you guys on skype.

anyway i think i´ll stop here for now. i´ll talk to you guys next week! be happy and let your frowns turn upside down. ho ho ho!

Elder Cornwall

Dec. 30, 2013a