Chau Itu, Hello Alphaville

First off, I have been transferred. I will be going Zona Alphaville and will continue to serve as a Zone Leader.  My new area is called "Engenho Novo." My new companion will be Elder Messick, an American Elder from Utah; he has about 11 months on the mission. 

My time with Elder Alvis has been great, I can honestly say that he is the best friend I have made here on the mission. We were a great team, and even though it is very sad for us both to part ways, we live in the U.S. so we will be buds forever and still hang after our missions, so it’s all good! :) But in the 6 weeks we had together we were able to baptize 12 people together all 6 weeks consecutively. Our zone also baptized 8 this week, so it was good, but we can do much better! I hope that all that has been built here and Itu can continue with success. All that I have learned I will take with me to my new zone and area to do the very best that I can. 

Monday- We had our huge pizza activity, but I ran out of time last week, so I wasn’t able to elaborate and tell you about it. We went to a chacara, which is a big piece of land that rich people live on. So a member in Cidade Nova has a chacara and used to own a pizza company, so he said if we bought the ingredients, he would help us make all the pizzas in his pizza oven. We made pizza, played football, and other stuff, it was a ton of fun! 

     

Ana Flavia on her baptism day

Tuesday- Ana Flavia was baptized! Ana Flavia is Amabile's sister, who was baptized last week! Great day, great service. That night a family of our recent converts made us dinner so that was nice :)

Wednesday- Our usual follow up, looking for news, and pregando O Evangelho de Cristo! But that night we felt something that told us to visit a the girlfriend of a recent convert (Natalia) who has been investigating the church. We starting teaching her, her little sister, and their mother. After a great lesson they all accepted a baptismal invite for the next day! It was a great lesson and a great experience. 

Thursday- Sort of a sad day, Natalia and her family flaked out on us and got mole. We were also in a division with Cidade Nova; I was with Zenteno, who is always super fun. haha :)

Friday-We literally got to Cidade Nova at 9:30am and got back home at 9:30pm. We spent the entire day in Cidade Nova doing their interviews because Zenteno went to Porto Feliz to do interviews for the sisters. By the end of the day we had completed over 8 interviews. But we got to know better Zenteno's comp Elder Alves, who is serving a mini mission. He lives in our mission and is just getting a taste of missionary work and he is super good! Usually young missionaries don’t know what to do and are shy, but this Elder Alves is super good!

Saturday-On another division with Cidade Nova, we followed up with everyone to go to church on Sunday. We had a miracle with a girl named Carol, who was interviewed and was going to be baptized! Later that night we went back to Cidade Nova to make sure their baptisms happened, and they did! During the whole day, Elder Alvis was in Porto Feliz doing more interviews. 

Elder Hunt, Almir, and Elder Alvis

Sunday-Transfer news. Carol was going to get baptized, but got nervous and didn’t want to anymore. :( We had lunch with Almir; We worked a little in the CDHU then we went to Salto to do interviews, but the interviews didn’t happen. So then we went and taught a bunch of mole Haitians who don’t understand Portuguese. Long sad day, last full day in Itu. 

 Monday- I packed up all my stuff, I only have a bit more to pack and transfer meeting will be awesome tomorrow! Excited for the new opportunities that are ahead! :) 

Making Families Eternal, One Baptism At a Time

Elder Hunt with some of his Brasilian friends

This week will mark one year in the field for Elder Hunt (after the CMT)

Acai for two

Monday-Tons of frango assado (roasted chicken), pull-ups, and Conheça Os Mormons (Meet the Mormons) hahaha, great day. Elder Alvis and I have too much fun together! Best comp!

Zone Itu

Tuesday-We had an awesome zone training! Today we let a bunch of awesome missionaries in our zone who usually never give trainings give trainings! We have two sisters in a zone called Porto Feliz, (or Happy Port) haha, who will be baptizing three weeks straight this next week. Generally Porto Feliz is a difficult area that hardly ever baptizes so we invited those two sisters to share with us what they are doing to have such good results! We also had two other great missionaries give trainings too! Great trainings!!! Fabulous!

Wednesday-President asked me to do a division with an Elder in our zone who wanted to go home to try and help him out. The division was fine, I did all I could, but in the end, the Elder went home :( 

Thursday-We did a lot of follow up like we do everyday. We are working a lot in Sao Judas and Aeroporto. 

Look at this cool bug!

Friday-Today was one of the best days in my mission :) We knocked a ton of doors today and we marked our baptismal interviews for later that evening. Our first 7 doors we knocked, people answered, and we marked baptismal dates with them! Every person accepted, it was great! :) 

     

During our door knocking, I was talking on the phone with one of the elders in our zone and out of nowhere, a 74 year old man opened his door and invited us in. He began thanking us and talking very well of us for leaving all we had in our homes to come teach and help him. He did that for about 10 minutes, then he stopped and for 10 more minutes he talked about how he went to church once and it was the best experience of his entire life- how he felt, how he was treated, everything. We then invited him to be baptized that Sunday, and he accepted without skipping a beat :) What an amazing man. 

That night 19 year old Amabile and her 17 year old sister Ana Flavia were interviewed. They have been in a huge fight for the past 8 months and finally through The Gospel of Jesus Christ they have been able to forgive one another. :)

Franklin, a recent convert is preparing to serve a mission.  

This is his One Direction tattoo.

Saturday-I went to Porto Feliz to do interviews for the sisters. I went with a recent convert of Morada Do Sol who is preparing to serve a mission. His name is Franklin, he is our buddy and we've done divisions with him before; he is an awesome fun guy. It’s him who had the 1D tat. 

Elder Alvis, David (new member), Elder Hunt

What handsome young men!

We also went with David to The "Tenda" which is like the Costco of Brasil and we bought all of our supplies for our Pday pizza making activity!

Andre on his baptism day

Sunday-We picked up Andre our miracle 74 year old! We brought him to church and to our surprise he is the relative of a very strong member of our ward. When the member saw him and found out he was going to be baptized, he cried and cried with joy!  After church, the member baptized his uncle Andre. 

Amabile on her baptism day

Amabile with her family 

Later that afternoon Amabile was baptized!!! :) It was amazing!!!!

The zone baptized 10 this week! And this will probably be my last week here in Itu, because next week are transfers! Next week we will see my fate! :)

P-day activity was to make homemade pizzas in a members special oven

Pizza!

Today we had a sick activity making pizza!  Loved it so much!!!

Elder Hunt

Só nas Milagres- Only In Miracles

Elder Hunt loves to grill meat and have a 'churrasco' at home

Monday-We are only eating chicken and eggs now, so every p day we grill up our chicken breast for the week! That evening David and Nany were having some marital issues, so we gave them The Family Proclamation to the World and wrote them up a little plan of how they can have a more loving marriage based upon the teaching of Jesus Christ.

All he is eating is chicken apparently. 

Tuesday-District meeting! We did a sick mini training to begin with, it composed of the Elders jumping over a broomstick low off the ground, slightly being raised after every attempt, at the point of where no one could jump over the stick. We put the broomstick very low off the ground and asked the Elder who jumped the highest to jump again; he did a little jump and cleared the stick with ease. After, we asked him why he only did a small jump to clear the low broomstick when we all saw him jump much higher before.  He responded, "Because that was all that you asked me to do," and that is where we made our point about raising our visions and pushing ourselves beyond our limits. 

Wednesday-We visited a teenage girl who is a reference from a member; her name is Ana Flavia and she is super elect!!! She accepted a baptismal date for the 16th! We had a long day looking for part member families in the area of Jardim Aeroporto. 

Elder Alves and Elder Hunt

Thursday-Today we woke up at 3:30am to go to leadership counsel!!!! The counsel was amazing! We learned so much and we learned more and more about The Atonement. The biggest things we were instructed to do are to teach more about the Atonement and The Temple! After we took a long bus back to Itu. 

'Um Lanche' - A 'snack' in Itu

After we had another similar type day like Wednesday, we worked super hard with a lot of diligence and focus in our work, but we did not have a ton of results. 

A strange site they saws this week in the town square

Friday-Friday evening I went to do interviews in Cidade Nova with Elder Zenteno. I interviewed a 9-year-old girl, whose older sister had been baptized a few weeks earlier.

I started off by asking her about her life goals and dreams. Usually 9 year olds don’t have a very good idea about things like that, but I felt inspired to ask. The little girl began to talk about the struggles and difficulties she has living with a mother who loves to party and stuff and her real father that lives in Itu. Out of anything in the world, she just wants an eternal family and she said she would do anything to get it, and that is why she wanted to get baptized. I was shocked and very impressed. As she spoke, she teared up and began to cry, but she was able to continue talking just fine. This made me begin to cry a little for her, her situation, and her Christlike desires. I believe we can all learn a lesson from her.  This night we also got home super late at night because of the bus.

Saturday-We had interviews in our areas and we had sort of a rough day, a lot of frustrations with people not being home and way too many excuses. 

The zone that has the most baptisms, 'wins' the banner for the month.

Sunday-All our baptisms fell today... :( BUT out of nowhere a man and his wife that I had never seen before were in sacrament meeting. We found out that the woman had been baptized a few years ago in a different state in Brasil and that they had moved to Itu a bit ago. They are legally married -YES! The husband had never been baptized, but had been to church a ton of times. We marked to return to their house that afternoon. 

Welliton on his baptism day with his wife and Elders Hunt and Alvis 

We had an awesome lunch with Vandy, a guy in our ward who is the high priest group leader. He is the man! That afternoon we returned to Welliton and Antonia's home. We taught about The Temple :) and Antonia admitted that her life's biggest dream was to be married in the temple. Baptismal invite, baptismal interview, Welliton was baptized that night at 8pm! ;) Miracles. God is blessing more than I can believe. 

On P-day today they ate chicken and watched Meet the Mormons.  

I asked Elder Hunt today when we were emailing back and forth if the part in the film made him feel sad.  This was his response, "It's sad a little, but it's really inspiring.  Watching the film just makes me love people more, people of every race and culture as God does.  I love being a member of the Church and having the knowledge of the restored gospel, the hope of eternal life, an eternal family and repenting every single day of the things I do wrong.'

Only two more weeks until transfers and we still have a ton of work to do here in ITU!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And Sunday was my 1 year and 1 month mark as well as Father's day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love you Dad!

<3 Grato Humilde

Elder Hunt

Julho (July)

Monday-P day night we found some young families with potential!

Tuesday-We had a great district meeting! I listened in on Elder Martinez's training, which was all about marking baptismal dates, well done!

We had money for lunch so we went to Menino's, which is an all you can eat meat and salad place.  That’s what’s up! After, we had marked with a recent convert of ours to go visit her 15 cousins, but we got there and she had forgotten...so in Itu, the area is HUGE, so if you go to an area and you have to come back in the night for another lesson that night, you just stay in the area because you waste your whole day traveling.

Pro Brasilain BMX Bike Riders

That night we talked to a 12 year old boy named Rodrigo. Rodrigo really wanted to get baptized, but when we talked to his mom like he asked us to for permission, he completely denied that he wanted to get baptized and completely turned on us. That was not a momento de felicidades (time of happiness) for Elder Alvis and I.  On a high note, we went and found a bunch of professional Brasilian BMX bike riders; it was super cool!

Elder Hunt taught the BMX riders

Wednesday-We went early to visit a super elect young couple WHO IS LEGALLY MARRIED!!! Yeah! They are super interested in the church, they have been tons of times, and have much desire to know the truth. We began teaching with question after question, bible chase craziness, and three hours later we left for lunch, inviting him to read the Book of Mormon and asking of it's truthfulness and if they should be baptized on Sunday. 

Thursday-We went back early in the morning to Walter and Andrea. Their response was that they know The Book of Mormon is the word of God, but then they tried to start bible bashing with us, and with that they lost the desire to learn and just had the desire to try and prove that the Melchezedek priesthood doesn’t exist. That’s when we left, #TCHAU- (BYE)

     

That night I went to do interviews in Cidade Nova. We got there and the person wasn't home, so we just went back to Itu- lol, wasted about one and a half hours with that. We came back and tried baptizing a friend of the young men who we baptized last week. He was super nervous, but to show him it wasn't a big deal I put on baptismal clothes and got in the water, at one point I submerged myself completely to show him it wasn’t cold (It was freezing, lol) and he didn’t even get baptized...

Friday-We went back to Cidade Nova (new city) and I did their interview. It was a 12-year-old boy named Ryan; I got him super excited for his baptism and he was baptized right after! 

Friday was also the last day of the month, and as a zone we ended with 32 baptisms in the month of July, once again winning in the mission. 

Saturday-We visited TONS of people reminding them all for church! We expected to have a ton of people! 

Sunday-We went out early looking for all of our investigators with a ride, but almost all of them were mole and didn’t come, despite our efforts. We didn’t have a ton of people at church, which was sad. 

Bryenda on her baptism day

with Elders Hunt and Alvis

My comp and I fasted this week for our zone and for us to be able to continue baptizing at least one person per week. On Sunday all of our baptisms fell last minute, so we looked on a list of "members not baptized" (like that list name makes sense aha) and found a 12 girl named Bryenda. We went to her house Sunday afternoon, talked to her mom, and the girl was baptized that night! :) It was great! What a miracle!!! :)

Bryenda on her baptism day with her Mom and the Elders

One thing I've learned on my mission so far is how to maintain your faith through times of discouragement, like when you have something totally planned out perfectly and last minute it all falls. It makes me think of that Elder D. Todd Christofferson General Conference talk about the currant bush. He talks about how sometimes we think we know exactly who we should be, what we need, and what we should do in our lives.  But in reality, God knows all, and in his plan for us things happen that maybe we weren't expecting or maybe didn't want; but in the reality, the path he wants us to follow and the future he has for us is much greater than anything we could ever imagine. God sees us not as who we are today, but with the eternal potential of who we can and will be one day. As missionaries he wants us to do the same thing, and the transformations and miracles we see in people on a daily basis are the most rewarding and spiritually uplifting experiences I've ever seen. This is what makes me happy :)

August Zona Itu; let's go!!!!!!!

Four Teenage Boys!

Elder Alvis and Elder Hunt

Monday-We made homemade pizza and we found a super elect family! We were walking to an appointment and out of nowhere Elder Alvis is like, "STOP, let’s knock this door!” We did, and taught an awesome lesson and found a ton of elects! That night we followed up with all of Claudionor's friends (Claudionor who got baptized last week); they are a funny group of boys. 

Homemade pizza that Elder Hunt made- one chocolate, one with meat

Tuesday-District meeting. Ugh way too much on the bus today. Bus to district meeting, bus back, bus to lunch in Jardim Aeroporto, a bus super far away to as Chacaras dos Machados. This Chacara is a huge, rich ranch that is far away. We marked to visit at 3pm, we got there at 3pm and they said they were leaving...we asked them if we could at least pray with them to not lose the long trip and they said no.  L We then took another bus to get to another bus stop to get a bus to Potigaura (another place in our area.) We taught a lesson with a girl who goes to church every week and is the sister of a member named Rafaela. 

Wednesday-Our awesome recent convert David works at Herbal Life and has a good buddy that works there named Marcio. He wanted us to go there and teach him, so we did. We taught him the Restoration and explained a lot about who we are and why we are here. He showed interest but was also very strong about his beliefs, but hey, at least we got a free protein shake, haha. 

Members made us a BBQ with a ton of meat for us for lunch! It was great!!! That night we went back and visited all the Ceramica country folk. 

Thursday-We made a ton of preparations for the church soccer game that would be held that night. We bought all the teenage boys we are teaching food and soda for after soccer. We picked them all up, they played, ate, and we taught! It was great and they loved it! 

Friday- We had lunch far away again in Potigauara so we used the opportunity to teach Rafaela. We had a good lesson especially with her older brother being there. He is strong in a different church, but we totally changed his mind. :) We found a bunch of news and once again visited the Ceramica folk.

Cidade Nova

The swimming pool where a child was baptized!

Saturday-Today we did a division with Cidade Nova. There in CN they interviewed and baptized a kid in a swimming pool because their chapel was out of water, how cool!

Elder Zenteno and I got A TON of interviews done in our area! Great day!  That night David bought us pizza too!

Maycon, Luan, Walison, and Joao Vitor on their baptism day 

with Elders Hunt and Alvis

Sunday-We picked up all our investigators for church. A lot of them made excuses and didn't go...but the four teenagers did and they were baptized afterwards! It was sick! It was so great! Maycon, Luan, Walison, and João Vitor were all baptized! Today was an awesome day. 

Elder Hunt earned the 'desire' plate last week in the mission.

After we ate lunch and had a meeting with the Stake President discussing ways we could improve the zone. Today was a very good day. Also we found a ton of novos (new investigators.) This week I found the most new investigators than any other week in my mission; we found 62 this week! 

A huge papaya!

Our zone is still in 1st place in the mission competition! We have 30 baptisms in the month and we need 11 more before Saturday to break the mission record! Let's go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm doing great here and love the work,

Elder Hunt