"O assassino"

Olá! Como que tá? It is always so good to hear from all of you. I have officially killed off one more person on the mission (the forth missionary i have lived with who has gone home in my short nine months). Some are beginning to call me "o assassino" (the assasin) or the grim reaper of the mission. It is a little difficult always being around missionaries that are getting ready to go home and do all the things you miss doing and what not but it has been a big advantage for me I think to have been surrounded by so many experienced missionaries. Today we will go to the mission office and Elder Baird and I will sleep there tonight so that he and Elder Ravasa can get an early start tomorrow touring old areas and what not (you have like two days at the end of the mission with nothing to do so people always go to visit old areas and stuff). After that, I will go to Jabaquara (the main bus/subway station where everyone getting transferred goes to) and pick up my new companion, which of course brings us to the transfer news. I will be staying here in Jardim Apurá and my new companion will be Elder Silvestre, who will be my first brazilian companion. He is supposed to be super good and I'm excited. Other than that our zone will not change too much, with only two new junior companions switching with old junior companions, so almost everything will stay the same. I have a good feeling about this transfer and we have a lot of good people we are teaching who will hopefully be able to progress a lot.

This week has been a pretty good one as well. On Tuesday for our last district meeting we had cake and food and after we filmed a hilarious video because we found a bunch of plastic ninja swords in the chapel. The days past by a little slowly as Elder Baird continued his countdown. On Thursday I think it was there was confusion because one of the ladies in the ward thought she had marked lunch but really it was another lady and so the first lady got upset with us on the phone when we didn’t show up. We went there and meekly showed here the list saying that it wasn’t here day, and she got quite embarrassed. It was somewhat gratifying and turned out well because we ended up eating two lunches haha. Saturday and Sunday we just spent going around and mostly saying goodbye to people in between appointments. We also go spoiled with food and we had to churrascos (Brazilian bbq´s) and it was lots of fun.

All of it made me think a lot about what it will be like when I go home. Sure it would be exciting, but I thought how disappointed I would be if I had to go home now. The mission is hard but it is great too and there is a lot left for me to learn I think before it ends. I also decided to make a goal that when I go home I will not talk about it a lot and after seeing it happen so much I will work with a lot of urgency because its given me a vision of how short the mission really is. As the manual says the time we have to serve is "extrememente curto" or extremely short. I know if I work hard and obey the rules - keep my end of the deal - the Lord will give me exactly the mission that I want and need. At the same time though, I could really go for some orange chicken and fried rice with a tall dr pepper at panda express. There are always two sides haha.

(cloths drying on a clothes line)

So that is the update for the week. There is important news but not very much of it I suppose. I love you all and hope everything can keep going well there. Merci for everything and for all that each of you has done to allow me to be here in Brazil! Eu amo vocês demais!

Elder Wilcox aka le jeune homme aka o rapaz

Olá!

Olá! What a lot of news! I was so happy to hear from all of you! Sounds like it’s been a great week. The week here has been pretty good as well. We had zone leader council (as some call it "Jedi council") on Monday and it was good. We are focusing a lot on real conversion both personally and with investigators and teaching by the spirit. We had p-day on Tuesday because of that and we just rested at home. I got caught up on letter writing a little and wrote about 8 letters haha. On Friday we did a division with companionship in our zone. I stayed in our area with Elder Monteiro, who is from the north of brazil and has the same time on the mission that I do, and Elder Baird went with Elder Kerr, who is American and has six months. Almost all of our appointments fell through and we basically just did contacts and it wasn’t exactly what we were hoping for but oh well. We hope that maybe they will be motivated to see that other areas have days like that too at least haha. I did another division on Saturday with our district leader, Elder Buzan, so that he could do a baptismal interview with someone here, but the person drank coffee that same morning so we couldn’t do it (the mission rule is a week without word of wisdom stuff). We got rained on a TON and nearly got killed by lighting about 10 times but it was good. 

The best part of the week was yesterday. We had the baptism of a man named Robson. He is the brother of a less active guy whose family got baptized last transfer and now they are all going to church. their dad was active in the church and you could sense that he has had something to do with all of this work going on in his family now. It was incredible to see as well with Robson especially because just a little over a month ago he was smoking a ton, drinking tons of coffee and had serious problems with other commandments we will just say, and now he is baptized and his life is transforming. It was a really spiritual baptismal service and his brother baptized him, which was way cool. 

So yeah that is the update from here. It is already the last week of the transfer (yikes!) so next week I will have news about my new companion and what not. The mission is going by faster and faster. It is great to be a missionary and to have the chance to work with all these great people and learn so much. Eu amo todos vocês e eu sei que Cristo vive!

Us with Roberto (the brother) and Robson (on the left)

(with the rest of the family (Ana Paula - the mother, Juan - the son, and Ingrid - the daughter)