New week and a new year?! Time sure flies like a clock thrown out the window for sure.
It's a new year: the year that I shall be a missionary for the whole year, crazy! And a good year it will be for sure!
News:
What's there to tell? A lot, that's what. We started a whole new year, did another division (it worked out this time, no hospital visits!), and we made bagels. It's been a good week yall.
USA is still better:
So Brasil likes its fireworks, that's for sure. During soccer games, Christmas, NEW YEARSSSSS 🎆🎇, and as cool as they are here, I do think we've got em beat just a bit in the firework section. Although people here sure do like setting fireworks off until very early in the morning, despite whether people, or missionaries, want to sleep or not. Buuut, it definitely was cool to get to experience the culture of Brasil with Christmas and New Years and how the people here celebrate.
Capybara:
Randomly this morning my companion's mom suggested we go look for capybaras today, so that's what we're gonna do! There's definitely perks in having a big area, and being in the Capitol city surrounded by water: there's places to find capybaras, and alligators, and anacondas, so we'll see how it goes.
People:
Uhhhh, so how about families? Cuz that's what we've got. We've been teaching this one family, the parents are like 60s and their son is almost 40, for about a week now and they've been just awesome. We met the dad, Antônio on Christmas night, just walking around bringing cookies to people, and he was super open to talking with us. Then a few days after that we went by where he lives (he's the caretaker of an apartment building so he's always home haha) and we met his wife, who, during the first lesson, asked us where our church is because she wanted to go. How about yes? And then as we kept visiting them we met their son, who has a kidney problem and so he's waiting for a kidney transplant, but is just so optimistic about his life and loves visiting with us: this family has been wonderful. And then when they came to church this past Sunday for the first time, they just loved it. And then we're still teaching a family that we've been teaching for a while here, and they do really like the gospel. I smell baptism coming up...
Menu:
Bagels are good. Protein shakes are good, too. Also, I ate so much food on New Years day: members are very very willing to give Elders food, so I'm thankful for that.
The work:
So like I said earlier, we did another division that actually worked out this time, thank goodness. I did still go over to São Sebastião, but this time Elder Oliveria stayed there with me. Elder Oliveria is from São Paulo and has a sister mission and almost a month: so just about 19 months. We had a full day, and then most of it fell, but we still did what we could. As we went about the day, we didn't always know who we were gonna visit, or when, but we knew what we were going to do. Why? Because we had made goals for the day. We knew how many contacts we were going to make, and how many lessons we were going to try to teach. I asked him what was one lesson that really changed his mission up to that point. And he talked about goals. In our mission we have 7 goals set by Presidente Santos. 5 out of the 7 are in our control, the other 2 are in our control. It's up to us to set goals daily to reach those weekly goals, and then we have to work to reach those goals, its up to us. (More in spiritual thought)
Spiritual thought:
What better is there to talk about than goals and plans for this new year's email? More goals and plans! But first, the birthday mentality: the best way to think y'all. My companion told me to think like every day is your birthday and God wants to give us gifts on our birthday so we just have to find the gifts. That's about that. Back to plans. Like Elder Oliveria talked about, those goals were set by Presidente Santos, through revelation, so by revelation, we are promised that we can achieve those goals as long as we do our part. And when we do our part, outing forth our effort, God will, in turn, do His part because he wants to bless us. He truly wants to bless His Children, and we're His children. As we enter into this new year and make plans and goals, if we seek revelation from God in setting those goals, we will be able to achieve them. When we have parts of our goals that are outside our control, if we do our part, God will do the rest. Because He loves us! And I love yall too!
With much love,
-Elder Hyatt
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