Week 20 Another great week!

We had two baptisms this week, Cristiano and Davi. Cristiano is the brother of Domingos, who we baptized a few weeks ago. He is so awesome. We really didn't even have to teach him, we just gave him the pamphlets, he would read one before our next visit, and then he would tell us everything that was in the pamphlet the next visit.  It was so awesome! He's one of those people that just gets it, and its been awesome to see him embrace the gospel whole-heartedly. 
Our other baptism was Davi. He is ten years old, and he's been going to church for about 4 months.  He was ready for baptism this week. He's a really funny kid. He had to stop drinking coffee to get baptized. We went for a visit a few days after he knew he had to quit, and asked him how he was doing. He said he drank coffee twice, and elder Etchichury said, "Davi, you have to stop drinking coffee if you want to be baptized!" to which Davi replied, "Etchichury, its ok, I drank it with milk!!!" We thought that was pretty funny. He did quit, so it's all good!  We asked him who he wanted to baptize him, and he said Elder Etchichury, but a little while later he said "hey elders, you both can baptize me! Etchichury can hold my arm, and Poulson can plug my nose, and you can both baptize me!" I love that kid! (for the record, we didn't do that, Elder Etchichury baptized him alone haha)

 

So everyone knows about Brazilian Carnival, right? Well its supposed to start next week, but apparently, they have something called pre-Carnival, which is basically a party in preparation for a party. Welcome to Brazil, Elder Poulson!  Anyway, there's this big field near our apartment, and for the past two nights, there have been huge parties going on and its really hard to sleep so I've felt like a zombie. Its so ridiculous, they have these giant stereo systems they haul in on trailers and set up and just blare all night. At this particular party there were like 2 or 3 monster size stereos blaring at the same time. The real party starts sometime next week haha wish me luck!

Have a great week!

Love, 

Elder Poulson

We were able to visit the stadium Castelão, because one of the church leaders has some connections!  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 19...some good laughs!

Pretty good week this week! We set baptismal date with Jonas, who is 19 years old. His older brother Reginaldo was taught by some other missionaries but didn't want to get baptized.  We started teaching Jonas this last week. It was pretty awesome because at our second visit, he told us that he believes the church is true and came to church with us this week. He is getting baptized on March 1st! Something kind of funny that happened with Reginaldo and Jonas. One day when we were in the house teaching Jonas, Reginaldo came in and started talking too. He told Jonas that the church is true - but remember how I said he doesn't want to get baptized? That happens sometimes....

 

So there were a few interesting things that happened in the area this week. I think it was last Tuesday, we were talking to someone outside their house, and a little girl that was about 9 or 10, was holding a 2 year old. She came up to me and asked if I was the 2 year olds dad. I told her I wasn't. She asked me again. I said nope, not mine. Then she told me I was the dad and kept trying to give the baby to me until we left - haha. 

 

Remember Darliane that got baptized last week?  Well we´re teaching her mom, Clea. Clea is 31 and has a 17 year old boyfriend. So yeah. We were going to her house to teach a lesson, and we turn the corner to the house, and Clea and her boy are making out in the doorway. We kind of froze for a minute, looked at each other, and backed away slowly. Then we went back later (2 hours, just to be safe) and had an awesome lesson! 

 

That's about all I got for this week. We're teaching a lot, walking a lot, sweating a lot. I've lost 25 pounds since I've been in Brazil!!!!  Just about 8 weeks now. Things are going great! 

Love you all, have a great week!  Proverbs 3:5-6

love,

Elder Poulson

a spider that was WAY bigger in real life!

tiny banana!

more bananas!

There's a family whose house we stop by a lot, and the four year old likes to comb hair - the last couple visits, she's given me a little touch up before we head back out to work! haha

 

Week 18

Dear Family & Friends,

Okay, so I'm just gonna come out and say it, this week was awesome!!!! We had THREE baptisms! Domingos, who we have been teaching for about the entire time I've been here, and Gabriel and Darliane, two youth that are basically active members already and wanted to be baptized. It was pretty great to be able to see that! Sometimes I feel like we are blessed way more than we deserve.
 As far as the language goes, I am at the point where I can understand a good bit of what is said in any given conversation, but a lot of times, I will not know one or two words in the sentence, so I don't understand the whole thing. Sometimes, I'll understand all the words, but still not what they mean. So definitely not fluent yet, but I can see more progress! My first few weeks, I barely understood anything at all. It's really a miracle with how far I have come. 

 

P-day was pretty fun today. We went to the church and played volleyball with some other elders and some members. They have like an arena in the church parking lot with basketball hoops, soccer goals, and places for a volleyball net. 

 

This next week, we have another baptism coming up on Saturday, and two more on the 22nd, one of which is the brother of Domingos, Christiano. One day this week while we were at their house, the two of them started fighting over whose pamphlets were whose! Missionaries have like 5 or 6 pamphlets with our lesson material that we give out. We told them not to worry, we have plenty of pamphlets to go around! 

 

To answer a few of your questions mom...no packages have arrived yet.  They say it takes 6-8 weeks.  All the bracelets everyone made for me are gone. The people here love bracelets. A lot of them were a little too small, so next time, it might be better to just make them all on the bigger side.  I've never taught a lesson on Sunday at church....its hard to describe what the members are like because it's hard to talk to them haha. We wake up at 6:30 am and go to bed around 10:30 pm. It's not enough. Oh, this week, a sister in the ward asked me to translate the song "I will survive" into Portuguese for her, so I'm working on that - haha. 

 

Well, that's about all I got this week, as always thank you for your thoughts and prayers!

love,

Elder Poulson 

 Baptism of Domingos!

We forgot a knife for the cake, so I put a napkin around my name tag and cut it with that.

 

baptisms of Gabriel and Darliane

 

café da manha (breakfast) that Domingos made for us!

Week 17

Dear Family & Friends,
 Well, this week marks the end of my first transfer! I'm staying in the same area with the same companion, so that makes things a little easier. This week was pretty good overall! I did get sick on Saturday and a little bit of Sunday, but I'm back to normal now. Something else that was exciting is that I got another chance to weigh myself and I'm down sixteen pounds! 
 The highlight of this week as far as the missionary work goes is that we set our next baptism date! It's scheduled for this Saturday. The person getting baptized is Domingos, I'm not sure if I've talked about him before, but we've been working with him since I've been in Brazil, and he's ready to receive the blessings of baptism in his life. He's made a lot of changes in his life, and it's been great to see him progress the last five weeks. He has such strong faith! oh and also, yesterday in church was fast and testimony meeting, and shared the testimony he has of the gospel - That totally made my week. He is so excited be a member of the church - he will be a blessing to the people here! 
 Thanks for the emails!
 I hope you all have a great week! 

1 Samuel 16:7
I read this scripture in my studies this week, and it's just good. 

Love, 
Elder Poulson 

 

 

 

 

Some pictures of our apartment.

 

 

 

 

Week 16

Dear Family & Friends,

 

This week I had my first baptism in Brazil!!! Remember Mel? We baptized her on Saturday! It was so awesome!  That day was just full of great stories, so I'll start from the beginning....we went over to the church at about 8 that morning to clean out the font and fill it up. So we cleaned the font for about 40 minutes, then went to turn the water on, but it didn't turn on. After a few minutes of exploring, we found that NONE of the water in the building worked.  We panicked for a few minutes, BUT hope was not lost. There are a few emergency fire hose things in the church with water, so we went to hook the hose up and crank the water, but to our dismay, the metal ends on the hoses that hook the hose to the spout had been cut off and stolen. What the heck, who does that?! When I said something about it, Elder Etchichury said "Welcome to Brazil." So with that new development, we devised a plan. We found some buckets in the closet, and we proceeded to fill the buckets at the fire spigot, carry them to the font, and dump them in. I'll send some pictures.  That took us another hour to do, but we got it done!  We went to walk out of the church at about 11. BUT - there's more. For some reason, we only have a key to the door of the church and not the gate to the church grounds. Someone had unlocked the gate for us to let us in, but while we were inside working, someone walking by must have seen the unlocked gate and wanting to be helpful, snapped it shut. Little did they know, this locked us inside. So yeah. We were trapped inside the church grounds.  Elder Etchichury made a call and some members came and rescued us. We were able to leave in time for lunch!

 

The baptism was awesome, we had a LOT of members come to watch, despite the fact that we and Mel and her family were a half hour late.....but it all worked out well, and the best part is that I said the baptism prayer right the first time! My Portuguese is getting better and better, its great to see my progress. The hardest thing is still understanding people, but I understand so much more than I did when I first got here. I can actually contribute in conversations now. Anyway, this week was great, mostly because Mel was baptized. It's amazing to see the changes she's made in her life. I love my mission!!!

 

Love,

 

Elder Poulson

mitchel.poulson@myldsmail.net

 

Brazil Fortaleza East Mission

Rua Republica de Armenia, 765

Agua Frio 60821-760

Fortaleza-CE  Brazil

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 15

 Dear Family & Friends,

Before I start, I need to answer some questions that my Mom has asked:

• We walk everywhere unless we need to go to the mission office or somewhere downtown. We've ended up on the bus once or twice a week.  At first sight, everyone thinks I'm Brazilian. I'm still pretty amazed by that, but that's what people think!
• The apartment is pretty small, not too big of a deal. It's nicer than a lot of the houses I've been in here.  I'll send some pictures next week.
• I don't recall any weird bugs, I mostly see flies, ants and mosquito's. I saw an iguana once, though!  There are horses and donkeys that people use, and I saw a sheep one time. 
• For future reference, an American in the ward that used to serve here told me its a good idea to put the value of the package as less than it actually is, because if the value is high, they'll tax it out the wazoo and I'll have to pay a whole bunch of money just to pick it  up. He told me once he had to pay 82 reais (about 40 bucks) to get a package from the post office. 
• The ward (congregation) meets in a church building.  It's kind of weird because there is no carpet at all.   There is an electric piano in the chapel. There's only one set of missionaries in the ward, but there are three wards in the building (our church starts at 4 and ends at 7) so we see other missionaries once in a while.
• Most houses have just concrete on the floor with rugs. The nicer ones have tile floors, no carpet. The most modest home I've been in was about  15 feet by 15 feet with dirt floors and put together with whatever they could find. 
• On prep day we study until 10, then we'll shop, email, nap, in whatever order we feel like, and then we sometimes go to members houses and visit. We played a Brazilian version of Risk a couple weeks ago with some members.
• I feel safe!!!  There was one time when we went up a street looking for someone to invite to church and there was this guy up there that really gave both of us a bad feeling, so we just got out of there.  That has been the worst thing, and its not even bad.  The people are usually really nice here.  Kids are really funny, they'll run up to Elder Etchichury and yell "Fala Inglês!!!" because they think he's American (he's from Rio) and then he'll tell them he doesn't speak English, but that I do because I'm American and they don't believe him. It's really funny.
• Grocery stores aren't that different, there's just Brazilian brands of food, and different fruit.
•  Oh so mom, whenever I show people my pictures of the family, they're always like ohhh they're so beautiful! You have a beautiful family! Your mom is beautiful!  Yesterday, a family was looking at them, and the mom said that you look like an actress....a Mexican actress hahaha I'm pretty sure that's a compliment....anyway, I thought it was funny.

 

 

This week was definitely the best one so far in Brazil!

 

We had so much success with our work this week!  I'm at the point now where I can understand the conversation during our lessons (not really any other time....the Gift of Tongues at work) and so that means I have been able to take more of a role in the teaching, which has been awesome! Scary, but awesome! We taught so many good lessons and we had a lot of new investigators. We had nine investigators come to church yesterday!!! What we do is that about two hours before church, we go around to the houses of everyone who said they would come and we all walk to church together. We had a huge group yesterday! A miracle we saw yesterday was that this couple we started teaching this week, Marisio and Silvia came to church by themselves! When we stopped by their house, they said they would be there at about five, and they were! A lot of people will say "oh yeah, I'll come to church" just because they don't want to offend us, and then they won't show up or won't be home or say they can't go when we stop by their house.  But, Marisio and Silvia came, and I think they enjoyed it. I sat by them in Sacrament meeting, and Elder Etchichury sat by some other investigators. I tried to explain the stuff in the chapel to them in my limited Portuguese, but I think their questions were answered. It was funny because Marisio was just belting out the hymns, at his first time in church! I was loving it!

So we have a baptism next week! It will be my first one in Brazil! Her name is Melione, but she goes by Mel. She's been awesome, she has quit coffee, smoking, and alcohol all at once!  So impressive.  She has some friends and relatives that have been in the house when we teach her, and a few of them are showing interest in the church as well, so hopefully we'll be able to baptize her family too.

 

So on a more secular note, I discovered a few new things here. One, is this weird Brazilian dessert which I think is called canjica.  It's kind of like pudding, but a little thicker, and the main ingredient is corn. So we were in this member's house, and she brings it out in these little bowls. I looked over at my companion, and he was digging in, so I took a bite....and almost spit it back out across the room. Not what I was expecting at all!!  I think if I was to eat a yellow kitchen sponge, it would be similar. All of the sudden, that little bowl was looking like Bryant Denny Stadium. I struggled through a few more bites, but I didn't know if I was going to make it. Apparently, I was a little more obvious than I thought I was with how I liked it, and the sister said, "Elder, if you don't like it, don't eat it." Music to my ears!  She was very gracious about it, which I appreciated. 

Not much else to report, but I hope you have a great week! A scripture I read this week and really liked is in Alma 32:21, look it up if you get a chance! 

Love,

Elder Poulson

 

A Capri sun...unique, i thought it was cool. Didn't taste any better but still, haha

 An awesome bug killer. I call it the racquet of death. its electric, so when it touches the bugs, ZAP and they're dead! best 14 R$ I have ever spent. 

 

This is pretty typical for a member lunch. Rice beans spaghetti and some meat, usually chicken. not whatever this was. I think it was a pork chop. and there's usually some kind of juice as well.

A kid from one of the families in the ward who wanted to try on my jacket. his name is Eduardo, but his nickname is do-do hahaha

We had to go to the doctor for my athletes foot last Friday, and he told me to wear flip flops for a few days. so I wore flip flops to church yesterday! I actually wasn't too out of place, haha

 

 

The tapioca car...the speaker on top blares this recording over and over again for tapioca for fifty centavos. Elder Etchichury knows the whole thing. it will do the advertisement, and then it plays this song with this woman singing about Jesus. completely random hahaha but that sums up Brazil....

 

Week 14

Dear Family and Friends-
 

Another week has gone by. It seems like they're going faster and faster! A couple exciting things happened this week. One, I weighed myself on the 8th, and I've lost nine pounds since I got here! And probably more since then! I went a notch smaller on my belt today too, so that is pretty exciting for me. Also, I had exchanges (or a division as its called here) with one of my zone leaders this week.  Basically how a mission is organized, is there is the mission president who is in charge of all the missionaries.  He chooses two elders (missionaries) to be assistants, and they help him run the mission.  Companionship's of zone leaders who oversee at least two districts, which have usually about 6 or 8 missionaries each, help the assistants.  Then there is one district leader per district. The missionaries in leadership positions go into the areas of other missionaries every once in a while to see how the area is progressing and help the other missionaries improve. I hope that made sense.  Anyway, I went with Elder J. Souza, one of my zone leaders into his area to work for a day.  He is from a town near São Paulo, and he doesn't speak much English like my companion, so I really had to use my Portuguese that day. It went really well, there was a loooot of walking, but I was able to sleep well that night! 

Something else that happened - Elder Etchichury, my companion, broke his finger.  We were exercising one morning at a park near our apartment with a member, and we had my football and were running around and throwing the ball. The member threw a pass to Elder Etchichury, and his finger went KERBLAM!!! So the next day, we spent pretty much all day downtown waiting in a clinic and then the hospital for an assessment, x-rays, and then treatment.  He has a little brace thing he has to wear on his finger for 6 weeks.  It's kind of funny because it's his middle finger that's broken on his right hand, so whenever he writes he is flipping off everyone in the general area (that particular gesture is still offensive in Brazil haha). So he has to explain what happened to basically everyone we talk to.

I started sleeping in a hammock this week! It's been pretty awesome, because my mattress that was in the apartment was totally destroying my back.  Hammocks are just fun to sleep in and a lot of people here use them. 

My Portuguese is coming along well, I am able to understand conversations more. Not everything, but it's improving.  Towards the end of the day, I have to really focus if I want to know what's going on. It gets really easy to zone out.  Some days by about 6 or 7 o'clock, I'm just absolutely sick of Portuguese! But, its coming along well.

My testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel grows every day, especially at the end of a really difficult day. I know what I'm doing is the Lord's work!

 

Have a blessed week!

Love,

Elder Poulson

 

The view from the zone leader's apartment of the Fortaleza airport!

This is a picture of a Brazilian version of risk, that has the whole united states separated into California and New York hahaha pretty funny!