Dear Mom and Family and Friends,
Well first of all to answer your questions, i am only supposed to email family and stuff which stinks but its a rule so im gonna follow it. MMmmmm and I am not sure how long it takes for mail to arrive here I think it is usually like a month but I don´t know because I havent gotten any mail here but it still hasnt been a month yet. We receive the mail usually on Tuesdays because that is when our district meetings are and the zone leaders get it from the office and drop it off at the different district meetings. And we usually eat with members for lunch. Yesterday we ate at the bishop´s house so I had to make a really good impression and I ate so much and it was so good but I thought I was going to die right there and explode but yeah. Mmm this week has been awesome. We baptized two people. Both were on Saturday. The first man is Alexandre. He had been coming to church for a few weeks already on his own which is totally awesome. He had been referred by a member of his AA group or something, and he is the president of the AA group which is totally awesome. He is a very short Brazilian man with a really deep voice. He is really cool and firm and stuff. The other person whom we baptized is named Alef, I think I have written about him before. He and his girlfriend were going to be baptized a few weeks ago, but for some reason they werent. Well it was totally cool because Alef still wanted to be taught and stuff which shows he is super awesome. He kept on changing his mind though and Elder Carvalho and I knew that he had to choose because it would totally change his life. He lives in the ghetto and he is like 4 years behind in school and not going anywhere but he still had really good values. So the night before the baptism Elder Carvalho and I taught him and we could really feel the Spirit of God. I shared the experience where I wanted to put off serving a mission and it was really good because I felt that that experience touched him, and he ended up being baptized which is awesome. Right, what else, we had a zone conference in Aldeota which was pretty awesome and it was on Friday. Mmmm I´ll tell you a little bit about my area. Benfica is one of the richest areas in our mission. There are not really any favelas but there are lots of ghettos. Maybe a little bit worse but I am fine. Yeah I gotta go but talk to you later, bye!!!!
Elder Willoughby
Monday, March 22, 2010
Monday, March 15, 2010
Dear Sisters,
Hey how are you all doing? Hey send this email to mom and stuff. Hey and Courtney are you putting all the emails I send to mom on my blog? And is mom sending you all the emails I send her? I hope! So Stephanie you asked about what I like to hear about in communications with me and the answer is what is happening during your week, its very interesting for me.
So this week was pretty good, alright I am going to tell you about the investigators, food, and weather. By the way what do you guys like to hear about?
So this past week we had five baptisms. The first one was on Wednesday we baptized this 13 year old boy named Iran. He was pretty cool and before he was coming to the chapel with his friend Pablo every night for seminary and futebol. And I baptized him! Also we baptized two girls yesterday named Andressa who is like 13 and Aparecida who is like almost 16 and they both live in the Benfica area. They kinda remind me of young women in America who are really awesome and smile all the time and stuff. In the Maraponga ward where there are no missionaries serving we baptized Marilha who is 16 and married to a inactive man named Jon and we also baptized a 14 year old named Berto. I baptized these two in Maraponga as well! Especially Marilha was like so awesome she had such a witness that we were speaking the truth. Everytime we tell someone to ask God if what we are saying is true and they have a sincere heart, every single time they will go home and read from the Book of Mormon and ask God and every time God answers their prayers through the power of the Holy Ghost. A side note. For a person to be baptized they have to have gone to church two times, keep the commandments that we teach them (law of chastity, word of wisdom, keeping the sabbath day holy, and tithing), have a testimony, and be taught the lessons in Preach My Gospel. Usually a person can get baptized really fast. They come to church on Sunday we teach them during the week, and if they are keeping all the committments and come to church again the next Sunday then we can baptize them after church. Oh and a cool thing with Marilha. Every time that my district leader, Elder Christensen, asks them who they want to baptize them I usually can know what will happen. It can either be Elder Carvalho who talks to them and laughs with them and really knows a lot about these people or it can be me, who is oblivious to most things, and usually just teaches the first part of a lesson or bears my testimony at the end. By the way that last sentence was supposed to be funny. Because I dont care it is just funny.....well anyway when Elder Christensen asked her and she was like I want it to be a very special person who worked so hard to communicate with me, and it was me!! I was so excited, not that is matters, but it was fun. :-D
So about food. I basically never eat breakfast because I am never hungry and this is common among missionaries in Brazil. Because at lunch we eat like so much, so much, I cant overemphasize how much we eat at lunch. Usually they have rice and beans and sometimes some feijoada which is like beans and sausage, and they sometimes have pasta, and steamed vegetables and stuff. And usually I pile it on my plate. Eat it all. Pile my plate full of food again, and then maybe half a plate more. So that is 2.5 full plates of food. WE usually have some legit juice or guaraná which is totally awesome, and then sometimes we have icecream for dessert. Sometimes we will stop by a bakery for dinner and pick up a salgada. Like today I wasnt even hungry for lunch even though I didnt eat dinner or breakfast.
So the weather is pretty hot, it has started to rain just a little bit but they say that more rain will come. Whenever we are in the street there is a breeze and its not bad.
Well I gotta go but I am sending some letters today hopefully. It will be there in about a month if I do. mmmmm Love you all and have an awesome day!!
Elder Willoughby
Hey how are you all doing? Hey send this email to mom and stuff. Hey and Courtney are you putting all the emails I send to mom on my blog? And is mom sending you all the emails I send her? I hope! So Stephanie you asked about what I like to hear about in communications with me and the answer is what is happening during your week, its very interesting for me.
So this week was pretty good, alright I am going to tell you about the investigators, food, and weather. By the way what do you guys like to hear about?
So this past week we had five baptisms. The first one was on Wednesday we baptized this 13 year old boy named Iran. He was pretty cool and before he was coming to the chapel with his friend Pablo every night for seminary and futebol. And I baptized him! Also we baptized two girls yesterday named Andressa who is like 13 and Aparecida who is like almost 16 and they both live in the Benfica area. They kinda remind me of young women in America who are really awesome and smile all the time and stuff. In the Maraponga ward where there are no missionaries serving we baptized Marilha who is 16 and married to a inactive man named Jon and we also baptized a 14 year old named Berto. I baptized these two in Maraponga as well! Especially Marilha was like so awesome she had such a witness that we were speaking the truth. Everytime we tell someone to ask God if what we are saying is true and they have a sincere heart, every single time they will go home and read from the Book of Mormon and ask God and every time God answers their prayers through the power of the Holy Ghost. A side note. For a person to be baptized they have to have gone to church two times, keep the commandments that we teach them (law of chastity, word of wisdom, keeping the sabbath day holy, and tithing), have a testimony, and be taught the lessons in Preach My Gospel. Usually a person can get baptized really fast. They come to church on Sunday we teach them during the week, and if they are keeping all the committments and come to church again the next Sunday then we can baptize them after church. Oh and a cool thing with Marilha. Every time that my district leader, Elder Christensen, asks them who they want to baptize them I usually can know what will happen. It can either be Elder Carvalho who talks to them and laughs with them and really knows a lot about these people or it can be me, who is oblivious to most things, and usually just teaches the first part of a lesson or bears my testimony at the end. By the way that last sentence was supposed to be funny. Because I dont care it is just funny.....well anyway when Elder Christensen asked her and she was like I want it to be a very special person who worked so hard to communicate with me, and it was me!! I was so excited, not that is matters, but it was fun. :-D
So about food. I basically never eat breakfast because I am never hungry and this is common among missionaries in Brazil. Because at lunch we eat like so much, so much, I cant overemphasize how much we eat at lunch. Usually they have rice and beans and sometimes some feijoada which is like beans and sausage, and they sometimes have pasta, and steamed vegetables and stuff. And usually I pile it on my plate. Eat it all. Pile my plate full of food again, and then maybe half a plate more. So that is 2.5 full plates of food. WE usually have some legit juice or guaraná which is totally awesome, and then sometimes we have icecream for dessert. Sometimes we will stop by a bakery for dinner and pick up a salgada. Like today I wasnt even hungry for lunch even though I didnt eat dinner or breakfast.
So the weather is pretty hot, it has started to rain just a little bit but they say that more rain will come. Whenever we are in the street there is a breeze and its not bad.
Well I gotta go but I am sending some letters today hopefully. It will be there in about a month if I do. mmmmm Love you all and have an awesome day!!
Elder Willoughby
Thursday, March 11, 2010
MY BAD!
K guys, so I wasn't suppose to include his email in the last post. His mission president wants the email only for immediate family. So please don't email him. You can write your little hearts out in snail mail!
Thanks for supporting our Davie Boy and respecting his mission rules!
~Courtney
Thanks for supporting our Davie Boy and respecting his mission rules!
~Courtney
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Dear Family and Friends,
Well this past week has been pretty good. So from the last time you guys emailed me a lot has happened. It was funny I think last email i said something about how everyone says i am so white. so when i finished there was this really black guy that was talking to me in english and he was like when i saw you i knew you were not brazilian. he was from africa but had lived in san francisco for a while. so we got his number and are going to call him. so my whiteness got us somewhere. oh yeah and by the way i still cant barely understand anything but they say that is normal. so last monday night we taught this guy named pedro who was telling us how he had had visions of the book of mormon being written in the americas with a lot of isaiahs prophecies in it. so he had already gone to church twice and to the noite mexicana and we taught him again on tuesday and baptized him that day.
ummm we also have been teaching jorge and damaris who are married. i cant remember if i told you guys about them. they were supposed to be baptized last week but he went to the beach instead so we had to work with them a little bit more. it is awesome though because they can support each other and stuff and yesterday they entered the waters of baptism also!!
Also there is this rapaz (young man) named Augusto who is like 18 and super awesome. he like goes to institute already and loves church and wants to serve a mission. He is in a ward where there are no missionaries so we got permission to teach him. He also was baptized yesterday. He kind of has a girl friend named Edwarda or something like that. It will be so legit in one year when he can put his papers in!!
So I kinda gotta go but I will send some pictures
Love you guys,
Elder Willoughby
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Dear Family and friends,
Well I am in Fortaleza, eh? Yeah its sweet!@ Sorry these Brazilian keyboards are really different and hard to get used to. Well I am in the Benfica ward in the Fortaleza Montesse Stake. My companion is Elder Carvalho who is from Sao Paulo but can speak basically perfect English and is basically the man. So I left Sao Paulo CTM on Friday at 3:30 in the morning, and got to Fortaleza around 9 oclock. We went to the mission office and the mission home for lunch, there were 23 of us missionaries that arrived that day. President Batt just lives way north of us if you go really far north on 5th west. SO At like 600 pm we met our companions and went to our areas that night. WE went straight to this one activity called Noite Mexicana where there were like more than 80 investigators. WE first watched the Restoration and then all the investigators went down to the baptismal font where we baptized them all. Jking but they went down to the baptismal font and learned a little about baptism and the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. We got special permission frfom the president to be there past 1030 and we got home at like 1130. It was so good and boy can Brazilians party; after the baptismal font we went outside and had food and music and stuff. We have like 50 numbers and addresses of people that attended. Oh theres so much that I want to tell you right now. Ummmm one funny thing is that a lot of people make fun of me because I am so white and I cant speak the language and I have a difficult last name. Ive had a few Brazilians say i look like joseph smith but its just because i have blonde hair and blue eyes. oh yeah and someone said i look like someone from harry potter. crazy huh? Alright so my address that you can send letters to and packages to is.
Elder David Scott Willoughby II
Missão Brasil Fortaleza
Av. Santos Dumont 1789 Sala 1612
Ed. Potenza, Aldeota
Fortaleza-CE
60150-160
Alright what more. WE shower twice a day just so you know. OH we are teaching lots of people. Rita and her daughter. Augosto who was supposed to be baptized yesterday but wanted to wait. Demaria and Jorge who are a couple and Alicia. Basically I dont understand anything that is going on. OK 10 percent of the time I understand the basic general idea of what is going on, but it is fun and I know it will come with lots of practice and making lots of mistakes on my part. OH yeah and speaking of making mistakes I bore my testimony in sacrament meeting which the bishop asked be to do. Oh yeah and the worst mistake I made so far was a different time when they were telling us that it cost money for brasilians to check bags but not for americans and i asked Quanto custa por uma brasileira? to a sister sitting in front of me instead of Quanto custa para uma brasileira. basically it sounded like i wanted to buy a brazilian woman and yeah. Oh geeze well i gotta go teach the first half of the first lesson to an investigator that came to church by his own will power yesterday which is awesome. Yesterday we had 10 investigators at church but no baptisms but we were supposed to have a few but they all fell through.
UM abraço,
Elder Willoughby
Well I am in Fortaleza, eh? Yeah its sweet!@ Sorry these Brazilian keyboards are really different and hard to get used to. Well I am in the Benfica ward in the Fortaleza Montesse Stake. My companion is Elder Carvalho who is from Sao Paulo but can speak basically perfect English and is basically the man. So I left Sao Paulo CTM on Friday at 3:30 in the morning, and got to Fortaleza around 9 oclock. We went to the mission office and the mission home for lunch, there were 23 of us missionaries that arrived that day. President Batt just lives way north of us if you go really far north on 5th west. SO At like 600 pm we met our companions and went to our areas that night. WE went straight to this one activity called Noite Mexicana where there were like more than 80 investigators. WE first watched the Restoration and then all the investigators went down to the baptismal font where we baptized them all. Jking but they went down to the baptismal font and learned a little about baptism and the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. We got special permission frfom the president to be there past 1030 and we got home at like 1130. It was so good and boy can Brazilians party; after the baptismal font we went outside and had food and music and stuff. We have like 50 numbers and addresses of people that attended. Oh theres so much that I want to tell you right now. Ummmm one funny thing is that a lot of people make fun of me because I am so white and I cant speak the language and I have a difficult last name. Ive had a few Brazilians say i look like joseph smith but its just because i have blonde hair and blue eyes. oh yeah and someone said i look like someone from harry potter. crazy huh? Alright so my address that you can send letters to and packages to is.
Elder David Scott Willoughby II
Missão Brasil Fortaleza
Av. Santos Dumont 1789 Sala 1612
Ed. Potenza, Aldeota
Fortaleza-CE
60150-160
Alright what more. WE shower twice a day just so you know. OH we are teaching lots of people. Rita and her daughter. Augosto who was supposed to be baptized yesterday but wanted to wait. Demaria and Jorge who are a couple and Alicia. Basically I dont understand anything that is going on. OK 10 percent of the time I understand the basic general idea of what is going on, but it is fun and I know it will come with lots of practice and making lots of mistakes on my part. OH yeah and speaking of making mistakes I bore my testimony in sacrament meeting which the bishop asked be to do. Oh yeah and the worst mistake I made so far was a different time when they were telling us that it cost money for brasilians to check bags but not for americans and i asked Quanto custa por uma brasileira? to a sister sitting in front of me instead of Quanto custa para uma brasileira. basically it sounded like i wanted to buy a brazilian woman and yeah. Oh geeze well i gotta go teach the first half of the first lesson to an investigator that came to church by his own will power yesterday which is awesome. Yesterday we had 10 investigators at church but no baptisms but we were supposed to have a few but they all fell through.
UM abraço,
Elder Willoughby
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