Elder Cooper Siebers has been called to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He will serve for 24 months in the Brazil, Rio de Janeiro mission. He enters the Provo, Utah Missionary Training Center on 10 July 2013.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

24. Madureira, Rio de Janeiro


This week was absolutely soul-crushing and reawakening. I had to relearn that anything can happen at transfers. Getting called to be a senior comp and a trainer after one transfer in Arizona was totally unexptected, and losing Elder C was also unexepcted. I had been told that usually the new missionary stays in an area with their trainer and then the new missionary leaves. Not the case for me.  The first day with my new comp was rather dificult. I thought I was receiving an experienced elder that would sit down and destroy the area book and get to know whats been hapenning. That was not the case. He instead asked me, so what do we do?...It was at that moment that  I realized I hardly knew our area, the people we had been teaching and all that jazz. great.  Most of the week was him meeting the people and talking with them about whats been happening. 

The second day (wed.) we had lunch with bishop. He explained all the struggles that the ward is facing, and most of it I understood, just because I've been here long enough to know what difficulties our ward is having. 

The loss of elder C really hurt our small ward.  Multiple members told me that in the past years they have had a BUNCH missionaries who don't know how to do much...  Elder C brought a lot of hope to this ward and things were starting to happen and the members were getting really involved. It was as if luke skywalker flew in, in his xwing fighter and started the epic flight through the death star.  Everyone was holding on tight and knew that he could make it, when all the sudden he was shot down. hope lost. Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but i think Elder C meant a lot to these members.

Elder P found our Madureira house absolutely disgusting. He just came from living in a brand new house for the past 8 months in the really nice part of rio to here, and hes been cleaning all week, and our place looks actually pretty nice now. 

Here's some good news... I gotta take things into my own hands. Last transfer I absolutely just followed Elder C. Around and didn't do anything. I am going to learn a lot this transfer which is going to be really good for me.

This week we had a lesson with J and T which was hilarious. J has awesome questions that are sometimes difficult even for us to answer. Like after the family is sealed and one of their kids decides to leave the church and such what happens?  Meanwhile during all of this T was reading in the plan of salvation pamphlet which I don't think he had really read before. In the middle of the discussion he slapped the pamphlet on the table and said something along the lines of, "alright, thats it, we all gotta get baptized".  Now they were already planning on this but now I'm certain that its gonna happen and it means a lot to them.




We had the ward christmas party on saturday night which was supposed to start at 7 but brazilian mormons are worse than normal mormons and even really active members showed up an hour plus late. We had to leave before the dinner even started but they sent us home with some food that I ate last night which was delicious. 




Also I got sick this week.  Calm down mom, its just a cold. I've been taking vitamins every single day so I'm a bit disappointed. The first day was just a sore throat, which went away and now it's just a super runny nose and a bit more exhaustion. I think I'm overcoming it though.

I have a lot more to share but this keyboard is driving me crazy...soooo

Merry Christmas! I'll see the fam on christmas. We set up a skype appointment with a member family for 6 pm our time. they have one computer and I'll let Elder P go first so probably closer to 7 pm our time.

if for some reason it fails, ill call

Love
Elder siebs

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