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.

Monday, June 9, 2014

48. Itaborai, Rio de Janeiro

9 June 2014

Hey everyone!

It feels like such a long time since I've sat down to write you all. My world has had a sufficient amount of temporal changes as I left my beloved Madureira and arrived here in Itaboraí! I got the call that I would be training and opening a new area, a task that scared me a bit at first, but I know the Lord is in control. I picked up my new missionary on Tuesday afternoon, Elder S is his name,. He´s from São Paulo and hes a really cool guy. He's probably one of the most down to earth guys I have ever met! He's also a convert of about 5 years and is excited about serving.

We made a horrifying journey with 3 suitcases and 4 bags. We hopped onto a crowded bus and stood uncomfortably for 2 hours. We crossed the Nitiroí bridge which connects Rio and Nitiroí. We watched Pão de Açúcar and Cristo Rendentor fade away as we made our way here. My novinhos (greenie or newbie) suitcase got utterly destroyed during the journey and it was pretty rough. A tip for Qp and Parker, don't bring those suitcases with four wheels...they WILL break. We got to our area which has a decent amount of cobblestone and it tore down my heavier suitcase pretty well... but better than having the wheels come off entirely like my comp.


itaborai 5000m2 site pacheco - plots in Itaboraí images - 02
Coops did not actually send this photo, but according to Google, this horse lives in Itaborai.


Anyway we are living with the Zone Leaders, Elder M and Elder VW, and they are both awesome. They found out the night before that two new missionaries were moving in so they had to move some stuff around with almost no notice. We were down one mattress until Saturday so each of us got to spend a night on a wooden box. It was one of the worst nights of my life. 

This week we got to meet some of the members, we did some service for a couple in the ward who needed help moving. We started to explore our new area which is nothing like Madureira. I left with Elder VW one day to visit our investigators and do the trade off. We didn't have any luck and up until now we've only gotten to meet with one of the four. Talk about bad luck, but we'll continue. Opening an area is not easy, we spent almost all week just walking on random roads, getting to know the area, knocking on doors, doing a bunch of contacts. We picked up about 35 addresses this week so with more time the area will begin to grow and well have a solid teaching pool. 

Sunday we had stake conference and there was a church broadcast for all the stakes in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Elder Ballard and Elder Scott talked.... in Portuguese! It was awesome! Elder Ballard talked about technology and pornography and Elder Scott talked about prayer. 

We had a ward Family Home Evening that night also to help the ward attend a baptism for the Zone Leaders. This is an awesome ward and they all seem really excited to have two more Elders. 

That's all I have for now, I have a ton of emails to reply to and not a lot of time.  Have patience with me as I respond to as many as possible, I love you guys! 

Enjoy the World Cup, on the 12th we've been ordered to stay inside all day!

Elder Siebers

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