83. Rio das Ostras, Rio de Janeiro

11 February 2015

Well this was the pending last week in Rio das Ostras and it went pretty well. It rained like no other here several days this week which was awesome. We continued to work with some of our investigators.

X is coming along great and is on board to be baptized this Saturday. He´s 19 years old, dating a member and is enthralled by the idea of being able to marry her for eternity! 

On Monday, on our way home and older woman called us over. She explained to us about her son who is heavily involved with drug  trafficing and is causing all sorts of problems at home. She simply wanted us to pray for her and her family, but we offered to stop by the following day to help them out! We began teaching her and her grandson, 8 years old. Her troublesome son, hasn't been home these days that we taught, but we took a walk with him, became good friends and helped him pick out flipflops for his girlfriends birthday. The mother has been inviting countless pastors and religious preachers to her home to help her son but he hates listening to them rant about how he is sinning against God. In fact the first time we showed up there was a women there just talking endlessly at him, citing scriptures, ordering him to repent and such and he just didn't respond well... We decided to take another approach, show him that we care, became friends, search for the real issue, and then begin to help him change his ways. These things need to be done with sincere love and patience. I'll follow up when we see him next!

We also began teaching  a student from our weekly English class. I don't think I mentioned that until now. An English class began here last year and it was a huge hit. Weekly 30 or 40 students came and several people were baptized. When I arrived, Christmas and New Years were passing by and only 1 or 2 people came each week. We had 5 last week, so it's growing and I think people are liking it. I didn't like teaching at first, but I've learned some teaching strategies and now I'm actually really enjoying it!! I think my students are too! Anyway, we taught this student English for several weeks, just us and her.... Shes a spiritist which are difficult people to convert.... What's interesting about them is that they believe in a lot of the same things that we do about the Plan of Salvation. They believe its all a plan to grow and to evolve, to perfect ourselves and to become like God, they believe in Jesus Christ...but they don't believe in the ressurection into the same body. Instead, they believe in reincarnation. We taught the plan of salvation and well see where it goes from here! 

Sooooo now the part you were all waiting for. Transfers. Elder Evans, and my three housemates were all transferred while I stayed put! We had to leave Sunday for Rio and we spent the night in a small missionary apartment in Rio Cumprido with 30 other missionaries. It was a mess and one of the worst nights sleep I've ever had. The good news is Elder Neu is serving there and I got to catch up with him along with some other good friends including Elder Hammond. We spent the night  on a mattress and remininsced about good times in Gilbert until like 3 in the morning!

So this transfer was interesting. As they were calling areas and companions I noticed many whom were returning to old areas or with former companions. The pattern continued with me. My "new' comp is Elder Ribeiro!!! After just 6 weeks were back together again! So funny!!!!

Its gonna be another good transfer here. Caraval is on the way which is going to be rough, but well get through it!  Apparently some churches here are offering "Carnaval with Jesus!"

I love you all so much!!! Have a great week!!!!

Elder Siebers

82. Rio das Ostras, Rio de Janeiro

2 February 2015

Good morning family and friends! I hope you are all happy and well. 

So this week will be wrapped up pretty quickly seeing as we ran into some health issues that really kept us back, but don't worry too much it wasn't me this time :D My comp has been dealing with an ingrown toenail for a while now but hasn't had the funds to see a doctor, so when our payments came in this week we went there first. He got it worked on and it was UGLY. On top of that, we caught mad diarreah this week. On top of that our progressing investigators were abnormally difficult to get a hold of .... It was kinda a rough week for us but there is always a highlight. Two actually.

First is that we continued to work with a family that is on their way back into activation and we helped them with a move. We moved their fridge and other furniture into their new home, which is still on our area so we'll continue to work with them! They came to church Sunday and are coming along great.

So funny story this week. Here in Brazil the largest youth activity occurs during Carnaval. It's summer vacation here and its better that the youth avoid any type of carnvaal related activities.... So the youth trip is planned for next moth, but it's in Sao Paulo and kinda expensive. X had really wanted to go but the price was a bit out of his grasp. His parents have already passed away and he lives with his older sister who has two of her own kids and is single.... The ward hosted a fundraiser where members donated old items and they held a mini thriftstore on Saturday to help the youth raise some money for the trip. Well on his way there to help he found 750 reais in the street (Roughly 300 dollars!!!!) and that's enough to pay the trip and more! So nows he's on board and I'm so glad.

I love you all and hope you all have a good week!!

Elder Siebers

81. Rio das Ostras, Rio de Janeiro

27 January 2015

Good morning family and friends, I hope you are all doing well! 

I'm doing great. I was able to recover from whatever I had last week early this week and things are back to normal health wise. 

This was a very down to earth week. We had another Zone meeting in Cabo Frio which turned into an interesting activity. Each companionship was sent out to find one person and bring them into the church to have a church tour. The zone leaders said that no one could go home until we brought someone in. We said a prayer and 6 companionships went running to speak to closest people around. The chapel in Cabio Frio is located on a majoy highway, and it was 3 o clock in the afternoon so theyre weren't that many people around. Amazingly each companionship was able to bring someone in within an hour. We brought a man in who was leaving his work, which was a woodshop nextdoor to the chapel. The activity was to help us understand that when we are DECIDED to do something, then we will find the way to do it. Many times in my mission I've had the attitude, "I'll work my best and whatever results come from it, so be it", I never really DECIDED that I was going to have certain results. When we are determined to have a certain result, ask God for his assistance, and act, we are much more likely to accomplish more. I digged the activity.

This week we continued to work with some awesome people whom are coming to get to know the church through members. The members are bring tons of people to church each week and we are just doing our part to teach them. 

Not too much else to report from this week, but things are going well! 

I love you all so much! Hope you are all enjoying these winter days, the weather here is beautiful!

Elder Siebers

80. Rio das Ostras, Rio de Janeiro

19 January 2015

Hey Everyone, 

How was everyone's week?  I know mom and dad had a swell time enjoying the beaches in Mexico. It must be nice to sit back and relax. We got nice beaches here, but we don't even go near them, SUPER DANGEROUS TERRITORY! 

Anyways, so this week was pretty excellent for the most part. X's baptism went over swimmingly. Some of his family members were present including his older sister, who cried during the ordinance. She told X how he is setting an example for everyone is the family (there are 11 siblings) and shes already so impressed with the changes he's made in just two weeks. 

That was the highlight of this week. The low light was that entire day (day of X's baptism) I was feeling terrible after lunch. I fought it off the entire day because we had a lot to do. That night I vomited BIG TIME! I felt terrible all day yesterday and I'm still at it today. It feels like the same thing I had in October when I went to the hospital. Thankfully I kept the doctors note on medication so I'll bring that to the pharmacy today to take it again. 

BIG NEWS. I found out today that X2 was baptized!!!! I can't even believe it and I'm soooo happy!!! Almost to the point of shedding tears! 

I love you all so much. Hope you all have an amazing week!

Elder Siebers

"...that perhaps I may be an instrument in the hands of God to bring some soul unto repentance: and this is my joy" Alma 29:9

79. Rio das Ostras, Rio de Janeiro

12 January 2015

Good morning family and friends! 

How is everyone doing? I am well. 

The summer here in Ri odas Ostras is much cooler than Madureira and Alcantara so I'm just trying to enjoy it while it lasts. This week was caught up in several meetings in Cabo Frio. We had our Zone Training with E. Luque and E. Evans on Thursday. It was a great and inspiring meeting and helped us all increase our desire to do more. Presidents main theme is just to have us do ALL that we can, striving to have the most results as possible. President has really help expand our vision as to what we can do. 

My entire understanding of goals have changed while I've been out here. A goal is implemented to push us, to do more, to accomplish more. It's not always reaching the goal that is the point, but to have more success along the way. 

Everyone is going to work harder to achieve our goals and along the way we will find ourselves with more success, which is what Pres. Cabral wants. 

It's like an athlete practicing for the high jump. He places the bar at its highest level. While he fails to clear the bar attempt after attempt, when he goes to compete he finds himself jumping higher than earlier thanks to his efforts in trying to clear the highest bar.

In other news we had interviews with President as well on Friday. My interview was really low key this time around. President just urged me to push harder, to increase my faith and vision and finish off the time left with the most success that I've had yet.

We continued to work with X this week. He´s excited for his baptism and he's doing very well in keeping commitments. His baptism will be this Saturday and we've invited the whole family, so much should come out of the example of a 15 year old boy. 

We had some new people at church including boyfriends of members, spouses of other members, and we booked to teach them all this week. There is a ton of work to be done here, so I'm excited for this week ahead! 

If we don't take chances and step into the unknown, we may find ourselves ripe in age and discover that all the outcomes of our not taken chances have become eternally unknown to us.

I love you all so much and I hope you all have a fantastic week!

Elder Siebers

78. Rio das Ostras, Rio de Janeiro

5 January 2015

Good Morning everyone! Happy New Year! 

My News Years activities including arriving home at 9:00 and crashing at 10:10. I didnt even wake up once to the fireworks I was sooo beat!

So after one week, we got to know our area a bit better. Here's the run down. Our house is located above a members home in county of Jardim Marilea. Get onto Google maps to get a better idea of all this. We don't live in our area, and our area begins on the other side of the bridge that crosses Rio das Ostras ( the river that the city gets its name from). The bridge is about a 30 minute fast paced walk and that begins our area. The chapel is an hour away, and our main area of focus is closer to the chapel. To sum it up, we are walking a TON. Our area goes almost into Cabo Frio, to a place called Unamar. The area is beautiful, but we came at the worst part of the year. The summer holidays everyone comes here to enjoy the beach and to party. We knocked on many doors to find tourists, or people who were just spending the holidays in their summer homes... Its clear that we have to work through the members, especially in an area like this one. 

Actual scenery shot from Cooper, not Google.

Speaking of such, a Irmã R called us Tuesday night telling us about a young man who was shot in the midst of a trafficing incident. She and he husband work at the hospital and asked the lad if she could send two young men to give him a blessing. We went there on Wednesday, gave X (15 years old) a blessing and we've been visiting him almost everyday teaching him the lessons. He even came to church with us with his massive cast that covers his entire arm until his shoulder. He wasn't involved in the trafficing incident but he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. While conversing in the street, other trafficors (does that make sense) shot the 16 year old boy in the back and twice in the head. X and his cousin ran for their lives and X was shot in the upper arm. The experience opened his eyes, he saw death, and is now searching God in his life. 

intense. 

We also helped with a service project this week. We helped a member who is contructing a house. We mixed cement and carried bucket loads into the house for him to work with. I got BAKED in the sun. I will send a picture of my arm which looks like Neopolitan ice cream, white, pink and then brown! Way funny!  President said we had to use our prosylitizing clothes and they got way wrecked, but no problem! The project was awesome though, it's nice to get out of the routine every once in a while.

So thats about it for this week! Things are going well here so far. We have a lot of work to do. The ward is great!

I love you all. Have a great week!!!

Elder Siebers

77. Rio das Ostras, Rio de Janeiro

30 December 2014

Well everyone, seeing as I'm writing a day late, you can probably guess what happened to me yesterday, but before we get to that, let's recap my last week in Alcantara. My time in Alcantara came to a peaceful close as the week of Christmas passed by. I got to talk to my family which was awesome as always. As I have said before, that skpye call is always so strange for me, its like I just want to hear you guys talk and you guys just want to hear me! I enjoyed the musical number! How did caroling work out (this keyboard literally doesnt have a question mark button) Anyways, I hope you all had an awesome Christmas! In the last week in Alcantara we had a dinner at Shana´s. Pork Leg, Turkey, rice, beans, farofa, and a ton of desserts. We ate so much and it was good company. I taught the kdis how to play Spoons and we had a blast. 

So late Sunday night we were at a members house, we had dinner with X, recent convert, whose going to travel to Forteleza unitl Februrary, so it was kinda a send off. While muching on hotdogs we got the phone call that both Elder Ribeiro and I would be transferred. Turns out that was the theme for the entire mission. Almost every single area is being whitewashed. [Whitewashed: both missionaries leave and two new ones come in.] In our Zone of 8 areas. 5 of them are being whitewashed and only 4 of the 16 elders stayed. 

I stayed up until 3am putting my suitcases together, which is reaching their limits, SO MUCH STUFF!!!! I had to write detailed intructions to help the new guys work their way around the area, find lunches, and investigators and all that stuff. I woke up at 6:30 and we took of to Botafogo for our transfer meeting yesturday. It was intense to say the least. I'll spare the details. I was transfered to an awesome area. My two good buddies Elder Evans and Elder Luque were here together before me, and they stayed in the zone as the LZs but in a different area now. Without any further ado, check out my new area on google maps-

Rio das Ostras! 

This area is BEAUTIFUL! Its a big city that is settled on the beach. It kinda feels like Masquamacut and Hammonassett. [Uhm no- I think he is really stretching it to say that this feels like a Connecticut beach.]   I'm so excited to explore the area today! 

From Botafogo, a member of the ward called us and asked us if we needed a ride. HECK YES!!!! We pulled up, we threw our suitcases in his car, and we took off for the 6 hour trip! We were cramped in his small Fiat. but it was way better than bus. We darted through Alcantara, Itaboraí and Rio Bonito on our way here and the trip was awesome. I got the same feeling I get when taking our trip to the Weber Cabins, the highway curved between tropical hills and this part of Rio is gorgeous! We stopped in Cabo Frio as well to drop some luggage off there for the other elders!

[Looking at the image of the Rio de Janeiro mission , you will notice that he is on the most northeastern edge of the mission boundary.  Rio das Ostras is near the city of Macae on this map.]

So yeah thats really about it! My new comp is Elder de Oliveira, he has 4 months in the mission., from Natal, Rio grande do Norte. He seems like agreat guy and were gonna get along well! 

Elders Siebers and Ribiero in Alcantara.

I love you all so much, 

Happy new year!

Elder Siebers