Re: Love From Home!

So about the Strike... I don´t want you to be worried or anything, and I know asking this will make you a little bit uneasy. But could you maybe put maybe, I know it´s a lot but things are going really bad here and they don´t look like they are getting any better. But I was wondering if you could maybe drop $200.00 into my checking account. I won´t touch it, but the prices here are starting to rise and the Mission Money only takes us about a week now where we are anyway. Because in my area, anything that is good to buy is expensive. From what we have heard Brasil doesn´t have anymore gasoline in the country and the Truck Drivers are going on Strike so there is no way to send Gas or Food to the Markets here. We are praying for it to pass though. But people here are saying it might get worse. But I´m still going good here and this strike has made me really skinny for the lack of food. I lost 5 Kilos in the past 2 weeks. I also don´t know if I told this to you already, but your 6´7´´ son is now a 6´8´´ son. And you guys said I wouldn´t keep growing. But all things are going great here right now. We just had a Baptism last week, yesterday actually. So that was really awesome. It was a little unexpected but we made it work. The girl that we baptized was super hyped and loved it. She was jumping around and at times it was hard to find her, because she would run all around the chapel, in the baptismal clothes telling everyone how lucky she was to be baptized. It was a sacred and really funny experience, because when we got into the water she instantly fell backwards as if that was all she had to do, but I caught her really quickly just before she submerged and explained to her after the prayer she would go under. She is great though and we will confer the Holy Ghost to her next Sunday.

This week was a really humbling experience for me. This week I started studying the Pearl of Great Price, and I don´t know why I just kept skimming over the pages of this book. It is amazing. I´ve learned so much from what the words say, and I feel like so much of what it said applied a lot with what I am feeling. As well I was also studying in Doctrine and Covenants this week, and I think the verse I passed was D&C 112:10, and it had so many prophound things in it, it´s just a small verse but it has a lot of meaning, it says;

10 Be thou humble; and the Lord thy God shall lead thee by the hand, and give   thee answer to thy prayers. 

This week has been a little bit stressed for me, but after I read this scripture, I kneeled down and prayed for the strength to have more humility in the work and to help me with my questions and I have seen amazing changes in my life here. As I have talked to the people I have felt more of a caring attitude in teaching and as I pray with Humility, I have felt the Spirit in me and it has helped me to find peace in my questions. This is a challenge I pass on to you guys. That you can humble yourselves more in your lives, and I know that as you do this it will strengthen you in all that you are doing, and you will be able to handle it with greater capacity. I leave this with you guys as my challenge and my Testimony of these things.

That´s all for this letter, unfortunately I don´t have my camera cord with me right now so I can´t send any pictures, (sorry dad) but I will send the pictures next week. Also this might be my last week in Manaíra. We have transfers next week. I like Elder Kozlowski a lot but I really hope I can get a Brazilian companion. It´ll definately help with my Portuguese more. That´s all fam! See you guys next week!

Élder Jacklin

As well as, tell Austin that I love him and will continue to pray for him. Also tell Finley that as well if you see him. I´ve been really thinking about them. That´s all until next week!

De novo uma semana boa aqui em Brasil!!!

Hey! This week was fantastic for the most of the last half of the week! To start out we had Zone P-Day last week. That was an interesting experience. It was a big water games day. So this P-Day with the Zone was actually kind of worth it! It was really fun and it got even more fun when all the Elders turned on the sisters and had a competition which Elder could soak the sisters more. Then we left because it got boring after that.

Our week of teaching was good. We had a lot of success with teaching, but not as much as getting those people to come to Church. We had I think 13 new investigators this week and only about 7 still want us to visitl. One calls us Angels, because she was praying that God would send her angels to visit and bring the truth to her. She is a very high Spirited woman. She has a bit of a problem with drinking and smoking, but she´ll stop soon. We aren´t giving up on her. We have four youths that we are teaching. They all listen to what we teach and understand what we teach. They are willing to study what we teach as well, but they have a hard time getting up for church. So we´ll try to work on that with them.

Yesterday was what was the real deal! We made 5 new contacts yesterday that are still strong, and we will be visiting them later this week. We taught them both about the Restoration and all of them want us to come back and teach them. Also on Saturday we had about 4 news but they weren´t home yesterday, so we  couldn´t do anything with them. Some of them don´t live where they say they lived. But all in all this week was really good. We had a lot of miracles happen. I would like to end this email off with a Scripture, it talks about Praying with Faith. When we pray with faith, we need to not just ask for the things that are troubling us, but to ponder and act on them. We need to ask and study it out in our minds, and if it be right, then God will show us that it is right through the feelings we feel. But if we feel something then ask God and we feel something different that gives us peace of mind to forget the other feeling. Then we shall know that it is not of God. That Scripture that I´d like to share and for you to ponder about is D&C 10:6-9. That´s all for this email. I´ll leave this off with some pictures so you can see what it is like here. That´s all for this email! Love you! I pray for you everyday! Remember that You have a friend here in Brasil watching over you!

Giants are walking the Streets of Brasil

Rocking it out in the Mall on P-Day

Dinosaurs Walk the Earth!

How do I look to you guys now?

It's a short one!

Hey I´m sorry I didn´t get to write a big letter today but I already talked to you yesterday. But I love you guys and I hope that you are all doing great still. Got to go! Tchau!

What in the world is going on here!

Things are just going WACKO for me right now! I don´t know what it is but the weeks are just going by really weird.

The start of this week was a major bummer. Petronio is really driving us crazy now. (By the way I will start writing names now). He is one of the most stubborn people I have ever met in my life. He thinks that the Church is judging him for not being married by paper, which if you know the story of Moses, you will know that it is a Commandment of God to be married this way. He keeps saying that Jesus Christ will save everyone no matter what they have done. And that he doesn´t need to be married, so he thinks he is not committing sin. So he thinks the Church isn´t excepting him because of it. But after a while of speaking Fire to him. We were able to convince him by reading the Bible that Christ taught about the sin of Divorsion and also the sin of Fornication. So he knows that he is sinning now but now he is justifying that sin. He thinks that a sin is only something that makes us feel bad, but does that mean a Cereal Killer isn´t sinning because killing makes them feel good. No. Then after more talking he finally told us that he wasn´t reading the Book of Mormon. Now we know why he isn´t excepting the Book of Mormon and the Church. There we go. I think we´ll be able to start helping him now. So it looks like things are turning for the better for him now. So we will start visiting weekly to read with him and study it with him and his family more and help him gain a testimony of it.

We had another investigator but we lost her due to the fact that she got carried away in something else that gave her ´´Peace`` so she thinks she doesn´t need the Church in her life, we had her Baptism marked to as well. So it was kind of a bummer. But we have two teenagers that we passed in the road who actually talked to us about wanting to be baptized so we are going to help them with that and we have dates marked for that.

Other than all of that, I think that´s all for this letter. Hope you are doing great as well. I pray for you everyday and I want you to know that when you are feeling lonely, know that you are never alone. You have the Holy Ghost, Christ, and Heavenly Father with you and also my Spirit will always be with you! Tchau!

Élder Jacklin