MINHA NOSSA! TA PEGA!! EU VOU SER UM PAI!!!

My life is going nuts right now I have no idea what to say!

We had transfers come in this past Saturday and I got a special call from President, and this was the conversation;

Elder Jacklin: Good evening President, how are you?

President Dias: Good evening Elder Jacklin, I am doing well.

Elder Jacklin: Great, what do you need?

President Dias: I have one question for you. (With exaggerated seriousness)

Elder Jacklin: What is it?

President Dias: Are you ready to train?

...

...

...

...

Elder Jacklin: ... Heh, what?

President Dias: You will be training this next transfer in Altiplano, are you ready?

Elder Jacklin: Ready, no, do I accept, yes.

President Dias: Awesome, but, ARE-YOU-READY. (He said that in English to make it more dramatic)

Elder Jacklin: ... ... ... ... .................... Yes, I´ll do my best.

President Dias: Great, have a great night Elder. Until later!

Elder Jacklin: Until... ... ... Dang. Well I´m gonna die.

So if you guys didn´t catch the message in the little story, I am going to be training this next transfer.

I don´t know who is my new companion, and I won´t know until Wednesday, but I am super excited for the new opportunity.

So right now I am in Manaíra right now for the next two days waiting for the Greenies to get here.

This should be very interesting.

I´m sad to say goodbye to Elder Souza though, he was a really good companion and he helped me a lot to prepare for this, this past transfer.

I´ll still be in the same area, so at least I won´t be opening an area.

So this week we didn´t have much happen, there were a lot of meetings this week and we didn´t have time to do much in our area.

But I do have highlights for this week though.

So this week I had the grand opportunity that very few Elders experience in the mission, and that is that I baptized with normal clothing.

So some Sisters in our district had a baptism and they only brought clothing for the person being baptized, and there were no members from the ward there.

So I had the closest clothing to white, so I had to do the baptism with my tan pants, so that was an interesting experience.

The other experience of the week, was that I got to speak with my family again and that was super awesome, it was awesome to hear that many people I know are marrying and that I will have another Nephew or Niece which will be awesome!

So that´s all for this week. I hope everyone is having a great time and having amazing experiences.

Until next week everyone, love you all!

Elder Jacklin

Photos from the transfers with my Pai and Tio and my biggest friend in the mission!

Feliz Natal para todos amanhã!!!

Wow this week was a great week! It was also super crazy to think and still is that tomorrow I will get to see my family again. Vai ser topy!!! Minha nossa, eu vou falar isso agora, eu estou na quele ponte onde eu vou começar falando e escrevendo só em Português, então eu estou com medo que eu vou perder todo de minha outra idioma. Now let me translate that; My goodness, I will say this now, I am at that point where I will start writing and speaking in Portuguese (without thinking), so I am scared that I will lose all of my other language. It should be fun for my family tomorrow.

So what happened this week we had some great highlights. The first is we were able to start teaching T´s family again. For those who don´t know, I don´t think anyone does, but she has been a firm member in the church for 1 year, basically a little bit after I came to Brasil last year. So her whole family is baptized in the church, it´s just that they are all inactives. One hasn´t been confirmed yet, whose name is J. But earlier this week we were able to teach J again and help her understand why she was baptized. Because going into it she didn´t know what it was or why she needed to because the missionaries in that time didn´t teach her very well. She had no idea about the church. But we were able to give her a lesson of The Restoration and she loved it a lot. We will start teaching her more and get her to come to church so she can be confirmed finally.

Another thing that happened, is we were able to reactivate a member who had been baptized two years ago. He has always been a fan of the church, he just lost the excitement to go. But we were able to help him these past few weeks and yesterday he came to church. He loved it a lot and said that he would start coming again.

Now finally on to the best of all of these miracles. We were finally able to get R that girl we have been trying to get to come to church for four weeks, to come yesterday. She was confirmed a member yesterday and is really happy about it. She has also started her Personal Progress as well, so I think she is going to stay firm, but just to make sure we will keep on passing there to see how she´s doing. So my family and amazing friends. That is all for this week. It will be another super lit week this week as well. We have transfers coming up this week as well, so we will see what happens there. So that´s all. Eu amo todos de vocês e eu espero que vocês tem um Feliz Natal, este é tudo por hoje, até o próximo!!!

Elder Jacklin.

O que esta acontecendo minhas pessoas!

What is happenin my people! It has been another fantastic week in Brasil with many miracles! Allow me to share some of the grand experiences of the week.

So to start the week out we had our Christmas Conference with the ENTIRE MISSION! That was a party. We started it out by listening to the Christmas Devotional with the First Presidency. Then we had a training about how we can be more dedicated in finding new investigators. For Missionaries who are in the field right now. Don´t give the person their space, don´t get to close, but try to be super persistant when you find someone. Be super firm when you are talking with them and use a strong voice and they will feel the spirit of your words. Like Elder Holland does. But that was most of the training for that day. Then the second half came, which was a huge party. We had a huge talent show as well. My entire Zone did a dance, that wasn´t very great to add on. But we were all still laughing in the end. Then we did White Elephant gifts, I got a new bag to work with, which I have been needing for a long time, and we took a bunch of pictures so I´ll send those as well.

So the next thing that happened is we also had our Christmas Party for the ward and we were able to get Ryssa, one of our recent baptized, but not confirmed investigators to come to the party. She loved it a lot and she loves the church a lot. The only problem is is that she has a sister that always drags her off to some place on the weekend and she wasn´t able to come to church yesterday AGAIN! But we are going to be as firm as we possibly can for this next week.

The next thing that happened this week, is that we were able to find some new people to teach. Two men named Antonio and Paulo who are really great. They have seen us passing by for a long time and yesterday we stopped and talked with them. They like us a lot and want to come to church with us this next Sunday. So it was an awesome week this week. We are going to have a lot to do next week.

Well that´s all I have for this week. My message for today is a talk from Elder Bednar which is called The Powers of Heaven which is a really good talk, which is more sided for Priesthood holders, but it can always still be applied to everyone. Because we can all use the influence of the Priesthood in our lives and for the lives of others. So that´s all for this week. Eu amo todos de vocês e espero vocês tem uma boa semana e um Feliz Natal! Tchau, até o próximo!

Elder Jacklin

Pictures from the Christmas Conference

I thought that this photo wouldn´t make it on to the computer, but believe it or not. Our phone has a way to do photoshop, so I made this little photo just to say Merry Christmas to all of my good friends and family who have always given me such a great example and many great experiences in my life. Feliz Natal tudo mundo!

Hello people!!!

Wow this week was a very interesting week. We had a lot of very strange experiences this week, we had awesome ones as well. So to start them off.

So to start off the week we had a man walk up to us and ask if we could read the bible with him. So we started to read with him and such, he really enjoyed what we had to say to him, but when we asked him where he lived, actually only I heard this. He said he lived in the prison and that he escaped from there that week... I have no idea if he was being serious or not, I hope not, but he didn´t give us any problems so I don´t think so, but it was a very weird experience.

Next thing that happened this week. We had the great opportunity of finding a Less Active that we had no idea existed. He loves the church, it´s just that he moved and he didn´t know where the church was in his new home. We were able to show him that we have a bus that will take everyone to the church on Sunday, the only thing is is that he wasn´t able to come on Sunday, but we will start visiting with him this week.

We had another interesting experience happen this week, one of the members here broke their cellphone when we were in their house, and I have never seen someone so depressed in my life about something so little. But her reaction was really funny. But she´s all good now and she should be getting a new one this week.

We had been planning to confirm someone this week but we weren´t able to get her to come to church again, but we will plan to work super hard with her this week so she will be able to come this next week.

Well that´s all from me for this week. I hope everyone is having a fantastic week with lots of Miracles happening. I hope that you are all enjoying the Holidays this week, with snow or cold or heat. Have a great week everyone! Tchau tchau!!!

Elder Jacklin

P.S. I don´t have any pictures for this week. Sorry...

Minha nossa esta semana foi um outra coisa...

Me desculpe mas esta carta provavelmente vai ser muito pequeno. Então não muito aconteceu em nossa área. Nos tivemos um bom tempo ajudando um membro com uma problema difícil mas em outras coisas nos não temos muito.

So now I´ll switch to english. This week in reality was a little bit of a drag. We didn´t have the success that we wanted to have, and it was very stressed with a lot of events going on. We had interviews this week with President though. I really don´t know why we have these anymore. It´s like 5 minutes of: Hi how are you? I´m good thank you, and you? I´m good. Ok let´s have a prayer. NEXT! Not much really happens anymore in these interviews when you have been in the Mission for more than a year. But it´s cool because it gives us a chance to relax a little bit and talk with the other missionaries for 3 hours.

Other than that, we had to help a member out with a problem she is having, that´s been giving us some stress but we are getting it resolved so that´s a big relief. We are going to try this next week to focus more on our work in finding people, because this thing was taking up most of our time last week. But we´ll be getting there.

So I guess I´ll leave my message now, because I don´t have much left to say. So my message is a very plain and simple talk from Elder Holland, it talks a lot about Missionary Work, but the point of the talk can be applied to everyone that is a member of this Church. The talk is called: Missionary Work and the Atonement. It´s a talk that when you are in doubt, or are having many trials, always have confidence in the Atonement, it will help you in all your trials, and if you are a Missionary, use it to help your investigators. That´s all from me this week, I hope you all have a fantastic week, I´ll be praying for you all. Keep on moving in the light. Eu amo todos de vocês! Boa semana para todos!

Pictures with the Hommies!

Beleza, eu não fiz isso em muito tempo!

Eu acho que é um tempo bom para mostrar meu Português para tudo mundo de novo. Eu não sei se vai dar certo por todos de vocês para entender mas eu acho que este pode traduzir para um outro lingua, então... No I´m just kidding.

But anyway, how´s it going with all of you! Things are going great here in Altiplano. So what´s been happening is I´ve received a new companion. He´s awesome, his name is Elder Souza. He´s from São Paulo and one of the coolest guys I have ever known in my life. I´ve never had such a good unity with any of my other companions as I have with him, except Elder Goodwin, but aside from that.

We had a good week this week, it wasn´t a week of new investigators, but we were trying to get someone that we baptized last week to come to church this week to be confirmed, but things happened with her mom and we couldn´t get the chance to confirm her this week, so we are going to help her out this next week with that.

So not much else happened this week and I don´t have that much else to talk about, so I guess that´s all for now, my message this week is just to express the challenge that I left two weeks ago. It has helped me learn so much more about the scriptures and what they say, and I know it can help all of you as well. Find the words that you want to know about then find the scriptures that have those words in them. It will help out immensley. That´s all for this email. I´ll put some photos up for everyone to see as well. Tchau tchau! Eu amo todos de vocês! Boa semana para todos!

Me and my companion

A street in my area