Hello EveryBODY!

Hey everyone how´s it going down! The highlights for this week is that not much really happened but out of that stuff that did happen it was awesome! First of all Brasil beat Costa Rica 2-0! (#worldcupchampions2018). But this week we got a Baptism in! His name is Gabriel and he is a great youth. Just before the Baptism he asked me when he could serve a mission. He´s fantastic! Our work this week was a little weak because my companion got sick on me. As well as the Cup is being a little bit of a road block in our work. But we´re getting by. Last week we found 11 new people to teach. So next week we´ll be going strong! Well that´s about all. I´ll leave my scripture for the week, it´s Alma 56 this chapter has so many great points but one thing I love about it is where it talks about how if we do not doubt in God, He will deliver us from our Trials and Bless us. That´s all for this week! Tchau meus Amigos!

-Élder Jacklin

P.S.-What the what?! I had no idea Wyatt was 18! Tell him that he should do his papers because the Mission is one of the Greatest experiences you can ever have!

Baptism of Gabriel

Hour of the Game! (#icouldsleepintheroadandnoonewouldhitme)

R$750.000 photo right here

Hello everyBODY!

Hey sorry I´m running short on time so this email will be short. Everything is going great here. The world is going nuts right now because of World Cup and every time that Brasil has a game we are asked to stay in our house. So yesterday at 3 in the afternoon we were asked to stay in the house and we couldn´t watch the game! It was sad! We heard that they tied as well so that stinks. But what was so funny is we could tell when something was happening in the game because every time someone came close to scoring a goal the entire city would light up with yells, guns, and fireworks and by guns I mean like fire crackers and stuff. It´s just chaotic. This week is going to be hard to work. But we have three people that are going to be baptized this week and they are all fantastic. Well that´s all for this email! For those of you who are Missionaries and haven´t given me your addresses yet, I´m getting the next letters ready to send! I hope that you all enjoy them. This weeks Gospel Message from me is to study Alma 26 The whole chapter is amazing, it has so many things that have helped me and I know that they can help you all too. This is your missionary in Brasil saying, Tchau, até o próximo!

-Élder Jackling

Photos!

Hot Rod Baby!

I think I´m gonna die!

Waiting for lunch in Paradise!

I´m proud to be a Brazilian! (#worldcupchampions2018!

This is a Special Email

Today Elder Jacklin sent us a recording instead of an email. It was great to hear his voice. His mother will be informing him this week that although a recording is amazing, an email to family and friends is still required each week😎. He is doing well and enjoying his new companion. He is going to be starting to teach an English class this next week which they are excited about because there are many who want to learn and it gives the missionaries a chance to teach the gospel while they are teaching the language. He did send pictures though so enjoy!

This is what your table looks like when World Cup is going on.

Water...WATER....WAAAATTTEEEERRRR!!!! I want to Swim!

Só vai at the Ocean!

Missionaries of João Pessoa!

Where´s the Bowling Alley (#Jacklintheexplorer)(#ihopeyouguysunderstoodthatjoke)

First Place BRO!

What...In the world...is this?

Transfers to ´´Leadership``

EYYYYYYYYYYYY BOIS e MULHERES! Família! Muito tempo quando eu tinha uma email como isso.

How´s everyone doing! Good I hope, this week has been wako! This week we had transfers and I am really sad that my buddy Elder Kozlowski will be leaving me this week. I´ll be staying in Manaíra though. He is going to be a Zone Leader, and I´m the senior companion. My companion only has 4 months in the mission. His name is Elder Saldanha. He´s my first Brasileiro companion. This transfer I will be his leader and he is the leader of the District, just until he gets used to the Area. So I have the phone, keys, and responsibility in our area and he does the Key indicator calls and I do training with him at District Meetings. 

G was confirmed yesterday and she was really happy about that. We have a lot of new References to work with this week. It´ll be awesome this transfer with the work. I´m going to be speaking fluent in no time! I hope that all of you are doing well as well. I´m praying for you all everyday and I am hoping that you all are using your time wisely in all that you do. I love you all, Tchau Família, até o próximo!

Élder Jacklin

Photos Caras!

The Last Stand of the Four Americans of Manaíra and Tambaú

Goodbye Elder Kozlowski

The Four Greats (Goleiros)

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

...What in the world happened this week...

...I don´t really want to talk about what happened this week...(sigh)... I mean we had good. I´ll start with that!

We had a lot of Miracles happen this week. We have this one investigator. She really has no care in the world about somethings. She didn´t even mind feeding her baby right in front of us as we were teaching. It was a little weird, but we´re getting to her. How we met her was very interesting as well. I just knocked on the door and asked if the day after we met her if we could get to know more about her. She said sure and gave us specifics on what she would be doing. She said 2 o´clock I´ll be here you can come then and share your message.

So the day after we came and explained the Restoration with her. She had a lot of questions and we answered them to her satisfaction. We gave her a Book of Mormon and told her to read and pray about it.

The next day we talked about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She had questions about the Holy Ghost and the Gift of Tongues. So to answer her question, I taught the lesson in English and Elder Kozlowski translated to Portuguese. Her question was answered. That was probably one of the biggest Miracles of my Mission.

We had a Baptism this week. The man we baptized had been in the Church for 12 years but was never baptized. But finally he knows it´s true and was baptized and confirmed yesterday. As for the family that we were supposed to baptize. They aren´t married legally. They never told us that until we taught about the 10 Commandments. This is what I don´t really want to talk about. And now the husband is losing faith because he doesn´t think he needs to be married to be baptized. So we´ll visit him tomorrow and talk with him. They are going to be I know it!

That´s all for this week my family. Keep on working strong in all you do! Missionaries keep preaching the Gospel. I pray for you all everyday, I love you all and I am so happy that I could meet you all. This is all for this letter! Until the next!

Élder Jacklin

SEMANA DE BAPTISMOS!

Eiiiiioooooooooooooooooooo!!!! Como vocês estão, este carta hoje vai ser sol em Português, como este som?... Não sol uma brincadeira. Mas este- oh sorry, this week was really good! I don´t know if you read the title but that´s for this coming weekend.

Soooooooooo.... To start off the week we had a fun little day of cleaning the cockroaches away. Yeah, I hate them with a passion now, they ate almost all of our food, ok it was more of the ants that did, but anyways it was bad.

We had an activity this week. A Missionary activity! That Elder Kozlowski and I put together with a member and our Bishop. We made this to get non-members and in-actives to come and BOY did they come. We had 45 people there that were either in-active or that were non-members. We had a good spiritual activity and we played a lot of games. Then we had cake and soda after. It was a huge success for our work.

We had Zone Conference this week, we learned a lot of great new stuff. We almost had all the people from our district in the same Zone. We have me Elders Stratton, Day, and Daniel. We´re only missing Elder Geisler now.

Now for the goods. We have 5 baptisms marked for this coming weekend. Four of which we had planned, but then the other one came out of nowhere, and he came to us, instead of us to him. He´s getting baptized because he knows it´s the right thing to do and also the person he wants to get married with is a member and she will only marry a member. So this weekend is going to be amazing. Now I´m a little short on time so I won´t have the message at the end. Sorry... But I love you all, I hope you all have Happiness in your lives. I pray for you all everyday. Tchau! 

Elder Jacklin

Uma Tarde em Itália! Como vocês estão!

HEY! Hows it going everyone! This is your favorite and over exaggerating missionary in Brasil! Things have been going fantastic this week! We have had so much success this week!

So to start off the week I had devisions with the Zone Leaders on Tuesday. I don´t know what it is about people here, but they go crazy when they see tall people? Has anyone else had this problem yet? But at the end of the day we had pizza paulista, which was amazing!

The next day we had a BAPTISM! It went amazing. The person we baptized has such a strong spirit and she was very happy after she came out of the water. That was also my first time leading a baptism as well. Elde Kozlowski did the ordinance. Then we got to meet with another investigator again who I had given my Book of Mormon to to read. We got him a new one and I got mine back. We also had a great conversation with him as well.

So why I brought up Italy is because we apparently really like to do things that have to do with Italy here. My country worships your country Sister Miller. It was great! We had Italian food, we had people from Italy who spoke in Italian, which interestingly enough I can actually understand. But the best thing of all is that we got our investigators to go to the activity.

Yesterday was awesome as well. We got all of our investigators that could go to Church to go to Church. We´ve been working with a family now for a long time but finally we are going to Baptize them the 28th in the OCEAN! YEAH MAN! If everyone in the Zone can get Baptisms scheduled for the 28th the President will let us baptize in the Sea. As well as I had to give a talk yesterday as well. The best part about that was that I got people to cry because of the Strong Spirit I was giving off as I talked.

Well I didn´t make time to prepare a thought for the end of this letter so I think I´ll end it off with a couple of words of wisdom. I think these words can be of great use to you all who are going through trials. It´s in the Book of Matthew but I can´t remember where but it says. ´Be not afraid, only believe´ Don´t  be afraid in the Mission or at home or where ever you are. Only believe in yourselves and in your God, through faith in Jesus Christ that the Holy Ghost can help you through your trials. That´s all for this letter. I love you all and pray for you all. You are all my family and I don´t know what my life would have been like without you all. If you guys are struggling I pray that you can have my Spirit to be with you always. I think about you all when I do work and when I teach and when I study. I´m grateful for you all. A Gente vai la! Tchau minha Família!

Élder Jacklin

OPA!!! Meu Família!!!!!! (I consider friends as family too)!

Hey what´s going on everyone! I hope you are all getting these emails! I love sharing my thoughts with you guys! Things in Brasil have been going amazing this week! We´ve had a lot of miracles this week.

To start off we have 3 new investigators to teach. We taught two of them on Monday. They are really interested in the Gospel. We taught them about the Restoration and invited them to read a part of the Book of Mormon and pray about it. One we lost unfortunately, but the other read the part, and is starting to read from the beginning. I think he really likes what we are teaching him.

We marked a Baptism with one of our investigators for this week on Wednesday. She is really excited and is a very spiritual woman. She has such a strong belief that through Jesus Christ all things are possible.

We have also been teaching a family for the past couple of weeks and finally marked them for baptism this coming week. We also gave the wife of the family we were teaching a blessing yesterday because she is preparing for surgery this week. She said after that that moment was the most spiritual feeling she had in here entire life.

This week was full of great things. It was a time that I think I have given the most love in my mission. I thought that for this weeks thought I would talk about Charity. Earlier this past week I was reading in 1 Corinthians 13 and I love what Paul says about charity:

1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

13 And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

It is the greatest gift of Christ to this earth. I know that Charity is the greatest gift to this earth. Because without Charity, there would probably be no Atonement for our sins. Christ did that out of perfect love for us. Which is Charity, Charity is pure love. I invite you all this week, to find ways you can give charity to someone. Remember what it says in verse 3. I could give $1,000,000 to someone and say it is charity without having good in my mind. This is not charity. Charity is kind in all things. I know this to be true. I love and pray for you all always and I close this email and this testimony, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Élder Jacklin