April 27, 2015

My week was pretty good, super crazy.

On Monday I was in Santos to get my new comp on Tuesday. while I was there I left with another Elder and talked to like 50 people on the streets…Santos is a big City and the people are a little colder.

People here think I’m funny because of how fast i can wake up haha. I hear the alarm and I’m already on my feet. I slept in the room with the new assistants and they thought I was crazy.

I am now Training Elder Müller from Rio Grande do Sul. He is a pretty cool guy. A little different, he gets super nervous… I think it’s just the new missionary thing. He is getting the hang of it fast. he is already talking to people on the streets, I’m trying to help him be more confident in the lessons.

When we first got home I did not have the keys so I had to climb the roof to get in haha it was funny.

Ever since he got here it has been raining a ton!!! Everything is wet haha

Solange is as great as ever! She was confirmed and is telling everyone about the crazy change in her life. a month ago she drank smoked and was addicted to coffee. She was full of piercings and used very presumptuous clothing. but now she is free from her old addictions and a totally different person.

We are now teaching a Rosa she has come to church 2 times alone. Which is rare here. Her sister was an ashiest and was baptized in the church and it changed her life. In her Patriarchal blessing said she would not be in the church for a long time, and she passed a way a couple of months later. Rosa has always wondered about this church that changed her sisters life so we are helping her now.

I also interviewed a girl named Bia to be baptized. She is a wonderful spirit. It makes me happy o be a part of this work 🙂

Love you all!!

Love Elder Winstanley

My new comp Elder Muller

April 20, 2015

KODAK Digital Still Camera

KODAK Digital Still Camera

So this week has to be a fast one because I have to go to Santos

Solange was baptized with her son. I had the opportunity to do the ordinance for Brayan and it was a very wonderful experience.

After the baptism we presented the choir it was our last presentation and it was in the praia grande stake (where I have spent more than a year of my mission) and it was sooooo good!!!! There were tons of people there…the thing I liked the most was that Maria José was there. I baptized her over a year ago, she was that little old lady that would kiss my hand and call me her angle. She is going to the temple next week… I could hardly believe it!!!! she is so special. The Lord prepared her to receive the Gospel… it really was something.

On Sunday I sang a solo at church that turned out pretty good. and we received the transfer and I am staying here in Mongaguá and Elder Hernandes was transferred… I’m pretty sad but after 4 and a half months I knew it was coming. I will be training again so I don’t know who is my next comp yet but ill go pick him up tomorrow. I was also released as a Zone Leader and I was pretty excited at first because after a year of that responsibility I got a little tiered, I am now a District leader, I thought that I would have less responsibility but my new district is bigger than my old zone so I now have more to do haha but ill do my best to magnify my calling 🙂

Love Elder Winstanley

April 13, 2015

My week was amazing!!!

I started off pretty sad, we had very little going, on Monday our plans fell through, so we went to contact people…it started to rain and nothing was going well. then we found Solonge at first i thought maybe she was just interested in talking to us because we are cute but then when we got there and she started to talk about her relationship with God and when we told her that Joseph Smith prayed to know the truth and saw God and Jesus Christ and that God would also answer her prayers she started to cry. in the end she thanked God For answering her prayers by sending us there. She went to church with us and loved it, she will be baptized on Saturday.

we also started to teach 21 new people and we are super excited about it

We had a way fun service project at this women’s house, the weather is so great here this time of year.

It is the last week of the transfer and I’ve been here for 5 months so we will see if I’m still here next week.

Love you all

Love Elder Winstanley

April 6, 2015

My week was also great!!! I gave a training to the whole mission about how to work with church members with joy…I’m a pretty excited missionary so it was pretty good. I made tons of people laugh and I think people liked it.

I have also invented a new sandwich that sounds crazy but is crazy good!!!! It’s with banana pepper and hot sauce. Don’t judge it until you try it haha. I think it was about time I ate something a little strange since I’ve been in another country for a year and a half and never really eaten anything strange.

I have changed a little bit about my mission. I’ve always talked about the gospel every chance i get but now I’m making the chances… we are talking to so many people about the video “porqueelevive” in English it should be because he lives.

General conference was so amazing…I took 55 pages of notes, It would take a long time to write about it all in the end the thing i liked the most was “twas I but Tis not I”

Love Elder Winstanley

March 30, 2015

O Musical “Vinde À Casa do Senhor” estreiou ontem, na estaca Guarujá, com cerca de 500 pessoas assistindo. Os noivos deram um toque especial!

Parabéns a todos os que participaram de alguma forma!

O que faltou nesta: a estaca não fez convites para entregar aos pesquisadores, conclusão, não atingiram a meta de 150 pesquisadores.

Élderes e Sisters, vejam como está a divulgação em sua estaca e qual plano eles têm para atingir a meta de pesquisadores. Estaca Serra do Mar terá sua apresentação cancelada, provavelmente, por falta de divulgação. Não vale a pena o esforço de ir até lá sem ter havido preparação para a apresentação – estaremos ocupados, mas não estaremos produzindo!

Com amor,

March 23, 2015

So my week was a little rough but ill live

It started on Monday when i went to a members house that sells hamburgers from his garage and he doubted in my ability to eat his biggest…long story short Elder Winstanley 1, 3 kilo hamburger 0 haha

I had a big scare this week, we found a snake and Elder Hernandes has never seen one, so being the Colorado boy that I am I pinned its head with a stick and picked it up to let him hold it…he dropped it and I went to catch it and it bit my finger….so I thought to myself…snakes here are different…I’m in Brazil ..and then I thought …”I WILL DIE!!!!” in the end it was not venomous

The reason the week was kinda hard was because the wonderful people we were teaching no longer want to talk to us…its hard but we are excited to find new people.

Elder Adukiatis (a seventy and a member of the presidency in the area Brazil  visited us and gave us some great advice. I really enjoyed his training’s.

On Saturday Elder Hernandes and I had an epic heart to heart. My biggest weakness as a missionary is that I prefer to get things done by my self rather than let others help me.. We talked about his diabetes and how we can be better missionaries together.

On Sunday i gave a talk in church about happiness and hope…everyone loved it.

all in all I’m doing really well 🙂

Love Derek

Conference Time                                                   English class

Workout

March 16, 2015

My week was way good.

We had a division with the assistants again. it was a good day. we made him work a lot but it worked out in the end.

Our ward mission leader had a birthday so I made him an oreo truffle cake with sweetened condensed milk and chocolate on top…it was way good 🙂

We have a problem with mice in our house and everyone who lives with me has a huge fear of them and the cockroaches…I don’t know if it was because I grew up in a more simple city than this or maybe the 4 years of killing mosquitoes that has made it so that i do not feel any fear for that kinda thing haha. I have successfully captured 2 mice…unfortunately I killed one in the process, the other I took him into the swamp and threw him in a grassy spot…I hope he does not come back haha

So I don’t know what the view of Brazil is there in the states right now because people here are pretty mad at the government and the whole country was supposed to go into protest on Sunday so we had to stay home…we did not even go to church, In Mongaguá i did not see much of a difference but it was kinda nice to stay home for a day…we organized studied and played like 7 hours of cards haha

it was a simple but good week 🙂

Love Elder Winstanley

The new Zone                                                       The sign says it’s Prohibited to Liter!

Catching my 1st mouse

March 8, 2015

My week was wonderful.

It started with a fun zone meeting, it was the last for 2 sisters and another one was having a b-day so we made banana pancakes and I gave my training, I’m pretty well known in the mission for giving good trainings. always pretty fun. I think it helps that I am an excited guy so other people have fun too. in the end I played a song for the 3 sisters and Elder Hernandes and I sang, it was super funny and it turned out pretty good.

My English class is incredible. I think it comes along with the me being excited thing, when I started there were 0 students and this week I had 22, people love my class. English here is something interesting, if you speak it you get paid a lot more and all movies and music are in English and people want to understand so they pay tons of money to learn but it is way hard if you don’t live in a place where you can practice speaking. But since people have such a good time in my class people are remembering and really learning.

The 5th is always a tough day but I did not have time to be sad for myself. Elder Caceres an Elder from Argentina was super down and he wanted to go home so I decided to do a division with him and I had him read 2 Nephi 4 and I helped him out a lot, I just hope he sticks with it, he’s only been out 4 months.

We had a family home evening with a less active family and they live in the middle of the jungle and the power went out. it was super fun, it made me miss the quiet Colorado nights. Here in Brazil you almost always share your wall, like there is no space between houses and stores. and with all these big cities there are tons of cars and it is always loud. so it was nice to escape for a minute.

We had a ward choir for ward conference and there are no pianists in the ward and I can read bass cleft and Elder Hernandes can read treble cleft and we both played one hand it was funny and turned out super good.

So Elder Hernandes and I were losing our minds without sugar…ive never liked sweets but i just want candy haha so the sisters bought us some diet chocolate and it was way good.

To say thanks and to celebrate women’s day I made my first batch of oreo truffles here in Brazil because the stuff is way expensive but they turned out amazing!!!!  The sisters loved it.

Then we had our transfer I stayed here with Elder Hernandes so that’s wonderful

Love Derek

March 1, 2015

My week was pretty good The highlight was Patricia and Layze, they both went to the temple in São Paulo and they loved it. I’m pretty sure they are both going to go on missions, which is the coolest thing ever!!! I’ll probably send them packages all the time. haha

I’ve become pretty creative with the boxes of milk here. They are made out of cardboard and metal and it is waterproof so I make covers for scriptures and planners and stuff and I glue pictures on them and then do a self-lamination thing and it looks pretty professional. I made planner covers for my whole zone and I bought bibles for Patricia and Layze and I made a cover for them as well…it turned out great!

On a sad note Patricia moved back to São Paulo, i think it will be ok but I would have liked to have taught her a little more to be sure she is set.

I have also become a good seamstress. It started as a joke that I was good at it but now people from all of my mission are bringing me bags and cloths to sew and I’m getting pretty good at it.

We are working with 3 wonderful families.

The first is Nelson and his family. He is the father of a member and is very cool but he is a bit of a drinker so we will have to help him with that.

The next is Estephoni and her mom Marisa, estephone is one of my English students and Marisa is her mom and she is 6’5″ its crazy haha. but they are super sincere and genuine I love talking to them.

The last family is the Picolo’s, they are the greatest!!!! it is a father and mother with 3 kids, but the kids are all adults but everyone lives together in their sweet beach house. They are great!!!! They love to talk and they went to church this week and they loved it!!

All in all it was a great week!

Love you all!!!

Love Elder Derek

Grocery shopping!                                                  Ward Mission leader

Patricia and Layze at the Sao Paulo Temple!

Feb 23, 2015

hey all!!!

My week was crazy. We worked super hard and traveled a lot which is always a little rough.

I got sad when i learned that Maria is not married just living together and that Dora did not want to talk to us anymore but the good news is Patricia and Layze still ere strong and were baptized!!!! Patricia is super funny and is an epic Harry Potter nerd. its funny to fight with her about who would win in a fight between Dumbledore and Yoda. She will go to the temple this week so that is super cool.

Also I went to a ward in my zone to do a baptismal interview of a family who was unsure about baptism and the spirit was so strong with all of them that in the end they all wanted to be baptized and they were but the problem is when we got to the church there was no water so we started to fill up the fount with buckets of water and after an hour of seeing that that was pointless i called president and he approved a baptism in the ocean (which was less than 100m away) and it was an amazing experience.

Love Elder Winstanley

Ocean Baptism                                                      Patricia and Layze