Hello Family,

Well this week was a week full of goodness, It was an amazing week. I loved it. We worked "até o pó" (until the dust). It was a really good week. Honestly I feel great about everything until now. I'm still growing and I don't know what to do in every situation but I'm growing and that's a good thing.

We had a baptism that was way good, I'll send a picture. We have some perspectives for the 4th and the 11th which are way good too.

I have too much stuff that it's really hard to carry it around on every transfer. For example I have a bag I don't use. Basically my big bag I just keep all the stuff that I never use. It's about half full and thinking about how full it was when I left, I don't know how I'm making it to every transfer with everything. I'm wanting to send home the stuff I never use. I've been trying to send it home for the last 6 months and I could never get it off.

I've honestly reached the point where I don't want to go home. Unfortunately it's an inevitable end that all missions come too. But if it wasn't for a visa, I would try to stay longer on the mission. I'm learning probably more than I will in two years at home.

There are A LOT of things I haven't told you during my mission. I've probably told you less than half of my mission and I want to apologize that it took me 1 year and 5 months to realize that I should tell these things. I'm not the best but I'm learning.

So, I can't tell you everything right now but I'll tell you one thing that happened this week and I'll keep telling things about the mission in other emails.

Right now I'm in Pedregal as a Zone Leader. I'm been here for about 3 and 1/2 months. One thing that I love from being a Zone Leader is doing Interviews. I did an Interview for a lady named Maria leidilane. She is married but her husband didn't want to join the church. He was totally against it but she went right ahead and wanted to get baptized. Her husband tried tempting her with coffee a lot of times but she held strong. One thing that I wanted to share was during the Interview, we were talking about her family and something really cool happened. We were talking about how families can be forever and I had the strongest Impression that her husband would be baptized one day too. I started to cry because I knew and I know that God loves this lady so much. It was one experience that marked my mission and it has been one thing that I love to do. I love to Interview the people getting ready for baptism.

My new year's resolution was to write in my journal too. so far... so good.

I had an experience just like that Elder that got hit but a truck, except I wasn't hit. This was about 7 - 10 months ago. I was in Planaltina de Goias and the buses there are crazy. Truely crazy. I've never seen bus drivers like the ones there. Well I was walking with my District Leader (who had already been my companion Elder Santos) and we were with the Branch President walking to do a visit with him in a place really far. Well,we were walking up a hill that went slightly up. We were walking and walking and a bus passed us. This street is a pretty big street and here... we usually walk in the street or close. In that particular area we had to walk in the street. The street was big enough for two buses going in the same direction on one side and two buses going in the other direction on the other side. A bus passed us and I just had a feeling to look behind me. Right when I turned, another bus passed right where the right side of my body had been 1 second before. It's really interesting how the Lord protects. He does that for all the missionaries in the whole world.

Right now we are working with Meiken (Mike). Remember him from a while ago. We could never find him but we found him again and he is doing good. He was smoking 2 packs of cigarettes and now has only smoking 1 or 2 cigarettes per day. He wants to get baptized. He told us "I got to get me baptized." We are working with him for Dia 4 de Março.

In our mission, we have two Standards of Excellence, a Silver and a Gold. The Silver works like a base line of the work we need to do and the Gold is the hard one. The president wants that 80%of the mission gets silver. It's like the minimum work we should do. Well one thing I'm way excited about is that these last two weeks me and Elder Giles have gotten Silver. But this week we went for Gold. It was amazing. We threw it all in, planned and did it.

I hope you like the letter because it's cram packed with information. Hope your brain doesn't explode.

Endure to the End (of the Letter)

Signing Out
Elder Barry

Dear Readers,
I'm sorry I didn't post Matt's letter last week. His day to write letters this week was on Thursday and I was in the middle of zone conferences. I forgot to send it till now. In my last letter to him I asked him some questions to stimulate his thinking. These are the questions:
1. Have you had the chance to be a Sr. Companion? It’s okay to tell us things like leadership opportunities, baptisms, teaching experiences, contacting experiences. I love to hear those types of things. I feel you purposely don’t tell us the good things you do. It isn’t bragging.

2.Tell me when you felt the spirit this week and the events surrounding it.

3. Tell me a funny experience

4.What do you do on preparation day? Our missionaries have to wash the car and sometimes wax it. You don’t have that responsibility. What is it like to go food shopping? What are the stores like?

5.How are you feeling?

6.Tell us the everyday activities of a Brazilian. Do they have siestas? What is unusual that we don’t do in the states?

I felt that you needed to know the questions because he answers them randomly with no explanation. It's a trick to figure out where he is going. I'm grateful for the juicy letter. Mom/Marilyn


Dear Fam,

Today we don't have a lot of time because in 20 mins we need to leave because my companion needs to do an interview. So, I'm sorry if I don't get everything responded to because I still need to write president.

Elder Giles has been in the pageant and his dad is the director of the pageant. So he knows exactly what you are talking about. Me, I'm still a little bit clueless.

(Matt's comp is from Castle Dale so I told him in the last letter about the pageant there and the times we went to it - Mom)

Sorry for not saying anything for the last while about it. I just don't like to talk about it... but if you want to know about it I will tell you.

I've been a senior since about May. It's been a new experience. It's been pretty cool to teach and take the lead in some lesson but honestly, I have so much to change. My new companion, Elder Giles, has shown me a whole bunch of stuff that I can do to become better from the way I talk to people to the way we teach. I used to teach a little like a robot. I've been working on overcoming that and learning on how to really teach people.We had a really good lesson with a man named Sávio. He is really good. The only problem is that he has a broken foot. It's been broken for about 1 month and he is having a hard time going to church because of it. But the first lesson with him this last week was amazing. We saw him driving a car yesterday so that's a good sign. We will see what's going to happen there.

We had a meeting with President Geartner on Monday, (which is the reason why I'm writing today.) and it was really good. He talked to us about helping others around us and living by example. Teaching by example and being a better example are somethings that I want to strive for plus doing better contacts and meet more people and not being afraid.

Funny experience, Well not funny but good. We ate at Burger King today. It was sooooo good.

On preparationg day we email, write letter and clean the house and sleep. Maybe study. Eat at burger king. Do some fun activities. Food shopping is just like a grocery store. Nothing different. It's big and cool and has food inside. I think that's how it is in the states. I usually eat oatmeal, milk and chocolate mix in the milk. It's way good.

I'm feeling good. Honestly. I have a lot to get better at and it's overwhelming sometimes all the things that need to be done in missionary work. You know how I'm antsy about the future. I just need to take things step by step. Other than that I'm great. I need to follow the counsel in 3 Néfi when it says focus on today and don't worry about tomorrow.

An unusual thing about Brazil is all the houses are tiles. There is no carpet and to clean you just throw water, soap, scrub with a broom and then use a squigee to take all the water out. That's something different. Also the showers only have one setting, cold. To take a warm shower you need to buy a shower head that is hooked up to the electricity and when the water passes through, it warms up. It's just a little bit different. Our water heater you usually don't see. Also they are supposed to have building permits to build stuff... but... they usually overpass that and just build. So it ends up with some pretty cool building. But they are sometimes strange.

I have make a goal to study the missionary manual to be more obedient. I've been studying in depth so I read all the scriptures and follow references and everything. I've read about 5 pages in 4 days. somewhere around that time. I also have a goal to study more of Preach my Gospel because that is something that has been lacking. The last time I studied all the way through was about a year ago. So I need to focus again and learn something more. I also want to learn more scripture references and read the Bible , D&C and Pearl of Great Price and the Book of Mormon in Spanish before the end of my mission. It's a lot of goals but I know when I plan I can do them. I'm way excited this year to learn more about everything. Knowledge is a Christ-like attribute and through this I can accompish more Christ-like attributes. It's going to be an amazing year. I'm excited.

I just want to challenge every single one of you to pick a spiritual goal like reading the scriptures everyday or studying Preach my Gospel. Or read and study the bible. Or read one of the Teaching of the Prophets books. The gospel principles book is a goody. I know we can all strive to gain more knowledge about how we can help others and helps ourselves. After you gain the knowledge. Apply it.

I Love you

Endure to the End

Signing Out
Elder Barry

New Year

FELIZ ANO NOVO!!!! FELIZ DOIS MIL E DOZE (2012)

Querido Família, (Dear Family)

Eu Amo Vocês!!! (I love you)

It was so great to see you (almost) all on Christmas and I hope that everyone is having a wonderful New Year.

One thing strange or awesome about Brasil is that there were A LOT of Fireworks on new years. I woke up, watched a little bit and couldn't go back to sleep because it was so loud. It was a cool experience. I was actually surprised with how many fireworks there were. I'm in a poorer area and I was surprised with how many fireworks people bought.

I wrote a whole bunch of notes on my patriarchal blessing, now I need to go back and review them because there is a lot of things there that I can learn from and grow from.

New years was a day like any other day for me. Only difference is that we woke up around mid night to look at the fireworks. But honestly, people are a lot happier here during Christmas and New Years. I hope it lasts.

I think the biggest difference for me is that my plans now need to include what is going to happen after the mission. It's strange to think that in 7 months, everything isn't planned for me. I need to actually plan 100% of my days. I'm so excited to do love gifts for next year. I'm already planning something awesome.

So for transfers, I stayed in the same area and got a new companion, His name is Elder Giles and he's also from Utah. He's from Castle dale (try finding that on a map.) He is actually in my same group. We will be going home together and we are way excited to work together.

I love Lehi's dream and thanks on the insights. I find that the best way we learn is sharing what we learned. Something cool that I learn this week was in church. We learned about the mission of the church. The mission is to invited all to come unto Christ. We learned about three over lapping circles 1. Missionary work 2. Perfecting the saints 3. Work for the Dead. These three circles overlap in a way that when we are doing missionary work, we are becoming more perfected. When we are doing the work for the dead we are becoming more perfected and helping missionary work. When we become more perfect, we have a desire to serve others and help in missionary work and go to the temple. So you could say that we should have some goals as members of the church. 1. Help the missionary work 2. Go the the temple and do work for the dead 3. Become Perfect.

I loved this lesson we had in church. I hope you all can learn from it too.


I love you and hope everything is going wonderfully good.

Do what is right.

Endure to the End

Signing Out
Elder Barry