a little behind......

Life is crazy and busy as a college student. So, yes I have gotten a little behind on the blog. I will post the past 2 weeks of emails here and then some cute new pictures on a seperate post. Seems like Wes is doing incredible, he is a wonderful missionary just like we all knew he would be!

Email from March 31st...
hello everyone!!
i have to start off, dad thank you for your email! seriously. it got me way pumped! im pretty sure rocky music will be playing in the background the rest of the week! thank you!
Things here are awesome. seriously im loving everything. my companion is such a stud, and we are in an amazing area. lots of cool things happened this week!
i think it was friday, we went and ate in a neighbor hood called Chamonix. WOW.. so, this neighbor hood is in the outskirts of the map, but the map distorted things to fit it on there.. ha so we walked to this members house for just over an hour.. we thought we were lost forever but we made it! its a gated community and the guy at the gate took our visa numbers, our licence numbers and took pictures of us.. ha thats how rediculously nice it was. lots of the houses had their own futebol fields and all sorts of different things. but this community i guess is the 2nd best place to live in the world. because of the housing aswell as the greenery. the air is about as good as it gets. supposedly here in itatiba the air quality is good. the food was really weird though. ha but its all good.
We´re still teaching that couple celse and cleoniçi, we taught them the word of wisdom. we werent sure how it would go but it went so well. its amazing how everytime you have a lesson like that that you arent sure how your going to teach, i get reminded that its not me doing the converting, i just need to teach the truth and have faith, and the spirit will do the testifying.
We had our first run in with a crazy drug addict the other night. My comp only has 8 months in the field so it was a first for him too. we got off the bus, did a few contacts and were on our way home for the night when this guy came walking towards us saying something, we couldnt understand so we met him and spoke with him for a bit. he did the classsssic, pretend like i have interest in the church then ask for money to buy bread. (bread.. right........) so he did his routine, and we did ours. "sorry amigo we dont have money to give you, as missionaries we're volunteers we arent paid and we dont have money to give you sorry." so of coarse he starts his ahh what? i know you have money, how did you ride the bus if you dont have money? what happened to helping your neighbor? bla bla bla...... so we just said sorry we dont have anything for you, we didnt want to argue so we turned around and started leaving, at which point he got mad and started yelling at us. ha then it got good, he asked us if we were scared of guns a couple times, and then asked if we were scared of being kidnapped and ransomed!!!!!!!!! hahaha we just had to leave before he went completely crazy, it was funny. he hasnt said anything to us since. we see him just about everyday in the same park, but hopefully he´ll stay chill now.
General Conference this week!!!!! Wehew! it will be interesting to listen in portugues. ha im excited. we can watch it if we have investigators there with us but if not we cant so we have a bunch of investigators coming with us to listen to a prophet of god speak.
This week we were teaching a lesson is a neighborhood called Jardim Ipe, and at the end we always ask if they have family or neighbors that could use a prayer or anyone who is having a hard time. we were pointed to a neighbor whom supposedly had bad spirits, so we walked over after the lesson and clapped at the gate, and talked for while, but it turned out that she was just crazy.
This week has been really awesome working with our investigators, helping them get over problems and helping them with things in general and watching them grow, and change and become happier people. its been an awesome week.
My companion is a staight up stud. we´re having a great time. OH yeah, i just remembered, on sunday we had lunch at a members house and we got there and clapped and this thing came running around the corner and jumped up on the gate. not even joking, the first time ive been scared in a long time! ha seriously scared. this dog is the biggest thing ive ever seen, ha standing on all fours its head is mid torso on me. its was like a horse so we waited in the middle of the road for someone to come out. but it ended up being a nice dog. lunch was amazing as usual. im not sure how im not huge by now, i get stuffed full of food daily. but im fine with it.
This week our zone got an award for the most baptizing zone in the mission. also elder pedroso and i got an award for having certain numbers of key indicators in one day. its called Dia Fogo. fogo means big fire. dia means day. the word fogo is used here in the mission to signify work, or when the spirit is strong or things like that. sorry ha hard to discribe. but it jsut means we had a really good day of work!
anyway.. things are awesome here! im loving it! i hope everythings giong well! i love you all!
Wes



Email from March 24th...
Ópa!!!!
whass goin on??
things here are cool. just preachin the word.
things are ok with my health. i talked to sister castro deus at the multi zona and basically ive just been told to take it easy. but i got sick of that quick. im not going to take it easy for 2 years. so im just doing things like normal and if all the sudden it gets really bad ill go get it looked at. so ya its all good.
how are things with school out??
We´re teaching 3 people right now that are awesome. (not only three people. just 3 people that i want to talk about.) Daví, is 18 and way cool. he likes me a lot and is excited everyday when we go teach. he´s a trainer, and lives with his mom and siblings, and likes Bob Marley a lot. ha.. so i get a long with him well. hes excited about baptizm and his date is Abril 4th. The other 2 people are Celso and Cleoniçi. they are married and probably 40 years old. Celso is hillarious and loves us. cleoniçi always goes and gets water for us right when we arrive ha they´re awesome. but last night we went over and taught the atonement and we asked if we could start with a prayer and Celso said, yeah i want to say it! ha (usually people are very timid saying prayers in front of us so it was supprising). he started praying and just prayed for us. we started teaching them 3 days ago, and had taught 1 lesson before this prayer. we taught the restoration saturday, they came to church with us sunday and we went over monday for 10 minutes and tried to teach but Celso was way drunk and thought everything he said was hillarious and he wouldnt stop talking ha so we just gave them another part of the Book of Mormon to read and marked the same time for tuesday night. (last night). so,, this prayer meant a lot to me. this Catholic guy Celso just met us a few days ago, welcomed us into his home and loves us already. in his prayer he said, "God, thank you for these missionaries im my home. i knowyou guided them to my door. i know their work is hard and that people dont accept them but help them know that they are always welcome in my home for anything they need. They´re my friends, i love them, and they
will be my brothers forever. bless them with safety, heath, and love."
It was an awesome prayer. and it meant a lot. i know that we´re being guided to these homes. Its so amazing to me because there are so many people here but we are somehow guided to people like Daví, Celso, and Cleoniçi. its certainly not by chance. i know that the Lord is a larger part of this work than we know. im so greatful that he loved my enough to bear my sins and die for me.
Thanks for all of the love and support!
talk to you soon. I love you all!
-Wes