11/17/14

11/17/14

Well this week has been really crazy!! I am actually in São José right now which is really close to Flopria because tomorrow we are going to have the leadership counsel! I am really nervous because I don’t actually know what to expect and I don’t have anyone there in Videira to teach me what the Zone leader actually needs to do. I mean I get the basics:  write down the zone numbers, do divisions with the District leaders, do the zone meeting, lead and inspire; but I feel like there is a lot more things that I am missing.   I am hoping to talk to Pres. today or tomorrow.

Well I was pretty sad to say good bye to Navegantes but here in Videira it has been looking good! I have been drinking a lot of homemade grape juice which is really good actually!  I have been climbing up a bunch of hills!!! I took a lot of pictures these past weeks but unfortunately I do not trust the lan house here to not give my camera a virus so it is going to have to wait until next week!!

My companion is really cool! His name is Elder Mesa! He is from Argentina! He is a really humble elder and you can really tell how much he wants to be here through his prayers. It is truly an inspiring thing.

I am serving in a branch! It is actually cool because the church started not far from here! But it also means that the people are pretty hard but there is no problem with that, I am trying to butter them all up and make them laugh so that they can feel comfortable around me. Unfortunately the branch has had the frequency of 40 members for the past couple years....and the missionaries have been baptizing but the people aren’t staying in the church. If you guys have any ideas of how I could help or deal with this situation I would love it!! 

So the new people that I have met here!! Let me see one of the most fun people that I have met here was a recent convert who is 8 years old! She is really funny!! She came running around when she saw us and she showed us her cat...whose name is Dom Tom Mimi Hucela which means in English Dom Tom Mimi Spanich :P she is really funny and her mom is pretty cool as well! Both she and her mom were baptized but not her dad yet.

The other really cool family is a recent convert who is 17 years old. She is really cool and she is really trying to do everything right.  She loves to read so she is like already half way done with the Book of Mormon.

Ummm alright well now I am here in São José! I am actually here with my Trainer Elder Arine!! It is really strange to see him after so long and the first thing he said is that my Portuguese was a lot better ;P  

This town is really small......and yes six elders in one apartment is chaos!!! Well this week we spent one whole day just cleaning the apartment to give you an idea. I refused to kneel on the ground because it was sooooo dirty!!! But yes this time I have a bed :) Just not a dresser ;P and yes there are always exposed wires...this is Brazil! This area is way rural compared to where I have been working!!!  The church started here because the family (Blind or Wisse) I don’t remember came from Germany and they held the first meeting here in Ipomeia! They didn’t actually have a chapel.  The first chapel was built in Joinville which is way far way but still in Santa Caterina.  

I love you so much!!! I hope that everything is going well at home.  Know that I am here on the Lord’s errand :) I am so happy here :) I am sooo tired but it is all so very worth it :)

Love, Elder Pachner

11/11/14

11/11/14

              

Well this week was a pretty crazy week. I got a call from the assistants that I would be a zone leader here in Videira! I am ZL1 and I don’t actually have another ZL here to help me.  My companions name is Elder Mesa! He is from Argentina. He finished his training this past week so this is his first week as a fully trained missionary. He seems to be a really cool guys and he is already speaking Portuguese soo well! It is pretty clear so far that he is going to be a great missionary. We have 6 elders in our apartment.....yeah it is pretty much trashed. They are already searching for a new house because this one is soooo bad! But that’s okay it will all work out in the end, life in just an adventure and on the mission there is no lack of adventure. I traveled about 8 hours by bus to get here and next week I will be traveling by bus back to Floripia (Florianopolis)  for 10 hours just to go to the leadership counsel....alone...because my comp isn’t an ZL which is really weird.  But other than that is should be all good! I am now serving in the mountains! It is super hilly but it should be a good area! It is where the church started in Brazil!!! But it is still a district if that tells you something  ;P

This past week was good! I had some little difficulties with my companion but when I looked back on the whole transfer I realized how much I had grown and how the Lord had prepared me to take on this new job as Zone leader because before I totally was not ready. 

One of the sad things was saying good bye to the adventistas....they cried a lot...it was really sad. Saying good bye to Marcelo and Maeinha, that was super sad as well but it is soo true what one member said. When people enter our lives and then leave again they leave a part of them and take part of us! It sounds a lot prettier in Portuguese ;P but you get the point! It was an interesting experience.

I had one cool experience. Last Sunday was fast and testimony meeting and during this past week one of our investigatores commented that he thought it was strange that everyone bore their testimony about the Book of Mormon and about Joseph Smith. So I thought about that and when I prepared the training I prepared about chapter 12 helping your investigator keep the commandments. It talks about bearing your testimony and I also read a wonderful talk by Elder Holland called Missionary work and the atonement. It talks about how we must bear our testimonies about Christ! It was something that I realized. I can understand how others could get confused and think that we worship Joseph Smith because there are some people who only bear testimony of him. I learned that we must bear our testimony about Christ; that he lives that he loves us and that he is our personal savior! It was a good experience and I felt the spirit very strongly as I bore my testimony on the living Christ.

That was my week I forgot a lot of things but I promise that I will try my best to remember this next week!

I know that Christ Lives. I know that he loves us so much! Here on the mission I have the privilege to see that love change the lives of so many people. As a priesthood holder I get to feel that love as I give others blessings in his name! I know that Christ is the Savior of Mankind and that only through him can we be saved.

Love, Elder Pachner

11/03/14

Well this week was an interesting week. We had a good p-day. What we did: woke up, pumped the iron (and by that I do not mean a spoon), ate breakfast, then we studied for an hour and then had weekly planning! It was good and then we went to a buffet to eat....I was feeling really lazy that day....and then we went to the lan house to send you guys emails. It was great and then we went home and I wrote letters and then we went to a member’s house because it was Elder Nascimentos Brithday!!!!!!! That was fun! ohh and in the morning we smashed eggs and put flour all over elder Nascimento because it was his birthday :)

Then Tuesday we went over to Itajaí because we had to go get our bus tickets because my companion needed to go the dermatologist. Yeah usually we would use the ferry boat to go but our president told us not to use it so we had to get a ride from a member and we ended up losing about the whole day of work. But something cool happened as well. My companion needed to get his pants fitted so we started searching for someone who could do it...so we went to the first place and they were closed. Then we went to the second place and we knocked the door and this man told us that the seamstress (I had to ask Elder Young how to say that in English) was in the other part of the house. It was interesting because he looked familiar and then we started talking to him it turned out that he had gone to the chapel and we had been told that he was a member but it turns out that he wasn’t. We went by and we started teaching him and his wife (who is a member). It was just cool because it is an experience like Madison was talking about; there are just little things that happen and if we don’t pay attention we write them off as coincidence when really they are meant for something.

Then Thursday we went to Blumenau....it was super weird! It is the German colony here in Santa Caterina! It was funny because I felt normal! I didn’t look different than anyone else! The only difference is that I was a whole lot tanner!!  

Then Saturday we went to go teach our investigator who is marked to get baptized on the 15! We were going there planning on teaching the law of chastity but when we got there her whole family was there too and they wanted to sit in for the first time....so we changed it to the gospel of Jesus Christ! It was super cool and they really liked it! We had a member come with us and he helped a lot!!! I looked at him and I realized the difference between coming home from your mission and relaxing and coming home and still trying your hardest to keep with reading the scriptures. But he was awesome!! He speaks fluent English! He served in Chicago!!

But anyways that is about all that happened this week!! :) I love you all and I hope that you have a wonderful week :)

Love, Elder Pachner

10/27/14

10/27/14

Well to answer your questions I have now been in this ward for about 6 months.....this is my fourth transfer here and remember that I got emergency transferred so I have an extra two weeks here. It is a huge ward here! We have about 200 members!!! It is actually scheduled to divide here soon. 

This week we had some amazing, funny, a little nerve wracking, and spiritual experiences. 

Amazing: well we went to this investigators house and we were planning to teach her the law of chastity and then my comp started to get sick. He just said lets teach a quick lesson on baptism and get out of here so we did and it turns out that she is ready. We set a date for the 15 of November and she was like....yeah I can prepare to get baptized! I was like what??/  How crazy is that! She just accepted without a problem :) 

Nerve wracking: well we were in the ghetto knocking some doors and we came up to this one house and this guy covered in tattoos and piercings comes out and we start talking to him and it is a really sketchy place.  We are just teaching and then out of nowhere this guys walks up behind me and says to make me jump “what’s up American” and I was like I´m gonna die :P but then nothing happened and we walked in the guys house and taught him about Jesus. We told him to pull out his bible and he asked if he needed the Old or New Testament and his friend says “Wait why is there an Old and a New Testament. Did they change something from the old to put in the new” ....yup! So that was interesting :P

Spiritual: The other day I lost the cell phone.  That wasn’t  much fun! It wasn’t in our house or in my clothes and I was kind of in despair. We had searched the whole day and the only chance was this one member whose house we had been at the night before. We asked her if it was there and she told us that it wasn’t. So that night I got on my knees and I just asked for one thing I asked to get the cell phone back! As soon as I finished the prayer the other elders phone rang and my comp picked it up he was like “Oh Hi.... you found it! Great!”   I just walked immediately back into the room and gave thanks for the immediate response to my prayer :) It is good to have these experiences sometimes!

I love you all soo very much!

Elder Pachner

10/20/14

10/20/14

Well this week went well. We had some fun experiences. Well after emailing this past week I got trunky. I don’t know why it just kind of happened....So I decided to by chocolate because I was trunky and then we took a picture with my most trunky face that I could make.  :P

Well this week I got boxes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and letters!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Whaoooo!!!!!!!!!! That’s what I am talking about!!! I got two boxes from you guys and then I got a box from the family of Elder William....I mean I assume it is from them because his fiancé kept writing thanking me for taking care of “my angel” hahahahaha ;P It was really funny and I am going to mess with him and call him Meu anjo ;P (my angel) but it was really super nice of them to send me a box.

I went on a division with the Zone Leaders!! He was really super cool! His name is Elder Vauterlaos or something like that. I don’t know how to spell it :P but anyways I had a great time serving with him and it was fun to see how they work! They are really cool people. Anyways it seems like I have a curse with divisions whenever I go on a division all of my appointments fall....but it still went well and I found stuff to do! 

Unseen miracles!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well we went to the zone meeting and I was talking to Sister Gregory and she had just been transferred from Jardim das Acasias which was my last area and she told me about Julia an old investigator that we had been teaching. She told me that she is going to be baptized this next week!! She has been going to church now for just about 3 months!!!!!!!!!!  She is ready to be baptized and she said that Julia had remembered elder Schoen and I! It was really cool to hear about it! It made me feel really good because it just goes to show that not always you get to baptize the person but still your effort matters. That makes two in jardim das Acasias and who know how many others in Araranguá. And there will be people here as well once i leave :) I really love the feeling.

Um let me think about another thing that happened this week. We were teaching our investigators and my companion and them got into a little bit of a bible bash and it just started going bad. They had said that they believed the Book of Mormon to be true but still didn’t believe that the church was the ONLY church of God on the earth. So we started talking and finally we found their problem...I have no idea why but she said that we worshiped Joseph Smith and I got of got a little bit frustrated with her, but in the spirit kind of way.  I bore my testimony to her about the Savior. I told her about my love for the Savior and that I knew that the church was true. It was really cool and I felt the spirit very strongly. It was cool because the dad who usually doesn’t pay any attention to our lesson, well he was studying at the table and while I was bearing my testimony he looked up and listened to me. It was cool everyone got silent and the spirit was super strongly in the room. We promised that we would teach about Joseph Smith the next lesson and that then they would need to pray to see if he was truly a prophet or not. 

Every day I see the need to develop a testimony. Just mere faith in the church will not help you when the problems come. We need to have the foundations; we need testimonies so that we can build a house of conversion! It is so very important and it is just something that I have grown a testimony about!  I see members everyday who are struggling with various stuff and the answer is pray, have faith, and rely on your testimony to bring you through the rough patch in which you find yourself. It is something I love so much about the gospel! 

Anyways I love you all and I hope that I can write emails like this every week but it just seemed really easy to write today I am going to send pictures of my shoes ;P they are really different :)

Love, Elder Pachner