Still alive, Still in camaqua.

Well, im still alive! The good news is this! 

Things are good. I'm working hard. This past week was way hard. We had a bunch of people drop us, which is kinda sad. Its always sad when people seems to be progressing so welll but the devil seems to grab them. 

This week we had more traveling to do. We went to sao lorenco again. Its a city that sits next to the beach. We had interviews with president, It was good! President seems to be pretty tired,, we talked alot about these next 3 months in the mission... Freaky, he started to make goals with me on what I need to do for the end of mission, and that I need to start making plans on what to do when I get home. YIKES> 

The work in the area is going good. We are finding a bunch of great familys. There's a church that sits next where we live that we are teaching a bunch of members that go there. Its pretty funny because they do family home evening. LIke the sing hymns, then have a message, then have a snack after... Pretty werid. Anyways, we got invited to give the message in the family night at the church.... We totally went... Needless to say its went pretty well. Nobody pulled out the bible to start a bible bash or anything. We were even invited back... I don't think we are going to visit again, but they are muito gente boa. 

This week me and elder Silva had amazing experience, We were having a pretty rough day. Everybody was traveling,. The sun was out. It was hotter than hades. Seemed like nobody was letting us in, we elder Silva said: Hey lets say a prayer? I'm sure that someone has to be home today. We said a quick, yet powerful prayer, then continued to our next appointment. The next appointment we when to, we had one of the best lessons of my mission. This family we are teaching, Christiana, and her sons and daughters, finally decided to accept a date to be baptised. after we left the appointmet, Elder Silva and I said another prayer, thanking father in heaven for the amazing lesson and went on our merry day. The rest of the day was awful, but I know that god truely blesses those that ask. I'm so grateful this experience that we had. Just another proof to me that god really listens to our prayers. God loves us. We need to talk to him. Its not old fashioned, or out dated. we literally need to communicate with the only person who really understands everything that we are going through. 

Love you all. 

Have a great week. 

Elder Heiner

Still alive!

Well this week was HOT. Again. Things are starting to get hot again here in camaqua. Its a good thing and a bad thing too. 

We had a great week. We are see the lords hand everyday in our work. Its amazing to see the work that is happening here. 

Well, remember last week when we contacted natalia? well Natália came to church this sunday. It was DOPE! She had a amazing experiance. Things She said that she had never felt so happy in a very long time. unfortunatly, she didn't bring her two sons, but she said that the next week she will. I'm way excited to see what happens. This upcoming week should be he baptism. 

So PUMPED. 

We also are helping the other young women that we found in rain. She didn't come to church this week, but shes keeping the rest of here compromissios. I'm excited.! 

We also are working with a family, named christiana, andre, and samantha. Well, they are just another mirical.

Thrusday was a great day... We had a super importante meeting in porto alegre....... with Elder Neil A. Anderson. Needless to say, we learned alot. It was great to here him speak in english... Yes I still speak english.. It was a little dificult at first, but I'm still american. haha. 

The rest of the week was just work work work. Elder silva is a amazing missionary. 4 weeks in the mission and already doing his share of the work. Love the kid to death. Before the mission he was a Personal Trainner...  Soo basicly he's teaching me how to get ripped. I'm tranning pretty hard in the morning. 

Things are great! I'm doing good. Working hard. 

Love you all! 

Elder Heiner

Re: Gente!

Wow, This email was formatted horribly. 

Sorry,  for the spelling and Formatting. 

Hopefully you can read what I was trying to say. haha. 

On Mon, Sep 5, 2016 at 2:50 PM, Justin Heiner <jheiner@myldsmail.net> wrote:

Well well then, 

We meet again. 

That famous word. 

Gente.

So many saying.

So little the word. 

Portugese is weird. 

This week was... Amazing. I don't know why despite how difficult this week was, I still feel like is was quite the good week. We worked hard. Had a lot of disappointments but still ended up on top. 

We started out the week with rain... We I rained all week... And its still raining. Went good. lhahaha. 

When I rains here In brazil the roads turn to mud. There are very few roads that are paved.... Basicly this week was dirty. We ended up buy a pair o mud boots because of how ridiculous it was. 

Despite the rain we had the joy of have some incredibly spiritual experiences. I'll tell you about a few. 

Thrusday we were knocking doors in a part of the city that is really spread out. Its a good area to work but for some reason, nobody was answering the door. Weird how that works right? Nobody seems to be home when we knock on the door... haha. The life of missionary. 

Anyways, We were knocking doors we it started to rain. Like really rain. It started to rain so hard that the street started to fill with water.

Anyways we were truly stuck in the water when This old man called out to us to hurry inside. 

Anyways, we entered and started to talk when him when this young mom around the corner, saw us and said "Its the Elders". 

Anywho, we started talking to here how she knew the elders and such when she stated to tell us that she used to come to church with her grandma, and when her grandma died she stopped coming. Anyways, we started to teach now. Shes way loving the gospel and every time we teach her her testimony and desire to be baptized keeps growing. it was such a spiritual experiences because I know that It wasn't by chance that this old man called us into is house. I know that god sent us to right spot at the right time. Its just another proof to me that god really knows his children. 

Another experience that we had this week. 

Friday we received a phone call from a man that lives on the other side do brazil. Anyways, he gave a address of a family that lives in our area that he knew and felt that we should visit. (this doesn't ever happen) anyways, we thought well weird but, whatever, lets visit this family and see what happens. 

Saturday afternoon it was rainning again. Really hard. And when its rainning like super hard we usually try and stay out of the street. Anyways, I felt that we need to visit this family, at exactly 3:20. I didn't know why, but I really felt, exactly 3:20.Anyways, we planned it out and stated to set out in the rain. We arrived at exactly 3:19, knocked on the door, and waited for someone to anwser. A young woman came to door, her face obviously crying, inviting us in. When we sat down she started to tell that in eactly that moment we knocked she was praying to god to send some one to help her out with some questions that she had. Needless to say, the spirit was there. Her name is Nat. Needless to say we anwsered her questions. We are going to visit her again tomorrow. I'm way excited to see where this goes with here.

Anyways, this was alittle bit about my week. 

I'm doing fine. This up coming week it should stop raining. Who knows though. 

Love you  all, 

Elder Heiner

Gente!

Well well then, 

We meet again. 

That famous word. 

Gente.

So many saying.

So little the word. 

Portugese is weird. 

This week was... Amazing. I don't know why despite how difficult this week was, I still feel like is was quite the good week. We worked hard. Had a lot of disappointments but still ended up on top. 

We started out the week with rain... We I rained all week... And its still raining. Went good. lhahaha. 

When I rains here In brazil the roads turn to mud. There are very few roads that are paved.... Basicly this week was dirty. We ended up buy a pair o mud boots because of how ridiculous it was. 

Despite the rain we had the joy of have some incredibly spiritual experiences. I'll tell you about a few. 

Thrusday we were knocking doors in a part of the city that is really spread out. Its a good area to work but for some reason, nobody was answering the door. Weird how that works right? Nobody seems to be home when we knock on the door... haha. The life of missionary. 

Anyways, We were knocking doors we it started to rain. Like really rain. It started to rain so hard that the street started to fill with water.

Anyways we were truly stuck in the water when This old man called out to us to hurry inside. 

Anyways, we entered and started to talk when him when this young mom around the corner, saw us and said "Its the Elders". 

Anywho, we started talking to here how she knew the elders and such when she stated to tell us that she used to come to church with her grandma, and when her grandma died she stopped coming. Anyways, we started to teach now. Shes way loving the gospel and every time we teach her her testimony and desire to be baptized keeps growing. it was such a spiritual experiences because I know that It wasn't by chance that this old man called us into is house. I know that god sent us to right spot at the right time. Its just another proof to me that god really knows his children. 

Another experience that we had this week. 

Friday we received a phone call from a man that lives on the other side do brazil. Anyways, he gave a address of a family that lives in our area that he knew and felt that we should visit. (this doesn't ever happen) anyways, we thought well weird but, whatever, lets visit this family and see what happens. 

Saturday afternoon it was rainning again. Really hard. And when its rainning like super hard we usually try and stay out of the street. Anyways, I felt that we need to visit this family, at exactly 3:20. I didn't know why, but I really felt, exactly 3:20.Anyways, we planned it out and stated to set out in the rain. We arrived at exactly 3:19, knocked on the door, and waited for someone to anwser. A young woman came to door, her face obviously crying, inviting us in. When we sat down she started to tell that in eactly that moment we knocked she was praying to god to send some one to help her out with some questions that she had. Needless to say, the spirit was there. Her name is Nat. Needless to say we anwsered her questions. We are going to visit her again tomorrow. I'm way excited to see where this goes with here.

Anyways, this was alittle bit about my week. 

I'm doing fine. This up coming week it should stop raining. Who knows though. 

Love you  all, 

Elder Heiner

'MURICA Day,

Today is 'murica day. 

... 

Only the best holiday that exists.

.... 

They don't celebrate 'murica in brazil..

... 

Quietly cry's in the bathroom. 

...

This week was just another week in the labor of the lord.  This past week was a little disappointing, but we got to see a miracle Saturday. 

The whole week seemed to fly by. This up coming week will probably be my last week in this area. I'm going to be really sad to leave, but at times we just have to do what we have to do. This ward is just waaaaayyy to good. All the friends that I've made here, the people that I've baptised. It will be sad when I have to leave. I just hope that It's not this transfer and that I can stay 6 more weeks. 

Anyways this past week we were just in the rush to find new people to teach. We spend a lot of time knocking doors. It was good but bad at the same time. We found some really awesome family's but, none of them came to church this Sunday... Which means we get to start all over again. Oh well, its all part of the work. 

Anyways, Saturday night we saw a miracle. for the past little while we have been visiting a familiy that lives in our ward. This family, the mom, and the kids are members, but that dad no. anyways they are passing for some serious difficulty right now. He has cancer in his cheek. The doctors say that he has only like one year left to live. Anyways, the bishop asked to pass by there and teach him and see if we could help him out. We had a lesson waaaay awesome with him. ON saturday we taught him about baptism, and he completely accepted it. The spirit was soo strong. He said that before He never really though alot about baptism, but the moment we walked in he felt like we had something that he needed. We have marked the date for this upcoming saturday. We hope that everything goes well. It was such a crazy experience and real testament of how the spirit can touch anyone. This man was incredibly cold to the missionary before, In our records, they told us that he didn't even let the missionary in when He was home, and now... We'll the lord always has a plan for us, and maybe part of that plan is that pass for some crazy things in life, but I know that the lord always knows what hes doing and he will never let walk alone. 

Anyways, that just about all I have. LOve you all! 

I hope you have a great fourth of july. A friend of mine sent me this photo... Describes my feelings today. 

Love you all, 

Elder Heiner

Ismeal and Lurdes.

Here some photos of Ismeal and Lurdes when they were getting married. 

Elder lima is my comp, The other woman is her aunt. and the the other Man in Nathan, our Leader the Mission the ala. of and of course the casual in the middle is Ismeal and Lurdes. What a good day. 

BATISMO!!!!

Welp, this week we had another baptism. It was great! Rogeiro, Ismael and Lurdes are all members of the church now and they can start to recieve all the blessing pomised to them. 

This week was just crazy trying to set everything in place. To make matters worse Its like we only had 4 day this week work instead of 7. We had a couple zone conferences, and then we went to the temple! I love the temple so dang much!!  Freak do I love the temple. I'm so grateful for the opportunity that we have to have a temple here in porto alegre. 

It's kinda weird though. This city has a temple, but It only open from 4-10 5 days a week. Pretty sad. The mission president has set a new goal to bring more people to the temple. Therefore, this upcoming week we will be going to the temple again, but this time to do baptism with our recent converts!! woot woo!!

The rest of the week we spent doing a whole of finding. I'm not really sure what happened this past week but we had a super hard time finding new people to teach. Crazy. I think It's the cold that is making it happen. This past week it got down to about 33 degrees. Everyone was flipping out. My comp thought that his hands were going to fall off. I had to explain to him how to keep warm when it gets cold like this... Weird to think that pretty much everyone here has never experienced snow. I think I would be quite the trip for them ahahaha. 

I don't have much time today. We are moving apartments today. We are going to be living with the other elders that work in our ward... Elder Rufato, and Elder Kime.... ahha, I'll be living with everyone thats already been my companion. It's going to be tight. I'm super pumped. 

This week I was thoroughly struck by the faith that this couple that we baptized have. Ismael and Lurdes are only 19 years old. We metem because they decided to come to church one Sunday, looking for help. They live in a house that is less that 10 feet wide by 10 feet wide. They have 2 kids, One Danilo is 4 years old, and Taylor, has less than 1 month. Every time that we when to their house they love our message, and when we left them  with a assignment or invite to do somethings, they always do 10 times what we asked. Ismael has read 3/4 of the book of Mormon is less that a month. something amazing for someone who has never read more that 5 paragraphs before.

The amazing thing about this couple is the fact that Ismael, he don't have a his left leg. It was amputated after a car accident, and lurdres has had a life full of difficult after here mom and dad kicked her out of the house at only 12 years old. They are going through so much, yet they are so happy and have embraced the gospel so well. Even though they don't have much, they are grateful for what they do have. 

Its amazing how the lord works. His work is strange at times, and difficult for us to really understand, but when we are will to humble ourself and really listen to the stories that people have, we can truely see the infuence that god has in the lives of people. Before the mission, I don't think I would have even talked to these two, Now, great friends. 

I know that God loves us. That he is listening to our prayers. He stands by us when we need help and send angels when we can't do it along. The gospel bring peace to our lives. Jesus Christ is our savior. 

Love you all, 

Elder Heiner