88th Letter 11-24-14

 

 Photo: Hudson Shaye Scott (Elder Hauck's new nephew.)

Dia de gratidão

What a studly addition to the family! Hudson Shaye Scott will be such a beast out on the football and mission field here in a few years! :) Ha-ha....I am so grateful for Heavenly Father blessing us with another angel from heaven. Amanda and Shaye you deserve the best blessings because of your love, worthiness, and obedience to the Lord…add others.

So...here in Brazil they don´t have Thanksgiving so unfortunately it will be a normal Thursday for us. Also, with me being the only American I don’t think I well have much of a celebration at home either. Maybe I will make a little turkey and mashed potatoes! ; )

This week was a pretty crazy week! A new chapel was dedicated and we got to help out throughout the week. We passed out hundreds of invitations, gave tours of the chapel, and posted up in a busy road with big picture frames on stands and talked with a bunch of people. It was very hot and I got fried with there being no shade where we put up the picture stands. But blessings! :) Ha-ha!

Another crazy thing and a blessing is that I don’t work in the area were the new chapel was opened because 2 of the 3 days we were there 2 people were murdered in the near by neighborhood...one was a knife fight and another was a 12 gauge in the stomach.

So on a better note...or a more spiritual note. Monday we had a lesson with Tiago and Patricia and we taught the law of chastity and eternal marriage to them. The spirit was so strong and they are progressing awesomely! We are even starting to organize some wedding plans in the chapel. Pray for them that everything will go well! They truly are a family very special!

Another awesome experience was with Rute and Gabriel. So Rute is Gabriel’s Mom and they live alone and have been investigating the church for a good 4 months now. We went there Saturday night and had a great lesson with them. We asked them how they felt about the church, the things we have taught and about baptism and Rute replied like this, “Alright, I will be honest with you guys.... (At this moment hearts stopped beating and wind left our lungs)... I don’t have any doubts about the church. I want to be baptized!”

Woohoooo!! The spirit testified to all four of us and Gabriel said, “I think baptism is cool!” Ha-ha...So we marked the 6th of December for their baptism! :) Looks like Christmas arrived early here in Brazil!

With it being Thanksgiving week I want to talk about the many things that I am grateful for! So here is a list with no specific order! :)

-My Heavenly Father

-My Savior, Jesus Christ, His plan and His Gospel

-The Atonement

-My Mom

-My Dad

-My brother and sisters

-My whole awesome family

-The Book of Mormon

-My mission and the people I have met

-The true and living church of Jesus Christ (the restoration)

- Opportunities to learn and grow

-My friends

-Food and sleeping

-Comfortable shoes

-The US and the English language…Ha-ha!

-Sports 

-Rain when it is super hot here in Brazil

-Churrasco

Well there are some things! :) 

Mom, I want to tell you how much I love you and how thankful I am for you! Also, thanks for the pretty pictures! :) Dad, I am thankful for you too man! Ha-ha…just playing! I love you! I didn’t know that Brother Reber served here in my mission!! Great to hear about Dixie High taking state but sad to hear about University of Utah’s loss.

Have a great Thanksgiving! :)

Love,

Elder Hauck

87th Letter 11-17-14

Photos: 1-Our crew. 2-The baby birds nesting in our kitchen.

 Dear Family,

All right, so this e-mail will be short, so I will say sorry right now....Nada muito legal.

So as you know transfers where this week and it all went pretty smoothly. Transfers are always a bit nerve racking, because if something goes wrong it is the Zone Leaders fault usually or at least we take the blame…ha-ha! But thank goodness it went well! In our Zone we received a lot of new elders. We still need to get to know them and everything, and tomorrow we will have our Zone meeting so we will get to meet all the new guys in the Zone. 

This week we traveled almost all week because of the Mission Council in Santa Maria. All the ZL´s have to travel to SM, which is an 8-hour trip on bus. But the Council went very well and we shared the subject of doing the Prayer Approach, an approach that worked very well in the U.S.  So I prayed and thought a lot about it and felt like we should apply it in our mission as well. President Parrela loves the idea and looks like he will study it a little more and apply it in the mission here soon. I am super excited for it! 

After the Council we had some extra time so I was able to go with Elder Silveira and visit Sara, a recent convert that was baptized in Santa Marta. She is doing awesome. She is staying active in the church and trying to be a missionary too! I was glad I was able to surprise her with a visit! :) 

A cool/crazy thing that happens when we have mission council is that all the ZLs stay in Casa Grande, which is a big house with a bunch of beds. So we slept there 2 nights and of course we ordered pizza and ate until we were knocked out with sleep…ha-ha!  So you guys can know we did this both nights...I think I gained my weight back that I lost. ;) Ha-ha!

When we returned home we got to work and were able to have some great lessons. This week will be crazy too because we will have a new chapel inaugurated (dedicated) here and we have to organize with the bishop and stake president, so it will be a crazy busy week!

Mom, so the weather is warming up and that means the LBS will start to drop... ;(  I am super excited for Amanda and the new baby! I will be an uncle of two!! Thanksgiving here isn´t too big. I think the only holidays they really celebrate here are Christmas and New Years, along with the other Brazilian celebrations. It will be cool to hear of the changes Amy will make in the next few months as she prepares to serve a mission! She is going to do awesome!

Dad, yes, a member here in the mission makes the scripture covers for missionaries. They are super cool! :) So on P-day we usually clean the house and sometimes play basketball, volleyball or goal to goal, which is like soccer but without contact. The missionaries here in a Brazil can´t play soccer. It is a rule. Here in Uruguaiana, there aren’t many cool things to visit…ha-ha! The missionaries in the Zone are doing very well. Of course there are some problems, but nothing serious. To tell you the truth about the sisters we have here, they aren´t a distraction. They are usually very obedient and respectful but some of them bring some drama to the mission, ha-ha! I will finish the mission strong! No regrets, right?!

Keep Millie alive until I get home!! Thanks for the sports update! :)

I love all of you so very much! :)

Elder Hauck

86th Letter 11-10-14

Photos: My new scripture case!

 Maravilhas!

So the newest news is that I will stay here in Uruguaiana with Elder Silveira as Zone Leaders. I am excited to stay here and see some more miracles happen! This city is very blessed and in the zone we are doing super good and are leading in baptism in the mission! Things are going great!

So this week we taught a lot more lessons than usual! We also were blessed with 4 new investigators that seem promising! One new investigator is from a part member family and he was in the Spirtism Church, but is seeing some lies there so he decided to accept the lessons. His wife was very happy with this decision! We taught him a little about the resurrection, because he believed in reincarnation.  We also taught the Restoration. He is liking the lessons a lot and even went to the ward activity that we planned! :) We need to get him married to his wife and baptized so they can get to the temple!

If you all remember that one young family that we are teaching…the lady that stopped us in the street about 4 weeks ago. They are doing super good! The lessons we have with them are incredible! They have awesome questions and are feeling the spirit very strong. Actually after our last lesson with them we asked them how they felt during our visits and they both explained how they feel at peace and happy. We testified to them that it was Heavenly Father manifesting the truth by the Holy Ghost. They accepted that manifestation. :) Saturday they went to the ward activity and loved every second! They have 2 kids and they loved it too! Sunday they came to sacrament meeting and loved that as well! Went perfect with it being the Primary program and they only talked about eternal families! What a great blessing! So Tiago and Patricia are looking super solid and we are growing a great love for them!

Carlos is a very sad man that is suffering with many problems. He has told us many times that he wants to remove his life himself. During our lessons he cries a lot and we try our best to help him out and feel the love of God. He went to the ward activity and I think it helped him a lot. The members treated him well!

Well, there is a little of what happened this past week here in Brazil! We are ready and faithful for the future success. I hope you all are doing awesome! 

Mom, I am glad you all heard of the great news about Amy! She will be a great missionary! Sounds like the spirit of missionary work is strong there as well! :) Also, sounds like Emme´s Birthday went awesome! I hope you told her Happy Birthday from Uncle Brad!:) I love the pictures! 

Dad, I would like a copy of your talk if that is possible. Ha-ha-ha, what a good story about Uncle Todd! I am sad to hear about the Utes losing. And dad I am sure your talk went awesome!

I love you all!!

Elder Hauck

85th Letter 11-3-14

Photos: 1: Our LMA bought us Xis! 

2: Us and our LMA ready to baptize 3: Baptism

Yay!

A great week here in the south! We had two baptisms and in the ward, in total, we had 4 baptisms!! It went super good! We had a good show up of the ward members and many non-members were there as well! Luisa and Leticia are two awesome young women! They are already looking for friends that we can teach. They always say, “Elder, she/he is 10 so she/he can be baptized!! Lets baptize him/her!!” It is super cute and of course the more people we teach and baptisms we receive the better! :)

This week we taught a good amount of people. It is awesome seeing the work move along. I love looking back at the numbers we had, or just remembering how just 4 weeks ago we were struggling with the work and now we are doing well. I know the work will continue moving along how the Lord wants it to. The Lord is truly full of mercy!!

This week I have been using part of my studies and extra time studying the Atonement. The more I study and learn the more I realize how little I know. Ha-ha, but I finally understand some key sacred principles of the Atonement, which have really moved my look on things, and desires. From reading and rereading Alma 34 I understand a lot more. Imagine if we didn´t have the Book of Mormon to restore the truth that was lost. The Book of Mormon is so awesome!

This week we talked with a man named Igor. His son is a member, and he wants to learn more and be baptized. He is an awesome guy and has a lot of desire to move his life around. We taught a great lesson to him and invited him to be baptized, as we always do the first visit, and he said yes!

Yesterday we taught the elect family again! Patricia and Tiago. They are so awesome! We taught them the Plan of Salvation today and they asked great questions! The spirit was so strong there as we taught them about how their family can be eternal! I feel very good about them and feel like they are learning great and fast! I am super excited for them. They seem to already love us after the 2nd visit!! :) What great blessings!!

So today we will have the Zone p-day and we will eat a lot of ice cream!! Elder Silveira and I bought 20 liters of ice cream and a bunch of fruit!! :) We will play basketball, volleyball, and ping-pong with the zone!

All right....so now for some news that could be a little upsetting. So I talked with President Parrela and I will be going home in March instead of January. But everything is for a reason so I am excited with the extended time! :)

Mom, so Halloween doesn´t really exist here. Ha-ha! I think the stake had an activity, but I think it is considered an American holiday. But we did have the Day of The Dead. Sunday we went to the cemetery and handed out pamphlets of the Plan of Salvation and explained a little about what we believe. That is awesome about Mason Paxman´s family going to our ward now! Our ward is celestial! Mom, I want you to know you have done everything that our Heavenly Father desired of you raising us children in LOVE, CHARITY and in the true and everlasting gospel! 

Dad, so the official release date is March 10th. The extra time is an answer to my prayers. I feel a lot more confident now in reaching my personal goals. The work is going great in the Zone! We had 7 baptisms this week in the zone! My companion and I are doing well…I am learning a lot of patience. He talks a ton, so I just wait for my turn and will talk when he lets me. Ha-ha!

I love you all so so much!

Elder Hauck