The week my faith grew a lot more! (Week 29)

Fazenda Rio Grande - Semana 6

I am so happy this last week Willian decided to be baptized!!! He was so so so happy afterward he couldn't describe his feelings! His nephew actually baptized him too !!! 

These past weeks have been a trial of our faith for sure and a little bit of pushing past being so tired from the sun and knocking doors like crazy! Really we had some really cool experiences these weeks but mostly this past week. We taught more than we have in a long time with more than 30 lessons in one week and plus a baptism! I am so happy to see that when we put our trust in the lord and are worthy and ready to serve with all your heart Heavenly Father will open doors that you can't even imagine you could see happen! First, we passed almost all of our goals this week! I think for everyday we knocked doors for 2-3 hours and just taught but also taught with something we call listening with the Holy Ghost and teaching what the person needs at that very moment in time. We have found that Teaching directly through the book of Mormon people have a desire to learn more and more and are able to understand everything if not the first time but the second time reading. We have seen progress in our testimonies as well with our investigators in so many ways! 

its short today but I am so honored to be a servant of my Heavenly Father representing his Son Jesus Christ on the earth in Curitiba Brazil. Today we had a chance to serve on a pday. To be honest I got this phone call and I did not want to help on a pday butttttt when we were serving I felt a joy I couldn't feel sitting in the house doing nothing. I got to serve my Heavenly Father by responding to a last minute phone call to help an older couple move. They are trying to come back to church and now they have a motive to return. I am grateful Heavenly Father gave me the chance to serve his children today!!! Love you all!

-Elder Hammond  

New Ties for Bryson's Birthday! (He asked for ties and a Rubix Cube) Happy Birthday, Bryson! 😀💥He should have received other items I mailed to him also. He didn't send pictures, of those items, so I'll have to ask in his next email if he got our other gifts too....or if they were stolen. 😩 Good to see he received his gifts from home finally! About 1.5 weeks after his birthday sadly. So hard for parents in the states, to get packages to our missionaries in a timely manner. These were in Brazil in time, but you can't control how fast packages and letters move. Takes about 3.5 weeks or MORE for him to receive packages to the mission home.😒 That doesn't include how much time or how many weeks that will take for him to get to the mission home, to even pick up any packages. By city transportation, it takes Bryson 1.5 hours one way to reach the mission home/office. So he doesn't get to go often. From what I can tell, monthly.... So if his packages or mail barely miss him visiting the office, it will sit and wait till he can come back, or someone can make the extra effort to take these things to him. - Amy Hammond
Aka Bryson's Mom 

Oí Everybody Fazenda Rio Grande Semana 4-5 (Hi Everybody Fazenda Rio Grande Week 4-5) *Week 28

So first sorry i didn't have time to send a big email to everybody last week. It was my birthday so i had a lot of time talking to my family for my birthday!

I have had a lot of things that have gone on these past two weeks with a lot of experiences and a lot of just the normal. One thing that happened is that my friends Elder Sousa and Elder Goes have now gotten a home closer to their area now. Well actually its in their area which means now we have a house that is huge for just two missionaries lol. But this week we have had our investigators really really progress by either going to church or they are understanding everything we teach them and literally throwing out the coffee from the house lol. 

One of the days we were knocking doors ( we have knocked a lot!) we entered into the house and felt the spirit really strong. Anyways at the end of every lesson we ask if we can do anything to help of service of any kind. He began to talk about literally nothing and about life. It came down to it and he was asking for food. And its not like he said i wasn't a hamburger, he just said as small as a cup of rice would help his whole family be able to eat. At this moment i felt bad because sometimes money is tight for everybody but he was just asking for a little bit of rice. We don't have money to give out but i do want to see how we can help him for sure! 

The other day we were fasting to be able to find those that are looking for the truth. We passed a house and i saw a little boy running inside (maybe 2 years old) and i had an impression... Knock their door and talk to them. After lunch (because we were late) i knocked their door and said exactly what i thought Hello my name is Elder Hammond and my friend is Elder Pereira and we had a thought earlier that we need to share our message with you because its important for me and i know it can be important for your family and it brings blessings! Can we share this message with your family right now? Needless to say we entered right away and taught them. I don't know what will happen next but if i wasn't able to listen to the Holy Ghost we would not have talked to them. We will visit them this week to see how they are doing! 

Last thing i want to talk about is we found a less active family the other day with her 5 kids and how she wants the best for them (mom their son looks like me as a 2 year old and my cousin Bracken lol). We were talking and i thought of my mom! I remember my mom always wants the best for me and my siblings and i am so so so grateful for my mom today! When anything was hard she always brought Scriptures and God into the subject and even when sometimes i wasn't always the best at following i know we need the scriptures and God in our lives today! Thank you mom for always being a big example for me even when i was stubborn at times and didn't know where i wanted to be. Now i know without you i couldn't have found these things for myself. I know now we all need to search God in our lives to be better people and to learn and grow. I know that we have a Prophet today that talks with Our Heavenly Father and can guide our family better ! As President Gordon B. Hinkley said Satan knows where to place those bombs to destroy us and the first bomb is to destroy a family. In these days we need to build our house on top of God and Jesus Christ (our cement) and then build our pillars of church, prayer and scripture pondering!  I know this is a priority in these modern days!

Love you all!

-Elder Hammond 

The pizza was my 6 months in the mission!!!! - Bryson

A new tie! Thank you Grandma! Its a woven tie! - Bryson

Jacqueline made a birthday cake for Bryson! Claudio sent me these pictures on my birthday (9/15/17) over WhatsApp and said that Bryson said he was sharing this cake with me for my birthday. Such a sweet son I have! I missed him more than words on both of our birthday's, which are 4 days apart. - Mom (Amy Hammond)

Thank you Jacqueline for making Bryson a birthday cake! Thank you Claudio and Jacqueline for always taking such good care of our boys, and sending me pictures and messages so we know how Bryson is doing! We sure miss him, so these are tender mercy blessings you bring to us! - Mom (Amy Hammond)

Claudio with all 4 Elders

Such amazing missionaries!

Fazenda Rio Grande - Semana 3 (Week 26 - 6 Months!)

So there is one question members like to ask me during lunch. Well actually there is 2 questions lol. 1. Do you have beans and rice in the United states?..... and 2. Do you guys eat actual meals or just snack?... I can always expect to have these two questions asked during lunch. I always respond with I actually ate a lot of rice in my house almost every day. This is just 2 of the normal questions I get haha. 

So two weeks ago I had a fast because I have been needing to fast for a while and I had one day i was able to. So i had this fast to know if i should teach a lesson (which would be a bible bash, I don't like these because the spirit cant be there with this. Especially because I know this family likes to yell during these...)  or not because i had a feeling not to. Anyways this fast was for us to be able to find success in our area. Its a very good area but its hard to get people to church. So I arrived here and we didn't have any baptism dates set at all. This past week we have received 4 dates for baptisms. one mom with a son that is 5 years old we met this week used to be visited by the missionaries and then she moved 1 month before and she couldn't find another Chapel. She then finally contacted us though the Sisters in our district and said I NEED the address of your church and the contact of missionaries now. Lol a dream for missionaries and she already read the Book of Mormon front to back by then. She has already set a date for a baptism on the 15th of September!!! she said i want people to visit me too outside of the Missionaries! This week has has been really good in this aspect. We also were able to help 6 investigators get to church!!!!! So happy they were all able to make it this Sunday ! 

So finally this month i have officially become fluent enough i can carry on a full conversation and my accent is coming about 25-30% so people actually understand me now!!! This was my goal at 6 months to be fluent!! Oh i hit my 6 months this week btw . I am so happy i can understand basically everything now even with words i don't understand i can understand with other words in the phrase! But this does not mean i will stop studying my best everyday. I literally don't want to have others think i am American when i talk lol. Love my country but if i am here in Brasil i want to talk like one!

This week we have walked more then i every have in my life! Actually our area goes from one city to another and we had lunch in Mandirituba the other day which is almost 2 hours walking south and that's from our house which isn't even the top of the area . Needless to say i paid for my companion and i to get a bus home lol. 

This week has been great and my testimony has grown a lot this week through walking a lot to only find out a new investigator left the house when we had an appointment. This has stretched my faith a lot this week! Among other things too! 

Love ya all 

-Elder Hammond