17 March 2014 - Estancia, Brazil

Well hello there! Welcome back to Elder Frogley's adventures in Brazil. This week we have LOTS of pictures to share with you all. As a brief note, my parents are moving from Providence (near Logan) Utah to Layton, so they have lots of work to do around the house in Providence to prepare it to sell, particularly in terms of yard work (spring cleaning, and such). Hence the opening comment from Elder Frogley.

Also, fair warning, this e-mail contains some graphic details about the death of a rather large arachnid, so if you are prone to queasiness then you may want to skip over that part.

Anyway, here you go! (Pictures at the end.)

Hello! Dad, the moment i get back Id love to do some yard work. Itd be a change in scene. If you can find some to do in November. Anyway, this week was pretty lame, but ill tell you about it anyway. So with investigators. Flavesliene (I cant write her name) is doing really well! We had a little scare with her. After her baptisim she came and told us she wanted to give up and drink and stuff. But we talked to her and helped her out. And even Perla helped! Her friend whos our other investigator. And now shes back on track. It was because her parents started screaming at her and said some sad stuff to her. She had a pretty sad fight. But after they appolagized and even invited us for dinner one night. But Perla is excelent. Shes having a rough time and sometimes she wants to give up but shes really amazing. All her friends call her up to drink or do drugs or stuff and she hasnt steped back one time. And she goes to church every week. Shes really amazing. But her baptism still wont be until the 29th. We also started to teach one of our converts Moms. We walked into her house and she had a bunch of friends there and the first thing they decided to do was to tell us how beautifull we were. Hahaha, we probably wont be teaching all of them together again. The investigators that needed to get married before they get baptised are hitting some stubling blocks. We found out that the free wedding got canceled, so now theyll have pay 70 bucks to get married. We´re going to brake the news tomorrow. Pray for them please. We started teaching a few other investigators but nothing special to mention. It was a slow week but we did start getting a lot of investigators. OH! We did have a girl who was sooo set in her ways that she didnt want to pray cause she new shed recieve an answer and didnt want to change. Her excuse was ´´all churches lead to God so why do I need to find out if youres is good? It does the same things as mine.´´ We explained and she doesnt want to believe. Which is sad cause shes really cool. But in other news. We started finding exotic insects in our house. We found a spider in our house the size of my hand! I woke up and my comp was looking at the wall with a face like a guy was pointing a gun at him. I got up and looked and this thick harry spider was just sitting there chilling. We didnt even want to get close. So the old lady who lives next to us walked in like it was nothing and smooshed it with a plastic bag. Like it was nothing. I swear i heard its legs break. It was nasty. Ill send a pic. Also the rain started this week! Woooo! Last winter in Brasil, haha, sad... Today was tight! We went to the beach and it was gorgeous! Ill send some pics. We ate at a little resteraunt (thanks for the Christmas money dad) and i did a back flip close to the beach. it was a fun day but im pretty burned. Ive decided i cant live far from the beach again. Ill have to live in Hawaii or Cali after my mission. I love the ocean tooooo much. Any way. Love you fam!!!

Elder Frogley 

Beach

Ancient boat club

Inside the boat house

Me finding the effects on the camera

More beach

Rainy days

Rainy days

Restaurant on beach--our waiter was cool

Scary pic of a little neighborhood in our area with smoke and fire and stuff

Super pretty lighthouse

A different angle of the light house--check out how the colors pop out! (I finally figured out my camera.)

The HUGE spider

The pit

Today in Ponta Verde

10 March 2014 - Estancia, Brazil

Hey folks. We have a whole bunch of pictures this week, though curiously no e-mail... Ah well, I love pictures, too. So, here you go.

A pet monkey.

A river of trash in a ghetto of a town on a mountainside. There really is a river under there, and this isn't even a dump--it's in the middle of a neighborhood.

The baptism of Antonia, a smoker we helped.

Edna's baptism.

The fan of death that cut my hands and head when it fell--that's why it's duct-taped to the chair.

A sneaky picture of me teaching.

We had lunch with some members. (Note: Elder Frogley LOVES sushi!)

Our most recent baptism.

A pretty beach.

A riot that closed the main road.

Two kids we baptized a while ago.

3 March 2014 - Estancia, Brazil

Carnival!! So is it just Carnival in Estancia, or is it a country-wide thing? I thought Carnival was a Rio thing, but maybe all the city festivals are also called Carnival? Anyway, there weren't really any comments from Elder Frogley on Dad's message, so I have nothing to summarize. So here you go.

Alright, carnival in brasil right now so everything's closed! Makes it hard to buy food, or go anywhere. Even the train is closed. But the week was chill. Our investigators are progressing and we have several baptisms marked. The problem is that it's carnival and everyone is gone. Does everyone remember perola? The crazy one? She's doing excelent. She stopped doing everything bad she use to do. She had an interview with out dl for an hour and a half (the guy talks for ever) and even he was impressed by her desire to change. She told us that she just needed someone to believe that she could change. Everyone even in her family calls her a lost cause, right to her face. Her baptism has to wait a little because of some stuff we talked to pres about, but she's verry excited. She also introduced us to her friend. Her name is flabisline and she's in a similar boat as perola. We've had several talks with her and she wants to be baptized too, she just needs a stronger testimony. But through all this experience I've learned that really anyone can be baptized. These girls have made impressive changes. With the couple that we were working with, they still need to get married. They want to alot, but they receive a pension right now and it's hard to give up. But we're working with them. Jessica is our other investigator. She traveled this week so we didn't talk to her much, but she thought we were more like salesmen trying to get her to change churches. After we explained our purpose a little better she agreed to really pray for answers. We're going to talk to her Wednesday. We started to talk to this kid and took him to church, but we think he's crazy. He's really dramatic and after church Sunday we saw him on the street and told us he didn't want to talk to us anymore cause some guy told him he'd kill him if he did. He followed us to our house to tell us that. He's nuts. But carnival is really annoying here! People have egg wars and we pass armies of kids having egg fights and flour fights on the street. It's a dirty mess. Anyway, love y'all! Send an email next week dad and Christian! Thanks for the email mom!

25 February 2014 - Estancia, Brazil

Hey folks, thanks for coming. We have a great show for you today all the way from eastern Brazil, featuring our very own Elder Frogley! I didn't get to see the e-mail Dad sent, so I can't help you understand the references Elder Frogley makes to Dad's comments, but anyway... So, enjoy!

Hello family!!! This was a pretty normal but exiting also week! sounds like moving is being complicated. And arent yall still going to remodel the new house too? Going to be annoying. Where will I give my homecoming talk? weird. But sounds awesome in the good old USA! Dad, trust me, I have to deal with same sex attraction with investigators a ton here. Its a huge problem and here they are shameless and just openly hit on us. Its verry creepy. But its chill.

Lets get to the investigator list! We got three new investigators from a return missionary in the ward. Both his parents and his friend. Lots of missionaries have talked to his parents but they need to get married to be baptised. NO ONE IS MARRIED HERE. Its super annoying. but i think that there son coming home finally gave them the spark they needed. We marked both of there baptisims. Theyre going to get baptised in March and then the baptisim will directly follow. We just have to find out more information about a free wedding they do here cause they have financial problems. But they both went to church and it was great. We also finally got our older investigator Daisy to go to church. But i think she went more for us then for the church. She really likes us. We challenged her to be baptised but shes still scared of baptisim. Were going to visit her tomorrow to really finish it up. If we cant mark the baptism tomorrow we´ll have to let her go. Sad but we´ll put her in the area book for other elders to teach. We also started to teach a young women named Jessica. Shes 20 and super cool. Very inteligent and educated wich is a nice change of scene, but she like our lessons and she actually asked a member about the church, which is how we found her. She promised to pray and read and when she gets an answer she´ll be baptised. Awesome! And now, the biggest supprise of the week. We started teaching a young women. shes the neice of a less active member named Rackel. Rackel is the classic gheto tough mean chick and we never thought that her neice would listen to her message cause shes 16 and she is messed up in ALL the wrong stuff and just seems to crazy. Her mom was baptised but apostated and shes against all churchs and is verry verry vulgar and gross and encourages her daughter to be the same. Yall wouldnt imagin the things shes done!!! Shes 16 and ive never met anyone in my life whos more confused! I dont think theres a comandment she hasnt broken in every way imaginably. All of her friends are drug dealers. But we felt impressed to talk to her one day when her aunt wasnt home. She accepted our visit and was chill with it. She started out skeptical about everything but as we explained everything she really opened up. She said she wanted to change but she has so much shed need to do to change. Shes scared shes going to end up dead in a gutter somewhere if she stays on the same course. We promised her she could change and taught her about the law of chastity and the word of wisdom. She doesnt drink coffee wich i thought was ironic. but she promised to start living them and we felt impressed to chalenge her to be baptised. She accepted!! What!? Miracle! she spelt the spirit on that one for sure! Awesome.

Anyway, one story that was funny. Edna (our recent convert), remember her? Her boyfriend? So he hates us now! Hahaha, we were expecting it but hes a little kid about it. Like he doesnt look at us when he walks in and refuses to talk. He thinks that Endas falling in love with the ´´tall blond american´´. Hahahaha, she thinks hes just really annoying wich made me happy! Haha, she tried to force her to kick us out and made her chose between him and us. She chose us. Hahaha, also we played basketball and i got REALLY burned. Its going to hurt tommorrow. Love you family!

Elder frogley