Week 7

well, i finally made it out to the frield. i coudnt wait to get out here and leave the ctm.. nothing against that place, ut it was a prison! hahapres daltin is super super legit. my first official companion and trainer is...... elder w. dias!!! he is from the campinas area! just north of sao paulo. hes really cool. he speakes a little english so that is really helpfull.pres dalton told me that he wants e to baptise every single week.i didnt think that would be possible but after this first week i belive it. we just gotta work hard.

so i staight up live in a ghetto! haha but fortunetally i live on the church grounds behind locked gates. that makes me feel better when i try and sleep at night. haha there are so many people here in my mission there are 12 million people in sao paulo but 5 million of them are within my mission boundaries. crazy. my area is Itapecerica. there are two wards. my ward and then the other ward is covered by sister missionaries.

thing are definetly different here you eat a small breakfast, have a big lunch with members, then eat a small dinner (if we have time). that usually means that i eat maybe 2 pieces of brad before i hit the hay.. haha im starting to loose the aweful 10ish pounds i gained at the mtc. by the time my mission is all said and done though, i am sure i wil have gained it back in leg muscle. we walk and we walk and we walk and we walk up and down up and down hills all day long. by the time each day is over im soooooo exaused. im glad to be here though. im reakky worried about how my portuguse has been coming though. but when i asked elder dias (who has tained 3 other americans) how i amdoing compaired to how they did their first week, he said " voce e muito melhor de eles" you are way better than them... its hard to belive but that really gave me a boost of confidence to know that im farther a head than some other people. but at the end of the day, all of that doesnt matter. its  about how i am improving myself everday and not compaire myself to others.

sooooooo after just 6 days in the firld i baptised someone!!!!! way to set the bar high id say! hahah 

love yu guys! keep e in your prayers and dont ever be too busy to thznk the lord our god for all of our many blessings!

love, elder Barnard

Week 6

im finally in the field! we have 5 minutes to send a quick email! love you guys! 

Week 5

HOLY COW PEROPLE I HAVE 6 DAYS LEFT AT THE MTC! when i think about it
it seems like just yesterday i said my final goodbyes and shipped off
to this wonderful country so its hard to belive that ive been here
longer than a month and by this time next week, ill be in the field
doing what real missionaries do. so i havent talked very much about
elder tippets and my investigators. theyre names are hilda and nielle.
they are just our language teachers but we get to teach them almost
everyday as if they were real investigators. sometimes they make
things easy for us but other times they make things so incredibaly
hard. haha long story short, they are both set to get baptised this
week! it was soo cool to watch them be "converted" and be so "excited"
for baptism. lemme tell you somthin, they are some GOOD acttresses. we
had the oppertinity to listen to two mission presidents from the area
come talk o us here at the ctm. one was from the sao paulo north
mission and this guy didnt look a day over 40. man he was young. but a
great, powerful speaker that talked about how we have the obility to
change peoples lives and that when we have the constant companionship
of the holy ghost we can do anything. i have a new favorite
scripture.. Alma 29:9 ill let you guys dive into the scriptures to
read that one ;) i cannot express in words how excited i am to finally
dive into the lords work, get sick, lose a bunch on this mtc weight,
and baptize! the record here (idk if this is he exact number for my
mission) but the record is 18 baptisms in one week for one
companionship. what ever the record in interlagos is, im gunna beat
it. goal number one LEARN PORTUGUES, goal numba 2 BAPTIZE as many as
possible. this is my ward and my word shall reamain. love you guys and
dont have too much fun back home because remember, im down here and i
bring the fun ;)

Week 4

canival is off the chain bro!! naked people everywhere and they let us go outside everyday this week to party! HAHAHA jk!! the mtc is like a prison. but ive been told that i need to think of it more as a palace. but its hard. there are guards that are constantly on watch. i guess us missionarys are a huge thret;) 

so the mission president from sao paulo lste (east) spoke to us yesterday. he talked about how we need to always have the constant companionship of o espirtio santo com nos. it was a great talk and i learned a lot from him. 

my portugues is really coming a long and im talking more and more everyday. but as my knowlegde of this language grows, my english is starting to leave me. i forget how to spell and say so many word its crazy!

last night i got my first haircut here in brasil.......I DID IT MYSELF AND IT LOOKS.... pretty good. hahaha elder chumpley from my distict (who is our new zone leader) taught me how to do it. and he fixed the partys i totally screwed up. haha

13 more days here i prison thand then ill be free!!!! hurayyy for freedom!!!!!! this saturday will mark on month. dang only 23 to go... crazy how time can fly!

love you all and remember, god loves all his chidren and wants us al to return to him someday. he blesses us more than we even realize and gives us trials because he knows who we can become if we have aith and keep marching through the storm

Week 3

heres a few of my photos ive taken in the last 3 weeks.  i have no idea what order they are in but obviously theres a picture of me and tipeets, one of elder pequeno (the elder i talked about in my firts letter) the sao paulo temple, one of me and the girl i sat by on the 9 hour flight here to brasil and so on. so about that girl. her name is julia and she lives in campinas brasil. like an hour north of the mtc. she was a forign exchange student in wyoming with..... A MORMON HOST FAMILY. she is so gunna get baptized someday. she went to church every week for 6 months... so she knew alot about the church. hse said she wasnt really interested in baptism but she will definetly get baptized someday . no doubt in my mind. this week went by super fast! me and elder tippets are really starting to get a feel for one another and with me understandung and speaking a lot more of the language our lessons with our pesquisadores are going a lot better! 

so last week we had our room just to the two of us and it was great. but then last wednesday night after we had finished our pday, we found 4 new set of bags in out room.... i love being able to talk to them everynight but man... they are smelly and dirty poeple!!! hahaha love them like crazy though.

there has been highs and definet lows this week but the overall message this week for me was to not be discouraged. não tive duvidas!!! dont have doubts. especially about how you feel your progress is going. instead look at how far you have come and realized that the  lord gives our more blessings then we even thought.

be glad, seek for the insperation of the holy ghost, strive to be perfect, and if you fall short, christ has our backs and will always get back up again.

miss you guys and hope everything back home is just peachy.

love, elder barnard