Mar 24, 2015 Back to Sao Paulo, and back to the temple!

          1 week in Vila Yara

This week has been absolutely crazy. Like there were so many things to do but i feel like we didnt do anything this week at the same time. 

My new companion is elder Barros. we call ourselves the gordinhos gostosos. cuz we are both fat ;) haha He has been the biggest help to me as a district leader. he has basically been the companion to the DL for about his whole mission. (8 months) and has been keeping me in the path. He is really funny and loves this people. He works really hard and is really obedient. Just think about the dream companion that you would want and he is it haha. This Area is a prime area. We hit the standard this week and this is normal here. so many people to talk to and its going really well. Just a really good plan everyday. 

I love this new ward too. Like i dont think ive ever eaten so much in my life. they are really nice to us and help out with all we need. Also we have been getting references which hasnt been happening here before too. so thats a good change for the better. Go new missionaries!

We went to the temple today so thats why we have pday on tuesday. I love the temple and my other zone didnt go so its been a while. i definitely feel rejuvenated from these past months! The church really is true :)

As a LD i had my first District meeting, training, and interview for baptism. They all went well and i didnt mess up too bad for my first week. Something funny in this district is that im the DL of the ZLs. Also my trainer (Elder Cinezio) is in my district too. I have new people, people who are going home soon, people who have been in the area for a while and the new DL. Its been pretty cool to take on new responsibilities and be able to grow a little more as a leader and see the mission in a different view. 

Like i said a lot happened but its hard to get it out in english. Let alone sum it all up. I love you all and thank you for the support and prayers that are sent my way. Have a good week!

Love,

Elder Kyson Sullivan

yup.. i went there :)

my snake (a girl who likes you on your mission)

my companion. it was his bday. we had lots of cake this day :) ill be spending my bday with him too :)

my first experience with american food in brazil. BK. of course with an american haha

brazilians and duct tape curiosity

i got a guitar from a good friend :) thats pretty sweet :)

meu companheiro no predio    (my companion on the building/roof?)

gordinhos gostosos ;)    (chubby delicious? haha google translate)

we rented a van for our zone to go to the temple.

pinked tied missionaries

brazilian selfie.

 (the 2 that live in the same house with me. 

theyre from pernambuco). 

(northeastern Brazil)

my companion got 6 letters and a package... wheres mine????? ;)

Mar. 17, 2015 fixed my toe and found some Heaven at the LDS bookstore.

Transfers.

So this week felt like P-week. haha We had pday, then the next day was our toe appointment. 

We didnt get home until like 9, so no work. the procedure was really quite cool how she cut the nail. She put some cotton on it with some liquid to make the nail softer. Then she took some sort of medical knife and cut the toe down the side where it was ingrown. it didnt even hurt. she then pulled out the part where it was stuck inside my toe. it looks like a shark tooth.. ill send a picture! 

The next day i was feeling so sick and the other elder that went to the toe doctor with me couldnt walk cause his toe was hurting pretty bad he couldnt get shoes on. so.. it was basically another p-day. that day sucked... i felt like a loser haha. 

On thursday we had our Mission Tour. Elder Costa of the quorum of the 70. That was really cool and really spiritual! one of the things that i loved was when he told us to just put ourselves in the hands of the holy ghost and he´ll guide us where we need to go. 

(The mom feels like this is a nice humorous spot to add this picture!!!)

The other soda is A&W root beer. The mom has a hard time believing that Kyson is the one drinking the root beer. He has craved a Dr. for 10 months!

We met a reference that we got a while ago. he was never in his house but we kept passing by. one day we found him in the streets and invited him to semanary. he went! like we only invited him the one time. he went to church and now they are getting him ready to be baptized this sunday! Our mission has a challenge called march 5 which is to baptize 5 people in the month of march. that area will definitely get it!

We had transfers today. Im finishing writing today cause yesterday when we were writing the internet fell and we didnt have power. so president said we could come in today and finish writing. I got my new companion Elder Ba. He is way chill and way cool and i already love him! I got transfered out of the jungle and into the city. 

I am in Zona Rochadale in area Villa Yara A. I was also called to be a District Leader! :) I have 4 areas in my district and even the elder who trained me is in my district too! Im so excited to be able to help these elders in any way i can. 

Yesterday we said a lot of goodbyes. they were pretty hard. The area was hard but the ward was really loving and helped me grow a ton. they did so much when i need their help and it was hard to leave. 

The name of this dessert escapes me!! (the mom)

No, it doesn't, I am just not going to repeat it!!! LOL

It is

chocolate covered marshmallows!

Sorry i took a while to get back on. Its been a crazy day already. Full of fun times already. But now its time to get to work and get to know this new area! Should be pretty fun! there are a lot more people here in this area than there were in my past one so it should all go fine! 

I love you all and thanks for all the support and love you send my way!

Elder Kyson Sullivan

Mar. 16, 2015 don't know why, but only got 15 minutes on the computer

This is everything that we heard from Kyson this week. He got on and responded to our letters, then nothing, nothing, nothing. He just disappeared!



Dad says: Kyson your toe looks very pain full!

ya im working on cutting it better now. ill send the pics of them cutting it and the huge nail that was inside me haha

the cool thing about them cutting it was that it didnt hurt and i could walk with shoes on right after she cut it! pretty neat stuff!

Dad says: congrats on the baptisms! Does your ward members keep them active?

ya this ward does a great job with it. they already have family home teachers, and they are well in with the YM already so its going good. they are some cool boys and are doing well.

love ya dad!

Elder Kyson Sullivan

Picture mom sent to him of his 2 sisters: front in pink, and back with tongue out, and his 3 neices waiting for a hotdog picnic to start.

Kyson: it took me a good 30 seconds to realize that the girl in the front was kamarie.... like when did she get so big??????? holy cow!

i miss a good american hot dog. the hot dogs here suck.......

love ya! Kyson

Mom did find out from one of his very good friends on facebook that is in his current area that he is being transferred tomorrow. Otherwise, I would not know anything.

These are the pics the friend sent to the mom.

Cutest decorations for a baby birthday party!!!

March 9, 2015 baptized 3 and flippin' with a sore toe.

          Cirurgia e 3 batismos! (Surgery and 3 baptisms)

Well... what a week. So things have gotten a lot better with the companion. like turned around completely! we are getting along and talking better than we were. also compromising and doing things together. when we had a division this week something out of the ordinary happened...

I was with Elder Tas, another american from Tennessee, when we took off our shoes he showed me his toe. he had an ingrown toenail that seemed to be growing another toe off of where it was swollen. Well.. out of coincidence i also have an ingrown toenail.. like its pretty swollen and it had started to hurt a few days before. we had agreed to call Sister and have her tell us what to do. she told us to go to the hospital cause there is nothing she can do for that. We went the next day....

Our "city" doesnt have a hospital so we went about an hour to Cotia where we got in and talked to doctors for about 15 minutes (we were there for about 3 hours). They scheduled our surgery for today to pull off our toenail. We wouldnt walk for 5 days. It was working out cause Elder Tas would need it too so we could stay together and our companions could stay together and still work so both areas wouldnt die at that same time. 

(The Mom thinks the bottom toe belongs to Sullivan. 

Top toe belongs to Tas.

At least the mom hopes!!!)

Well we didnt go to the surgery today. President had called us and said that he has found a woman who can cut our toenail and still let us walk right after. We will be going out there tomorrow to get the nail cut. I dont know how she will do it cause my toe hurts WAY bad. i have to wear closed shoes cause im a missionary you know so it just keeps getting worse. if i bump it on anything i am brought to tears and i dont know how this lady will get it off without me kicking her in the face haha. 

Some of the members have been trying to help though so thats good. I was given like a home remedy of like leaves and jungle materials. You make a tea out of it really hot. then put rock salt in it and put your foot in it until it cools down. apparently it was supposed to take out the inflamation. Then rub an oil on it to make it even better. Well i did that and.... it didnt work. so.... it will be a fun day tomorrow.

To add to it yesterday i woke up at like 1:30 in the morning with an upset stomach. without trying to get too graphic lets just say that what ever was inside my body needed to get out. it started with diarreah and was followed 10 seconds after by throwing up. i only had enough time to turn around and flush the toilet before it all was coming out again. Church dragged on yesterday. i was so sick...

But we had some cool stuff happen after church! we baptized 3 boys! one has a mom who was a member and he just didnt get baptized and the others really wanted to but their mom still has problems with the word of wisdom. The baptism was really special and i felt the spirit strong!

Later that night i didnt work at all. i couldnt move. I stayed at a members house and slept for 3 hours. finally we went to a post of health and they gave me some fluid through a needle in my arm to help me recover. all of it was free (taxes) and really sketch. they set me up in a hallway on a chair with other people passing by. like it was kinda awkward but still i feel better today. i am taking some pills to help too.

We had a service project at the church on saturday where i got to tumble a little. that was fun and i was super sore yesterday cause of it. yes i can still do it ;)

This was posted on facebook by one of Kyson's friends who friended me as well.

have a good week! better than i had at least haha

Elder Sullivan

These are some pictures I sent Kyson.

His cheer squad partner/trainer (they shared a flyer (girl) during Kyson's 1st year at Utah State,) friend, and roommate (Kyson's 2nd year at Utah State.)

KC got "beheaded" (revealed to the crowd and retired) at the last home game after being Big Blue for 2 years.

Kyson's other good friend, Caleb, got "beheaded" during a game in February after being "Big Blue" for 5 years!

This is Caleb with Kyson's 1st stunt partner/flyer, Jenna. They are both amazing performers. 

We miss seeing them all. : (

Mar. 2, 2015 zone picture

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          9 months?

what happened to 8 months? finally the time is picking up. i knew it had to happen and now its going good. :)

our zone did baptize the most this month. a little bragging there for you guys. unfortunately we didnt get to baptize cause they weren´t quite ready. we should be baptizing this week if all goes well and they follow through with our invites. We are visiting them everyday to try to keep them focused and strong to not let satan get a chance to tear them down before sunday. Another thing.. our wedding got canceled cause they thought it was too fast. but the woman went to church yesterday so that was good. she didnt seem to like it very much so on thursday when we visit them next we will know more about it. 

My companion is a little weird still. He went on a streak of not taking his scriptures with him... like what kind of missionary doesnt take scriptures? youre not a missionary without scriptures. he didnt ever plan or study or wake up cause apparently it is my job to call him to plan or to wake him up. my reply... im not your mom. this week ive been praying that we could fix this thing that weve been having. ive been trying to be more patient and doing the things better that said that bugged him. one day we were fighting all the way down to the chapel (about 40 minutes from our house) and when we got there i told one of the other americans about my companion and how he likes to break the rules. he told his companion (the DL) and he called us both in and talked to us individually. so that was good to see that our DL will do something. then the ZL called us over to their house after the meeting and we had basically a forced inventory. we were able to tell them all the stuff that was bothering us and now we are doing better. like a ton better. We are doing more work and communicating better and he takes his scriptures now and the lessons go better too. 

so this week was good and bad. ups and downs but it turned out alright. 

i hope you have a good week! 

Elder Sullivan

Feb. 23, 2015 teaching while soaked.

         Zona Batizadora!

So this week is the last week in February In the mission that means get all your baptisms in right now so it counts for the month. Every one in our zone has baptized BUT us. Well... until this week. we have 3 boys who are looking into the church. 2 are brothers and the other one already was prepared a while ago but ran away from the baptism.... Pretty sure we will have at least 2 this sunday to make us the zone who baptizes the most this month! We are one of the smaller zones with only 5 companionships. So this will be pretty cool to do :) Welcome to Zion!

We had one investigator who has recieved the missionaries in his house for over 10 years. The rest of his family was already baptized and now we are working with him. When we had this appointment everything was looking like we werent going to go. We had dinner offered to us and we denied it. Then it started to down pour..... without an umbrella. Usually this would make us turn around cuz people dont like to accept a wet missionary into their house. but we kept going. We got there SOAKED. We had a lesson and invited him to be baptized. So that was freaking great cuz he finally accepted. :D

We are planning a wedding now too. Pretty great when they accepted to get married. I hope it proves to be less problems than koby´s haha. 

(moms note: koby's investigator is expecting the bishop and the missionaries(koby) to pay for the wedding and the dress rental. dress rental is $200 usdollars.)

Ya thats about it this week. Still working lots and gathering the fruit from the seeds we planted. pretty great :) have a good week everyone!

Elder Kyson Sullivan

Feb 16, 2015 the burning

          Queimação (burning)

So this week was cool. we got into our house a little late one day and we got burnt by 3 people. our DL, our ZL, and the assistants. So that was a fun night. 

To make it better we went to a different area on friday to watch a wedding and a baptism that elder Garcia helped prepare. So we were supposed to go to the mission home to sleep at 930. well the baptism hadnt even happened at 930 so we stayed and Elder Garcia didnt get it authorized like i had said, and so he got burnt again by president. That was fun to hear about haha. But we got home fine and i slept on the ground again... that too was fun. i was so tired i didnt even notice really. 

We had 3 people in church this sunday. 2 we didnt even invite. one of the investigators brought him along and the other was there with his family. i didnt think they would ever go to church but something changed and they went and now we are going to work with the man of the family. 

Also the YM/YW were in a campout cause of the carnaval so we didnt have a pianist sunday. guess who played a rocking sacrament meeting? yup i did :)

So thats basically it this week. everyone burns us and we live on the outskirts of everything. its great! have a good week :)

Elder Kyson Sullivan

Feb. 9, 2015 prayer rock problems

          a week where nothing and everything went right

Well this week was pretty interesting. I got my new companion. Elder Garcia. He is from Lima, Peru and is a little annoying to be honest. Like he tries to take control of all the situations without talking about it first. But we teach really well together. like there wasnt the awkward ´how do you teach´ time that there usually is. 

We taught a ton of lessons. which was kinda a miracle. Like i didnt think that it would be possible because everyday our lunch got pushed WAY back. like over 2 hours 4 days this week. Sometimes its the buses fault. other times they forgot, sometimes its both. like its been a crazy week. but still we were able to teach all of our investigators and mark 10 of them for baptism the frist of march! Yup this day will be a day of baptizing até o pó! 

Some cool things that happened...

One of our investigaters (tal) that we have been teaching for a while never was praying but always showed a lot of interest. So.. .i gave her a prayer rock. you know that one that you put on your pillow to remind you to pray? yup. i did that! Well the next day she was pretty mad cuz she did hit her head on the rock haha. but it worked and she said a prayer and went to church and now is wanting to get baptized!!!! it should be a cool day. 

Another family, Mar and Andr (sister of tal), are really special. we found them this week and we are going to get them married and also help her to quit smoking. they are really receptive and love us coming over to share a message :) they went to church this weekend too and they really liked it!

I was so happy to finally have some investigators who would go to church. its been a while and now we finally have our fruits of our work that we have been doing. ah its so nice :)

anyway thanks for the support and the love and the prayers. send me a letter. dont do drugs. pray everyday and have a good week :)

Elder Kyson Sullivan

My new scriptures and leather scripture covers:

                   (Mom and Dad bought these for the Christmas presents. Kyson was transferred out of the area where th person makes them, so he had to wait till he made a trip back to Sao Paulo to pay for them and pick them up.)

The backs of the scpriture cases.

It was quite the process to get the picuturs all picked out and the edges and backs and sides and everything, then add in it was all through email one week at a time for two missionaries.
Haha Happy Valentines Day!