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!

Feb. 2, 2015 cups of apostacy

         Last memories

So this week is transfers. Elder S. Oliveira will go to a new zone and i will stay here and get a new companion from peru... so this will be interesting. his name is Elder Garcia...... well see how it goes.

So this week on pday i forgot the keys in the ZL house. its a good 3 Km from our house. We had an appointment at night so when we got home it was too late to get the keys. so... we learned that its possible to hop our wall, and climb through the window to get into our house. Luckily i was a cheer leader and we left our window semi open haha

We get rides in the back of the trunks of cars. Look at the pic. That was cramped haha.

this is how we roll ;)

Also we have a pizza night planned tonight to send him off good :)

Not a lot happened this week. We got a ton of new investigators and a few accepted to be baptized. We are going to work hard with them to see if they really will do what we ask. 

We had stake conference. It was good but took out a lot of time in the field.

And we had french toast in a FHE. It turned out really good and brazillians seem to like it a lot :)

french toast for lunch. i was pretty tired of rice and beans haha

love ya and have a good week :)

Elder Kyson Sullivan

a tuchan :) da hora!

our best investigator. we teach him a lot!

one of the families that we visit. they always give us coke :) its the best! last time of elder so we took a pic.

my cup demonstration to teach about the apostacy.

apostolos

commandments

teaching 

and jesus

Jesus died and went to heaven

we kill the apostolos too. everyone removes a cup

the church falls into apostacy.

Everyone gets the cups and builds their own church. without Jesus of course. this helps them see that the authority was lost and that lots of churches were built that werent Jesus´ church. pretty neat!

a sunset from our house.

Jan. 26, 2015 no water for 5 days

          8 months and 5 minutes

So i kinda didnt schedule my time well so here we go. 

We had an investigater go to church this week! she said she really liked it and will help us get the rest of her family to go too. should be a lot of baptisms coming up :)

We were without water for 5 days this week. that was fun. and smelly....

We gave a blessing that was really sketchy to a lady in the ghetto in the jungle where we possibly could have died. haha

We made french toast for some members. They really liked it and we are planning to do it again for a family home evening with some investigators. 

Look up the fruit Açaí. 

There are a lot of crazy people here in brazil from some weird churchs. 

Thats my week in like 3 sentences. Love ya!

Elder Kyson Sullivan

Jan 19, 2015 read the Livro

          Week 33

Well not a lot happened this week. It felt like it flew by though... 

We had interviews with president. he showed me the numbers which is a little weird cause im not anyone important like a zone leader. just a senior companion. so im a little scared for this next transfer haha.

We painted a house. 

Um... like i said not a lot happened. We are training the young adults in my ward how to be missionaries and making them more excited about serving. I think its working. We are training them in the lessons and then we are going to their friends house and teaching them. so we get a reference too. thats fun :)

President challenged us to read the Livro de Mórmon by april. When he announced that i was almost done with alma......... now im in 2 Nefi haha. He is having us pay attention to the parts about prayer and supplication. so its turning out to be pretty cool :)

Um....oh i have a new way to teach the first lesson. Well about the church of Jesus Christ and about the great apostacy. its with cups. You stack them up and talk about the apostles dying and then the church falls. I'll try to take pictures this week so you guys can see it. then everyone tries to build their own church with the cups that have fallen. so everyone has a part but not the whole church. its pretty cool :)

Thats about it. love ya guys and thanks for the prayers and support! 

Boa semana e até próximo!!!

Elder Kyson Sullivan

Jan. 12, 2015 spaghetti fail

         Vontade de Deus   (Will of God)

Well, it wasnt the best week I have ever had but it was still good. 

This week we really got to see how we can do the will of God in our work. Really we dont have a choice. This happened everyday this week: we would start to follow our planner and have 5 or 6 appointments lined up. ALL OF THEM WOULD DROP. which is really annoying. We would then start to visit the other people on our list. When this happens I know that I need to be looking for someone to talk to cause there is someone out there waiting for us that needs the gospel. It ALWAYS works. This week we had this happen with Kel.

Kel has been reading the BoM a lot. Like we left her for a week and she said she read the 3 nephi 11 like 3 times and then started from the beginning. She is at 1 nephi 18. Like that never happens with us. We marked her to be baptized on the 31 of January. Should be cool to see her prepare :)

We also started to work more with the young men/women in the area to help them see what its like to serve a mission. This week we went with Jhen. She is really looking into going on a mission. We taught some of her friends already but yesterday she took us to her dads house. He really just denied it all. I think he is scared of what other people will think about him cause his family is really catholic. I will return there (without her) and burn him about fearing God more than man. and that he needs to read this book haha. 

Tal got a job that works on sundays. que porcaria. so now we have to get her a testimony thats really strong before we can get her to quit.

Btw dont trust missionary food. especially spagetti. we tried. we failed. it was really bad. lets leave it at that haha. Also dont try to make popcorn in a frying pan. it doesnt work. well it does... it just ends up on the floor or burnt. 

Yup thats about it. I'll try to keep it interesting this week with interviews with president and a service project. 

Should be cool. 

Boa Semana!

Elder Kyson Sullivan

Jan. 5, 2015 the elects, special ones

          eleitos?

Well this week was freaking awesome. We had really good numbers and found a ton of people to teach. The last week we had about 97 references. This week we went out and contacted almost all of them and have been returning to teach them. Its been going good and we have been having success.

It all started with a training from Elder Castilla. He is a champ. He did it on love and how if we don't have love, we have nothing. if we have love and we even struggle to get our message across they will see our love and want to change and will understand that we want the best for them. Then a couple days later we had a split with the presidents assistant. He showed me how to love and how to get things rolling the right way. We had a ton of lessons and found a lot more people to teach. We found 4 hopeful elects. We taught Kel one time and she is catholic. She doesnt go to church cause god hasnt told her to go back. When i talked about the BoM she stole it out of my hand. I think she will read haha. were going back today. :) Ro and San are troopers. We had a lesson with them on saturday from a contact. I said we´d like to come back another day and leave a lesson with you guys. or right now. She invited us in. her mom used to be a member. We gave them BoMs and somehow got on the subject of the word of wisdom. turns out she has been trying to quit for a while. We asked her if she really wanted to quit. She said yes. I said give me your cigarettes. SHE DID. (first time i had ever touched ciggs btw. hello sheltered utah mormon haha) We invited them to go to church with us the next day. They said they would. I didnt believe them cuz everyone says they will but dont. THEY DID.  and they brought their friend too!!!!! We hadnt had someone in the church for a really long time and with one lesson we had 3! One of them had never even heard about it before! Way crazy this week! (Oh i forgot to say that it was a 50 MINUTE WALK to the church that they did with us. Thats why they are troopers :) )

Well new years was good. We had a fun time just eating food and playing games. When it was the new year it sounded like i had entered a battlefield. Like so crazy nuts. Everyone bought fireworks and I shut all the windows cuz i was scared some drunk guy would throw one in our house haha. 

Ya thats about it. It was a fun week and it kinda dragged on a little. but I had a good time :) até próximo! Until next time!

Elder Kyson Sullivan 

Dec. 29, 2014 w pics

          Prospero Ano!

Hello everyone! i hope you all had a great christmas like i did :) I enjoyed talking to my peeps on skype and had a fun time catching up a bit.

So a little about my christmas. The big celebration is on christmas eve. they have a big dinner and light off fireworks. ya its a party! We had so much food at the members house that we didnt even know where to start. There was turkey, ham, roast beef, all sorts of salads including green bean, potato, and the regular and even had some american dressing! My favorite parts were the ham with a pineapple i put on top and a pomegranit that they had there. Ah i cried like 3 times just eating haha. After we sang some karaoke and ate some more food. I was so trunky. 

We skyped at a dude named j p. well its j p. but you get the idea. His family is from the congregation of christ which doesnt celebrate christmas. i dont even know how that is possible..... but they dont. he is the only one in his family. so he was way happy and willing to let us go to his house to talk to you guys and celebrate a little with him :)

This week we were challenged to get more contacts and references. i took that to heart. we went to town with the references. I have this activity called noahs ark where you have the investigator write down the people they want to save from the rain. We ended up with 97 references this week. our goal was 15. :) our ZL said that if the zone does good in these 2 areas then he will talk to president about paintballing :)

Something fun that happens here in caucaia is when it starts to rain the city will cut the power. i dont know why. it doesnt make sense to me. but that just means cold showers or really sweaty days. Our shower is electrical and the fans are too. This area is just full of new tricks for us. 

We moved houses today. to an area where the water cuts off frequently and its hotter than inferno. (it sounds better in portuguese) Oh ya we dont have a bed (just a mattress) or a fridge, a stove, our tables arent put together and i am hanging my stuff up on dismounted chairs. it should be a fun week. 

We are ´teaching´ a few people. First there is A Pa. She is a recent convert who is also less active. how that works i dont know. there was this guys who basically just talked her into being baptized and i dont even think he taught her everything. Saf. So i am reteaching her the lessons. the only problem is that she is kinda an air head so it gets a little hard at times. She is like 11. 

Also we had a lesson with is. He is like 45 and is budist. no... wait. he is reformed budist. so he believes in christ. I didnt even know that this existed but ok. Makes it a little easier for us to teach. He is reading the Book of Mormon. I dont know if its just for knowledge about the church or if he is really investigating. We´ll know the next time we go if he has prayed about these things or not. 

Thats about all i have to say this week. should i try some pictures?

Elder Sullivan

The cool looking bear i got from koby. thanks for being so thoughtful for my package for christmas bud.

From mom: in Koby's defense, he looked everywhere for a shirt with this logo that Kyson said he wanted. They were all sold out. Koby hates to shop, and I told him to just anything with that logo on it, cause Koby could not think of anything, or find anything to get for him. So, this is really mom's fault. Mom actually thinks this is a cute souvenir. PS. shipping is so expensive and so unpredictable, that we agreed that each boy would buy something for each other and ship it Brazil to Brazil and save their parents hundreds of dollars in shipping costs. Kyson got Koby some new shoes from the temple store and some other things.

(((PS. Mom just found out that those jersey's Kyson wants are like $50 on up on ebay. 

They cost the same in Brazil, so like $100 for those people.)))

the package i sent to koby. this is elder castilla. he drew captain moroni for me :)

My christmas dinner with my mom and dad for the night. (they met each other on the mission so they like to have the missionaries over for these kinds of things to make the homesickness not too bad). thats not even all the food. there is a table behind us with dessert :D

a sketchy bridge...

Look at what an elder bought for 3US$ here in brazil. He gave me a sip. I almost cried.

at the sitio where we had our ward christmas party

 elder s. oliveira,  elder alvarado. elder oyston.