São João is here!

This holiday is a month long in Campina Grande.. luckily, it's only about a week long, here! Anyways--

Hi everyone!

Things are going well here for Elder Buechele and I -- we have transfers in one week, and he is probably going to be transferred.. sadly :/ But, maybe we'll get lucky, and he'll be able to stay for a fifth transfer! Him and I are both fine with the idea of staying here until November -- that would be great! We love it here! But, it is very unlikely.. hah

We went to the only McDonalds that I know of around here on Wednesday, and bought Angus Bacon burgers, with fries and Guarana (a soda they have here). The burger seemed very salty for some resaon.. It was pretty good, though. It was R$25,00, which is about.. $8 USD.. maybe a little bit more expensive than normal.

On Thursday, I went on an exchange with Elder Costa, my district leader's companion, in my old area, Geisel, and we visited an old investigator of mine -- Daniel -- around 8pm. He was very surprised to see me, and him and his mom were very happy :D She made dinner for us, too! They took some pictures with us, and we talked a bit, and then went home. It was so nice to see them again, after almost a year! I am extremely grateful for all of the friends that I've made here while serving my mission. I love Brazilians! :D (the nice ones, anyways -- haha!) I also got caught in the rain, and so I have a cold now. :S

On Friday night, we went to a party to celebrate São João at the church, and everyone was wearing plaid (sp?) shirts, and jeans, and straw hats, and they had all sorts of food made from corn.. hah -- My companion made chocolate-chip oatmeal cookies, to be different from the corn theme, and about 20 people have asked him for the recipe since then. People don't bake here.. it's weird! They only make cakes, for the most part, as far as baking goes. By the way, if there are any random "a"s in this email, it's because the 'a' key keeps sticking.

Yesterday (Sunday), we brought a 77 year-old woman to church, and she said that she felt different there than in any other church she'd ever visited, and she expressed a great desire to be baptized, so we marked her baptism for next Sunday, the 28th! :) We're working with a 16 year-old boy as well, and a 17 year-old girl (who has a 1 or 2 year-old son), and we also marked a date for one of the ward members to marry the woman that he is living with (August 1st), so that she can be baptized (on August 2nd). We're working with some other people as well, but these 4 people are the ones who are progressing the most. We talked to the boy's dad last week, after he had gone to church, and he said that he'd been telling him "Dad! I really liked going to church there today!". We're having a bit of trouble with visiting some of our investigators, who are home only at night, when we usually have lots of things marked (between 6pm and 9pm), but.. hopefully we can plan well enough to be able to visit them this week!

I hope that you all have a great week! :)

Love,

Elder Canto

P.S. Happy Father's Day, to you fathers! And of course, Feliz São João!

Festa!

People attacking my companion for his cookies


Ward cleaning on Saturday

A New Month

Well, June is officially here! Last month was pretty great -- first, we had the baptism of a 24 year-old girl, who'd been investigating since September, and then on the 30th, we had the baptisms of two 9 year-old boys, whose parents are members, and went out for pizza afterwards at a restaurant called "Arte da China" with one of the boy's families.

Yesterday, a new Ward Mission Leader was called, and he must be retired or something, because we had a meeting with him right after church, and I was like "So when are you free?" and he was like "When am I free? Let me see.. all day, every day!" haha! That's a nice change! Our previous Ward Mission Leader was busy all day, every day! We didn't have a single meeting with him in the past 3 months! Now that we have someone who can actually go out with us and visit people, things are really going to be different! I'm excited for this month now.

What's interesting, is that a new Ward Mission Leader was called in the ward that Alissa is serving in yesterday, too, and, that after the baptism on the 30th here, there was also a wedding at 7pm at the church, just like there was after the baptism of her investigator 2 weeks ago! Parallels.. weird..

Anyways! Um.. what else.. We taught a lady who is Atheist about 2 weeks ago, and that was an interesting experience! Just about everyone here has a belief in God and Jesus Christ.. so it's pretty uncommon to find someone who doesn't believe in them! That was only my 2nd encounter on my mission with an Atheist, and it was very different teaching her. We taught about The Book of Mormon not with the usual aim to show that the church is true, but with the aim to show that Jesus Christ really was the Son of God, and not just a regular person, and that God exists.

She'd said that she used to believe in God, but then she felt like He stopped answering her prayers, and so I feel like she is just kinda mad at Him -- but she said she doesn't believe in Him. I asked her if she knew the answer to the question "Why do bad things happen to good people?" and she said "Right? Good question. What do you think?" and then I shared this scripture with her (from The Book of Mormon), which Alissa had showed to me at one point in 2013, which I have really come to appreciate during my mission:

Mosiah 3:7

"And lo, he shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than man can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and the abominations of his people."

This scripture talks about Jesus Christ and what He went through here on the earth for us. Jesus Christ is definitely one of the best people who ever lived here on the earth, and He went through all of these terrible things! He suffered physically, and especially, spiritually, when he performed the Atoning Sacrifice, and then was crucified.

God doesn't let us suffer because he doesn't love us, or anything like that -- He lets us suffer, and have hardships, and struggles, because we need to have both negative and positive experiences in this life to truly learn the things that we need to. If life were just pure happiness, we wouldn't really learn much, now would we?

After I shared that scripture, a few minutes later, she said that because of that scripture, she became interested in reading The Book of Mormon, and that she's going to read it. I hope that reading The Book of Mormon can help her get her faith in God and Jesus Christ back!

Well, I've got to go now. I hope you all have a great week!

Feel free to email me with any questions or comments, or just to say hi! :)

Elder Canto

Photo from the baptism on May 30th

I love this family!

Photo from the baptism in early May -- not sure how the left side is blurry and not the right side.. maybe we were moving when they took this picture

A Long Week...

Hi everyone,

My companion and I were sick this week, both of us with the same sickness, and so we had the same symptoms every day.. it's been an adventure! On Monday and Tuesday, until Wednesday afternoon, we both had fevers and headaches, and we went to the hospital on Wednesday, when we got these red spots everywhere that were itchy. They drew blood for a blood test, and diagnosed both of us with Dengue. I thought this was round 2 for me, but then, we went back for a follow-up visit on Friday, and they did another blood test, and said that it wasn't Dengue, but it was an unidentified virus that has been going around here, which is like Dengue, but a bit weaker. I think that I'm basically fully recovered today, after the 2-3 days of rest recommended by the doctor, and so hopefully we can work this week. They also said to drink 4-5 liters of water per day, which, I discovered, is no joke! It felt like I was drinking water like it was my job! XD Also, since Thursday, we've both gotten tired really easily, and had to rest a lot. All of our numbers for lessons taught and everything were 0 this week.. imagine that! I miss my investigators.. DX hah

Hopefully, this week will be better, and we're done with this "unidentified virus".. I'm still kinda itchy though.. and tired.. but.. we'll see.

I was able to talk with my family on Skype last night, for Mother's Day, and it was really nice to see everyone again! It's hard to believe that the next time I see them, it'll be in person! I'm looking forward to that. :)

Well, I'm going to go rest a bit more, and hopefully I can go out and work at 6pm tonight!

I hope that you're all in better health than I am! haha! Have a good week.

Elder Canto

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

May the Fourth be with you..

I thought I'd steal Alissa's subject line here.. :D

Hi everyone! So Alissa and I have decided to move our wedding date to December 5th, 2015, since that's a Saturday, and it'll be easier for people to make it, we hope! Please email me to let me know if you're planning on going, whoever is reading this! (just so I'll know :]) We'll be getting married in the Seattle, WA temple. It's going to be awesome! :)

I officially have been on my mission for 17 months today, and I have 6 months left.. it's crazy how the time has flown by.. I'll be talking to my family on Skype on Mother's Day, for the last time before I go home, and I'm looking forward to that! It's only twice a year that we get to do that! I'll be flying in to the SEA-TAC airport on November 5th or 6th, and going to NY after getting married.

We'll be having a zone conference tomorrow with 5/7 of the zones in my mission, so that should be great, and I'll get to see some of my friends!

I was super tired this week, along with my companion, and our 2 new Brazilian roommates, since we spent our whole P-Day moving furniture and cleaning.. but, hopefully this week will be different, since today is going to be more relaxed. haha

I wonder how my brother feels about Alissa and I getting married on his birthday.. XD

Anyways, have a great week, everyone! Don't forget to pray and read the scriptures daily! God didn't give us the scriptures to keep them on a shelf, but, He gave them to us for us to read and study them! The more good things that you fill your life with, the less likely you are to have bad things in your life.

By the way, I was thinking about 3 questions this week:

1) Do I want to return to live with God in His kingdom after this life?
(to which I answered yes)

2) Am I ready/willing to do everything that I need to in order to receive this great blessing?

3) What do I need to change/do in order to qualify for this great blessing?

I promise you, you won't regret doing this! God has asked us to keep His commandments, have faith in Jesus Christ, repent of our sins, be baptized, be born of the Spirit (John 3:5), and endure to the end. Whatever you need to change, change it, ASAP! This life is the time for us to prepare to meet God, and we should not procrastinate the day of our repentance! Also, Jesus Christ will come again, and He will come when no one is expecting it, so we need to always be clean/free of our sins, and be ready, and watching, and waiting, for when He does come again! And by doing this, we will be blessed, and we can rest easier. :)

I love each of you! Have a great week! Happy Mother's Day, to all of you wonderful mothers! Especially you, Mom! :D

Elder Canto

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

Moving Day!

Today, we spent all day, (7:30am to 4pm), moving to the other elders' apartment, in our complex. We had to go down from the 3rd floor, and then up to the 2nd floor, over and over and over.. hah. I'm tired!

This weekend was stake conference, and I got to see a lot of people from Geisel and Mangabeira II, which was awesome. :) It was really great! This past week, I started learning how to play a song on the piano, and it's frustrating at times, but I'm getting there! I love playing the piano!

Our investigator is going to be baptized this Saturday, who's been investigating the church since September of 2014. It's going to be great :D

I'm doing great here in Cidade Jardim, and getting to know the members really well. It's been awesome teaching them the missionary lessons so far. We taught the Restoration a bunch, and now we're going to be teaching The Plan of Salvation. We've become professionals at teaching the Restoration, hah. We've watched the Restoration DVD like 12 times now in the past 2-3 weeks, and we keep finding symbolism in the different scenes. I love that movie, every time! Well, it's actually like 19 minutes long.. but yeah.. I love it! I'm still not tired of it.

So yeah, I'll be living with 2 Brazilians now -- Elder Foragi, and Elder Ribeiro, and my companion, who's from Texas -- Elder Buechele. It should be nice. We switched to the other side of the building, so now, we can see the church, and we have a nice breeze! And, we each have our own bed now, instead of a bunk bed. We had to clean the apartment a ton, and we threw a way a ton of church magazines and manuals that were just sitting around for a really long time, and nobody was using. I hate to throw these things away, but.. there comes a point, where.. there's just no point to having them! Too many! hah

Anyways, I need to get going now, but, I love each of you, and I hope that you are all well! I am always praying for you, and I thank those of you who are praying for me, as well!

Have a great week!

Elder Canto

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

Transfers next week! Happy Easter!

Hey everyone, next Wednesday is transfers, so I'll be emailing on Wednesday, and not Monday. We had a baptism on Saturday, and it was great! I love being a missionary, and having so many opportunities to help people. It is truly a blessing to see how the gospel changes people's lives. I learned a lot from General Conference this week, and I am going to continue listening to the talks again, and I invite you all to do the same!

Have a wonderful week. I love each of you! Happy Easter!

Elder Canto

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

I'm keeping my promise! I'm sending photos! haha

Elder Buechele (my companion) and I on our 3rd floor balcony


My new daily planner covers (I do this just about every transfer)


First-person shooter.. with the bee that Alissa sent me.. haha! I'm addicted to video games.. okay?


The bee and I :P


Have a great week, everyone! :)

Elder Canto

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.