This week was hard!

I am glad to hear that thanksgiving went great. Sounds like you all had a blast and did a lot of fun things. Seattle actually sounds fun this time haha. Maybe you should plan for it again next year, when i get home haha. Wheres all the pictures?

Well this week here was hard, we ended up cutting our last investigators, so we are down to the floor working on scratch now. We havent found really anybody good yet and the weather was in the 100s all week. We were out in the street all day every day and i felt like i was burning in the sun. its dry here like utah, so when its hot the sun just goes straight at you and it feels like we were in the oven. We did have a weird experience the other day, we contacted a lady in front of her house, she was a reference from a member, she was giving us a few excuses on why not to let us in, my companion was making the contact, i got tired of just standing there and started to talk about family and how Jesus has been helping her family that were members, and then i offered a prayer, during the prayer she started to cry and then after, she accepted very quickly that we return to share a message with her.

Anyways not mcuh more i going on, we might finally move our apartment i think tuesday or wednesday. Anyway,I love and miss you,

MY NEW AREA IS COOL

Well my new area is cool, it is a big city right on the border, ive already seen the Uruguay elders walking in my area. I may be entering uruguay today with some other elders. My new LD is way cool, i like him a lot and its weird my district here is new. I am one of the oldest missionaries haha. The LZs are the oldest, my LD has one year down, and then me. So i actually feel like an older missionary here. The food is still the same, wont change ever. We have some richer members here though that make a few extra on the side. The work is still the same, a little hard but i am liking the new area where i dont feel like ive already knocked every single door. ****** called me on sunday and he is sad i am gone, haha. He might visit livramento soon and he wants to pass by and see me.

The other day we ate at a very good members house. The dad started teasing the 15 year old daughter and she freaked out and then got up and left the room. It made me laugh like crazy because i remember when dad does it to ashley and how sometimes the whole family would join in. Ah good times. Tomorrow is a zone conference and i am excitied to see Elder ****** again. Zone conference will be in Alegrete. During conference its one of the biggest holidays here in Rio grande do sul. Gauchos are coming into the city from everywhere and everybody is riding horses through out the city. Its good we have conference this day becasue nobody will be open to letting us in haha. The holiday is kind of stupid too because they are celebrating a war that they had with sao paulo. But sao paulo won.. so i dont get it.

Anyways thats all that is goin on here.

Getting Transferred

Today is transfers and.... i am leaving Rosário, i am going to Livramento. My new companion will be Elder ******. I will leave tomorrow so today is my last day with Elder ******. I am way sad to leave Elder ******. We have become way good friends, i will miss him. He wants to study in BYU so i told him if he goes to Utah me and him will live together in Provo. But i am also ready to leave Rosário.

Cool thing, a family from Alegreto has been visiting Rosário. We took them to church and ***** walked holding my hand haha. All i know, is I may not be baptizing a ton of people but i have made friendships that are already stronger then some of my friendships i had before the mission. I am learning how to love people and i love it.

Things are alright

Sounds like things are going great, kids are starting school, big red is gone haha. A lot of things have already changed since i left lol.

Things here are going alright. We had another tough week but i am looking positive again now that it will start going better, the problem is the branch i was serving in is not doing anything so we are starting to work more in the other branch because they are looking forward to helping us out, its just kind of sad to leave my other area.

We have two more weeks in this transfer, i think i might stay here in Rosário for another 6 weeks after, or i will be transfered to another city. I dont know, but i am ready to leave to another city.

On a good note my companion and I are getting along great. He is really great and is a professional mangá artist (some weird comic book drawing things) he has started to teach me how to draw and i am improving haha.

Have a good week and I will write to you next week!

We had a BAPTISM!!

Well this week went a lot better, because we had a BAPTISM. I sent dad a email with pictures and a funny story about the baptism. I am doing great and still waiting for my package, i have a interview with the mission president on wednesday so hopefully.. hopefully he will have my package. haha. And some letters for me lol.

Tonight we are doing another family home evening and it should be fun, its with a man we baptized and his family, they are looking forward to it and we are too.

After emailing we are going to go and buy more food, i will probably just get hot dogs, cereal, bananas, cheese, just some easy stuff. I dont need to buy a lot since we always have lunch with members, even though we eat the same thing with them and i think my stomach is being weird again from eating beans and rice everyday. But I should get used to it, because thats what i am eating for two years.

Also i forgot to tell you at zone conference the family from Alegrete visited me. It was awesome and i was way happy to see them again, i hope i serve in that area again in my mission. Tenho saudades de eles.

But not much is going on just the work and talking to people, i love and miss you.

Love and miss you,
seu filho, Elder Boiteux

Setting goals for June

Hey well not to much is going on here either. We were abe to fulfill most of our goals number wise. Which is good and we were shocked, we are expected to do a lot here. We found some pretty solid people, which is good, i have a goal for five baptisms in june. Which will be difficult since we dont have anybody right now who can be baptized in june. So we will have to find those 5 people and teach them and get em wet.

This week was a little crazy though, we got persecuted pretty bad by one of the members neighbor. She is into Voodoo, and Voodoo is some scary stuff. Its all about bad spirits and devils and things, so basically we had a run in with a demon. She even said "The thing that is inside me is too powerful for you to deal with." But we just preached repentance and then ignored her. When she left the member felt really bad buut we just told her "our hands are clean, we did our part" so we are hoping we dont get anymore run ins with "psycho voodoo lady."

Other then that yesterday we went out to go finding and neither of us were really looking forward to it. Elder Melo tried one place and nothing happened so we were like, here goes another long day. Then we were passing this house, and i looked over and just had a feeling to give it a try. So i went and clapped and we got in. We taugh this single mom with two young children. She visited our church frequently when she was a teenager for six years but never talked with the missionaries. The lesson went perfect and we both felt really good about it. So she could deffinately be baptized in june.

We also had a lesson with four of our investigators at once, we taugh Alma 5 and the spirit was really strong. Three of the investigators are totally solid, but one of them doesnt really care. Later that night one of the investigators was at a members house when we visited and she said she wants to be baptized. So we set a date, she accepted our help. The only problem is that the one investigator that doesnt care is her boyfriend, who she is living with. So we will see waht happens there.

Other then those we have just been doing a lot of finding and teaching our good investigators. Member visits and so on. We are worried that missionary/member relations are dropping in this area. There were some missed lunch dates before i came and a few wihle i have been here. (The members sign up for lunch during hte week when we cant visit the chapel to see the calender.)

Well sounds like everything is going good in Utah. I love and miss you.

Com amor,
Elder Boiteux

Not feeling too well!

I was in Santa Maria for a training meeting for two days and then the night i arrived in Rosário i didnt feel good. So i hurried unpacked and went to bed. The next day i still didnt feel well, i had pain in my stomach but when i went to the bathroom it was just diarrhea and the pain didnt go away. I ate some food that our DL made and then we had district meeting and lunch. After lunch we studied and i felt horrible, we tried to work but i could barely walk because my stomach hurt so bad. we went back to the house and i got a blessing from elder melo and then laid in bed all day. the next day wasnt any better so the mission mom said we shoudl go to the hospital. At the hosptial they said i caught a virus thats native to this area of brasil. Its a stomach infection which causes a lot of pain, diarrhea, vomiting, and fever. They gave me a shot of some thick freaking liquid, it hurt and then they loaded me with pills. So after fighting the stupid virus for a week i am at the recuperating stage. I dont have my stomach pain and i am not vomiting, my diarrhea is leaving the only problem now is i still cant eat a lot which leaves my body weak and makes it hard for me to work.

Well i miss Alegrete. My new comp is awesome, we get a long great and he speaks english too. He is from the amazon, he is a indian. The only problem is i hate working in branches, in Alegrete we were in a Ward but here we are in a very small branch. There isnt even 10 priesthood holders, and they only need 1 deacon to pass the sacrament and it still goes faster then the sacrament in our ward does.

So i was glad to get your excited email and it lifted my spirits, it will just take a while for me to get out of my new downer attitude and get happy and excited again.

With love,
Elder Boiteux

Easter here is different

Easter here is different, easter in portugues is the same word as passover, its basically a three day holiday about jesus. They have plays all over brasil of his death and everything and they had tv specials about him everywhere. On saturday one of the Elders told me that where he is from all the kids make judas iscariot dolls and torture them all day and at the end they hang him. They do not have an easter egg hunt but they do get a lot of chocolate and bunny chocolates. So that is similiar.

Well the work is going, my companion goes home in two weeks and right now he is sick. But we are working, we have some good investigators but by the time they are baptized i will be gone because i am getting transfered for sure after this transfer. We are trying to push some to baptism the last week but its difficult. I still dont know the language and its starting to get really frustrating. But its good, brasil is starting to get cold, so i am going to have a double doce of winter this year. Lucky me.

But nothing really new is going on just the missionary work and my crappy language skills, also here is a better address to send my stuff too. It gets there faster and everybody says to use it.

Caixa Postal 0339
Santa Maria - RS
97001-970
Brazil

i love you and miss you,
Elder Boiteux

The Bishop is a funny guy

Well i am not in a trio anymore. Elder ****** is my comp and trainer. We still live with Elder ******* he got a new comp and there are two duplas in this area. So there are now four of us in that tiny apartment haha. Oh well we usually arent even in it just mornings and night.

The bishop is a funny guy and helps me with my language. We ate at his house and elder ******* played a trick on me and instead of saying 'I am full', I said "I am pregnated thank you" freak. We got a good laugh at it and then the bishop told me what to actually say.

There arent too many animals here, I see a bunch of horses and also a bunch of dogs and cats. Other then that only like birds. I am in country sides and farm country so the cities are mainly small little ones but they are good and fun. and yeah districts here are cooler, they find ways to bond with eachother better and it is really cool.


com mais amor,
Elder Boiteux

The people here are AWESOME

Well, i am in Brasil. And it is totally different. I am in a trio again. My fathers (trainers) are Elder ******* (He is a brazilian from Sao Paulo and this is his last transfer) and Elder ****** (American from Idaho), they are the Zone Leaders here in Alegrete and they are super awesome. P-Days are on monday and its the only day i can email now. Also its cool here because we got together with our entire district and had a picnic and played soccer, we didnt do stuff like that in Michigan. Elder ****** was way happy and said we had the father son connection with soccer haha.
The apartments are different, the kitchens are a lot smaller with less sophisticated stuff, but we dont have to use it often because we always eat at member houses. I am liking the camas (beds) they are way better then the ones i had in Michigan, also i havent had to use the mattress sheets, either all the beds already had them or there are no bugs in this area of Brasil, we also dont have any crazy animals like monkeys (sad) or those big spiders (yeah, saves my life).
Portuges is hard though, everybody speaks really really fast and although i have loved brasil and the people so far its been a week in (the inferno) i cant understand anything to save my life. I have beared my testimony in church and some things in lessons, made 1 contact that failed, and taught about prophets twice, plus a member lesson. But thats it, i can only talk, if someone says something to me i am lost, and i am pretty sure my portugues isnt very good.
Lucky for me the people here are awesome. The members are really positive and tell me that when i come back to Alegrete i will be fluent. I love the members a ton here, i cant talk to them and i already feel love, in michigan it was hard for me to do that, but here i do. Being a soccer player helps, and now i am a Gremista, a fan of gremio, its the team in Rio Grande do sul. Area i am in. So that is awesome.
Well nobody here can say my name. I have been called Elder Bottom, Batuch, Batukki, Bateaushhhh, its quite funny. When i have to introduce myself i hand them my name tag and say voce tenta (you try) and its funny to hear. Or sometimes they just look and wait, which takes about 6-7 tries before they get it.
Oh that reminds me, all letters/packages/anything you mail just needs to go to the mission office. They get everything and then send by way of missionary to us. So everything must go to the mission office. Thats how everything here is going though, nothing to crazy.
com mais amor,
Elder Boiteux

Members here are AWESOME

It has warmed up a little bit, it has been in the 40's-50's lately and we had it in the 60's the other day, that was great. So at least it is getting somewhere, it still gets cold when the Michigan wind picks up, man that stuff is freezing.

We are suppose to be back between 9-9:30 and then stay in the rest of the night and go to sleep. So we are usually back by 9. Things are going great right now though, the members here in South Haven are awesome and we get fed a lot and when we dont ahve a car they give us rides all over the place, so they help out a ton, its really cool. We are just working hard and having fun though so everything is going A-OK.

eu te amo,
Elder Boiteux

I got transfered

I just got Emergency Transfered last tuesday, i am now in South Haven, MI and i am not in a threesome anymore. Just a companionship, my new companion is Elder ****** and he is way cool and has a ton of energy, so things are going great right now, we have been tearing it up for the past few days, so dont send my stuff to Grandville anymore, my new address is: 309 Michigan Ave. Apt. B
South Haven, MI
49090

My talk on Sunday

Well i dont know about the talk that I have to give on Sunday. I think it will be hard but they didnt give us a topic so i am just preparing one on hope, i have most of it done but i will finish it today (i am writing it in portugues) and then Elder ***** will help translate it to spanish after i am finished. So i hope that goes well but we will see.

We are required to do a car fast every week. A car fast is going a day without using hte car so we just have to ride the bus and walk everywhere. Although now we have car trade-offs so we only get the car everyother week and it is annoying because this week we have been doing a bunch of bus riding and walking.

Well today we went and played basketball, Elder ***** is way good, and also Elder ****** and i have been getting along really well and he is way cool. He has been out here for almost 14 months so he will be home way before i do.

Sorry continuing on the day schedule, we are now emailing and will go grocery shopping after, then we are going to the Mall hopefully (because i need to buy a beanie, a light jacket, and i want a new wallet) and then we are going to the stake center to meet up with a bunch of missionaries and we will be playing basketball again. So thats all that we are doing today.

Thanks for the package

Thank you for the package, i got it the other day we all appreciated it a lot so thank you mom. And yes i missed your awesome breakfast this morning : (. Well the baptism was the other day and it went great and she was super happy, this next week is another one and i get to baptize him. I am excited but also nervous, i have to do the prayer in spanish so we will see haha.
Well i dont have a lot of adventures really because not much has been going on. I had zone conference and that was really cool, the zone leaders and ap's talked to us and the mission president and his wife. I also saw Elder ****** and he seems to be doing good and was in a good mood so that was pretty cool. He says hi.

We don’t shovel too much, we did on the day we got a ton of snow and it took us forever to shovel out all of the cars, we also helped push people through the snow and stuff. But other than that not much has been going on at all. Just getting ready for the baptisms and running around getting those already as fast as we can.
Today is going alright, i had breakfast and then did some scripture study.. Well that’s about all that’s gone on so far, we will teach later and then we will teach a couple in Spanish so that should be good too. After that i am going on Trade-offs. Trade-Offs are when the District Leader goes and evaluates all the missionaries so he has to go with the other ones and one of my companions is the district leader so i have to do it a lot.
It’s warming up a little bit but not too much. Well for baptisms we just have to make sure everybody is going to be there and constantly check to see if people are willing to do talks and stuff. We also have to make the program and print that off, make sure the font is filled, hymn books are in the room, everybody is ready and get everyone seated and the meeting started. So yeah, that’s it. The chapel isn’t very far only a couple of miles.
Well I really missed the Valentine’s breakfast, it didn’t even feel like a holiday at all so that was interesting. Today I am in Hastings, Michigan on trade-offs. Today we just have some less actives to teach and one investigator then we are doing service at a soup kitchen and then dinner at a members house. We just fixed a flat tire by filling the hole and everything so that was pretty easy and fast. So that’s all for today.

Yeah it is freezing here

Yeah it is freezing here still too. We got dumped on and couldnt drive the car because of bad driving conditions one day, so we just took a car fast. We still have to do door contacts but if i gets bellow 10 we aren't allowed to be outside for more than five minutes so we can't do contacts if it is that cold. But everything is going well, we have had some weird experiences such as getting cursed by some old dude. Also i got swindled out of 20 dollars by some guy on the street :(. I am a freaking idiot, but o well i just counted it as MSF money. But yeah other than those nothing new is going on really, just having a good ol time freezing in michigan.
I hope everything is going well in Utah and that you had fun with the grandparents. I miss and love you.
Eu te amo,
elder Boiteux

We got shined!

This will be short because I am working on my Mormon.org profile but anyways I enjoyed the email update. Sadly no i couldnt watch the BYU update we went to a dinner at a Mexican party and had some food but did not watch the game, they lost anyways, we can look up scores on the phone : ). I will put a card in the mail for Ahsley's birthday, i will wait to get her a present when i am in brasil because there is nothing cool in Michigan.But anyways thats all that is going on, we got shined on all of our friday and saturday appointments but today we haev 1 appointment and then we are going to a members house for brasilian food haha YES : ) and i will be practicing the second lesson in portugues with them. well thats all for today i love you mom. keep up being awesome and tell ashley i want a picture of her in her necklace when you give it to her.
Com Amor
eu te amo
elder boiteux

Here in Grand Rapids

Well yeah it is hard because it is cold here and door knocking sucks!!!!!!! Well there really isnt much here because since it is winter time everything is covered in snow. I am in Grand Rapids which is the most populated city beside Detroit. SO that is about all that there is to talk about Michigan, i will try and take some pictures so you can see it for yourself.
Well my traineers are totally stoked! I am too! Michigan is not an easy mission and since i have been here, we have gotten 2 investigators with baptismal dates. 1. is a 24 year old mom, her daughter was trying to play with me the whole lesson but we commited her to baptism. so that is totally awesome. 2. is a 14 year old boy and we just committed him to baptism. It is really cool and i cant way to see the baptisms. My trainers are awesome too.
Saturday is my p-day so i will email you then.

Lansing, Michigan Address

Hey everyone, Elder Boiteux's new address in Lansing, Michigan is.......

Elder Dylan Boiteux
1830 R.W. Berends Dr. SW, #2
Wyoming, MI 49519

Please write when you get a chance. He would LOVE to hear from you:)

Re-Assignment - Mission #2

Hi Everyone,

Dylan was reassigned to Lansing,Michigan. He leaves the MTC on Wednesday, January 12, 2011. We are so excited for him. Now we just need to keep him in our prayers and hope that he gets his visa soon so he can go to sunny, warm Brazil!!!!!