Good Morning Everybody!  This is Elder Hoskin.  This is the voice clip for the 10^th of June, 2013.  Bauru is the City.  This week was an interesting week, I guess.  And so, I will let you guys know how its all going.  First order of business is to say to Dad, Happy Birthday!  Because, if today is the 10^th, then on Wednesday is Dad’s birthday, the big 45.  So, Dad, Happy Birthday, and…. Yeah.  Just know that its good to have birthdays, cause that means you are still living.  Um, Happy Birthday! 

Yeah, so this week has gone pretty well.  We had some interesting stories.  So we went to Londrina on Monday, and this is the second farthest city away from Londrina.  Its Falls de Iguasu, then its Bauru.  So, it was like 6 hours on the bus.  Apparently, just some interesting facts, cause if you look on google maps, its right on the tip of our mission.  So, if you look on google maps, the city that I am in right now, is five hours away from Londrina, but its about three hours away from Sao Paulo, and about eight hours away from Heo  Judinao (spell?).  so, its getting pretty close to all that kind of stuff.  Like I am going back to the MTC, but …  So, we took that six hour bus ride, and that was not that great, because on Saturday, last Saturday, a week ago, we fasted and everything.  Then on Sunday we ate lunch to break our fast, it was Fagewata:  Really heavy, usually Americans think its gross Brazilian food, but they throw all the parts of the pig into the beans and stuff.  And, so, I kind of got really sick, not really sick, but pretty sick.  Because, I hadn’t eaten anything for 24 hours, and I just ate that.  And, so I was kind of sick from Sunday after lunch, to Thursday.  But, on the good side, at least I went to Londrina the majority of those days, so it wasn’t like I wasted any time in my area.  Because on Monday, the entire day, we didn’t have P-day, we just traveled down to Londrina, and that was pretty nasty on the bus ride, I was feeling pretty gross.  And, we got there, and we had a leaders council on Tuesday, which was really good.  That was the last leaders council of President Tavarez, so it was really sad, everyone just, like, cried.  We planned a special surprise for them, and it was just really sad cause it was the last leaders council.  But it was also my third, or second to last leaders council.  But, I am going to be sad to see him go.  Luckily we still have interviews with him this month, so I will be able to talk to him.  But, yeah,… so that happened.  And, then on Wednesday we came back, took six hours again, we got here, and we ate lunch at about three o’clock, but I still wasn’t feeling like eating anything, then we worked in our area.

So I told you guys about the story of the guy named Klebber in President Prudenche, he left his work so he could go to church, right. So, I had another example happen the last two weeks that I’ve been here, that’s a really good example.  Her name is Patricia, and she is the granddaughter of a recent convert member.  Basically how it happened was, the missionaries were passing by her house, ??? her extended family to church for six or seven months now.  But, she never had any interest, she would never sit there for the lessons, she would never want to hear anything, blah blah blah.  So, that’s her, Patricia.  But, when I got here, I didn’t know that she didn’t want anything to do with the church.   I just thought she was cool with us like everyone else in the house.  So, the first time we were there, I was like, Ah!  So, I was getting to know everyone, ‘hows it going? Lets go to church’ blah blah blah.  And so we left a message with them, and it ended up being really cool.  She’s like, yeah, I’ll go to church.  I didn’t see anything different.  Then, as soon as we left the house my companion is like, Wow!  I can’t believe she is going to go to church, because none of the missionaries have been able to get her to go to church.  And, it just taught me that your attitude towards people, your vision towards people sometimes prohibits things.  Because if our vision was like, ‘oh, she’s not going to accept, oh she has always not liked the missionaries of the church,’ then, it probably would not have worked out as well as it did.  I didn’t even know anything, so I just went in there, and invited her to church.  So, she went to church last week and she loved it.  So, she’s reading the Book of Mormon and everything, and she feels like the Book of Mormon is true.  And, everything’s true.  She prayed and felt good about it, so she got a response and everything.  So, last week we challenged her to be baptized.  But, she was like, ‘no, I don’t really know..’.  So, we were trying to find out what the problem was.  So, we were talking and talking and talking, and it came out that she had a boyfriend, so I guess she knew she was having certain commandment difficulties.  And, so we taught her about the commandment again, taught her about how its not a commandment of the church, but it’s a commandment of God.  And, she was feeling really good about it, like how it’s a commandment and she’s willing to follow it.  So we asked her to talk to her boyfriend, and asked, ‘would your boyfriend accept your decision to, abstain?’  And, she was like, yeah, I think he would.  And we were like, okay.  And I was like, ‘good, this will be a good test for him.  Because if he really likes  you, actually likes you, and actually interested it you, then he will respect your decision.’  Ha ha  So, we went back two days later, and she had talked to him.  She was like, ‘yeah, I just told him that it was going to be this way from now on.’   So, she’s like, ‘yeah we’re gonna stop, we already stopped, and blah, blah, blah.’  So, I said, ‘are you excited for baptism?’ and she was like, ‘yeah! I am excited for baptism.!’  So, the entire week she is like, pumped, excited to be baptized.  And, she got baptized.  And it was really awesome because you could see the real repentance that she had.  It was like the other story of Klebber was like.  But, he gave up work.  She was able to make sacrifices in order to follow the commandments, and it was a really special experience.  So that was really cool, that went well this week.  Um, what else went well…… um, yeah. 

I did a lot of interviews on Saturday.  There are four chapels inside the city, and there are four chapels outside the city in this stake we are at.  It’s a big stake.  On Saturday I ran around to four of them.  Just doing interviews and stuff.  But it was fun, I like doing that stuff, I like running around.  So, that was good. 

Oh, yeah, we had another interesting story, that you are probably interested in hearing.  So, there’s a ward in our zone called Mar de shall Hon Don.. its weird.  We are just going to call it Mar de Shall to make it easier.  And so, they (the missionaries) are looking for a new house, because their old house that they were in, there was a druggie living right next to it.  So the police had to break into the missionaries house one day, in order to break in to this guys house.  And, so, the President was like, ‘yeah, that’s probably not the safest place to be, so you should find a new house.’  So, they have been waiting to try to find a new house, and have been living in our house, and they found another house.  But their old house still has all the furniture and stuff.  So, there’s a lady, who is an old investigator of the Elder’s, who moved to Marilla, but she moved back two weeks ago.  So she knew one of the members, and she didn’t have a house or anything, and she has three kids.  And, the member is like, ‘yeah, you can live in this house because the missionaries aren’t living there right now.  So, she started to let the lady live in the missionaries old house.  Which, is charitably fine, except for the fact that it breaks a lot of rules as far as missionary logistics, or whatever.  So, I don’t know how President found out.  I didn’t even know, either, but President found out on Friday, and he was really, really, really, upset.  I just don’t think he was that great informed.  I think all he knew was that someone was living in the missionaries house.  I don’t think he knew it was a single mom with three kids who didn’t have anywhere to go.  So, he called me, like, really, really, angry on Friday, and he was like, ‘listen, I am going to put money in your account, you have to go there tomorrow morning, you have to go at 5 o’clock tomorrow, Saturday morning, and you have to take all the stuff.’  So he was like, you have to go there and take everything.  I was like, ‘we are not going to leave anything for her?’  And, he was like, ‘No!’  He was like, ‘you can only leave stuff, if its broken beyond repair.’  So, only if it is broken to the extent that we couldn’t repair it or use it any more.   And so, ….  I already knew this lady, to tell you the truth.  Because, her daughter is getting confirmed this week.  So, I went there on a Saturday morning with five of us.  And, the lady was really, really, cool about it.  She wasn’t like mad or anything.  We told her we had to get the furniture and use it for other houses and stuff, and she understood.  Cause she accepted that she was just kind of living there free.   But, I still felt really bad.  So, we went in there and we took almost everything.  She had her own mattress and stuff, but, we took everything.  So, I called Sister Tavarez, during the move, to see if I could get permission to leave some stuff there cause I was feeling really bad.  One of the things was a clothes dresser.  There were four clothes dressers.  There was two brand new ones, one that was old beyond repair that she wouldn’t even use cause it was so old.  And, there was one that was old, but it still kind of worked.  So, I called Sister, and tried to ask her, but, she was like, ‘no elder you have to bring it too if it still works.’  So, I was kind of bummed out.  So, usually I am really excited and cheerful and stuff, but, I kind of gave her a really subtle guilt trip, and said, ‘oh okay, all right.’ She was like, ‘are you all right, is everything good?’  And, she kept talking to me, but I was like, down, cause I was really really sad.   So, she called me back, like an hour later, and she said, ‘Elder Hoskin, I was thinking about it, and you can leave that other dresser there.’  So, I was like, Yeah!   I got her a dresser.  So later that night… We moved everything out in the morning, so that night, President called me and asked me how the move went.  So, I informed him a little bit better about who the lady was, how she was investigating the church, she had three kids, President was like, ‘Oh’  well, what furniture did you take?’  ‘I took everything President, I did what you told me to do.’  I took the shower heads, I took the washing machines, I took the fridge, I took the dressers, except the one Sister Tavarez told me to leave, I took the microwave, I took the beds, I took everything.  And he was like, ‘ oh, but you didn’t leave anything for her,’  And, I was like, ‘Well, President, what you told me to do was to take everything that wasn’t beyond broken, like beyond belief.  I was kind of being sneaky right now, I was kind of laying it down for President, kind of giving him a little bit of a guilt trip as well.  Because I was really sad, cause like, on Friday night, President was really mad, and he was like, ‘go and take everything!’  So the missionaries at our house were like, ‘the members were, like, doing a stupid thing’ and like blah blah.  (I think was Zach is trying to say is that the missionaries at his house were complaining about the members of the ward who told that lady she could live there.) I was really mad cause their (the missionaries) behavior was really really poor in regards to the situation.   So, I kind of got mad on Friday night, about the poor talking and stuff, so I was like, “All right guys, maybe they didn’t do exactly what was right, but the least you can do is forgive them for trying to be charitable.” Ha ha, I was just like, burn…  But, I was really trying to help this lady out, cause I felt like the other missionaries, and President, were a little low on the charity on the love during this whole move thing.  So I talked to President about all this, told him the situation, and I sort of made a little bit of a guilt trip.  And, then, an hour later, he called me back.  He was like, ‘okay, Elder, I’ve thought about it, and I have a list of stuff that you can just leave for her, and the mission will buy the rest of the stuff.’  Cause half the stuff is pretty old, but still functioning.  So, he’s like, okay, ‘you can leave the oven,  you can leave a fridge, you can leave a bed, you can leave a mattress, you can leave a table, blah, blah, blah.  So I guess he kind of like saw that she was really needing help.  So, he was like, you can leave these things cause they are older, but still working and the mission will just buy new ones, whenever we open up the new house for Mar de Shall.  So, for me that was a big success.  I felt like I was able to not lose my integrity, and stand up for what I know is right, try to just do what was right and help out this lady. 

So that was this week, and I love you guys, I hope everything is going well, and I will talk to you next week, bye.