All is well here in the mission. On Saturday I made one year. Or maybe it was Friday. I'm really not sure. But regardless of the date, I now am a one year old missionary, which is awesome.

Last week we went to visit the wife of one of the members in our ward, who is not a member. She really likes the missionaries though, and she prepared a dinner for us. It was kind of like a Brazilian Chicken Noodle Soup, with lots of meat and other stuff in it. It was delicious.
When it started to get late, Adam (the member) said he would drive us home to our apartment. Midway through the car ride home, my stomach started complaining about some foreign intruders. They were having trouble working out their differences and by the time we got home war had been declared.
We got into the elevator and climbed the 18 floors to our apartment. By the time I finally entered the apartment, I knew what had to be done, but I danced a reluctant dance, doing everything within my power to avoid the inevitable.
Finally, I submitted myself to this horrible fate and released everything that I had just consumed to be free. Not yet satisfied, I discharged my lunch as well. Moments later, feeling alone and left out, my breakfast made a last minute daring escape.
For the first time in many years, I threw up.
You can imagine my concern when, three days later, they invited us back for dinner.

On Saturday night we had a Dessert Festival at our ward and Elder Rodrigo and I made Lemon Squares from a recipe that I got from Sister Frei. I couldn't find any powdered sugar at the supermarket, and we put in too much lemon. There were a lot left over at the end of the night, and we didn't even place in the competition.
The good news though is that the family we're teaching went and loved it. They're progressing well towards their baptism this Sunday.
There was actually an attendance of 85 people, 23 of whom were investigators, so that was excellent. It was a good activity.

'Til next week,
Elder Sisco

Note from Amy: Write Dan some letters! He'd love to get mail, so drop him a postcard or something. Here are a few recent pictures; enjoy!


Me with the berimbau.

Here's Debora, Bahia's daughter, baptism from a couple weeks ago.

This week we found the most elect person I've seen so far on my mission. A long time ago when I first got into the area, a guy passed by us in his car, stopped, and came back to talk to us. He only wanted to talk because he assosciates white shirts and nametags with Americans and wanted to practice his english. But he was nice enough, and invited us to his house to talk- except that as he was leaving he started using some pretty heavy language and Elder Anderson was offended and said we weren't going back to talk to him.
Elder Anderson got transfered last week and we went back to talk to the guy. We got to his house, and the lady (who turned out to be his mother) said that he wasn't home and to come back later- but there was a kid sitting on the steps so we started talking to him and he mentioned that his family was very important to him and when we asked if we could share a message with his family this voice from above said, "Of course you can! Come on up!" It was his mom looking out from the second story window; she had been listening to the conversation.
It turns out that she had had a bad experience in the church that she attended and had recently been praying to Heavenly Father asking for His help to find the church that she and her family should go to. When she saw us, she said, she knew that he had answered her prayer.
The first lesson was fantastic. The Spirit was so strong, she cried at the end, and through tears when we invited her to pray and ask God if what we had said was true, she said, "I already know." When we asked her if, receiving an answer from God that our message was true, she would be baptized in His church she said, "of course."
The second lesson was also exciting. She had read 3 Nephi 11 and Moroni 10:3-5. We asked her if she prayed about it and she said, "I didn't need to ask, I felt that I was true as I read it."
So anyway, it's a family of four people. They're all very excited to go to church with us this Sunday. She and her two sons have baptismal dates for the 30th of November, so if you could all pray for that that would be wonderful. I've wanted my whole mission to baptize a whole family- complete with a Father- and we have an excellent chance now to help these people progress.
In other news, Transfers was last week and I'm so glad that's over. I had to take care of everything myself, since Elder Anderson was leaving and it was rough. But it's over now, and I can take a deep breath. Things have returned to their normal level of stressfulness.
The other day we had to go to another city to pick up a missionary so he could come to the office to fix our computers which were not working correctly. We got on the bus and asked the driver if he was heading in that direction and he was like, "Yep, I'll show you where you need to go, just stay up here with me," and he made us stand in the front of the crowded bus next to him.
It was actually kind of cool, I felt like a VIP standing behind his giant Bus Driver Seat. Turns out that he's a member of the church for like 12 years and he has three sons that all served missions. He wouldn't let us pay for the bus either. If the transit system found out that he was letting people ride for free he could get in big trouble- even fired- so we insisted on paying, and then he got angry and was like, "I'm in charge here! If I say you don't pay you aren't going to pay!"
So we didn't pay.
That's all my news for this week.
Let it be known that I am still waiting for letters from anyone who reads this Blog. There's been a letter drought since I got here in the office; it'd be fantastic if we could all work together and resolve this problem.
Love,
Elder Sisco

October 31, 2008

Let me tell you a little bit about The Best Sunday Ever. I woke up, went to church, ate a fantastic lunch, and then because it was my day to stay with Elder Dantas, we took a bus home and I took a two hour Sunday Afternoon Nap. I believe that I will never again have the opportunity to do this. At least not for another 13 months.
That night, we took a bus to the chapel where we had a baptism. Debora, Bahia's daughter, was baptized by the Bishop. It was an awesome meeting. Also, I sat next to our new Ward Mission Leader who is 80 years old. He was baptized 36 years ago, when the church was just getting it's roots down here in Brazil, and he was confirmed a new member by Elder Howard W. Hunter of the quorum of the twelve at the time. Sweet, huh? He showed me an old Aaronic Priesthood manual that has a story about him in it. Y'know how whenever they read those example stories with morals in them you always wonder if they're actually true? Well this one used his name and everything.
It talked about one time while he was a taxi driver in São Paulo and he rear-ended someone and he got out of the taxi and was like, "I'm sorry, this is completely my fault, I'll take care of everything. Now, I know that everything happens for a reason, so I'd like to take this opportunity to share a message with you about the gospel of Jesus Christ." The guy was baptized two weeks later. When I was done reading the story in the manual he leaned over and said, "that guy is a Patriarch now in São Paulo." Pretty crazy, huh? He's been a missionary for a very, very long time, and has had a lot of success.
The other day we ran into this guy who seemed to know the missionaries, so we asked if we could go to his house. Turns out his whole family, minus him, was baptized in the church but now are inactive. They go to some evangelical church now. We asked his wife (who is a member of the church. Or was.) if she could pray and she was like "sure, but I'm going to do it my way" and then she started praying really loudly and saying a lot of hallelujah's and Praise Jesus's and up until then I was thinking "this is the most horrible irreverant thing I've ever heard."
But she quickly outdid herself and started speaking with her "Gift of Tongues."
It went something like this: "chamalamahamawama oohwee oh chamahamahama (about a minute of this, coupled with a lot of rolling of the tongue. we had trouble controlling ourselves). Amen."
I was unable to identify the language.

So I'm still here with three companions. Elder Dantas, the missionary who had surgery on his knee, is getting a little bit better, but we're worried that he just wont get better enough soon enough for him to be able to go back into the field. We'll see how it goes, though. He has two more weeks to be able to be on his feet and moving. Every third day I stay home with him (we rotated days) at night while the others two go to the area to work, and during the day he stays in the office and... doesn't do much.
I had an interesting experience this week. I noticed that in my prayers I always asked for "everything to go well," and then I stopped one night and remembered something that someone had told me, I think it might've been Mom, to pray for all the problems to happen while Elder Anderson is still here to help me. And so I did that. And then the next day it just seemed like everything went wrong, and I learned more about being independent and taking care of problems on that day than I had on any other day since I've been here.
Tuesday was President's birthday, and at night we went to his house for a litle cake and ice cream. The Assistents got him a really cool picture of Captain Moroni engraved/burned into a big piece of cork. We got him.... lame cards that we made. But it was fun anyway.
Nothing really exciting has happened unfortunately.
So, until next week,
Elder Sisco

Last night President Frei officially signed the mission over to me, and so I am now the Financial Secretary of the Belo Horizonte Mission. Elder Anderson will still be here in the office though for three more weeks to be able to help me out if I need anything.
The work in the area is going well. We're getting a lot of good references from our recent converts.
On Monday we taught her next door neighbor and the ladies family the first lesson, and invited them to pray about it and everything. Then two days later we found out that the lady had gone on the internet, looked up "Mormons" and printed out a bunch of Anti-Mormon crap and sent it to Bahia, which she threw away (yes!). I don't think we'll be going back there. We asked her to pray and ask God, and not look up trash on the internet.
That's all the news I have for this week, so, until next week!
-Elder Sisco

Last Friday, I woke up and I was hideous. Even today, I don't know what happened. It could have been something I ate. President Frei thought it was probably something I touched. I really just don't know. But my face swelled up a little bit and had this horrible, itchy rash all over from my chin to even my eyelids. It itched like crazy! I wanted to die. I bought some things to help it on Sunday (sinner!) and on Monday it started getting better and now I'm fine.
It was unfortunate though that I had to go to conference like that and see a bunch of people from my old area (same stake) and then we had a baptism on Sunday night. I will always remember the baptism with the itchy, ugly face. I'll try to send pictures, but I don't know if you'll be able to tell.
The baptism was of Bahia and her two twin sons, Isac and Isan. It was one of the best I've ever seen.
Aside from the itchy face, conference was fantastic. I got to see the Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon sessions. I really like Jeffery R. Holland. His talks are always very powerful, and he talks with a lot of force. It's like he's forcing us to feel the Spirit when he speaks. And it's always good to hear the Prophet speak and have that confirmation that, yes, he is a true prophet of God.
After the baptism on Sunday, a woman that Elder Alfaro and I baptized in my third transfer (Monica, if you remember her, I don't know) came up to me (first of all, it was exciting just to see her going to church still) and said that she was getting ready to go to the temple to do baptisms. It was so awesome. I'm so excited that she's still firm and that she's progressing.
I'm no longer in a trio, I think I mentioned before. We have an injured Elder who will be staying with us, probably until the end of the transfer. He had to have surgery on his knee, and he'll be on crutches for a little while, so he's recuperating in the office and in our house for a while. Since there are four of us, we rotate taking turns staying at home with him at night, while the other two go to the area. It's a good opportunity to study more. I kind of enjoy it. I think I'm the first missionary ever to have three companions.
I've been in the office now for almost four weeks, and I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. Soon I will be in charge. I really am grateful for this experience that I'm having. It's great preparation for a job in the future. (Or to manage my touring band. Either one.)
Love,
Elder Sisco

Here's a picture from the baptism last Saturday.

So things are going well.
We're teaching a great family. The mom's name is Bahia. She's in her 60's, and all of her kids are adopted. Her and two of her adopted (twin) sons are going to be interviewed tonight and baptized on Sunday. So, the work here (proselyting-wise) is progressing. It's a lot better than I expected coming into the office.
Bahia has so many adopted kids that I don't even know all of them. It's hard to keep track. She also has a parrot, a cat, and like, 5 dogs. They just got a new dog two days ago- a little Terrier- and named it Sisquinho (little Sisco). It was a deep honor. I'll try and get a picture of Sisquinho and me to send home.
This week I lost a pair of pants. I'm not really sure how it happened. I remember that they were dirty, and it was late and dark, and so I threw them into a corner somewhere. My concern is that the window stays open 100% of the time and that it's very possible that I threw a pair of pants out the 18th story window.
Things in the office are going smoothly. I'm starting to the the hang of things around here. In about a week, Elder Anderson will sign the mission over to me and I will officially become the new Financial Secretary.
It's a little nervewracking to work with such large sums of money that don't belong to me, but I'm getting more and more used to it. I just hope I don't get too lax. But it's better than at the beginning when I was practically too scared to do anything.
Anyway, that's all that's going on around here. Hopefully next week I'll have some more exciting news.
Love and miss you all,
Elder Sisco


This first one is the last baptism I had before I left my last area, Nacional. Her name is Fernanda, and she's this guy's girlfriend. He baptized her. That's Elder Tolotti, my favorite companion to date.


This next one is my last district before coming to the office: Elder Frost (from my group, we were in the CTM together), Elder Tolotti, Elder Tiago and Me.


And a sweet picture of a tiger drinking water (you can see the drops of water coming off of his tongue!) at the zoo.