What adventures?

Yes, I know what most of you must be thinking at this point: "What adventures was he talking about? I've been checking this, my favorite blog of all time religiously for three weeks and have yet to see documentation of adventures in Maine. Why would he rename his blog to 'Post-Mission Adventures' if there are no adventures here?"

As it turns out, post-mission life isn't all it's cracked up to be. Every missionary dreams of the day that he will disembark that airplane home, embrace his family and take a step towards his new life free of the stresses that come from being a full-time missionary for the Latter-Day Saint church. The day that he will be able to nap on Sunday afternoons, take more than an hour for lunch, stay up past 10:30pm, etc. Ironically, it didn't take long before this certain missionary began feeling the same thing for Brazil that he had felt for his home just days before arriving, probably best described as longing. I just can't win.

Life in the mission is exciting and fast paced. Lots of things happen during a single day, which makes it easy to write about. Life home is not, which makes it difficult to write about. Who wants to read about the movies I watched last night, or the hours I spent adjusting my Facebook homepage?

As a recently returned missionary, I have learned several new things. First I've learned that life as a couch potato is not fulfilling.

I've learned that days really need to be planned, because when they aren't, nothing happens.

I've learned that isolation is tragic and depressing.

Don't get me wrong, I have enjoyed myself during these past three weeks of being home. Maine is a lovely place, and has been especially beautiful during these past few days following a snowstorm (the first of the season!). I've been re-learning how to drive, play guitar, and read books as a pass-time rather than obligatory study material, and of course have been reconnecting with my family whom I had not seen for two years.

I basically wanted to write this to apologize for the lack of material recently, and would like to assure all that dansisco.blogspot.com will never die. It may just remain in a dormant state for a little while, until my life becomes more exciting and document-able. Probably between now and Christmas.

Thank you all for your support!

Dan Sisco (formerly known as Elder)

Pajama Time!

While Amy and Sam were here visiting, Amy showed me Sam's favorite book and asked me to to put it to music.

I put it off for a little while, but had a free day today so I decided to finish the project.

The quality isn't the best, but that's easy to get past.

The final product can be heard here or view my iLike page on Facebook.

Enjoy!

I'm back!

Just after landing in Boston

Motherly love

A visit to the Boston Temple the night of my return

It's good to be back...

Gildeny and Ricardo, Tales' and Nardel's parents, are getting prepared for their marriage which will probably be in December. Then they will be baptized. The other night Gildeny asked us to get the Gospel Principles manual for her so that she could study that weeks lesson in case the teacher asked her a question on sunday. They're a really awesome family.
I will see you all next thursday at 10am! I can't wait.
I guess I should finish the last email with my testimony. That would be appropriate.
I know that the church is true. It is the same church that Jesus Christ organized while he was here on the earth. It was restored by the prophet Joseph Smith. On my mission I've gained a firm testimony that these things are true. The gospel of Jesus Christ is perfect, it contains everything that we need to be able to return to the presence of God one day. I know that God loves us and wants us to be able to return to live with him with our families.
I'm grateful for the opportunity that I had to serve a mission here in Brazil. I know that there is nothing better that I could have done in the last two years of my life than serve the people here in Brazil and bring the gospel to all of the people I ran into.
I've developed so many skills and learned so many great things. The greatest conversion among all the people that I taught was my own. I'm excited to get home to be able to live the gospel, and apply all the things that I've been teaching for the past two years into my own life.
I developed a love for the scriptures. They are the word of God, and are one of the ways God has to communicate with us. I have loved studying them daily, and plan to continue this valuable practice for the rest of my life. I know it will bless me, and anyone else who does so.
I can truly say that my mission transformed my life. Everyone says that young men who go on missions go boys and come back men. I am no exception.
That's all I can think of for now.
I love you guys, and am way excited to see everyone next week.
Love,
Elder Sisco

On Sunday we baptized Brenda. She is Rosângela's daughter. Sunday was one of the most stressful days of my mission. Everyone from Rosângela's family was interviewed on Saturday, and they were all supposed to be baptized together on Sunday, but were not because of the following reasons:

Vitor - His friends went to his house late Saturday night after his interview and made him go to this party with them, at which he drank his face off and then went home and puked his guts out all over the house.

Vera - Spent all Saturday night/Sunday morning taking care of Vitor, and Sunday morning decided that she didn't know if she wanted to be baptized or not.

Rosângela - Had a problem with the 4th question of the baptismal interview and therefore had to be interviewed by President Parrella before she could be baptized. She was interviewed by him on Monday morning, and he said that she was prepared and so she will be baptized on Sunday.

We are working with the other two still, to help them a) repent and b) get excited again about their baptism.

The Bishop questioned our baptizing just Brenda, since she's only 10 years old and kept asking us "where's her mom? you need to be baptizing families, not children, why aren't her parents here to support her?" So that was nice, to add to my stress. Then after that, the Bishopric had a counsel among themselves to treat the subject: "why are we baptizing children in this ward?" It's as if they didn't understand when I said, "her mom couldn't come today, but she is preparing to be baptized next Sunday."
Apparently some people starting badmouthing the missionaries for baptizing just the little girl.
I told President Parrella about this, and he said, "Elder, I'm not concerned about any meeting that any bishopric had, or any gossip that members might be spreading, I'm concerned about salvation of God's children," or something along those lines. Anyway, it made me feel better.
So that's basically all that happened this week. I can't really think of anything else.
Oh, Sister Clement was transfered to a different city yesterday out of the blue. Apparently there was another sister there who needed medical attention, but there they didn't have a doctor that could treat her, so she had to come her, and so she switched with Sister Clement. That was sad. Oh, Sister Clement was this sister from Utah that was in my District. Now it's Sister Santos from Fortaleza and Sister Reis from São Paulo.
Love,
Elder Sisco

We returned to teach the Baptists last night. It did not go as well as planned. The owner of the house who hosts them said that we would be able to leave a 15-20 minute message at the end of their bible study, but the study took over an hour and a half. We weren't even able to stay til the end because we had to be home by 9:30. That was unfortunate. Their message was about "why bad things happen to good people." I testified of Jesus Christ and his Atonement, but that was pretty much all we were able to get out during our time there. While I was talking, the Pastor was on the edge of his seat. My companion said that he looked like he was just waiting for me to say something that he could jump all over.
We have a family of four people that we are preparing to be baptized on Sunday. Rosangela is a single mom, and she has four kids, but only three of them will be able to be baptized on Sunday. They are elects, and are very excited about Sunday. It will be Elder Eve's first baptism. Their baptismal interviews are on Saturday. Please pray for them. Rosangela, Vera, Vitor and Brenda. Thanks.
Just four more weeks!
Love,
Elder Sisco

Here's some news from two weeks ago that I forgot to put in last weeks email. If I repeat anything, I apologize.
While Elder Vasquez and I were studying, two Jehova's Witnesses knocked on the door and asked if they could share a message from the Bible with us. We said that was fine. When we answered the door, the ladies eyes doubled in size; I guess she didn't know that the Mormons lived there. She shared some scripture in Psalms with us, and told us about how we could get more out of our Bible study, and then invited us to their church. We thanked them, invited them to the Church of Jesus Christ and they left. I learned quite a bit.
Two Sundays ago, Luiz received the priesthood (the guy that we baptized a couple weeks ago whose son is on his mission), and I was able to participate. That was a lot of fun.
This weekend was General Conference. We were able to watch all of the sessions except for the saturday morning. The best talk was Jeffery R. Holland's about the Book of Mormon. Before he even stood up, when they announced that he was going to speak all the missionaries got excited, his talks are always amazing. That was among my favorite of all conference talks of all time.
We finally managed to get into our apartment. Because of the missionary that brought our key with him to his new area, we had to sleep at the Zone Leaders house for two nights. But on Friday night we finally got into our apartment, it's quite nice, I like it. We live on the fourth and final floor of the apartment building.
Last night Elder Eve and I went to visit one of our investigators and when we got to the door we saw her and some other ladies bringing plastic chairs from the bar accross the street into her house. We asked what was going on and she said that they were going to have a prayer meeting, and invited us to stay and participate. We were reluctant at first, but when she said that there were 15 people inside waiting for it to start we went in. When we walked into the living room there were a bunch of people standing in a circle holding hands while the pastor of the church yelled/prayed and everyone in the circle kept repeating things that he said or just saying "amen", "hallelujah" "glory to God" and other things along those same lines.
Apparently what was going on was that our investigator is an ex-Baptist, and so some of the members of the Baptist church are doing a seven week program in her house to reactivate her. Last night was the third of seven weekly meetings.
After the prayer, we all sat down and the pastor started to talk about Psalms 42, which I've never read in my life, so it was interesting. Basically he talked for 45 minutes about how when we're down or feeling sad, or in a rough spot in our life, we need to believe in the Lord, have faith and always seek his help. When he was finished, he asked if anyone would like to comment, and he looked at us. So I asked him, "after I have faith, and am seeking the Lord, what else can I do to improve my life?" He said some things about continuing in the faith and whatnot, and briefly mentioned baptism. So I took it and ran with it, and taught the third lesson to everyone that was there. I talked about how faith is the base of everything that we do, but that we also need to constantly repent, and that our repentance isn't complete until we are baptized by someone who has authority from God and then receive the Gift of the Holy Ghost. I think everyone understood, the Pastor didn't seem very pleased that I was teaching his people, but I think it was good.
Then when I was done, he said that they were going to finish with a closing prayer, so everyone stood up and grabbed hands, and they put our investigator and her family in the middle of the circle to "bless" them. Before he started the prayer I was like, "so you're going to finish with a prayer?" and he said, "yes, we are." And I asked, "after your prayer, could I offer one as well as a thank you for letting us watch your meeting?" He said that was fine, said his prayer, and then at the end, put his hand on everyone's head... apparently to bless them even more. I'm not really sure what that was all about.
Then there was silence, and one girl looked at me and asked, "didn't you want to say a prayer too?" and I said to everyone, "that's right, but my voice isn't very strong, so I'm not going to yell, ok? If you could all just pay attention, I'm going to pray for us." And then I prayed. A few people threw in some "amens" and "hallelujahs" here and there, but it was nice.
Afterward, the pastor came and hugged us and called us "brothers." Then there was cake and everyone was talking to us and asking us about our work.
As we were leaving, the owner of the house (our investigator) asked us if we were going to come back to preach next tuesday. I told her that if they would give us some time to leave a message that we would come bacf. She said that it was open for whoever wanted to talk, so we marked to go back there next tuesday. We'll have to visit her during this week to strengthen her and help her recognize the difference between the truth and... not the truth. Hopefully that goes well.
Welp, that's everything.
Love you guys!
Elder Sisco

We just got to Contagem, our new area. When I say "we" I mean Elder Eve and I. I was transfered to Contagem today from Sete Lagoas and will finish my mission here training Elder Eve who got here from the MTC yesterday. He's from Kentucky. This transfer is sure to pass quickly, I think it'll be fun. Neither of us know the area because both of the missionaries who were here before us were transfered.
When I got to the bus station in Belo Horizonte this morning I found out that one of them forgot to leave the key here and went to Montes Claros with the house key in his pocket. Montes Claros is ten hours away from here. He's going to overnight it to us. Until then, we're going to have to sleep at the Zone Leaders house.
It was a very eventful final week in Sete Lagoas. On Sunday we were supposed to baptize two kids, Henrique and Kesley, but they both had to go work with their parents and were unable to attend church. Then on Monday when we found out that I was going to be transfered, they both insisted that they be baptized on Tuesday before I left, and so we talked to the Bishop and organized a baptismal service for tuesday night. It was really hurried and poorly organized, but also really fun to be able to baptized those two before I left the area. Elder Vasquez and his new companion will continue working with both of their families.
After the baptism, we went to Kesley's house and his family had made a going away dinner/party for me, which was delicious. I was sad to leave them, and leave the area, but at the same time kind of relieved. Six months is a long time to stay in one place. But overall, this last area that I was in - Sete Lagoas Ala 1 was my favorite of all the other areas I've passed in. It really is a great place. When I come back I will visit there for sure.
It was also sad to say goodbye to Rosa and Luiz, who we baptized a little while ago. They're the family who have a son on his mission in São Paulo and will be sealed in the São Paulo temple in July. Their son's mission president said that they could go there to be sealed while he is still in his mission. I'm hoping that I'll be able to come back to watch that happen next July.
On Sunday, Elder Vasquez went with Irmão Branco to Paraopeba to confirm Marcia who was baptized last week and to return her purse which she forgot in the bathroom of the church, unfortunately they didn't make it to Paraopeba because a semi-truck hit them from the front. Luckily, Elder Vasquez was in the back so it didn't flip, and the Lord probably gave them extra protection because there was a missionary in the car. So that was wild... luckily I wasn't with them.
Love you guys, and see you in six weeks!
Elder Sisco