Elder Proulx, Elder Iron Man, Lucas, ? Bispo?, and Julia

More of Julia e Lucas Baptism

There were lots of Young Men & Women and children from the Primary that came to watch.

Baptism of Julia e Lucas

Maringa January 30, 2012

Hello Hello Hello!

Yeah, this week was pretty crazy cool. I´m dead tired, but it was worth it. I get pretty jealous with you talking about snow and winter. I´ve come to the conclusion that winter doesn´t exist here. People put on winter coast when it gets to be like 70 degrees here! haha!

So this week was the last week of the transfer and it was pretty crazy! We decided to do a bunch of ´mutirões´ here to help out all of the Elders. This is when we grab everybody from the district and all go to one area to find tons of people and teach a ton and stuff. On Tuesdays we went to a small city called Cia Norte and it was raining a whole ton, but even though it was super rainy when taught lots of people and found 3 people to be baptized this week and it was way good. Then on Thursdays we did another one in a city called Paiçandu, just out of Maringá. It was raining a ton too and Paiçandu is a city of almost all dirt roads and so we looked like a battle ragged army afterwards, but it was pretty awesome. Elder Novaes from Paiçandu was ending his mission this week and it was good to go out with a bang! Elder Lee also finished his mission. Elder Lee is pretty rad.

So Michelles daughters did not get baptized yet, but Julia and Lucas did! They are the brother and sister of Marco who was baptized at the first of the transfer! All the young men and primary came to watch the service and they really liked it. Now we are working to baptize Alex and Miriele e Milene! Hurray for Israel! So the transer ended and I stayed here with Elder Proulx. This will be cool because this is Elder Proulx´s last transfer so we will work até o pó.

To answer your question about driving, I am super glad that we don’t have to drive here! Yes, I see accidents all the time and people here are pretty crazy driving! The rain is really strong too. Well, I´m really excited to rest this P-day and drink a whole bunch of tereré! Thank you so much for the support and love. The packages too! I will be praying for you to feel better during the winter.

I love you whole bunches and bunches! You are the best mom ever, so just keep in there! We had a training about doing family indexing in church Sunday and it reminded me of you.I testify that this is the work of Christ. It is the best feeling to be and instrument in His hands. I know that our family will be forever. We will all live together again and it will be great!
Just keep on smiling! YEAH!!!!
-Elder Markham

This box is heavy.

So innocent... or so it seems...

Rabbits 2B2

Men in Black

Our District (enjoying some pizza)

Ward Activity

Olympics

Michelle, Milene, and Mirele

Look Out Ladies

Bispo and the Kids

Batismooooo!

Reino Celestial

Maringa January 23, 2012

Hello mother! Bom dia!

Once again I write you from Quente Maringá!

This week was pretty awesome. Actually I like it when it rains because it cools things down quite a bit. That is a really awesome story about the family history pages. I know that God really guides us to the people who need us, whether living or dead. Preach my Gospel talks a whole lot about family history, but until now Brazil hasn´t really grabbed the fire of the thing. Our Stake President gave a talk yesterday about helping everybody to start doing indexing and it was pretty cool.

So this week was crazy cool! We started out pretty normal, working hard and everything. On Thursday we had interviews with President Tavares that were prettycool. We went on divisions with a whole bunch of Brothers and taught a lot of people. We also had a ward activity. We did role playing about how to talk to your friends about the gospel and challenged everybody to start bringing their friends to church. Afterwards we playing a really funny game with ties called Gato e Rato. Everybody loved it and got really excited. Next week we will have another and it should be really swell! After the interviews Thursday we went to visit Michelle with Irmão Arthur and challenged her to be baptized. She accepted but still had a lot of fear. On Friday she went to her interview and had a miracle! Afterwards she told us that she was feeling really nervous and had decided that she did not want to get baptized any more. She told that to Elder Lee who was doing the interview. He told her, I will read a scripture about baptism from the Book of Mormon and if it is true you will feel it inside of you. He read it and she felt the spirit super strong and was baptized Saturday 7:00! Whoo hoo! Her 2 daughters will be baptized this week along with the brother and sister of Marco, who was baptized my first week here. Yeah baptism! Saturday was crazy because the baptism was for 7:00 but we had to journey to Cia Norte, a city about 2:30 hours away from Maringá at 2:00. It was raining a whole ton which slowed things down and we barely had time to get to the church and fill up the baptismal font with the church hose and buckets! I had been in a division the night before and we hadn´t eaten anything since Friday and so after the baptism Bishop saved our lives and made dinner for us. Our Bishop is super awesome. I love Bishop André! Yesterday we had a family night with a family that has about 100,000,000 rabbits. Also Alex went to church again and is getting really involved. He will certainly be baptized soon.

Our Zone took 3rd place in the mission Olympics this week which was pretty great! This last week we´re gunna win! Hahaha!
So basically things are super busy, but going great. Let’s convert this whole city!

Thanks for the updates about my friends. That’s crazy that people are starting to come home now. Ó loco! I am glad to have such great friends for examples. Thank you for the pictures too! The flower is really pretty and reminds me of Dad.

I love you so very much. Distance doesn’t mean anything! I am glad that I have such and excellent mom who loves me too! I know Christ overcame all of our pain. I know God lives and loves us. Our family will be together forever. Stay strong and don’t forget that I love you.
Love,
Elder Markham
P.S. Some news: Due to problems in the mission office, they asked that we no longer receive packages through the office address. I you want to send anything from here on it has to be directly to the address of our house. Annoying, but oh well. Thanks!

Up on the Housetop

Freeway

Asking for a Stomach Ache

Maringa January 16, 2012

Hello Mommy!

Just to let you know, you are the best Mommy in the whole wide world and I love you. Here is a Steven hug sent through cyberspace. Sorry my other letter didn’t come through. I resent it just now. How were the results of the MRI? Is it really annoying lying still for 2 hours in a machine? How do you not fall asleep?

Give a hug to everybody there for me. That is also neat that we got new glass in the window. There is annoying techno music playing right now and it is hard to concentrate! Grandpa would find the houses here very interesting I think. Construction is very different here.

So this week was interesting. I don’t remember if I already mentioned, but the secretaries forgot to pay our water account and it got cut for a few days. It’s all fixed now, but we had to climb up on the roof to get rainwater to wash our clothes. Pretty exciting! Hence the picture of Elder Proulx on the roof. On Monday we went to Londrina in a van for leadership conference. It was pretty cool and we learned and bunch of good stuff about asking inspired questions and such. The next day we came back home started to work like crazy to make up for time. The weather was nice because it rained a ton for 3 days straight and got really cold. This is awesome for 3 reasons. 1) I like the cold 2) I didn’t get sunburned! 3) Everybody stays at home when it is cold so we taught lots of people! We had 2 families come to church with us (Mario, Rosimeire e Alex) and (Michelle and 4 children). It was a pretty intense and tiring week, but we have lots of good investigators and this week should be pretty great. We have interviews with President this week too, so that’s good. Also our ward mission leader went to Paraguay and bought us an entire crate of Tereré! Oh boy is tereré good. I´ll try to bring some back with me. Yum. Anywho, that’s about all folks. Thank you so much for the help with BYU and the love and prays and everything you do for me. You really are the best mommy ever!
The scriptures are true and they bring hope. Jesus is the Christ and died for us. We have a living prophet today. Lives can change. The sun will shine. Never give up. NEVER SURRENDER
-Elder Iron Man

Crazy

Leadership Meeting in Londrina

Leadership Meeting

Maringa January 9, 2012

Bom dia! (here they say bom dia until you eat lunch, not until any specific time)
That’s awesome that you had some snow. Here is has been unseasonably hot. That’s good to know that the world tilted and we´re all going to die. Haha!
Sounds like Provo is pretty excited right now with all of the weddings and missionaries and cat murders. Thanks for all the news. That’s too bad that Isis died :( are the new neighbors cool? Missionaries have a new neighbor alarm built in because people who moved recently sometimes are more open to the gospel. Say hi to them for me!

So in Brazil it is pretty pattern to have 9:00 church. I have seen a few at 3:00, but 1:00 here would cause a civil uprising because of the sacred lunch and sleep hour. Our building shares 2 wards, but it is also the stake center. Elder Larsen is in Espírito Santo, Vitória. I got a letter from him and he is doing well! The family of Rosemeire is doing great! They all went to church yesterday and loved it and Alex is preparing to be baptized this week! Yea! This week we did a division with another area and it was pretty sweet. We found some great people and things are going well. The coolest thing that happened this week as the whole entire mission started doing the Summer Olympics. President chose some of the most important indicators and assigned point values to help the missionaries work hard and have a fun completion. For example teaching with a member is 10 points, taking someone to church is 12, new investigators is 6 etc. Everybody worked really hard this week and our zone took 2nd place in the mission. Yeah! We are pretty excited. Let’s do even better next week! Today we are leaving to have leadership council in Londrina again. It should be pretty cool. We also made a hymn for our zone that is pretty awesome:
Hino da Zona Maringá:
(Para o melodia do hino 184)
O Jardim de Eden foi lindo,
A cidade de Enoque também
Mas bem-vindo a nossa zona,
A Cidade que vai além!
As ruas bonitas e limpas,
As arvores nos protegem,
Com nossa fé e trabalho,
Milagres se-realizem!
Presidente por favor me mande
Pra Maringá, Maringá, Maringá!
Só batiza família grande,
Em Maringá, Maringá, Maringá!
Magnificando o chamado,
Batizamos sem vacilar!
O Elderes de nossa zona,
Vamos lá, batizar Maringá!
Na praça nos construiremos,
O templo de Maringá.
Vamos por o anjo Moroni,
Em cima da catedral!
Oh, vamos trazer o milênio,
E a lei de consagração.
Para que não paguemos,
Dois setenta e cinco no buzão!
Presidente por favor me mande
Pra Maringá, Maringá, Maringá!
Só batiza família grande,
Em Maringá, Maringá, Maringá!
Magnificando o chamado,
Batizamos sem vacilar!
O Elderes de nossa zona,
Vamos lá, batizar Maringá!

Peterson and Larise were confirmed yesterday and their mom is receiving the lessons. There were a bunch of new people in church and we are really excited!
I love you both so very much. I am excited for all the good things that are happening for you.
I know that the church is true and that we have a living prophet. I know families are forever. The Book of Mormon is a book from God.
Love
-Elder Iron Man

More Batimso do Petersone e Larise

Baptism of Petersone e Larise

Happy New Year Maringa January 2, 2012

Feliz Ano Novo! WAHHOOO! Vamoquevamo! So the spacebar is broken on this computer and I don’t have the patience to keep fixing everything, so if there are a lot of words all put together please forgive me! So happy New Year peoples! How was the news year’s celebration? Did they have any good fireworks? Did you pass the night at grandmas? Or do something else cool? It looks from the pictures that Christmas was really fun! Que bom that the family is still all together although everybody is starting to look way different! I don’t know if I have changed all that much in appearance, have I? Speaking of appearance, Max´s beard is awesome! How does he have a beard and go to BYU? Grandpa was probably real happy to get some chocolate for Christmas! Thank you so much for the packages that you sent! I hope they weren’t too expensive, but It is really great to get things in the mail, so thank you very much!
So this week was pretty good. We started off the week doing a double division in a city called Cia Norte to train a new district leader. It was really tiring, but we found some great families and worked hard. The week was a little tricky because everybody was traveling or with family and stuff like that, but we still managed to find some great people. We found a family of two inactives and their son Alex. They are super cool and the moms name is Rosemeire, Rosemary in Portuguese! They want to come back to church and we have a family night with them this week. We also found another miracle family. We prayed in the morning that we could find a family to baptize this month and that same day God answered with the family of Nei, Claudia, Gabriel, and Larise. They couldn´t go to the church this week because of work, but we taught them with Bishop and it is going really well. The even greater miracle is that of the baptisms this week! On Sunday we had the baptism of Peterson and Larise. They are children of Antonio and Maria. Antonio is less active for more than 15 years and after the baptism everybody was crying and happy and probably the mom will be baptized soon. We had a recent convert Admilson baptize them and he as crazy happy and wants to baptize all of Maringá now! Super cool. Since Sat. and Sun were super hard to do normal work, we made apple pie and took it to a whole bunch of the members. They all loved it. Elder Proulx makes pies just like Dad! Way cool. It was really hard to sleep Saturday night because at midnight it seemed like the start of WW3. Fireworks in Brazil aren´t really the pretty type that make cool patterns, they are pretty much just bombs that make a ton of noise and looks like anti-aircraft flak from world war 1. Right at midnight all we could hear was BANGBOOM BANNG BLAM! I thought we were under attack. Sunday we had some good people at church even though it was New Years and one, Ronaldo is trying to quit smoking to be baptized soon. Yeah! So, things are going pretty good and we will keep on working hard. I love you all so very much! Oh, we also got to do a special music at the baptism and I played guitar. Pretty sweet! I know the church is the true church of God. I know that the priesthood is real and that our families can be together forever. The Book of Mormon is true.
Happy 2012!
Love, Elder Markham!