Hello Everyone!

Life is goooood. Haven´t been sick, weather is great, investigators doing good, what more can I ask for? A huge package for Christmas would be nice Me and Elder Boswell are getting along great. We figured out that we will most likely spend more time together than we will with our wife before we marry her. Elder Boswell has a girlfriend (I prefer to call her his fionce). It´s really funny haha. Anyways not many realy exciting things happened here this week.

First the food! Monday for lunch me and Elder Boswell got money so we went to Pizza Hut!! Man it was amazing.. I don´t think I have ever eaten so much pizza in my life. Then yesterday Elder Boswell decided we never really properly celebrated my birthday and since the lady forgot to make us lunch we went to McDonalds!! This time I got a burger WIHTOUT cheese and it was amaaaazing. I love American food! Brazillian food is delicious too

Yesterday we had interviews with the president. I finished off all of my requirements to be a senior comp. (review all preach my gospel, teach every lesson, etc.) so that was really cool. My portuguese has been doing great and everyone has been complimenting me The other day a lady said she could tell Elder Boswell was from America but she wanted to know where I was from because I spoke portuguese so well (I had only said like 3 words It was pretty hilarious. I am so grateful to be able to learn a language so I am trying to get as good as I can. i was talking with a guy from my ward and he said he had and american comp that spoke better than he did! Haha

Marilda is having her baptism this Sunday after Ward conference. She is really excited and is going to invite like 20 people! It´s funny because here you can tell who will get baptized because a. they feed you and b. they talk to all their friends. if they are doing that then you know you are in Her son Aroldo is awesome. He is only 4 but has mastered praying and loves primary. He is going to be a great missionary!

We met a guy named Everson a few weeks ago I think I might have talked about him already. He is just a really cool guy and loved church. Our members are awesome and really friendshipped him. We are going to try to mark a baptismal date with him this week. We taught a lady last night who called to get a book of mormon. i think she is skitzofrenic 9however you spell it) so it was a pretty interesting lesson. she was really cool though and accepted everything, we marked December 7th for her to be baptized She thought when Chirst was on the earth the church he established was the Catholic church, so we really had to teach well about the great apostasy and the need for a restoration.

Well that is about it for now, sorry my weeks are so boring! I will try to make them more eventful. I went through our huge stack of Ensign/Liahona magazines and have started reading them. Man there is some gooood stuff in there! It was hard to read those at home but now I love them. So when you have a minute, go sit down and read this months Ensign, and if you aren’t getting it, get it! I love you all thanks for everything.

I am SO VERY grateful for:
My family, including my amazing parents.
The opportunity to be a missionary! Especially in Curitiba, Brazil
My awesome friends
The gospel in my life!
My sweet house, area, and ward
The atonement, and this earth, and the plan of salvation
Prophets!
(I could go on but to save time will stop here)
Have a happy thanksgiving and I will talk to you next week!
love,
Elder Boyack

Address:
Rua Luiz Peligrino Toaldo 200 Casa 2
Butiatuvinha – Curitiba – PR
82320-270
BRAZIL

Dear EVERYONE!,

I swear, these weeks just keep flying by! The time just keeps going by faster. I am having fun and really in the hangs of things now. 1 Week ago after pday I woke up in the middle of the night and felt TERRIBLE. I had chills, felt like I had to barf, and just it felt like someone turned my brain on turbo mode, I just couldn’t go to sleep! My comp said I was acting craazy. So then I got a blessing from him and was able to go back to sleep. The next few days were pretty terrible, I had no energy and just kept having the feeling of puking, luckily I never did! But, I am all good now. I am back to normal and really thankful for my good health.

So as you all know my birthday was this past Saturday. I woke up and looked outside, and I felt like I was back in San Diego!! The sky was nice and blue with some clouds and a nice breeze. It was by far the best weather yet! Defeinitely a nice birthday present from mother nature I also was walking and saw a brand new Honda CBR 600RR motorcycle, I stared at it for about an hour There are millions of motorcycles here and they are all really crappy and loud.. so its really pleasing to the eyes to see a NICE one haha. I feel weird being 20! But I love it. We had a mini birthday party with ice cream, then one of the member ladies threw me a surprise party on Sunday night (my comp secretly planned it) she made REALLY good cake and we had a good time.

Last night we were able to go to the Clouse family’s house again! Her parents were there and they were really nice. We had a great time, ate some GREAT food, and left a dvd (joy to the world) and a book of mormon for them (we were running short on time so we couln’t watch the movie with them). She made burgers and we had brownie sundaes for dessert. SO GOOD! I feel like we are really planting a seed in their lives that hopefully (Alma 32) will start to swell and grow.

We had a zone conference this past Monday, it was SWEET! I got to see the new missionaries, and it feels goood to not be the newbie haha. MAN our mission president is awesome. We learned so much and got some good practice in. Usually you leave those things feeling like you have a lot of imporving to do, but this one I left totally pumped up! I just got so excited about missionary work and that really helps.

As for our investigators, things are slowing down a little bit. Marilda is getting baptized on the 30th and she is really excited. She makes us TONS of food which is sometimes annoying because we get super full from lunch haha. She already is talking to her family and neighbors and we are going to visit and talk with them. MAN I love new converts There is a family who the missionaries have been working with for months and they haven’t really shown interest except for the grandma! She is going to church every week now and we challenged her to get baptized but she is traveling until the 5th of December, so hopefully it will happen after that.. We are still waiting for Ezequiel and Jandira to get married, they haven’t gone to church the past two weeks because of no money and visitors, so we are a little worried. They are awesome though. They should get baptized the last week of November or the first week of December. We taught a guy called Everson and he was AWESOME! You could tell he realy felt the spirit and he even said the closing prayer! So cool. He will definitely get baptized And that is when its slow! Just imagine having tons of work haha..

Well my mom told me my letters need to be more about my spiritual progeression and not food so here we go! I have the wonderful opportunity to study the scriptures every morning. I have really developed a good habit of studying the words of the prophets, and have learned so much from them already. I have been reading Jesus the Chirst and it has REALLY helped me to strengthen my testimoney of Jesus Christ. I never really had any idea of how big of a role he plays in each of our lives. He literally is the head of this church and he is preparing people to hear the gospel. Its funny because EVERYONE here thinks as a missionary we know what we are talking about and we know everything. They believe anything you say and think its a credible source. My knowledge of the gospel has really grown and I love it! I have felt the spirit SO much (especially watching the movies, my favorite is the new Joseph Smith movie, so awesome!) and am really grateful to have the gift of the holy ghost. I have seen it happen with every missionary and it is happening with me, a mission REALLY makes you appriciate and love your family so much more. We are so blessed to have strong united families. Families are the core of everything and they are so important in God’s plan for us. Man, its really hard to talk this way in English! Haha I guess that is a good thing, well thanks for all of your support and prayers! Keep up the good work and remember, EVERy member a missionary.

LOVE,
Elder Boyack

Address:
Rua Luiz Peligrino Toaldo 200 Casa 2
Butiatuvinha – Curitiba – PR
82320-270
BRAZIL

Dear everyone,

Well well another week gone by. I am sad to say this was probably the most boring week so far! I worked hard and got a lot done, but nothing super exciting happened.. Tonight we have a baptismal interview with Marilda, the single mother. She is AWESOME! She is my first baptism and I am really happy to say I was at every lesson we taught her! Her baptism SHOULD be this sunday if everything goes well. The family of Ezequiel is doing great. Their marriage papers are in and we are going to hold a small wedding party for them at the end of the month then BAPTIZE THEM! I am so excited, we have been waiting for months.

So my comp got called to be district leader, which includes doing baptismal interviews! So our Zone leaders are in our district so we had to go do an interview for them in the center of Curitiba like the 7th. I went on splits with Elder Fortes and we did some contacts. He is an amazing missionary and I learned a TON from him. So he made up this amazing way to contact people. I will tell you how it goes. So we walk out the church and there is a group of like 7 construction guys all sitting around in a circle. So he walks up and says “excuse me! I am a missionary from the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints and we are doing a small survey, can we ask you guys some questions?” They are were fine with it so he pulls out a picture of Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist and asks “so what is going on in this picture?” One of them knew a lot and shouted out Jesus being baptized! “Perfect! Now we all know Jesus was perfect. He never sinned, so why do you think he was baptized?” Then the one guy said “he set and example for us to follow”. “Yes! exactly. Now don’t you think its important to follow the example Jesus Chirst set?” All of them nodded their heads agreeing. “Now were you guys baptized the same way Jesus was?” ALL of them shook their heads and said no… HOLY COW!! “Well, that is why we are here” said Elder Fortes. “We are representatives of Jesus Chirst here to help people to follow his example and be batized with someone who has the same authority John the Baptist had. Can we take down your address and visit your family and teach you more about JEsus Christ?” We got all their addresses except this one old guy. You pretty much challenge the person to baptism in the CONTACT! It saves hours of time figuring out they dont want to get baptized. So every dsay for one hour we do that contact. I have already found a few people who want to get baptized Pretty cool huh?

As most of you know, my birthday is this saturday, 20 years old!! I feel so weird. I feel old. But I am really excited. I had a huge feast/bbq planned but we got a call from the zl’s the other day saying president wants us all to fast after lunch on the 15th to lunch on the 16th (lunch is the big meal in BRazil). So, there goes my feast! I was pretty bummed out but I know we are fasting for a reason (he wants us to fast for personal revelation to help us baptize more in our areas). So I went a little crazy and bought some sonho de valsa ice cream! Sonho de valsa is a chocolate candy, the size of a golfball. It is sooooooo good so I bought myself a little present Well that’s all for now. Thanks for all your letters and prayers! For my birthday present, I want all of you to go talk to ONE person about the gospel. just ONE! Let me know how it goes

Love,
Elder Boyack

address:
Rua Luiz Peligrino Toaldo 200 Casa 2
Butiatuvinha – Curitiba – PR
82320-270
BRAZIL

Dearest Family and Friends,

How was your week?! Mine was fantastic. Time continues to fly down here… Transfers are today, we got a call monday night telling us what was going down. All four of the people in our house are staying! We couldn’t have been happier. Any my comp is now district leader which is sweet. He is excited. So my address is still the same.

On Monday (I think) we reallly wanted McDonalds. So we went and it was so good! The burgers are huge but they have brazillian cheese which is gross so it kind of ruined it. But the fries are truly amazing. Also we got a ice cream cone afterwards, I could have eaten like 7. SO GOOD. Every night before p-day we have a pdays eve celebration So last night me and my comp bought some marinated chicken wings and barbequed them. We also made some homemade ranch dressing and pineapple. Wow. I am loving it here!

We had a general Authority visit us, Elder Neil L Anderson. He was really cool and he had a really bad american accent when speaking portuguese. A lot of our meetings have been on baptisms cuz they have been down the past month so they are really pushing us. We had stake conference the past week and during the Sat. priesthood session our mission president ripped the members apart. Our stake is the lowest in the whole mission! Our stake is called Iguaçu (ç=s) which means many waters. But then after that he was like I’m not seeing it! Man it was awesome.

Me and Elder Boswell have really been working hard and it is paying off. We have like 6 baptisms marked for this month We taught a lady the other day who kept saying “why are there so many churches!?” “God is one and he has to have one church” “I will read this book (book of mormon) TONIGHT” and “where is your church? I want to go” she was sooo cool. So I challenged her to baptism and she accepted. FIRST VISIT! Man I love that.

So Valdica, Mariza and Marilda are awesome. Valdica (the mother) was telling us how marilda is looking for a different job so she can have Sundays off (SWEET!) and Mariza, who is getting married, has been teaching her husband and telling him tehy need to join our church. They are all so amazing. Valdicas husband has been dead for a while and she told us about a dream she had a few days ago where she could hear him and told him to show himself so she could see him but he said he coulnt because he doesn’t have a body. So we explained about spirit world, baptisms for the dead, and why its important to get these ordinances (baptism done here on earth. It was amazing.

So tomorrow we are going back to teach the Clouse family (the super rich family the dad is the president of kraft brazil) and we are going to watch a movie and leave them the book of mormon to read. It should go really well, and a rumor leaked out that she is making tacos Yay!

So a few days ago we went to visit a couple we taught a little while ago. The guy has officially gone crazy and he was plastered drunk when we came. The wife insisted we come in and help him straighten out his life. So during the opening prayer, he fell off his chair. Then while we were trying to talk to him he kept smoking and blowing it everywhere, took about 3 years off my life. WE finally got him to sit down and listen to us. We had an AWESOME member with us who told the guy he was spirituually sick and we (the missionaries) were his doctors and the book of mormon was his medicine. It was a really cool analogy and I think it actually might have stuck in the drunk guys brain. I really dislike drinking and I can see how terrible it is. It ruins your life. Luckily he has a woman who loves him and is sticking around!!

Well that is about it for this week. I can’t think about anything else to write. I am really happy and working hard. I am so greatful for this opportunity I have to serve, and I am grateful I made the choice to come here. Missionary work is so important, and I know that I am changing lives! Everyone thank your for your support and prayers. Have a good week!

Elder Boyack

p.s. my birthday is on the 15th, letters and packages would be greatly appriciated
i will be 20 years old!! sheesh.. so weird

p.p.s. my address:
Rua Luiz Peligrino Toaldo Casa 2
Butiatuvinha – Curitiba – PR
82320-270
BRAZIL