6 June 2016
Quick Week
This week was a very quick week, so, this Will probably be a
quick email J
On the mission, you learn things about yourself that you
didn’t know before. Outside of the influence of your parents and friends
and family, you discover who YOU are. And it’s funny to see how I’m
actually not much different than my family than I thought I’d be. For
example, I love to play with little kids. Babies and little kids are the
best. We can’t pick kids up or even touch them, but I’ve easily won
the “Best Elder award” in the hearts of a lot of kids: (these are
Gabriel's 6 and 7 year old sisters. They don’t let me concentrate during
the lessons)
Another thing I’ve learned is that I love dogs. I
already knew that I liked dogs, but now I LOVE dogs. When there is a dog
or puppy near (which are all over the place here) I cannot concentrate.
Here is a picture of me in my area. This is a good
idea of what it’s like here in Fortaleza. That big build on the right of
the photo behind me is a prison. Which is very common. We walk by
there every day. Generally when it’s late at night. I love this place J
Here’s a pretty picture of my companion
This week we baptized a young man named Bruno. He is
Waquisson’s cousin and had wanted to see how church was. His step dad
HATES us with all his dark evil soul. But luckily, Bruno usually just
sticks with Waquisson’s family, so it was all good.
Here in Brazil, everyone is part of one church or
another. There are 4-5 types of churches here: Catholic (which is
growing smaller and smaller), Evangélico (There are Hundreds of Evangélico
churches in my area. I’m not kidding. It is basically every other church
that isn’t Catholic or one of the following churches), Jehovah’s Witnesses
(which isn’t bigger than the Mormon church, but is pretty big. A lot of
people mix up the 2 here), The Church of Jesus Christ (or known as the Church
of the Mormons), and then there are a couple of other really weird churches
that believe in aliens, or in reincarnation or stuff like that. There are
very very few people who don’t “belong” to one of these churches. And
everyone believes that all churches are true. That it doesn’t matter
which church you are, you’ll go to heaven if you are good. But a lot of churches
teach that the Mormon church isn’t included in that list. 
The Catholic Church in the center of Fortaleza
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| Our Area |
But the people who live here (at least most of them) don’t
believe that. They see the missionaries as complete heroes. These
young men and women who throw their lives away just to serve God and the people
around them. Here in Fortaleza (not just with the members), the Mormon
missionaries are extremely respected. Even the drug dealers don’t allow
anyone to touch us. I heard from a drug dealer who we taught, that in all of
Fortaleza, if a Mormon missionary is robbed, “just tell us, and we’ll take care
of it” (basically kill the dude, so we don’t tell). But this really is a
once in a lifetime opportunity, and will never happen again, so I’m gonna take
advantage of these next 19 weeks (I’m not counting).
I love you guys and will talk to you next week!
Elder Biggs
13 June 2016
More Animals
This was a pretty cool animal-full week. I’ll start
with a couple of photos:
This is me flirting with a parakeet at an
investigator’s house. (She liked me I think)
Here is a picture of me with a giant I iguana named Maria
This one is a giant dog called Spike who just kind of lives
in the road.
Remember how I said that I like dogs? Well they like
me too J

This is a picture of me with a little girl named
Vitoria. Her older brother is member of the church and we’re trying to
help her and the rest of the family come to church. And Vitoria here in
this picture (I don’t know if you can see too well) I am sitting on the
ground, and she is standing up, and I am still taller, and she is 9 years
old! She’s so freaking tiny, its cute as heck. We didn’t believe
her when she told us, but she is actually really smart, its pretty funny.
Another baptism! The woman in the middle is named
Damila. She is Gabriel’s aunt. She a single mom with a little son,
Mateus. Her sister, Jacinta, has already been going to church for years,
but couldn’t be baptized because her husband never wanted to get married.
But when me and Elder Camargo got there, the Lord had prepared the 2, and the
husband said that it was time and they’ll be married on July 12th, and baptized
on July 16th. But in the meantime we’re gonna baptize her whole family!
And sneak peek for next week. This young man is
Cristian. He is the son of a Pastor, and very, very smart. He went
to church for the first time this week and wanted to be baptized with
Damila. We had to explain to him that there are still some stuff
that we need to teach him and he was like, “ok, but next week without a doubt
I’m gonna be baptized!” His dad (who luckily lives in another state, and
wont be able to do anything to deter Cristian) and his mom have called him to
go to church with them for YEARS and he never felt that it was right. And
he said that when he arrived he opened his heart and felt that everything we
were saying was true. As though he had already heard it before. It
funny because his best friend (who is only like 13) hates us because of the
Book of Mormon. His pastor talked really bad about us and the other day
wanted a Book of Mormon. But the next day Cristian said that he only
wanted one to show it to his pastor. So let’s see if we got any cool
Bible bash stories for next week J
Anyways, this week is the transfer and we haven’t heard
anything yet. Other than that we’ll probably be getting 2 new sisters and
losing 2 Elders. So that’ll be cool. But if I’m transferred Ill be sure
to let you know next week.
Elder Biggs
Alright, one more funny little animal photo that I took:
"what do you want?"
________________________________
20 June 2016
Transfers and Getting Sick
So this week was full of waiting, and a lot of it.
Usually when the transfer comes, we get a call on Sunday night telling us who
was transferred and whatnot. But this time, we only got the phone call on
Wednesday. So, the whole mission was just kind of like, ………, and when we
finally got the news we were surprised. Our zone has 5 companionships
with 4 wards, 2 companionships in one ward. Well this one ward has been
complaining and hating on President Fusco a lot because a lot of Apostate
missionaries have passed through there and convinced the members that President
was a terrible president. So, the ward was closed last week. There
aren’t missionaries there anymore. One of the companionships was moved to
our ward José Walter 4, and the other one was sent to another zone. Also,
a companionship of Elders were transferred and 2 sisters came in their
place. So now, we have 4 companionships (in a whole zone! That’s very,
very little) and 2 of them are sisters, 1 has the District leader, and the
other is us. So we’ll see if something happens here in the next few
weeks. But as of now, Elder Kusuda and I are staying here!
All of us lived in the same house for these last 6 week:
One reason that the transfer took forever was probably
because the District that Trindade is a part of, The Juazeiro do Norte
District, was turned into a Stake this last week! President Fusco’s dream
since he got here was turn that place into a stake! And he did it with 3
weeks to spare! I didn’t go, although I’m sure I could’ve had I
asked. But it’s the first stake in the inland of the northeast of
Brazil! And once one gets started, the second, third, fourth, etc just start
popping up!
I don’t have any pictures of Juazeiro, but this is a picture
of the state division between Pernambuco and Ceará, which is apart of the new
stake
Alright, 2 cool things. 1) there’s this really cool
soda here cold “Cajuina” and for some reason, they’re sold in beer bottle.
Literally, it says “beer” on the side… so as you can imagine, we had to take
some pictures’
I promise, there's no alcohol in this
And this here is Sidney. He’s a friend of
Cristen. We found him at Cristen’s house and started talking with
him. He was very open to our message and even accepted to be baptized
this Sunday. But the cool part, he watches Doctor Who! He just
started and is totally addicted! I’ve already gotten people addicted to
Doctor Who here on the mission, but I’ve never FOUND someone who was already
addicted! So yeah, there’s that!
Oh, and speaking of Cristen, he was baptized
yesterday. He has got to be one of the smartest kids I’ve already
encountered. His dad (a pastor in another state) didn’t like the idea,
but his mom totally told off her ex husband, saying that we we’re helping him
and that “the Mormons have done 10 times more than you and your church has ever
done for anybody!” And he didn’t say anymore. So, yeah!

I'm so sick in this photo...
Oh yeah, on Friday I got pretty sick, but just kind of blew
it off. The next day I was really sick, but I didn’t want to call
President. Why? Because I had probably eaten or drinken something
bad and the last time this happened, president forced me to fast for 24 hours
and that was HORRIBLE. But then yesterday, I could hardly even sit down,
I was wasted. Every part of my body was exhausted. When I baptized
Cristen, I almost fell into the water with him because I almost didn’t have the
strength to lift him. So I called President who told me to rest and eat
chocolate! Yeah! Really! Then today I woke up much better!
So, it’s all good now J
I love you guys so much and love the letters and pictures!
Elder Biggs
__________________________________
28 June 2016
Last Week with President Fusco
I don’t know if anyone reading this has ever had 2 mission
presidents, but anyone who had a president end his mission with you, knows that
it is very, very hard. It’s as though your parents had to leave forever
and now you’re going to get 2 new parents. I’m excited for the new
president, President Leite, to arrive, but I am completely heart broken to see
President and Sister Fusco go. But I’ll talk a little more about this afterwards.
This week was a very good week. Our zone, the Sul
Zone, is the smallest zone in the mission with FOUR companionships.
Just to give you an idea, a zone is a combination of 2-4 districts. And
each district has 2-5 companionships. The Juazeiro zone had at one point
15 companionships. And our zone has 4... A normal sized zone is
able to baptize about 20 people per month, and our zone of 4 decided today that
we were going to baptize 20 people in July. It’s gonna need a lot of
work, but we’re determinedThis photo from last week is already behind. Sister J
Santos, second from the left was transferred yesterday. But we'll take another
one here in a bit.
This week was also the 2nd day marked for Jacinta and
Pedro’s (Gabriel’s parents) marriage. Here in Brazil, you have to go to
the court, mark a day to come back, return 2 weeks later to mark the actual marriage
and pay R$200, then return the 3rd time 2-3 more weeks later to actually get
married. Its such a painful process, BUT, its all working out!
As for Cristan, who was baptized last week, he was
confirmed this week and Sidinei (his Doctor Who loving friend) was
baptized! I always knew that God wanted me to be addicted to Doctor Who.
Imagine if I wasn’t, Sidinei (who is really shy) wouldn’t have felt as
comfortable talking to us and probably never would’ve been baptized.
Maybe he still would’ve been, but I like to think that I’m know justified in
the many, many hours i spent watching Doctor Who were not wasted! :D
Elder Kusuda, Sidinei, Cristan (with my bag), me, and
Gabriel, who is also a friend of Cristan and Sidinei
Cristan and Sidinei are also total Minecraft nerds. So
they decided to make Minecraft skins of me and Elder Kusuda!
It's funny how everyone sees me as blond with blue eyes here
even though I have brown hair and green eyes...
Elder Kusuda (japonese)
Speaking of Elder Kusuda:
Anyways, yesterday was President Fusco’s last
conference. Tomrrow night at 12:00am President Fusco will officially pass
his keys to President Leite and President Leite will be our Mission
President. The only thing I can really think of is Dad’s advice to me
from a couple of years ago: To love your future President no matter what.
President Fusco was a lot different than what I anticipated, but remembering
that advice, I was able to love him and learned SO MUCH from him. He has
shown me so much about the Doctrine of Christ and how to apply it in my
life. But most important, he has taught me how to love my Savior in a way
that I never even knew was possible. Because of that, I am not nearly as
sad as I would be. Because what President Fusco taught me isn’t that I
need to love him, but Christ! And Christ will never leave. So it
really won’t be THAT big of a change.
I don’t have a picture with President Fusco and Sister
Fusco, but we did take one. President has it and will email it to you
guys, but you need to do something Ill explain it in another email. I did
however get a picture with his 2 daughters, Wilma and Teka!

I remember thinking that when President Fusco goes home, I’m
not far behind. And I’m really not (16 weeks). But the last thing
President Fusco told me personally was to end my mission running! Not get
trunky or soft. But to end and end STRONG! So Im sure that means
that there is still a LOT for me to learn in these next 4 months! So you
guys won’t need to worry about that, J I love you guys and will talk to
you guys next week!
Elder Biggs
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