January 25th

Yeah, a few days ago, we went to go get açaí which is like ice cream, and the news was passing with this giant snow storm crossing the entire east coast. They talked alot about New York and New Jersey, but I was thinking "hey maybe the family wont have school!" And I forgot this was dads first time being able to use the 4 wheel drive in the new expedition. I'm sure it was nice. 

Yeah that snow board was mine a long time ago, and after trying out real snowboarding, its a lot of fun. Just the first two or 3 days hurts a lot because your rear end spends a lot of time on the ground. 

Last p day, we had to go to the court house because my comp had to sign some official paper work to get a package from his house in Chile, and we saw some people waving at us to go talk to them. They started speaking Portuguese, but after a minute they said that they are from Utah, close to where Jordan lives, in Bountiful. They are Brazilian doing some official paper work, and so the wife took a picture of me and sent it to you! We saw them at church, then ate lunch with them at the stake prez house. They are good friends. They just left to go back to Utah yesterday. 

The Broadcast was really good! It had like 3 or 4 general authorities, and they talked a lot about teaching repentance and baptizing converts. It was a great training about how we cant look at investigators as objects that we need to throw in the water, but as people we are trying to help to change their lives. Baptism is a part of true repentance, not the other way around. 

This week we taught a ton of people, and were able to have 3 at church! two teenagers and one 22 year old. All guys. They liked it, and in fact, the 22 year old was asked if he was going to be baptized and he said not today but he will in a little bit. It was cool. He is actually one of the funniest investigators I've taught. I told him that my birthday was next Sunday, and he started singing happy birthday, but with the words Merry Christmas because he confused them. I started laughing so hard and so did he when he realized it. Then he asked me how do you laugh in English. At that point I couldn't control my self. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. 

Today we have our first pday with our zone! Its actually going to be really cool. We rented this place with volley ball courts and basketball, and we are going to have a giant barbecue afterwords. 

Love Elder Moss

January 18th

No theres not anything that I can think off right now that I would like or need... but thanks!

My week was pretty good! The area here is huge and so I walked a lot, but besides that, lots of new changes from my old area to my new.

We live alone, so instead of 4 its just us two. and we live in the guest house of the stake president. He is awesome, always asking us if he can help wiht anything. The people in this city are much more receptive than in my last. We were able to have a few new investigators. We are making friendships with alot of people, and I can already see that we are going to have success here! 

I think the Santa Barbara in Cali is cooler than this one. This one is small, but its still decent sized. Its not near the beach, and doesn't have a lot of site seeing  or touristy stuff.

I took a few pictures, but I cant seem to send them. Ill see what I can do..

This next week we have a conference with president, and on Wednesday we have a missionary conference with Elder Oaks. He will to a satellite transmission to the entire world. 

There are many members here that are friends to the missionaries, and I think that my birthday will be celebrated so I'm excited about that!

Love Elder Moss

January 4th & 10th

January 4, 2016
This week was good. There were even less people at home, so the only thing note worthy to say this week was about the barbeque that we had on new years. It was sick! 

 Tomorrow we have a counsel for the leadership on the mission, and I was invited. We are going to have the training in the morning, and after lunch everyone is going to play basketball for the rest of the day. Its going to be awesome.  President told me yesterday that there are going to be a lot of changes this transfer, so lets see what happens with the transfer next week. I'll keep you informed. 

Love Elder Moss

January 10, 2016

This week was transfer week, and I was transferred! I left good ole Piracicaba and I'm going to a city called Santa Barbara. Its near the city called Americana. I will be a zone leader there!! I know my new companion and its going to be a fun transfer!

Any ways, this week was okay. Nothing really notable. We had the leadership council this week at presidentes house from 9-12, then until 5 we had like a second p day and we played a ton of volleyball with president. My team won everything. We were unstoppable! haha It was a lot of fun. Then, I got a weird headache and throat ache. it was pretty rought for the first two or three days, but the medicine I took helped a lot. I also had a brazilian method tried on me. We passed by this one family and she told us that it helps if you put potatoes on your forehead to get ride of a headache and fever. It worked a little bit... But Ill try to send some pictures with potatoes on my head. We taught three new investigators and it was a really good lesson--- the way we taught was really good this time. 

I realized this morning that I only have 4 more transfers on my mission. One ends in feb, then in april, then may, then june... Its going by so fast. I hope that I am able to stay as happy as possible and have some awesome experiences. 

Love Elder Moss

December 28, 2015

This christmas was so much better than last year. I was a lot happier, And I just had better experiences. 

So basically this week, I went on splits with the zone leaders on Tuesday, then we got back to our areas and started contacting some of the contacts that had been made. Well, one of the contacts was named Gabriel. He is 20 years old, and he is awesome. We taught him the first lesson and he understood and really liked it. Well he went to church, and he accepted a baptismal date for the 9th of January!! It was awesome. An awesome christmas experience. 

And now we are going to keep helping him and we have to get back into the rhythm of doing 700 contacts a week which I am less excited about. 

Love Elder Moss

November 16th & 23rd

November 16, 2015
This week was pretty calm. We just worked, knocked on doors, visited people, and talked to people about going to church. 

Here is was pretty hot this week. Just sweating and sweating all day long. 

haha Theres not very much to say about this week.

Haha I heard there was a pretty bad snow storm in New York, and I had to stop and remember which month it was!

November 23, 2015

This week was very fast but stressful. On Wednesday we had English classes which was pretty normal, but on Thursday we had a ward activity that was awesome!... it was well prepared for and everything, just no one showed up. We had about 15 to 20 people there. It was planned for and everything by the missionaries. We even had to buy all of the material (and we will be reimbursed too) but that was stressful because we didn't have time to work all day. 

On Sunday we had a new investigator go to church, and we marked a baptismal date with him for December 20th. We got pretty excited about that.

Love Elder Moss

Monday, October 26th

Haha you and dad are now speaking Portuguese! maybe I'll write the message in Portuguese!

Então essa semana foi bom! O novo missionario que eu estou treinando se chama Elder De Almeida. Ele é de Pará, um outro estado aqui em brazil. 

ele ja serviu uma mission de corto prazo por 1 mes, mas ele ainda esta aprendendo. As vezes eu tenho que me relembrar de paciência. E tambem, nao da pra fazer todas as coisas nos precisamos fazer por que eu preciso fazer outras coisas que os Lideres de Zona falam pra mim. Eu estou gostando muito, mas eu acho que esse transferencia vai passar um pouco mais devagar. 

the google translate isn't going to explain very will because I used a lot of slang. 

This week was good! The new missionary that I'm training is called Elder de Almeida. He is from para! the same state as my other companion, Elder Portilho. He already served a part time mission for a month, but he is still learning a lot. some times I have to remind myself that I need to have more patience. Also, sometimes it doesn't work to do all of the things I need to do because I'm doing OTHER things the zone leaders ask me to do. I'm liking it alot, but I think this transfer will go by a little slower than the last. 

Its pretty good here in the city. I Think that next week I will have p day on Tuesday, because its ANOTHER holiday. Incredible. I don't like all these holidays on Mondays. Its the day of the dead. Everyone goes to the cemeteries and pay respect to all those that have died. So we know where we are going to be all day...

Love Elder Moss!

October 14th

     This week was interesting. It was just mostly work. We met some cool people, but nobody went to church. We started our first official English class. There were about 55 people there. I am helping to teach the advanced class. It doesn't have that many, but we actually speak English so that's cool. On Monday, I wasn't able to get on the internet because it was national kids day. Its like a second Christmas here. We did about 200 contacts in one day. We were exhausted. 

 Yesterday we had our multi zone conference. It was really spiritual. Our mission is finally going in the right direction that I feel like it will progress. We have this new idea of literally talking to everyone we see about the gospel. 

Haha I laughed when I saw my baptism photos yesterday.

Love Elder Moss

(These are the 2 pictures that were sent to James' Mission at their request for baptismal photo's)