Elder Chandler Hyer

Elder Chandler Hyer
Elder Chandler Hyer

Monday, October 26, 2015

Padre Bernardo Week 11



New house, New church, New missionaries,

So this week was one of the busiest of my entire life, I´m going to go quickly day-by-day.

Tuesday was just about the only normal day we had, but it was also the day that we decided we were going to move houses... the start of it all.

Wednesday we were planning the move when we got an unexpected phone call from a recent convert of ours who needed help cleaning a place she has, where she is starting a new store. So we spent a few hours cleaning there. There were tons of Spiders and webs everywhere. We finally had to leave in order to do the move (which took forever).

Cut to Thursday and we are in our new house, everything moved in, but we have no gas for the stove, a broken shower-head with no hot water, no utensils, and we are questioning ourselves on the decision to move. But we persevered (and at this point there was no turning back) and we headed out and bought everything we needed for our new house, which was really expensive...at least to us.

Friday comes around and we are now feeling quite at home in our new house and things are great, we found a few new investigators who have a lot of potential and I´ll update you on them as things happen.

The new church (that we got last week) is now located right in front of where we live. It's much more convenient for most of the member because the old location was on the other end of town, further away from where most the members live, and they had to walk up to 30 minutes to get there. Now it's only about a 10 minute walk for most.

Finally the day we've all been waiting for... Saturday morning we Baptized Uelton, Juliana, Estefany, and Aline!!!! That was really cool, and the other companionship baptized Pabline and Fabiano. That makes six baptisms here in Padre Bernardo, all of which were youth which is really cool to see the growth there. It was a great baptismal service and Padre Bernardo is growing!

Afterwards we had a Youth activity that Saturday, like we do every week, and it's amazing to see the difference. Our first youth activity consisted of 4 youth that came, a very humble group, and Saturday evening we had nearly 20 people there and it was a great activity. Love the power of the youth!!!

All was well and we were just waiting and preparing for Sunday to come around... and then the "fire nation" attacked! Or actually my companion's leg was in lot of pain. It had been feeling progressively worse all week. We ended up calling the mission nurse about his leg and she (thinking it could be a blood clot) said it would be a good idea to go to the hospital, that night, which is 2 hours away because we live here in Padre Bernardo.

So Elder Deleray and my companion left to go to the hospital, and since it was so late and so far away, they spent the night with the missionaries near the hospital. (turns out that my companion is fine, of course, he´s now taking some pain medication). The two of us who stayed behind handled all the Sunday services this week.

Anyways so now today Monday, we had to say sad goodbyes to Elder Nascimento who has been here in Padre Bernardo for 7 months, and we got Elder Peralta a Hispanic elder who has been on his mission for a year and a half and he seems like a great guy. We also get two new sisters tonight (who will be living in our old place) which will be interesting, and I´ll talk about them next week.

Anyways I've got to go this was a lot longer than I had planned, I love you all and have a good week!

Elder Hyer


Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Padre Bernardo Week 10


Sol, Sol, Sol,

Sol means sun for those of you that don´t know, and it has just been so incredibly hot all week. The first thing I want to say is that summer is coming and I´m feeling it.

Other than the sun things have been going really really well. We have an awesome group of progressing investigators right now.
Our top investigator right now is Uelton. He is on date to be baptized this Saturday the 24th. He is a way good kid who has given up everything we have asked of him without hesitation, and I haven't seen anyone so excited for baptism. I´m pretty excited as well.

Next Saturday we also have the baptism of Ester´s kids Juliana, Stephanie, and Adeline and they are amazing. Ester is really great, loves us a lot but just doesn't have quite as much desire as the kids do. But a cool experience that we had was Saturday when we were talking to Ester about coming to church, and she told us that she had to go buy something, find a new something (I didn't completely understand) and then her 12 year old daughter starts to try to talk her mom into going to church but without success. Then Juliana boldy tells her mom "well I´m going to go" And all of the daughters came, led along by the youngest of them all. It´s neat to see the dedication some people naturally have.


Elias is steadily improving, he told us in our last visit that the Book of Mormon is amazing and that there is no other book like it, he knows it´s true. The work that we do, converting people to the gospel would be so much harder without the Book of Mormon, It is an amazing book with a promise that if you will read it and pray you will know its true. And so far I've always seen that promise work.

In other news we changed our location for church, we are now renting a small place to meet in. Not to mention our awesome new sign for our church that we had made. Church this week was great. We had 2 recent converts give talks this week, both of whom did a excellent job.

Coconut is great! Yesterday a family gave me the inner husk part of the coconut, its hard and you break off pieces of it to eat, but it tastes so good, and I didn't even like coconut in the States! I don´t know why but fresh coconut is just so much better than I ever thought it would be.

Well that´s about it this week, transfers are coming up this Monday so I´ll let you guys know what happens there. I´m expecting some big changes. Also this next week is really hot, our coolest day is supposed to be around 100, and our hottest is supposed to come in at 108 degrees..... pray for me!

Anyways, love you all, have a great week!

Love,
Elder Hyer









Monday, October 12, 2015

Padre Bernardo Week 9

This week was really crazy, not much happened, we just worked like nuts.

This week I learned a lot about missionary work. Elder Lafaiete (my companion) is really an amazing missionary. We have a lot of investigators right now that are just progressing so amazingly.

Our leading investigator right now is Uelton. We first met him in the street while talking to some people we used to teach and we ended up asking him if he wanted to be baptized right there in the street, and he accepted! Since then for the last few weeks we've taught him what it means to be baptized and we've talked with him a lot, and the change is amazing. What I've seen is this 17 year old kid who was doing nothing, and just didn't really care about anything, to being excited about baptism and attending church every Sunday morning.

We also have Ester and her daughters that we are teaching, they are just a very hilarious family, the kids are kind of all over the place which just makes things interesting, but they all are preparing for baptism which is incredibly exciting.

We have a lot of other people we are teaching, but at this point there isn't much else to update. I´ll let you guys know about things as they happen.

In other news I ate cow organs this week, (I think it was just cow liver it really wasn't that bad). And I got an amazing package from my awesome parents full of chocolate, a pair of shoes, candy, sunflower seeds, and amazing stickers. (stickers are popular out here in the mission)

Also I saw a chicken eat another chicken this week... I am not joking, I did not realize chickens were canabalistic, but this chicken definitely ate a recently deceased chicken. Admittedly I was a little shocked. Beware of chickens everyone.

Lastly, I hate the height of Brazilians, because it means they make really short doorways, not always but often enough. I was in a house this week that was really messy so as I started walking out of the house I was looking at the floor to ensure that I would not step on anything, and what ended up happening was I slammed the top of my head really hard into the top of a doorway made out of concrete, and that hurt, I was bleeding a little bit, everyone feel sorry for me.

But overall everything is rather amazing, Brazil is awesome, juice is amazing (I tried green mango juice this week which is way good), and Portuguese is getting much better.

Love you all hope you have a decent week,

Elder Hyer

Monday, October 5, 2015

Padre Bernardo Week 8



Well, I am officially a quarter of the way through my mission and it's hard to believe, these were com certeza the fastest 6 months of my entire life.
This week was crazy! We just worked way hard all week preparing for conference this Sunday.

So first of all I have been having the best breakfasts that I've ever made in my life. This week I went and bought tomatoes and peppers, and cheese, and ham, along with oatmeal, and man I have just had the most delicious omelets every morning with oatmeal after. just to make you all jealous.

Other than breakfast this week we have been working with Uelton who is this 17 year old kid who is just so awesome. He listens to everything we teach him, and I don´t even know what to say about him, you could tell when we met him he wasn't going anywhere in life but he is loving what we are teaching him and it's cool to see the changes being made in this young man.
We also are teaching Ester and her 3 daughters. They love us a lot. That's the easiest way to explain it, they've been coming to church and they love the spirit that they feel there, it´s really quite amazing how just acting a little bit on your faith brings so many blessings into your life.
That's something I've been doing my best at improving at is simply trusting in my faith that God will help in this work of converting people to the gospel. It´s really funny how when I try to do it by myself I fail, but with God we know all things are possible and when we will simply trust in miracles they come.
We had a rather amazing miracle happen this week with our investigators. This week we had General Conference, so we got the opportunity to go to Brasilia to watch the prophet and leaders of the church talk to us live being broadcast to all the members of the world. It´s quite amazing. We really wanted to bring our investigators but despite looking all week for a bus to take us we had no luck... until Friday when we finally found one after much prayer. So Saturday then turned into a busy day of trying to get as many people as we could to come to conference, and amazingly we got a bus full of about 20 people between recent converts and investigators. Ester and Uelton both came which is a big deal considering we were asking these people to meet us at 9 in the morning to go watch people talk in a church and then they didn't even get back to their homes until after 6 at night. It is amazing what people are willing to do when they feel the spirit.

Anyway that's about it for this week, love you all so much, I hope your weeks were all amazing,

Love,
Elder Hyer