Email of July 8, 2013

Hello everyone! What a drastic experience. I´m so thankful no one was hurt. Its a good thing we have such a great family to take care of us. To bad I´ll miss the reunion. Send everyone at the reunion a BIG HUG from me. Especially Grandma and Grandpa and all of our cousins. And the meyers family. This week was good. We have gone quite a few weeks without baptism. We started to work even harder. The baptism we had this week fell through. The whole mission is having some difficulty. Last week we had only 10 baptisms in the mission. (that is very few) This week was a little better with 20, but still not much. I guess god gives us these experiences for a reason. We seem to be meeting more rejection in our area than usual. We asked the members to join us in a fast last sunday and I hope it helps. Times like these more than ever we need to fast and pray. We had two investigators at church that seemed pretty receptive. We will do a family home evening tonight and one of them will be there. I´m sure we will be able to find the elect. We played soccer again today. It was fun. Good to be distracted for a little from the work. I´m trying really hard to learn to control my thoughts. When the end is near your mind tends to wander a little. It starts to dwell on family and what will happen when the mission is over. I´m learning to focus my thoughts on serving the lord because the mission is not over yet. The end is the most important part because we learn what endure to the end means. The runner runs his fastest always at the end of the race. I hope to be able to run my fastest now as well. I´m so thankful to have all of my family in the church. That is the greatest blessing and motivation. I love you all! See yah in a couple years! Marc

Email of July 1, 2013

Hey Family! This week was great! It's been cold and rainy all week. We forgot our umbrellas and rain gear a couple times and got all wet. When we went to do divisions in Aquidauana we got all wet and muddy too. We had two investigators at church this week. Regina and her daughter Carmen. They were a reference from a member. They have their baptismal date marked for this week. I hope all goes well. We will do a family home evening at the member's house with them this week. They arrived at church before we did actually. That's what you call a golden investigator. This week we knocked on a door and the man at the door didn´t want to hear, so we moved on. Then he felt bad for rejecting us. He chased us down on the street and said he was sorry he had rejected us and that we should not get discouraged. That was a first. But it really is true that just our presence on the streets going from door to door is a testimony to others that what we teach is true. This last week we were going to a lesson, but changed our minds and decided to go to a different person. On the way we passed a members house and decided we could ask them to come with us. When we got in Irênio (a member) was really sick with laryngitis and they had just called the Bishop to come and give a blessing. We gave him a blessing. I´m sure that we were guided by the spirit to go to his house. Anyway. I´m glad that all of you are doing well! I love you all! See yah in a couple years! Marc Elder Skiles

Email of June 24, 2013

Hey everyone, Its been a great week! It did not rain this Sunday. Thankfully. We had one [investigator] at church this Sunday. Emily. She´s a friend of a member. She doesn´t have a baptismal date yet, but we´ll try to [set] that this week. We did get to see the [Worldwide Leadership Training] broadcast. It was amazing. It gave a vision to the members of how member missionary work is done. I especially liked to analogy of little kids playing soccer. That is soooo true. The little kids have lots of desire to make a goal just like the members have lots of desire to do member missionary work. They don´t know however how to play as a team or think they are playing alone. They don´t know what their position is and so instead just run at the ball. I also like how it showed the examples of missionary opportunities. We don´t necessarily know how or when a missionary opportunity will come, but we need to know to act when it comes. Anyway... This week was kind of difficult with missionary work. We had a really hard time finding people at home because of the rain and cold and the protests that were going on. Seems that lots of people are mad about the price of the bus going up. There are some pretty big protests going on all over Brazil. More than 1/3 of the city was at the protest. We ended up having to knock doors when the other plans fell through. wow. It's been a long time since I´ve had to knock doors. We met a lot of rejection this week, which is abnormal. We did start teaching a woman called Eloir who seems receptive. She accepted baptism, but didn´t come to church. We will go back to find out why. Sometimes Heavenly Father just gives us [uncommitted] people. Just to see if we will keep working. Then the blessing of the golden investigator comes. I hope that happens this week, but if not... we´ll just keep on working. Anyway. I love you all. See yah in a couple years. Marc

Email of June 17, 2013

Hey Family! I´m so glad to hear things are going well. Things are going great here as well. This week we didn´t have any investigators at church though. It was crazy. It started to rain on Sunday morning. There was strong wind and heavy rain and it kind of scared people I guess. Especially people who come to church on foot or on motorcycles. The church attendance was very low as well. This seems to happen a lot. It waits to rain until Sunday morning. I guess its Gods way of trying peoples faith. We are praying that it will not rain this Sunday. It can rain every day this week, just not Saturday night and Sunday morning. This week there was a party at the public park near our house. Festa Junina. The music was very loud. It made it a little difficult to sleep. Sertaneja. Its like country music in Brazil, just that its very different from country... like red neck music I guess. You guys can show me the new American music when I get back (some of the more popular stuff I have already heard on the street). I´ll show you guys some cool Brasillian music I´ve heard on the street here. We played soccer again today. That was fun. This week we are going to try to baptize Gabriely. She went to church the Sunday before last Sunday and was supposed to get baptised this last Sunday, but the rain made it difficult for her to come. She was brought to church by a less active. We can reactivate and baptize! yay! We´ll see how it goes. Gabriely´s mom is really receptive as well. We are going to try and baptize her too. Anyway. I love you all. See yah in a couple years. Marc

Email of June 10, 2013

Hello everyone! Thanks so much for all the emails. I loved all of them. Its so good to be remembered on your birthday. My birthday was wonderful. A miracle happened. Remember Rosangela that would be baptised if her husband would marry her, but her husband doesn´t want to get married and doesn't want to go to church. He came to church yesterday. I almost didn´t believe it when he walked in. Rosangela was sooooo happy. We are going to try to get them married this week. We´ll see what happens. Neide (one of the members here who is like a mom to all the missionaries) made me a cake. We ate it at her house while waiting to get the transfer [notices]. It was great. I stayed in the same area with the same companion this transfer. What a relief. I´m loving this area and my companion. Today we are going to go to a park in the city. It should be fun. My companion is trying to learn English. He´s doing really well and I´m trying to help him out the best I can. Its amazing how complicated English is. I know what´s right and what's wrong [grammatically], but it's difficult to explain why it's right or wrong. I think I don´t even know the basic rules, but the book explains most of them thankfully. I´m super excited to see all of you as well when I get home. I know however that God is still preparing more of his children for my companion and I to teach. It helps to pretend like the mission starts today. Anyway. I love you all. See yah in a couple years! Marc

Email of June 3, 2013

Hey everyone! This week was wonderful. Tatiane and Cleber got baptised! Yay! They got married legally on Wednesday. I was worried that the baptismal date would fall through because we went 5 days without being able to teach them. We taught them in the chapel on Friday. I was all ready to do the commitment pattern and thinking about what scriptures I would use and so when they accepted to be baptised on Saturday without hesitation I almost didn´t believe it. It was a wonderful baptism. There were lots of people and cake afterward as well. We joined our baptismal meeting with the sisters. 4 baptisms all at once! It was very exciting. It rained on Sunday so we had very few investigators at church and the attendance dropped considerably. We only had Rosângela who is an eternal investigator. She just needs to get married legally, but her husband is difficult. Today we got to go to a waterfall with a member. It was really cool. We saw a snake in the middle of a bridge too. I´ll send you some pictures. There is an Elder in our mission who had a stroke. Elder Weiss from Santa Caterina. He went to the hospital last week. Now he is in the hospital in São Paulo and was already released. He is getting better already, but remember him in your prayers. Anyway. I love you all. Have a good week. See yah in a couple years! Elder Skiles

Email of May 27, 2013

Hello Family, This week was awesome! I really like my new companion. He´s great! This week the other couple investigators we had didn´t make it to church because they got sick, but we had one more couple at church today. It was great. Now we have two couples that we are teaching that are possibilities for baptism. I got really sick on the bus today. That wasn´t fun, but now I´m better. I think there was something wrong with the breakfast I ate. Our recent convert gave a talk yesterday that almost made me cry. It was amazing. He studied a lot for it. That's pretty much it for this week. I love you all. See yah in a couple years. Marc