Zone conference, Skype and Ty's mission call

May 15th

Hey everyone back home! 

So my week was pretty good. I'll start with the beginning of the week.

On Tuesday we had Zone Conference which is always fun. President gave a training on the talk given by Gary B. Sabin "Be All In" and it was great. It really made me think, am I 'all in' with my work here on the mission: Am I doing everything I can with the time I have here? The same thing will apply to every part of my life, including after the mission. 2 things that he said that I really like are "When we're all in, we will want to do all the small things, not just do them because we're suppose to." and "We cant expect blessings if we aren't being as obedient as we can. When we aren't all in, we lose some of our greatest blessings." I always look forward to Zone Conferences, I learn a lot! Something else fun that happened is I got to se Lehi! He's the member in my last area that always is helping the missionaries, he's almost a missionary himself. Because of him, that area has baptized a ton of people and has a group of 20 or 30 people each sunday! The stake president is saying that by the end of the year, it should be a branch. Lehi's the man! It was a blast to see him again.

This week was pretty funny for lunch. Normally we eat lunch with members, but this week we only ate with a member one time and for all the rest of the days we had nothing. One of the members gave us some money for food which was good. So, we went to the store and bought food to make for the whole week. The other elders in my house can cook, which is good because I cant cook at all! We actually ate pretty well, I was impressed with the other elders. Pasta, a bunch of different types of meat, rice, etc. your typical brazilian meal but it was still good. On Friday we did splits with the district leader. My companion went with him to his area and his comp came here with me. His name is elder Sanchez, another elder from mexico. We didn't have a a ton of people to teach, so we went crazy with finding new investigators and were able to find 8 people that accepted another visit which is really good! It's been awhile since I've found that many people in one day willing to listen to us, so we were happy with our work. 

On Saturday we had a big ward activity for Mothers Day. The stake president's wife found out that Elder Boldrin and I play guitar, and so he asked us to participate and play some songs with some sisters from the ward. It was really cool! We got the church decorated with hearts and stuff and were able to play 2 songs for the ward. It was fun! At night, we went to a less active members house to share a message and invite her to church. We were walking there when the other companionship in the ward called us. There was a member in the ward who was getting on their case about visiting a referral she gave that day of another inactive member. She said that the referral needed help spiritually and mentally. When we got to the first less active members house it was already 815, so we decided that we wouldn't have enough time to visit the referral that night. But as we left the less active's house, we both felt like we should visit the referral. The problem was we didn't have the map, the address to the house, or time to visit! But we knew we needed to at least stop by. So we called another member to get the address and somehow made our way to the right house. We were let in by a girl who's about 10 years old. We went and met her mom, who was the referral that needed help. Her name is Taila, and I'm not going to get in to all the problems that she has, but I'll say that she probably has had the hardest life of anyone that I've personally met. I couldn't believe all the trials that she's had to go through! I was in shock as I was listening to her tell us about her hardships. I'm still not 100% sure how I'm going to help her, but we are for sure going to do our best.

Sunday was the highlight of the week! Mothers Day and getting to Skype the family! It was super fun to be able to see everyone again. The craziest part was when Ty read his call to me. When he was opening it, it was like I was opening my own call all over again, I was super nervous! But, for those of you who don't know yet, he's going to the Brazil Fortaleza mission!!!!! I couldn't believe it, Ty's going to Brazil too! I was so happy and I'm super proud of him. So cool that my brother and I will serve in the same country. Also shoutout to my cousin Kaylee, congrats on getting your call to Philadelphia, that's so cool!!! I'm super grateful for my family and all the the support I have from them. A big thank you to all my friends back home and serving around the world too, you guys are awesome!

That's all from me this week, I hope all you guys back home have a great week!

-Elder Odom

Companion health issues and a little guitar

May 8th

Another week down! So, what happened this week.

The first thing is about my companion, Elder Naytson. His health just isn't good. He has lots of problems in his legs and he feels a lot of pain, and from what he says it's almost constant, but especially when he's walking around a lot. As missionaries, it's kind of hard to avoid doing that! We went to the doctor to see whats wrong and they did and x-ray on his leg but still don't know why he's feeling pain. So, we need to go back on the 11th to have him do some more tests. On the mission, it really seems to take forever when you go to the doctor, so that trip wasted almost an entire day. This week he also got a pretty bad flu and was out of commission almost 2 days. His fever was high and it was tough for him. He was pretty mad about it because of all the time that we missed because of his health problems, but there's really no other choice but to let him rest because he was dying. So it's been a bit tough to work normally this week because of that, but regardless we were able to get some good lessons.

One of our lessons that was super cool was with 2 investigators, a girl named Eduarda and her mom named Fabiana. Eduarda is 17 and her mom is about 40. We found Eduarda the first week of the transfer but weren't able to find her at home until this past Saturday. We taught the Restoration and it went really good! When we found Eduarda the first week, she was sitting on a bench by herself and he felt like we should talk to her. When we did, we introduced ourselves and started to talk about our message, and she started to cry. She said she is having some problems in her life and she's been praying for help, and that's when we talked to her. Then during the lesson, both her and her mom cried. They said that the first time we found her it was in the exact moment when she needed help, and when we visited on Saturday it was the same thing, just the right moment when she was needing help. During the lesson I really felt the Spirit confirming to them that this is the path that Heavenly Father has for them, and I know that they felt the same way too. This is one of the coolest parts of the mission, to be led by the Spirit even when you don't know that you are! When we made that first contact with her, we didn't know that she was needing our help, we just felt like we should talk to her, so we did. I know that when we're making the right choices and asking for opportunities to help others, Heavenly Father will turn us into instruments in His hands, even when we don't know it. We can have a much bigger impact on the lives of others than we know!

Another thing about my companion. Sometimes he's a bit impulsive and likes to do crazy things. On Wednesday he did just that. The week before while we were at a members house eating lunch, they brought out a guitar and Elder Boldrin, another Elder, and I started to play a bit. Elder Naytson watched us and thought it was super super cool and after that he was 100% determined that he was going to learn how to play guitar. He knows that I taught guitar before the mission, so he said that I was going to teach him. The very next day he went and spent 250 reais on a used guitar so i could teach him how to play. So there's a good and a bad side to this... the good part is that I get to play more often and help my companion learn to play too, and the bad side is it's a huge temptation to play! I have to really force myself to not to play it all the time when I should be studying or something. So I made goals for myself, I'll teach Elder Naytson, but I'll only play on P Day! But it is super sweet to have a guitar again! I miss playing a ton!

There's my week though. Next sunday we get to Skype! I cant believe it! Something that my trainer Elder O'Neill said was that in between Christmas and Mother's Day time flies. It's true! It doesn't seem like that long ago that we were Skyping!  Have a great week!

Elder Odom

Another good week

May 1st

It was another good week!

My companion, elder Naytson is great. I learned a very valuable lesson that i'll never forget. Never judge someone based on what you hear from others. He's grown a lot as a person and missionary, and now He's doing just fine. Its a lesson I'll never ever forget! Hes really outgoing and wild so he's fun to be around. (some of the other elders said he would be a hard companion)

We were able to find a few new people to teach this week that are looking pretty good! Its two 15 year old boys and a 20 year old girl. We found them while contacting people on the street. They seem really interested and I'm looking forward to working with them.

My companion has some heath problems that are pretty bad, mainly because of the walking that we do. His feet are crazy, the bottoms of them are literally like rocks. I gave him one of my pairs of shoes to use because they are much more comfortable than his. I've been pretty worried all week because of his problems. i let president know in my email, so hopefully we'll get him some sort of help soon.

So good news with my Portuguese! its getting better! Both Elder Boldrin (elder in my house that I'm really good friends with) and my comp say that my accent is getting much better. I've been working really really hard with it and its starting to pay off! I have a huge testimony of whatever we ask for, in faith, we can receive. I'm so grateful for all the help i get every single day from Him.

Super cool that the Jazz moved on! I'm proud of my Jazz, already looking forward to watching them when i get home.

So as far as my guess goes for Ty's call.... stateside, I'm gonna guess somewhere in california. internationally, i think he's going to the UK. Super super anxious to hear where he goes!

I'm looking forward to the rest of this transfer. I'm already really liking elder Naytson and i think I'm going to really enjoy it. That's it for me though, sorry for the kinda short email! Have a good week!!

Love Elder Odom

transfers and saying goodbye to Elder Torres

April 24th

The last week of transfer 6 is over. It was a pretty good one!

So about transfers, there's some kinda sad news... I didn't get moved, but Elder Torres did. We are pretty sad about it! It was a super fun transfer and I cant believe it went as fast as it did. We were hoping that he'd stay one more but it didn't happen. But its just part of mission life. The comp I'm getting is named Elder Naytson and he's from Recife, so Brazilian.

This week we focused a lot on growing our teaching base again. We found a good amount of people so we should pretty good shape to start off this next transfer.

I did a split with Elder Guzman, my zone leader on Friday. I went to his area and worked with him. I always like doing splits with the zone leaders, its a good opportunity to learn. Elder Guzman and I are good friends so it was a fun day. He's also going to stay this next transfer along with my other zone leader Elder Seaman from Baltimore. The two elders I'm living with, Elder Boldrin and Elder Santana are also staying. They're super fun to be around so I was happy about that too.

btw, the weather is awesome here!  It's starting to be winter, and winter is actually the most wonderful time of the year.  These past 2 weeks its always been around 73 outside. It's so sweet!!!

But that's actually about it for this week. We're still working hard to find the elect people! But I'll talk to you guys next week.

Elder Odom

Elder Torres made awesome burritos

Rat killing adventures

April 17th

Well it's arrived yet again, can you believe it's my last email for this transfer? It was a quick 6 weeks!

This week was more of the same. We actually found people to teach, but the problem we're having is finding them at home to teach them again! But when we did splits this week, I found some people that seem pretty interested but I marked for next week, so lets hope it goes well with them.

Something cool that we did this week was the ward activity. We have 4 missionaries in the ward and so us 4 planned an activity to try to animate the ward and get them to help us out with referrals and stuff. We divided the ward into 2 teams Each person that brings a non member to the activity gets 3 points and each person they bring to sacrament gets 5. During the activity we had various activities for them to do that could win points too. It was kind of a bummer because we planned a bunch of scripture questions and games, but not very many people showed up. We're planning on doing it over the next 3 weekends too so we still have time to get the members involved!

So something super funny that happened on Friday! My comp and I were planning the ward activity with the other elders in our ward that live with us when one of them sat up a bit and pointed across the room and yelled "rat!" We all turned around and there it was, a huge rat crawling along the wall. It was about 7 or 8 inches long head to tail. We hurried and made a strategy of how we were going to get it out of the apartment and kill it without having it bleed, because it smells super bad. One of the elders snuck around quietly and shut all the doors while the rest of us got ready in our spots. I was waiting on the other side of the front door with a heavy wooden shoe while the others had pieces of wood and other things. They were able to scare it outside and when it passed me I swung at it but missed! My 3rd attempt was good and i got one of its back legs so it was going slower. Then we started hitting it back and forth as it ran around crazy. I was dying laughing the whole time, the whole situation was so funny! Eventually Elder Santana, one of the elders that lives with us, was able to get a solid hit on his head and it died. Then we put an old shirt over it and put elder Torres in charge of picking it up and putting it in a sac. It was so funny watching him because he was so grossed out he literally couldnt do it! He kept saying "Its body is so squishy and soft!!" But after a few minutes he was able to do it. I have a video of that part, Ill try to send it to you guys!

This week I was thinking about my friends and how cool it is that I have so many serving serving all around the world, literally!

I'm 1/3 of the way done with my mission now. Its weird because I still feel kind of new out here! It really does go by quick!

Other than that not much else exciting happened this week. Im looking forward to transfers to see what will happen. I love you all and thanks so much for all that you do! I can really feel the support from you guys and the rest of our family and friends. Until next week!

Love Spence

Over 60 doors visited!

Hello everybody! another week come and gone! This week went by pretty quick for me. The time just seems to keep going quicker and quicker!

But, as far the work is going it wasn't as fast this week. At this point we're running out of ideas of how to find new people to teach, so we decided that we're just going to visit as many inactive members as we can and try to teach non-members in their families. In the past week, we've visited over 60 addresses. It's sad to see when people don't have a desire to come back to church. We're trying our best to help them, but the problem is the same for all of them, they don't read the Book of Mormon, pray, pay tithing, etc. all the little stuff. The longer I'm out here the more I learn how important the little things are. Something that President Scholz always talks about are the "simple and basic things", because without them no doubt you'll start to lose or weaken your testimony. On the upside, we were able to find a few new people to teach because of this. Now the problem is finding them at home again when they say they'll be!

Elder Torres is still dealing with problems with his finger and also has problems in his shoulders, so he started to do physical therapy this week. Not the most fun thing in the world, but I just use the time to read. He was also super sick this week with a really bad cold or something, so on tuesday after Zone meeting, we went home and didnt go back out. Its lame we had to do that because we need to find new people to teach, but if he's sick you can't really do anything about it. That day he slept 13 hours out of 24! So like last transfer, I got a day where I studied a lot! It wasnt 10 hours like last time, but it was still a lot of time.

Now for the sad part of the week. Our investigator Dienifer that we've been working with had to be cut. We visited her 2 times this week and explained the answers she's received. On friday, we asked her "Do you believe that you received an answer during General Conference as well as other days?" she said yes. But then she said "But I decided I'm not going to go to church anymore, and I still wont be baptized." It's one of the saddest things out here on the mission for sure when someone knows what they need to do and have an answer from God but choose not to follow. We were feeling really bad about her choice, but as missionaries we did all we could and what we're suppose to, which is help her receive and answer from God. There's nothing more we can do because we can't choose for her, only she can do that. So that was a pretty rough part of the week, but we just have to keep going.

But that's all from me this week. Wasn't too exciting, just a bunch of finding different addresses. Something that I studied a lot this week was Alma 31 and 32. Those chapters are awesome! We learn about how important prayer is, and at the way that Alma explains faith is super cool. He literally says exactly what we need to do to receive a testimony and grow our faith. I'm super grateful for the scriptures and everything we learn from them. I've come to learn in the last months that every single problem we have in our lives can be answered using the Book of Mormon. Because we have it, it really shows how much God loves us.

I love all you guys, thanks for all your prayers and support, i'm super grateful for each one of you! until next week!

-Elder Odom

Drinking contest and questionable medical care

Hey everyone, another P day arrived!  This week was pretty different. I'll start with last monday.

We were playing bball and what ended up happening is Elder Torres dislocated his finger super bad and then after putting it back into place himself, it was still hurting super bad. He decided to wait a day or two to go to the doctor though in case it stopped hurting. On Wednesday, we went because it was still killing him. Let me say that the medical care here is... just not quite as good. We went to the hospital and waited and 2 hours after they said they'd "be with us soon". After that we asked what was taking so long and how much longer we'd have to wait and they said another 4 hours. So we left, pretty lame waste of time! We called the mission office and they got us an appointment at a private hospital which was better. But they just sent us to a specialist. We visited the specialist, who then told us that he had pinched a nerve in his finger super bad and now the nerve is out of place in his finger. Then, they sent us back to the private hospital again to talk to a doctor there. He wrapped his finger to help keep it steady, and then marked yet ANOTHER appointment for us to go back to get an x ray to see if he'll need surgery or not! We actually haven't gotten back to do that yet, because we were sick of wasting time. But in total, we wasted hours and hours across 3 days doing all that stuff, we lost a lot of good work time! But lets just hope that Elder Torres doesn't need surgery!

On tuesday we had Zone Conference. These past 2 conferences President Scholz has given an assigned reading in the BoM and told everyone to come prepared to give a short talk on a topic that he also assigns. This time it was repentance. He chooses 4 missionaries during the conference, we don't know who until they're called. You know when you just somehow know that you're going to be picked: I had that feeling as we were getting ready to leave, and it turns out I was right! He picked me, but the problem was that he modified the part of the BoM that we could use and the scripture I prepared was outside of that. So in 7ish mins I found another scripture and planned what I'd say as much as I can. When it was my turn to talk, I didn't really know what I was going to say exactly. But, that day I strengthened my testimony of the Spirit giving us what we need to say "in the very hour". It turned out good and I never was at a loss for words! I'm super grateful that as we do everything we can to be obedient and rely on the Spirit, we will always know exactly what to do in every situation. This is one part of General Conference that I really liked. Elder Rasband and Stevenson talked a lot about the importance of the Spirit, and this is something that everyone can use more. Elder Rasband said that as we pay attention and follow promptings of the Spirit, we'll receive more and more. What a cool promise!

So yeah, I was able to watch conference in English thankfully. I think at this point I'd be able to understand it in Portuguese, but it will always be better in my native language hearing the real voices of the prophets. Just like last General Conference, I remembered conference at home and wished that I had payed more attention, conference is awesome! Its also a bit weird that it's already been 6 months since last conference. It was my first weekend in the field! By the time next conference rolls around, I'll have a year and 2 months!

Something super funny happened on Wednesday. After lunch, my comp and I and the other companionship that lives in our house with us (we all eat lunch together at the same members house everyday) went to the all you can drink sugar cane stand, this time with a challenge to see who could drink the most. The first one of us tapped out at 6 and a half cups, right around 2 liters. Then the next one at 7 and a half. Elder Torres and I kept going. I ended up losing, but I gave a good fight. I drank 3 liters of it and I wasn't feeling too hot! This stuff is thick, its not like water or anything! The funny part is what happened to Elder Santana, the elder in the other companionship. After his 6th cup, he was bent over looking at the ground rubbing his head. We asked him what's the matter and he said he was concentrating. He was concentrating not to be sick! We, being good influences, urged him to finish just one more cup. He gave in and drank half. After 10 seconds he said. "I need to go to the bathroom in the store. I'm going to be sick!" So him and his comp hurried across the street and when he got to the bathroom he threw up! When we went over there to see how he was doing, his comp told us how he threw up and I was laughing so hard I was crying! Good times on the mission. It's super funny what keeps us entertained.

Friday we traveled to Ribeirao Preto to renew Elder Torres's documents. While we were there, we ran into Elder Mehmetof, my last zone leader. It was great to see him! He's headed home in 3 weeks, and I didn't know if Id get to see him again. We became pretty good friends this past transfer. Luckily, he has plans to study at BYU so I'll probably see him there.

The last thing I want to talk about is our investigator Dienifer. It was a rough week for her. Its just super hard for her to excersize faith. She feels like she needs to know for a fact with proof that what we are saying is true. She asked us over and over to show her that the Book of Mormon is true and that we need it using the Bible and we kept saying no. But after tons of asking, we asked her if she'd believe if we did. She said yes, and so we did. At the end of the lesson, she said "Well, you guys did it". But what happened: She still didn't believe, just like we told her! I relearned a valuable lesson- you cant receive a testimony of things based on logic and proofs. The Spirit is the only one who can give you a testimony. The other problem she has is her mom. We talked to her mom a bunch of times, and every time we ask she says that her daughter can choose to be baptized but she won't support her in her decision. Because of these things, it makes it tough for her to be baptized. The only thing we could think to do is bring her to General Conference and let the Spirit and prophets convert her. She went to the last session on sunday, and when she heard Joaquin E. Costa talk directly to investigators, we could tell that she was thinking super hard. Then even more when Elder Stevenson talked about what the Spirit does and why He is so important. She didn't say much after, but she did say that she had "a lot of questions answered". You can always depend on the general authorities and their words and testimonies to convert! We'll talk to her more this week to see what she thinks now.

So, there's my week. Talk to you guys next week!

-Elder Odom