Familia,

No I didn't get my package yet because they wont send it to me until I send the money to the mission office in Natal for the bogus fees they want for it.  No one is going to the office anytime soon so I just have to wait, so maybe next transfer I will get it.

Haha, dang you guys are not having any luck with the truck these days. It was fixed then damaged again at the repair shop? - that sucks. It sounds like a fun idea to get out of AZ for the fourth.  Of course you guys start to do cool stuff when I'm not around.  Everyone would rather stay home if I would have asked to do something like that... seeing the love. I guess now you guys are starting to feel how I feel with the heat haha and you guys have AC and a pool so don't give me any. No, but in this area the weather is pretty good compared to my last area where it was bad.

It's definitely a struggle in this area. Me and my comp started to lose our desire to work last  week because of this and transfers coming. But we turned to the Lord to help us with our desire and we finished out the week strong!  Even with the holidays last week, but we still haven't received any fruit from our labor's.   But we wont get down. We have been learning a lot in this area which I have a lot to be grateful for. I can see in myself some of the stuff I'm doing now that I would have never done before back in AZ -which I know wasn't much(; One of the biggest thing's tho is having patience for the members and our investigators. If me and my comp stay, which we think we will we are going to start all over again but in a different part of our area that's really far away. But it will be worth it because a member showed it to us last Pday and told us that a long time ago missionaries who worked in this area had pretty good success, so we will try it.

Last week we had two pretty big holidays São João on Thursday and  i think E São Pedro yesterday. It's when everyone lights up fires in front of their houses and bust off fireworks all  night into the morning or whatever time that you're feeling it. It's just what they do here. We spent time at a members house during the night cause we couldn't teach anyone at these times except yesterday when me and Baliach went on divisions together at the end of the day.  We all had to be at the church for a meeting but we also had a someone to visit so i went with him and it turned out great. They really liked me and Baliach and they popped out a big thing of ice cream and then we were about to leave and the lady there told us to sit down because they were cooking a barbecue for us haha so we stayed because we had to! At the end of the night, a lil kid who is 5 yrs old came in and started bombing us with fireworks haha it was so funny cause everyone just booked it out of the house. The sketchy thing about their fireworks here is that they are all handmade like Tyler's.  Anyone can buy them and some are gnarly big but they are a lot sketchier than the ones Tyler makes-haha.

A bunch of people have emailed me today so I'm keeping this one short but I love you guys I'll tell you if I get transferred or not. 

tchau 

Elder Mauter

Dad,  Feliz dia dos pais!!!!!!!!!

(Happy Fathers Day) it sucks that i didn't  get to Skype again with you guys-hahha but ill send my prayers old mannnn!!

This week has really been slow. We got our energy back in our house finally and it was like Christmas haha. We finally have clean cloths and cold water. The pictures that I'm sending you guys are from a member that sent them to me.  My memory card still isn't working idk why but i don't want to mess with it too much and lose all my photos... but don't worry I'm still taking pictures i just cant send them. But there is a few with the kids in my house, my district, and pictures of a group of kids I taught this Saturday when I went on a division with duji this week. He is the member that I went on divisions with last Saturday. The people we taught  seemed really interested in what we had to say. So I hope I get more chances to teach them. It was perfect because me and my comp were low on our numbers this week and this helped alot. 

The other two elders in our house got sick this week. I think i gave it to them because I was sick last Monday and Tuesday and then I probably passed it to them and they got it bad.... Brazil hahha. The water in this area is straight up green coming out of the faucet. I wont try and drink from it like in my last area haha. 

In these photos don't judge because some old dude cut my hair and he was not understanding what I wanted him to do burro.. so this is the second time that this happened in this area.  I'm about to call a member in my last area to come here and cut my hair next time cause I  don't have any trust. 

To answer your question dad, every morning me and my comp hit the weights hard except for Saturday and Sunday. It's good because I'm starting to see more results finally. I'm not a twig, exempt  when I'm standing next to my comp.

But this Sunday we had stake conference and we got to watch it broadcasted to our church. Our mission president spoke and also a Seventy.  It was really cool to hear from them. They gave examples of Nephi and both talked alot about the sabbath day and how we need to keep it holy. It seems like the more focused subject has been about the sabbath day lately. So everyone remember to remember that this day we have been given not only for rest but to recharge ourselves spiritually for our week. We do this through taking the sacrament and remembering the  sacrafice that the lord made for us so that we can become clean again every week. By renewing our covenants, through prayer , studying the scriptures and doctrine that can help build our testimonies. Remember this day is important!!

Love you guys.  I'm excited to hear that you both got fun callings in the YM/YW  haha good luck! Tell Chase, Josh and Gavin to write me.  I know they arent that busy to write me a paragraph.  See i dont even know how to spell in english any more but I'm still writing!!!

tchau
Elder Mauter

Familia,
That's  awesome that our ward has changed so much,  so many are leaving on missions and also a lot who are coming back. Sounds like everyone at home is doing good. Dad got a new calling in the teachers quorum, hahah! I feel like they always call dad to be with us in the young men to keep an eye on the Mauter kids haha. Its probably a good thing(; But thats sweet mom that you have been praying to find opportunities to serve when you can.  Thats one of the things i pray for every day, to find someone to serve. Because I know some of the stuff can be so small but it really makes such a difference and i like to do it.

So this week since Thursday we have been without energy in our house.  All of our food went to waste and without light at night to take showers and plan. So everyone just has been going to bed super early this week haha. I have been gaining a lot of trust from the members here. Last week a member that served a mission in colorado that never has left with a missionary left with me last week. My comp stayed with the other two missionary's and it turned out really good.  This guy really isn't a strong member in the church. Mostly because of this area and I'm seeing why.  But he is the smartest dude ever. He knows German, English, Spanish and Portuguese.  He teaches in like 5 different schools which I got to go to this week to help him, I'll tell you later. He literally knows everyone personally here in this area.  We'll be walking with him and everyone will yell his name and also all the inactive members and non members so we got to pass by some of them but then we got cut short cause there were some gun shots which is normal. So we didnt really get to teach as many people as we wanted but ill leave with him again this week.  I think he is the only member in this area that will help us. Everyone else is just lazy and won't leave with us so we really work on our own here. Our Bishop was released because he has alot of health problems so we don't have a Bishop.  We just have stake member that doesn't know very much about how to run things. Our ward missionary leader  served a mission and doesn't have a job and never has time to leave or meet with us which is weird. That's one of the things members really have to know is that without them it makes the work so much harder. They don't really have to leave with us but just give us addresses of people that  you know and it makes all the difference. So help the missionaries and feed them tons mom! Because we missionary's walk a lot.  Maybe not the ones in Arizona because they have cars and bikes haha.

Me and Elder Baliach left with this member to his school to help him out and he gives us some time at the end to teach English. It was really cool, he told us to only speak English so everyone thought we couldn't understand them when they were talking. But at the end we tore them up haha!  Everyone always has so many questions for us. But the most common in all the classes we went to was, what we thought about the girls in Brazil-hahahah. Later that night we went with him to his other school. It's a big catholic school which was funny cause i don't think they would have let us in if they knew we were LDS missionaries but me and Elder Baliach were just laughing so much about that. 

But this week was kinda slow again. We had a baptism marked for Sunday with a kid who is 23 but he didn't show up for his interview for baptism or church on Sunday. So that sucked cause we were really pumped to get this one.  But hopefully we'll get some baptisms this week.  Keep working hard and praying for sure mom, I don't know how I can do this work without that. I hope I get my package soon. Tell everyone in the fam that I love them. 
Elder Mauter

Familia!!
Yooo, yea its cool here hahahha not really but this area is so much better than my last area in the weather part.  I almost put on a sweater this morning before I went out but then I remembered it'll be hot in a lil bit. How are you guys?

 This week was a trial for me and my comp. It's hard to get members to come with us to go and teach or to give us references. So we are just hoping for a miracle to find more people to teach. Solid people that want to hear the gospel.  We have a bunch of older ladies that we are teaching that we got by a reference from another older lady in our ward. They are pretty good. But theres this one, senhora da graça we have been teaching. It's hard to pass by there all the time because shes always sleeping at random times of the day. So we are trying to go there at night more to teach her and her granddaughter who is my age. They are coming along well but the older lady is too lazy to come to church and her granddaughter really wants to come but she wants her grandma to go with her.  So we will get them to go next Sunday.  They didn't go yesterday because when we passed by there on Saturday she was sleeping.

We also have another older lady named Duva. She likes the church but she also likes to talk me and my comps ear off because she lives alone. We got her to go to an activity but not to sacrament meeting yet, but we are going to keep trying. She has a friend thats catholic who is sometimes there when we pass by. She always trys to argue with us so we just tell her that there is a meeting going on at her church and ask her why shes not there if she believes so much. But we also found a girl that is my age that we are teaching. She served a mission for the catholic church for 2 years in Sao Paulo and now is doing servicework for her church.  So it will be really cool to get her to commit to baptism. She's really interested in our church and is always asking question. We were going to try and teach her and her whole family Saturday but they weren't there.                                                                                          

Saturday was not a good day for me and my comp. We made a lot of appointments with people and not one person was home. Saturday is the most important day to get people to commit to come to church the next day. So that really sucked, we only had one person come to church this week but we'll do better this week.It sounds like you guys are doing good. Gavin is killing it on the mountain bike I hear.  I bet everyone loved the trip to Moab dad but haahah I knew some kids wouldn't make it the whole way. That was a pretty challenging trail they were on and if you don't have the mind set you won't make it. And mom haha Freak you messed up your beautiful face? Nooo I hope it doesn't leave any mark haha gotta be careful going downhill on the trail. Everyone here always asks me if you are a brasileira-haha.                                                                                                                              

I got to email with Jacoby a lil. He sounds like he is doing good on his mission in El Salvador.  Im starting to workout hard now and I have already gained weight back. Because I'm sick of being small haha. Did Heider email you mom? Email him back, he's a cool dude.  I told him to write in Portuguese haha because I can't even understand him sometimes when he writes in english haha but he can talk decent. Ehhhh I'm pumped for my package! I'll try to send some pictures off a members computer because it doesn't want to work on this one. I don't know why and I don't want to lose all of my photos.  I don't want to do anything stupid to lose them.  Today my district are going to a slack line. It's where you hook up a rope from one palm tree to another and you walk across it. It'll be cool. We will probably play volleyball too or something. 
Te amo
Elder Mauter 

Fammm!!!
How is everyone doing out there in big AZ. Sounds like everyone is really busy working on the rental house since it was left like a dump, stupid people these days. But it also sounds like you guys will have fun in McCall and up in Moab I miss doing stuff like that and messing around. But I know if I work hard here I'll  be blessed for it and so will you guys! 

So this week started out tuff because me and my comp are pretty much opening up a new area here.  My last comp that I had for like four days left me one person to work with. So we've been doing lots of contacts in the roads and stuff which is good cause now I'm learning alot because in my last area members always gave us references.  We didn't have to do very many contacts and knocking on doors there. It was funny this week, we were making a contact with this guy and he was so hard headed and he was a missionary from a different church. He kept telling us that he was from the church of Brazil, so we just kept saying that we were from the Church of Jesus Christ.  It was funny haha, gotta have some fun sometimes! But its getting better, we got some good references from a lady in our ward and we are going to try to mark there baptisms today. I will be excited if we do because everyone says its a hard area here but we're going to turn it around.

So I got a new companion Monday from an emergency transfer. He's from Argentina and this kid is crazy. He has so much energy all the time and he's 

ripped. Me and him are going to start hitting it hard exercising more. Because I'm tired of people looking at my pictures and asking me where I'm at in the picture cause they don't recognize me since I'm so small now hahah! But whatever, this area I'm always eating and members are always giving us cake haha! I'm going to gain my weight back or I'll  just get fat.

My comp has 1 year and 7 months in the mission so I swear everyone I know will be leaving..... but this kid is cool. But sometimes he doesn't know when to stop.  Like this week we were in a recent converts house and her whole family are not a member's and he was going crazy telling them he's ready to baptize everyone in this area and stuff.  I was like chill out dude haha!  He finally chilled out, when the sisters who were with us about had a heart attack from this! But 
it turned out ok, because this woman is building a house and she is really needing some help, so me and my comp are going to use our construction skills and lay tile down for her this week or next. 

I know I don't want to get on a bus again for a long time, thats for sure.  Two weeks ago I went from Mossoro to Currais Novo, that was almost a 3 hr bus ride.  Then last Monday I went to Natal and then back, which is four hours one-way. Then we had a mission conference in Natal Thursday so we went there and back again and now this week I have to got to Caico again and thats two hours right there. But the conference in Natal was sweet.  We got to hear from a Member of the 70.  His name was Elder Mazagardi and he was pretty hard core. He started off in the beginning saying, "if you don't feel worthy to enter the temple you should go home".  But after that he was pretty good, he talked about how some members will be baptized, go to church, then go to the temple.  Then there's other members that will make covenants, have their sinned washed away through baptism, continue renewing their covenants while taking the sacrament, make covenants in the temple , and talk with God in prayer continuing to build on what they have promised to do. I have it written better in my journal, but his purpose was to show us to not just go through the motions but to actually make covenants and have faith in these things.  It was really cool.

I 'll send some pictures of the conference.  When I can, but I think my camera has a virus or something. But I got to talk to my first comp Elder Vieira, Elder Dos Santos and all the other kids i met when i first got into the mission field. It was really fun cause now I can speak Portuguese with them and say what I want haha. I'm loving this area already, the members are cool. We have a really small ward. This week in sacrament it wasn't that good because we only got one investigator to come 
to church. But on Saturday we got two other women to go to the relief society activity so that was good. This area has alot of wind and this morning when i was going to workout I almost grabbed a sweater haha!

I love you guys, do the things that you need to do with meaning and don't give up! Blessings will come.  I love you guys and I'm so thankful for this chance we all have together.

 te amo Elder Mauter