Letter #97-It won´t be Long Ya

Elder Askins and Elder Croskrey

This week has been such a blast. Not much time has passed since I last worte you but here in 4Bs we are working our tails off and loving it! We are having such a BLAST!!!! You really have so much fun when you give your everything to the Lord. I feel so blessed for all the many companions that I have had and especially to end with Elder Croskrey. 

Well, this past week I don´t know if i talked about Admilson, but he is so ready to get baptized. He is so excited we are fasting and praying that his wife, Kelle, will also get baptized with him. She has the desire but there are little things holding her back. We are going this Saturday to the temple with them. I am excited. 

Yesterday we had 11 investigators at church. CAN YOU SAY BLESSINGS!? Hercílio came with his 3 brother-in-laws: Elder (that´s his name!), Elber, and Taylor, also Mateus and Tiele came (we just need to marry them! They want to be baptized),  Also Admilson and Kelle came.  Priscila (the friend of a member) came also. Marcos got work off and came too! HE LOVED IT!!!! Also a member brought her boyfriend and we will start teaching him this week. Also this family that is inactive that we visited came to church as well! It was amazing! Here in the Branch 4B, we had an attendance of 136. Have you ever heard of a branch having 136 people at church!? crazy!!!!!! 

Yesterday afternoon we taught Hercílio, Elber, Taylor and Taylor´s mom. It was great. They felt the spirit and said they wanted to be baptized. So we have a lot of work to do in the month of March. We also passed by the house of Marcos. Can I just tell you that he has taught me so much. He has changed so much in the past 3 months that it is crazy. He absolutely loved church today. He has been reading the Book of Mormon everyday. and he is so excited to get baptized. He will get married on the 16 and then they will leave to Ponta Grossa  (another city in Paraná) and then come back the next week and he will be baptized on the 25. He asked me to baptize him already. I am honored. Last night he asked about geneology because they talked about it in church and he was already talking about research he was going to do so that he could bring their names to the temple. He is amazing. I really loved it. 

This past week has been a blessing. A couple that my friends Elder Romm and Elder dos Santos baptized went to the temple last week to be sealed and one night we will do a family night with them and all of the couples we are teaching. I am so excited! Well. Everything is great! Don´t worry about me! I love you all so much! Like mom wrote me today: Obey like Nephi, pray like Enos, and endure like Abinadi. Don´t stop believing!

Com amor,

Elder N. Askins

p.s. this pic is me and elder croskrey

Letter #96- "The Long and Winding Road That Leads to Your Door."‏

Oh MY FAMILY!!!! I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH! I am sorry I forgot to tell you that this week we were going to the temple, so pday was on Wednesday. But next week it will be on Monday. Sorry. Please don´t be mad. 


SO MUCH TO TELL YOU. So Elder Schmidt was transfered. He was sad, but do you know where he was transfered? Guarapuava!!!! That´s where I was before he got here. Did you remember that!? He was actually pretty excited because he had listened to me talk about how it was the best place on the mission for the past 3 months. It was good. 


I called the secretaries and they confirmed that my cards got here. I asked them to send it by way of the assistants to me but when they got there they didn´t have it. So it just so happened that on the day, the entire Curitiba/metropolitin area bus system went on strike. Brasil is dependant on the bus system. EVERYTHING shut down for a few days. But we had our transfer meeting. 


Ever since I had met him, I wanted to be companions with Elder Croskrey. He is awesome. I was entering into my last transfer and I would receive my last companion. And Elder Croskrey was a Zone Leader, so I thought my chances were done. Well, when we got there, I was chatting with Elder Rogers, the assistant and I jokingly asked him if Elder Croskrey would be my companion. He laughed and said we´ll see. The transfer meeting started and they did the transfers and then at the end, Elder Croskrey was called for his transfer. President Cordon said that he was going to be opening a new zone. What? and that he would be my companion! We got so happy!!! That is awesome! And then President told be that I was assigned to be a Zone Leader again. It was nice. 


I am excited to be with Elder Croskrey. As we were leaving, a missionary in our zone that didn´t get transfered walked in and handed me a big envelope. It was my cards! He didn´t even know that it was super important! I was so happy! and I had no clue how my cards got there that fast, or how they got to the meeting! Then I was so amazed and I talked to Sister Cordon about it and she said that the most amazing part of it is that I didn´t get charged anything. Usually when people from the USA send things from the states that are by Fedex usually get a huge tax, and I got it here without a tax. 

So when we got back to our house here in 4 Barras, we had a note from the cartório that Marcos´s documents had arrived. So we marked his wedding the next day and then we also had a lesson with Admilson and HE marked a date with us! He is so awesome! The next day we marked a date with his wife. 

Well, everything here in 4 Barras is going great! and everything here in the new zone of Boa Vista is also doing great! 
I hope all is well at home! Don´t stop believing! I love you all so much|!!!!
com amor!
elder askins

Letter #94-"Once there was a way to get back homeward...‏

"Once there was a way to get back home. Sleep pretty darling do not cry and I will sing a lullaby. Golden slumbers fill your eyes. Smiles await you when you rise. Sleep pretty darling do not cry and I will sing a lullaby."

Oh my dear family. I love you all so much. I am so grateful for the message of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and for His church being here on the earth again. 


This week was a wonderful week. We worked super hard. Some awesome things that happened: 
1. We asked for Marcos´documents, marked an estimated wedding and an estimated date 2. Dara, Dara, Dara 3. It rained a LOT 4. Jessica and Carina were confirmed

1. Marcos. It was so awesome. The Branch Presidency passed by that Sunday and told him that if he were to pay for his documents that the branch would be able to fund his wedding. It was awesome. We passed by last Monday and he told us that. So on Tuesday we went to the cartório which is like the document place and he paid for his documents and asked to get them shipped again. They don´t have a ton of money and for them to do what they did, it was R$120. It was a huge act of faith. Then we went to his house and taught him. It was so wonderful. He talked about his desire to do the right things. He has gained a testimony. Awesome. So we marked his wedding for March 16 and baptism for the 17. His documents haven´t arrived yet and then it is a 30 day wait so that is why it is so far into the future.

2. Dara is this investigator that we have. Back at the beginning of when we got to 4 Barras, she found us on the street and she said that her brother was a member of the church and everything and she asked us to pass by. But it was always so hard to pass by and teach her because they went into holidays and everything. She lives close to Valeria so everytime we would go to Valeria, we would pass by Dara´s house. Sometimes she was there sometimes she wasn´t there. BUT a while ago we marked a date with her for the 12th. I think I said the story last week about how she wanted to be baptized on the 12 but didn´t go to church. SO we taught her the Word of Wisdom on Tuesday. She really likes coffee she said. We challenged her that on Wednesday, to only drink one cup of coffee. The next day when we found her on the street, she had stopped completely. She had prayed asking for help and stopped cold turkey!! they a few days later, when we were passing onthe street she called us over to just thank us for never giving up on her and persisting and enduring with her because she now knows that this is true and the right pass and she is so happy with her life. The Gospel is amazing!!!!!

3.  It rained a lot this week. The end.

4. Jessica and Carina were confirmed members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It is so awesome to see them. They are so happy with this decision they have made. But Heavenly Father is a lot more happy about this decision.

I know that this is Chirst´s church on the earth. I know that the Book of Mormon is true. I know that Joseph Smith is a true prophet of God. I know that Jesus Christ lives and loves us!
Don´t Stop Believing and help mom and dad not be trunky!!!! :)
Com Amor,
Elder Nay

Letter #93-It´s been a long time, now i´m, coming back home.‏

I´ve been away now, oh how, I´ve been alone.

WAIT til I come back to your side and we´ll forget the tears we´ve cried.

TRUTH, I will speak truth with you: HELP!, RUBBER SOUL, and REVOLVER by The Beatles could be in the top three greatest albums in the world. but that is just a side note. 

This week was awesome! So for my birthday we woke up really early and went to Baiano´s house to fill out the baptismal forms for Jessica and Carina. It was fun, then we left to go do a service project for someone. So listen to this. Our project was transporting brick for a family in our branch. Now that may not sound fun, but it was a blast, I really did enjoy it a lot. 

Then we ran to our lunch. They had made french fries and some sort of meat. It was amazing and for dessert, they made a huge chocolate cake with some candles on it. It was super nice. Then we went back to Baiano´s house to teach Carina and help her get prepared for baptism. It was fun. Then that night we went to Marcos and Vanesa´s house and they had put balloons up and made a cake. 

Because we had focused a lot on the Book of Mormon with him, he says he thinks of us when he reads the Book of Mormon so for my birthday they made a cake with a frosting of the Book of Mormon on top. It was so awesome. It was a blast. He is SO ready to be baptized, he just needs to get married first. We will get it done, he just has to get his documents first (Brasil has some weird laws) but it was great teaching him. Then the next day we had their interviews and Carina picked Elder Schmidt to baptize her. It was awesome. It was great. 

That day we also visited this family that we got to know pretty well. They work in 4 Barras and we just would talk to him a lot then one day he was like, you have to pass by my house and visit us. So we did. It was interesting. He's really into the Book of Revelation which was fun. 

On Saturday night we went and visited Admilson with Baiano. We were so excited to mark a date with him but it didn´t work out and we weren´t able to but before we went to Admilson´s house I told Baiano about dad´s conversion story with Roger Ethington and how Roger was a member and was good friends with dad and invited him to come to church and then be baptized. I guess Baiano was inspired because after he left us at our house, he went back to Admilson´s house and talked with him and invited him to be baptized! He accepted!!! So this week we will just mark the date. But he is super super excited.

AND JESSICA AND CARINA WERE BAPTIZED!!!! Jessica has been comin to church for well over a year. I don´t know what changed when we invited her, but she accepted and she was finally baptized. Elder Schmidt did great. He did have to do the ordinance 2 times but just becasue the first time, her hand wasn´t completely underneath the water. But the baptism was great. 

I am sending a pic of the baptism, the other guy in white is the branch pres. It was wonderful. The second pic is us at lunch on Sunday. The Baianos made a BBQ and we ate with them. It was awesome.

Well, family, I love you so much. I am so grateful for the love and prayers. They are helping a ton. Don´t Stop Believing!

p.s.s. if in the last while you have written me a letter, be expecting a response. i have many letters written, but i was lacking money to send. now i will start to send them.

I LOVE YOU ALL
Com Amor,

Elder Askins