Christmas and New Years

Before I forget:

Dear Everyone.  I love you all.  Please, I don´t really need much.  I would love to hear from you and get letters, and maybe envelopes and stuff with maybe a tie (actually, I do need ties to give to people that don´t have one and need one to get the priesthood) or other small stuff, but I don´t need food or worldly things.  Pictures are fantastic if you want to send something.  A CD of church music of any kind is also good.  These are just ideas if you really really really want to send something.  Yeah.  So, that.  Maybe a story or experience that you had or that we had together. Thanks!

So this last week was good.

This week we got a lot of new investigators and got our dates marked for baptism back up to 10.  Now we just need to get rid of the people in our inventory through baptism, and helping people to stay strong.  That is the struggle is keeping people strong in the gospel.  We are working hard to ensure that things go well in that aspect.  Yesterday church only had 29 people though, so we have a lot to do.

Christmas we did a lot of good missionary work, and then skyped home for a nice talk with family!  Yay family!  Yay technology.  It´s funny when skype from africa to america works way better than it ever did from Brad´s mission home.  Irony.

So the rest of the week, we had district meeting and made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and pizza which was incredible.  Thank you Aunt Diane!  That was pretty much it.  It has been a pretty unnormal eventing week.

Oh Congrats to Mike on the whole marriage thing.

So some investigator updates.

Joakina and her 4 kids:  So they didn´t show up at church because the other people that Joakina works with got fired so now she has to work twice a day every day, including sundays.  We are praying with their family to find a way to get sundays off, or at least to start with sunday mornings off.  Who in the world eats at a resturant sunday morning?  They have a date marked for the 18th.  Lets Go!!!

Joakin is different that Joakina.  He is the guy who owns our new church building we are moving into (right now our church is a 20 min drive from us, and more than an hour for some people.  It is being moved to a bigger building right next to our house).  He is sweet.  Turns out he talked to missionaries like 6 months ago and already knows the church is true.  He is also marked for baptism on the 18th.  We taught last night, him and his sister who is here visiting for the holidays becasue normally she lives in other places, because she works for the UN doing peace keeping.  She just pretty much walks into countries and yells at everyone that isn´t doing what they are supposed to be doing and aren´t being peaceful.  She also speaks fluent english (joakin speaks too but not as well) and is the first Catholic I have met here that actually has any idea whatsoever what she believes.

Hodielson (h is silent) is Kéven´s brother (he was baptized a few weeks ago and is a super studd) and he is being baptized this week.  Yeah.  Sweet.  I love baptisms.

That will be all for now. Next week I will talk about some more people.

So thought for the week.

Faith=Desire to do the will of the Lord in the Face of Opposition.  When temptations come, if we have enough faith, we win, if not, we lose.Yay Faith.  So, develop more faith, by using the faith you already have.  When your body says, time to sleep, not read scriptures, give your self a battle cry and win!  Then the next time it will be a bit easier.  When the spirit says, help your neighbor, Follow, AND YOUR FAITH WILL GROW!!!!!!  Wahoooooo!!!

So, in the end, it is all about winning.  The world says, it´s not whether you win or lose, it´s how you play the game.  But actually, the truth is, IT IS ALL ABOUT WINNING.  When you lose, fix whatever happened to lose, and win the next time.  That is repentance.We can´t have eternal salvation without winning more times the next day than we did the day before, every day of our lives.

GO

FIGHT

WIN

Anyways,

Love you all,
Love,
Elder Sampson

Feliz Natal

Dear Tudo,

Merry Christmas.

I will start with a Christmas message that I learned mostly at our Mission Party. 

So we have a lot of stuff.  We have food and family and bodies and houses and everything, but everything we have is from God.  If He wanted, He could take everything from us, just like Job.  There is only one thing that we really have that He can´t take from us. That is our Agency.  In this time of Christmas, and all year, we have so much, and the only thing that we are capible of giving back is the only thing we really have.  Our Agency.  Our choice to put God first.  Our Choice to do the hard stuff and get on our knees frequently, to study the Book of Mormon, to serve those who can´t give back, who are hard to serve.  To try and apply all the principles that Christ taught us.  The only thing we can really give is our hearts, to become completely, tools in the Lord´s hands.  God, if He hadn´t said otherwise, could take our agency and make us do everything to be happy.  This won´t happen, so why not use our agency to choose to let Him do the same thing with our lives.  Let go of the illusion of control and give this Christmas, your heart.

This will be Brief.

This week we didn´t have enough time to work.  We worked monday and tuesday, Wednesday we went to Sao Vicente for the Christmas party.  That was sweet.  It was pouring during the 45 min boat ride, and we were outside under a canopy with some drunks.  Fun.  We chilled with some other missionaries, and stuff until the next morning of the Party.  We had some great spiritual messages from President Oliveria and Pres Monson (video) and ate some great food (lots) and went out in our districts and sang to random people on the street and then came back and reported. It was all around fantastic.  So fantastic that we missed our boat and had to go back the next morning which threw stuff off a little.  So President goes to a Christmas party in every zone.  There is never a meeting with everyone from the mission at the same place.  There is a good chance I will never meet some of the missionaries I am with for 22 months. 

After a lot of time of straight traveling with no food or water, Keven was baptized, then we crashed.  He is a studd. I love him.  The ocean was a bit calmer. 

The next day we had a sweet district meeting (Which was sweet.  My district is the best litterally because we are super tight and work together instead of just kind of being in the same area.  We set some great goals for this transfer) and stuff but lost the whole day as we went to our branch Christmas party which was sweet and had soooooo much food.

Sunday I ate something weird and had a bit of upset stomach, but we ate at the one super strong families house, the Pasquinhas.  Everyone in our branch has been a member for like 6 months or less, except them.  (Used to be) President Pasquinha served a mission back in 94-96 and knows Brother Wright who talked to us before we showed up here.  I asked him about Elder Oaks when he came out and he showed me a picture of him with Elder Oaks and said that Brother Wright took the picture.  Small world.  Anyways, it was incredible.  Maybe my favorite meal the entire time here.  It was awesome. 

Yeah, so that is pretty much it. 

Oh Yeah, Joakina and her 4 kids were supposed to be baptized this week but they didn´t show up at church.  Pray for them.  They should be baptized next week.

Elder Jensen knows what is really up now, and has a very very hard choice to make so pray for him really hard.

Thank you to Aunt Diane.  I got the package.  I am so excited to have pumpkin Chocolate chip cookies.  They are my favorite and you can´t really get any of that stuff here, especially chocolate chips.  Awesome.

Well, I will talk to those of you who live at my house on Wednesday at 11, but those who don´t,

Merry Christmas!  See Spiritual Thought at the Top Again.

Yeah, so that is pretty much it.

Photos

Kéven and Otaniel and Us at the Baptism

Me in the middle of the ocean in the middle of a large storm with a bunch of Drunks!

Love,

Elder Sampson

Oh, and on the boat coming back (waves were terrible but that isn´t related to anything) I talked with these two cruse ship film makers from Hungary on a German Cruise ship that was stopped in Sao Vicente.  It was sweet.  My favore question was "So do you have any books you would suggest to learn more about this kind of stuff?"  Yes.  Yes I do.

2 Attachments

Late (coming on Tuesday instead of Monday)

So yesterday I was traveling all day and so I couldn't email.  I am still not to my new area.  All 4 of us in Cova Figueira left.  Elder Jensen is going to Mindelo where I am email right now but he wont be here for a bit longer.  His head is worse, but they have the best hospital here, so he will see a doctor in the next week, and if he will either get better or will have to go home which is very difficult for him.  Going home early is one of the hardest things for any missionary, and he already did it once and then came back after a year and a half.  Please continue to pray for him.  

I got transfered from the Southern Most area to the northern most area.  I am going to the island of Santo Antão which is the biggest island here but it only has 6 missionaries.  Also as of today, all of the islands have missionaries.  Last transfer Maio opened, and today São Nicolou (Sawou Nichole-ahw) 

I am super excited to serve and my companion Is great, but more about him next week.  We are going right now to buy a ticket for the fastferry which will take me from here to my island.  I left Fogo yesterday, Chilled in Praia a lot at the airport all day, then flew at like 11 to São Vicente and slept at the Zone Leaders house. Sweet.  I also got the two packages, one with Christmas stuff from family, and the other one form Grandma and Grandpa Low.  Thank You!  I had some problems getting them on the air plane and I had to pay almost 3000 escudos (33 dollars) to get them here.  That is okay though.

Congrats To Grandma and Grandpa on their Mission Call!!!

The Temple is sweet.  I challange everyone who is able to attend the temple twice this week, the first time pondering what you need to do to Come unto Christ more, and the second time pondering how you will do it.  If you can´t make it to the temple twice though, try to ponder about these things throughout the week.

I think we are going to buy a boat ticket now so I can go to my area.  We have 4 baptisms this week which will be sweet.

I Love You All!

Elder Sampson

No Comp Week Explained

Everyone,

So, first of I am going to explain the whole companion thing this week.

So Elder Jensen left to praia monday to see a doctor.  I stayed with the other two elders in cova figueira, Elder halblieb and Elder Pires.  I tried to do divisions throughout the week but all of the people who were supposed to walk with me wouldn´t show up and wouldn´t answer their phones.  It taught nothing in my área until thrusday.

Thursday was thanksgiving.  We ate the normal spaghetti with canned fish, and had no special food.  Thats okay though.  The person that was supposed to walk with me at least when it got time to go, bailed on me but at least this time he went and found someone that could walk with me that doesn´t have a phone (there are only about 5 options becaue they have to be a melchesidic preisthood holder and cant be working and stuff like that).  I worked my área with him all Thursday, and got another member all of Friday.  In those two days I taught as much as last week all together.  The Lord knew the desires of my heart and blessed me a lot.  I marked a bunch of dates for baptism, and started on two marrages so that these people can get baptized which is sweet.  Saturday I went on a split with Elder Pires becase Elder Jensen came back and someone had to stay with him. He is no better.  The doctor said that he has a bad sinus infection and that is causing the headeches, but he is still the exact same.  Probably he will stay in throughout all of this week again, which makes life very hard for me trying to work this área.  Church was an inprovement.  We had 80 people there which we can start to build on.  I also did a training with the ward missionaries and started teaching them how to teach the missionary lessons so that they can start to teach after baptism.  We had to leave church early because Elder Jensen is dying, so right now, it sort of feels like I am trying to pull the work in the área through a very small tube, and it is taking everything I can to just keep the área moving a little bit. Sunday is Transfers and I will have a new companion and hopefully I will be able to work.  The Lord has taught me so much though during this transfer.  I just want to work.  So, to sumarize, Elder Jensen isn´t better, and I am still pretty much working alone, it is just a lot harder now because I have to find someone to stay with him and to work with me.  I have a million appointments, but I don´t know how many of them I will actually be able to get to.

This week was a grand adventure though.  Missionary life is great but interesting right now.  Vamos ver o que vai acontecer.

This week I had a great experience with some crazy people.  A lot of the old people are a little rediculous.  One lady that will be baptized next week just always responds, "Sim Senhor" "Palavras de Deus" "Seguir Deus" and stuff (Yes Sir, Words of God, Follow God). 

Today we played soccer again.  It is lots of fun, and a lot of people here are really good.  Elder Halblieb played for AF, Elder Martinez played for some touring competitive legue, and the natives are really good, but probably not as good as they think they are.

 

Well, Love You All.

 

Hope All Stays Well At Home!

 

Love,

Elder Sampson

No comp

First a note from Kristin:

Would you be willing to send Jared a Christmas card or letter?  They take about a month to arrive, which I why I am asking in November =).  There are two ways you can send mail to him.  The first is through the church's pouch mail.  You can only send one piece of paper (no envelope) folded into thirds.  You send it with one stamp on it.  This address is:

Elder Jared Sampson

Cape Verde Praia Mission

P.O. Box 30150

Salt Lake City, UT  84130

The second option to mail to Jared is by sending it through the regular postal service to his mission office.  You can send it regular mail for $1.10 (three stamps).  This way would accommodate a regular "Christmas card."  This address is:

Elder Jared Sampson

Missao Cabo Verde Praia

CP 420

Praia, Ilha de Santiago

CABO VERDE

CAPE VERDE

Thank you!  Please let me know if you have any questions.

K

Dear Family and Friends,

This week was interesting still.

So since the beginning of the transfer (4 Weeks ago) elder jensen has had this headeche so I have been staying in and doing lots of divisions to try to work the area.  Pretty much the last 2.5 weeks I have been running the area alone.  We went to Mosteuros this week to the hospital on tuesday to see the results of the blood test, and the doctor hadnt come back so that was bad.  We had to go back wednesday too and the haice ride was terrible.  Some haices are better than others.  This one, imagine the worst most beat up minivan you have ever seen, then times that by 8 then cram a bunch of people in it and off road on the edge of giant cliffs.  Twas an adventure.  I sat on another Goat too, but this time, I didnt know it was there the first 20 mins of the ride until it made a noise.  The doctor called Pres Oliveira and told them that they knew nothing.  Elder Jensen Left today for Praia where he will see a specialist.  He was told to take all his stuff with him which means he probably wont come back.  I dont know what will happen to me but for now I will continue to do divisions with members all day, probably for the next two weeks until transfers happen.  That is my guess.  There is a chance I could get a mini missionary (someone from cape verde that is just trying out a mission, but hasnt been to the mtc or temple) but probably not.  I will probably just wait until transfers and then get a greenie.

This week Edson Muniz was baptized.  I would send pictures but the computer I am on doesnt have a slot and I forgot my usb converter (we are in sao filipe because this is where Elder Jensen and one other Elder took a boat to praia).  He is 16 years old and is the only real active male member in Figueira Pavao.  He will help us a lot.  We had the baptism in Sao Filipe as well because Relva didnt have water.

Speaking of water, we are out again.  I was hoping it would last at least until tomorrow because it am almost out of clothes, so I will probably just was them by hand when I have time in the next 2 days before I run out.  Joy.

So today we played soccer on a turf field and I got to run for the first time since Ive been here.  It was a small field, but bigger than the ones we usually play on.  I did two backflips, my first ones here, but they were both pretty bad.  I am out of practice.  

I am getting fat too here.  I think I am the fattest I have ever been in my life, which isnt that fat, but I miss running and healthy food all the time.  When you dont have much, you dont really get the choice of whole wheat or not, etc...  I dont think you can get lettuce in fogo either, and so I will have to wait for a while to eat a salad again.  Tear.  I try to excercise in our house every morning, but have been craving running all the time.  It ran around the soccer field this morning and that was great.  I hope I get a companion some time that likes running because I miss it and my body misses it.

This week I tried to help some members share the gospel.  It was rough and didnt make it that long. We did practice though with them.  I challenge everyone to practice sharing the gospel for FHE!  

Also, good luck to everyone in the musical on closing night.

I got the program from the choir concert a while ago and a great letter from my dear Aunt Cathy!

This weeks spiritual thought is that everything is for our good.  If you view everything as things to help you grow and recognize that all trials are blessings to help us grow, then you wont have problems.  This also relates to gratitude.  Be grateful always.  Dont be more grateful on thanksgiving day than any other day.  This means step up the other days and not be less thankful on thanksgiving.  Gratitude you wont find much in the scriptures or indexes of the scriptures because it is so closely related to humility.  Start today.  I feel like a sales pitch.. START TODAY TO CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOR THE BETTER.  BE MORE GRATEFUL AND HAVE MORE HUMILITY.  ALL BLESSINGS AND TRIALS ARE FROM GOD FOR OUR BENEFIT!

Well, thats probably it.  I feel like I am missing something I was going to talk about but that was probably most of it.

I love you all!

Love,

Elder Sampson

Hello Family

Hello Everyone!

 

So this week was an adventure.  I went on a lot of divisions and stuff with members and marked a lot of dates for baptism.  There is this one house in Figueira Pavao which is pretty much a jack pot every time.  Every time I go up there there are new people and we teach a lesson with Tequinha who lives there and whoever else is at her house, and just mark dates for baptism and other appointments.   Fantastic.

So Monday last week we went to Mosterous to the Hospital.  Mosterous is sweet.  We chilled in the Library for a while because they have an america corner where all the books are in english and stuff.  It is pretty sweet.  Mosterous has the most past-american cape verdians of any city in Fogo. We talked with this guy in english (he is fluent becase he lived in America most of his life) about thanksgiving and he said that there, every thanksgiving the americans get together and cook a turkey and stuff and play football.  There is a giant normal sized turf soccer field there right behind the house of one of the elders there.  It is sweet.  We went to the hospital and they drew blood from elder Jensen and we are going back to see the results tomorrow.  The roads going to Mosterous are super steep and sketchy but I have never heard of anyone dying so I assume all is okay with my safety!  

 

Cristina wasn´t baptized this week.  We had some rather large problems and we don´t know what is going on because she won´t talk to us.  If she really wants to be baptized she will be baptized after she shows up to church twice more on our own.  

 

We have one baptism this week.  Edson Munice.  More on him later!

So thought this week spiritual is about Denying the Holy Ghost.  It is interesting how a person like Those who saw angels around the time of Joseph smith still left the church. People that have been strong for years can just slowly stop.  One major factor of that is that, although it is not the same and unpardonable as denying the Holy Ghost, when you recieve a prompting and don´t act on it you are starting down a road that if you don´t correct quickly, will destroy you in the end.  It is important to always act on promptings from the Holy Ghost!

Love,

Elder Sampson

Only Half

Dear Family,

So this week was a good week although it had its struggles. 

First off, Elder Jensen, two weeks ago started to get a head eche, and it got worse and worse, so he stayed in for like three days this week and it is still really bad.  I was on splits a lot trying to prepare these people for baptism this week (more on that later).  He went to Mosterous of the north part of the island to the hospital there and they gave him some medicine with some nasty side effects so he stopped using that and we are going back in a few hours here because he has a check up earlytomorrow morning.  Please pray for him and everyone here that is sick.  I am on and off a tiny bit sick, but not bad, and it is nothing compared to what Elder Jensen has.

So this week we found some new investigators and stuff, especially in Figueira Pavao, our new area.  We invited this guy to come to church and he said he would which is normal, but he actually showed up which isn´t that normal, and he brought an investigator with him which isn´t normal at all, and then it turned out that he hasn´t been baptized which is rare, and then a person who doesn´t speak very much Portuguese that we had been working with and had a marrage date who had stopped talking with us and was running from us weeks ago showed up in church miraculously, and so we can start working on that marrage now, and she offered a beautiful first prayer which had more words in it than I think she has ever said to us ever.  We also had an investigator in church that already has had all the lessons and then moved into our area.  We will be talking with him.  He said he has a few doubts.

I love teaching people how to pray.  It is great because they always offer prayers that are so sincere, simple and sweet.  In a lot of cases, it is like they have been trying to talk to God for a while but didn´t know exactly how to do it.  A lot of people here already know how to pray, but a bunch don´t really, and a few just had sort of made up their own thing.

So we had 4 baptisms this week scheduled, One of a little kid who was 8, his older brother, Lourenco who is 14, and Cristina who is 14.  We did all the baptisimal interviews friday except for Cristinas, and we tried to find her, and couldn´t.  We found out sunday, thanks to the help of our members, that she still wants to be baptized but is afraid of the ocean and so she is also shy and didn´t want to tell us so she just hid from us.  We didn´t have the baptism in the ocean anyways because it is super steep to get there and the cars can only take like 10 people.  We talked to Cristina today and we will talk with her more tomorrow and she should be baptized on Saturday. (Our chapel and font are under construction for the next 6 months)  We ended up going to Sao Filipe to do the baptism.  It was a good Baptism, except that after we got there, we did some simple math, and to the suprise of the mom, our 8 year old baptism was only 7.  So, only Lourenco and Casey Johnny were baptized.  It was still fantastic though.  The were both confirmed on Sunday in church.

I was thinking about how baptism is like joining the Lords side in this war against Satan and sin.  We can fight against satan before, but we don´t join the side of the Lord until baptism and don´t recieve the blessings of victory until we Join the Lord.  When we recieve the gift of the Holy Ghost we get our ´´sword of the spirit´´ (ephesians6:17 i think) that we can use to guide us in this battle.  We join the 2000 stripling warriors when we are extremely valliant and non of us will fall if we are like the stripling warriors in the end of Alma 56.  Its good stuff.  Challenge for everyone for the week is to read about and become more like the stripling warriors.

I love You all. 

President and Sister Oliveira are coming out this week to do interviews and house inspections which means that we don´t have zone conference this transfer.  I am excited, except that it is hard to clean your house really well with limited water so we will probably fail house inspections.  Our water went out yesterday, and so we only have a little left coming from the sinks.  I guess it will probably come back saturday, but that is just a guess.

Love,

Elder Sampson

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Very Little time

Kristin Sampson <kristinsampson3@gmail.com>

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Very Little time 1 message

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Jared Sampson <jared.sampson@myldsmail.net>	Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 6:46 AM
To: Kristin Sampson <kristinsampson3@gmail.com>
Thank you to everyone who just sent me an email this week.  I can´t respond to all of them super well, but please send me a paper letter.   Cape Verde, Praia Mission CP420 Praia, Cape Verde   So this week we started working in Figueira Pavao.  That is going well.  It is like a 25 min walk from our house.  It is pretty sweet.  We only have 4 strong members there now but are working with them and will be growing shortly. Sorry that this will be short this week. We have 4 baptisims this week, 3 of which are ours and 1 is an 8 year old kid who is the branches.  2 of them we have been working for for weeks.  Christina and Lorenzo.  They are both 14 and have lots of friends in the church.  Our chapel is being renovated so we are meeting in a diferente building and will probably have our baptisms in the ocean this saturday.  The other two baptisms are 2 kids from figueira Pavao that are at church every week but haven´t been baptized.  One is 11 and the other is 8.  This means we have to teach all the lessons to the one who has 11 years.  It is a bit annoying, but we also got 11 new investigators this week, and dropped like 15.  We are trying to find more people who can be stronger leaders and preisthood holders in the church because it is bad to just baptize younger kids. This week for some reason, everything started working better.  I think that some of the district leaders said some stuff, and now we plan way better and work more smart and by the spirit.  We still aren´t as perfect as I think we could be faster, but we take small steps at a time and we will get there one day.  Elder Jensen has had a headeche since tuesday, so please pray for him.  We had to spend the whole day in on saturday which was a probablem.  Pray for him. Other than that, Everything is going well.  I got my birthday package!  Thank you so much!  The beef jerkey bag had been torn a bit open and had ants and mold, so I still haven´t had beef in months, but other than that, everything is great.  I made muffins and made brownies.  Fantastic!  Thank you. I´m actually a bit sad to be turing 19 because I like the reaction I get when I tell people I am only 18.  Oh well.  The new missionaries here showed up this week, and we only have one new missionary on the Island, and his birthday is the day after mine which means by 1 day I am no longer the youngest missionary on Fogo.  I am older than a lot of other missionaries in Cape Verde, but was the only one that was 18 until yesterday. Happy Birthday to my dear sister Summer! Summer, I love you and your smiling bright attitude.  You are the only one that I can see real emotion an personality in every one of your letters every week.  I love you!   Sorry this is brief.   Love, Elder Sampson

Room for More

October 28, 2013

Dear Family, friends and fellow folk,

 

You may have noticed that these letters are a little better than they used to be.  I started writing them out and then just typing them so it takes less time and they are a lot better focused and not spread over random stuff.

 

I am preparing stuff to send home but I need to know what kinds of pictures and videos and stuff that people want from Africa.  I am planning on sending home a jump drive of stuff that can be uploaded to the blog for all to see.

So I got letters this week.  Most of the letters from family were from a long while ago.  Jeff sent one on the 10th and it showed up here on the 16 and I got it on the 25th or so.  It takes about 6-10 days to get here and then after that I just have to wait for someone to bring them from praia during transfers or when someone comes to the island for whatever reason.  I can send stuff home pretty easy, but the mail here doesn´t send from cova figueria until the box is full so I will wait to send stuff until we go to sao filipe.

This week in Cape Verde was about 7 days long.  Tranfer calls came last night and pretty much no one on Fogo got transfered.  There are 26 missionaries here, 2 got switched but are still on the island and one elder and one sister left the island.  Everyone I see on a regular basis is still in the exact same place.  We had Cake and Icecream to kill the transfer (See attached pictuers).  Was good.  Elder Jensen is addicted to the cake.  

This week was a bit rough. We had 3 days in a row that we didn´t teach any lessons and then the next day after that we only taught 1 lesson.  We had 3 lessons yesterday though and also got 8 new references which will help.  We have access now to a new area because we found out that there is a car that can bring people from there to church so we will start working there this week too.  We are dropping a lot of investigators.  Pretty much we are just sifting through the people that won´t do stuff to find those who will.  

We got a call thursday morning that the assistants wanted everyone on fogo to have a baptism this week, and so we found people that could potentially get baptized, and unfortunately ours didn´t work out, but we had 2 baptisms here on saturday not in our branch.

We only had one investigator in church this sunday.  He came with his friends and has been going to seminary and to church activities.  We won´t have any baptisms this week but hopefully will have 2 or 3 next week.

So this week I have to spiritual thought and challenges

1. Read and ponder the words to the Hymn, Sweet hour of Prayer, then apply the things that the spirit tells you to do to imporve your prayers.

2. The second is about the sacriment.  Every week we take the sacriment should be able to feel the same joy as we did the day of our baptisms, however, this can only happen if every week we are preparing for the sacriment and trying to change ourselves to be more worthy.  Every week the sacriment should cause us to want to re-committ ourselves to be more like Jesus Christ.  This isn´t a Gospel where we just sort of go about doing our daily thinsg and baybe at nigh pray and say sorry for the things that we did wrong and then repent every day until we take the sacriment and then when we take the sacriment, everyhint we missed saying sorry for is okay.  The puropse and the way we can have the same joy of baptism every week is by trying our best and working at imporving and rearranging our lives to be more like Jesus Christ.  Then, and only then, do we really use the atonement though the sacriment.

So this week the water was out for about 8 days and finally came back on, but we conserved it better and still had a tiny bit of water coming out when the water came back on so it was better.  It was just a lot harder to wash dishes and stuff and we had to bucket shower.

Storys of the week:

1. So we had to fill the baptisimal font by hand which was fun because the water is out in the chapel.  My traps are sore still a little. Lots of buckets of water carried.  Check.

2. So we were in a lesson and elder jensen got attacked by a centipiede and I saved his life.  It was about 6 inches long, and we stomped on it and it wouldn´t die and so we burned its head.  They are very poisionous but that is the only one so far I have seen.

Love,

Elder Sampson

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Nature

Nature

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	Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 9:58 AM
Sweet Sunset or sunrise.  I don´t remember which.  Nature is sweet here. DSCN0325.JPG 2922K

This Week

This Week
1 message

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	Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 10:29 AM
So first off, the picture I attached is of Elder Jensen on the ladder that I talk about at the end.   And the other one I may have already sent. Hello Everyone, and Happy Birthday to the Greatest Father on Earth! Dad, Thank you so much for everything, but especially for making me do hard stuff.  I am sorry for all the times I complained and stuff, but I am glad that you taught me to do stuff the better way.  It turns out a lot of missionaries show up to be missionaries but not to do missionary work all the time.  Simple stuff like cooking and cleaning I put more of an effort into thanks to all the things that you taught me.  I was cleaning the bathroom today and was thinking about how you made me clean stuff the right way and that our toilet hadn´t been really cleaned until today for months just because no one really does the deep cleaning.  All the priciples of hard work that you taught me show up here and I am way more motivated to work hard all the time.  I know I would be way worse of a missionary if it weren´t for all that you taught me and I see and remember things you taught me every day.  thank you and I love you. So this week was pretty interesting.  We had some nice meetings with our branch mission leader and the one branch missionary that whowed up.  We planned for them to walk with us throughout the wee which was pretty good and we planned to visit less actives with them.  Less actives are a problem here.  I don´t remember if I already said this, but we have about 2700 members here in Fogo and just over 1000 are active which is still enough to make a stake, but we are trying to prepare more people to be solid, especially preisthood holders.  We lack and solid generations of families because pretty much everyone here is a convert.  The only real non-converts are the branch president´s childeren who are sweet.  One of the counselors in our branch presidency is inactive so we are trying to work on that.  Ther was also a excommunication problem in sao filipe with a person stealing tithing money.  It is things like that that keep us from having a stake here now, but in the next few months we will have one here.  People just need to work on continuing to be converted after baptism, as we all do.  The work is good though! This week we had zone leaders with us on wednesday.  Elder Martinez was with us which was good.  We learned a lot about teaching people and not lessons and showing people how the gospel will help them with their individual needs.  We marked a couple of baptism dates and also started on a marrage.  Most people here aren´t married so that has to happen before they can be baptized.  This family, the man is less active and the lady is a non-member.  I hope that turns out well.  We might possibly have 1 or 2 other marriages to start on this coming week as well. We had branch conference yesterday and some of the lessons were on member missionary work so we are starting to get more support form all of the members, nut just sometimes the ward missionaries.  Djoy who is a less active (pronounced Joy.  J makes a cghuh sound more or less so dj together makes an english J sound like j in Joy) who was called to teach gospel principles.  We helped him prepare his lesson on Obedience and it went really well.  We only had one investigator at church and we had 3 less actives show up.  We are working more on emphasising the importance of church and getting people to bring their friends to church instead of us making our rounds every sunday inviting everyone to church right before it starts.  Its nice that we do that, but it isn´t that effectice. This week I started talking to everyone more (not that I didn´t talke before but I approach tons of people on the street)  Elder Jensen doesn´t really like to do that but once I approach and start out he is good to talk with them and then we teach whatever gospel principle and try to sit down with them and have a short lesson or mark for another day.  We found some new investigators through this and got a baptisimal daye marked.  There are so many people to teach we are emphasising the importance of work in recieving blessings of the gospel and dropping people that aren´t trying sooner.  Almost everyone here will sit down and talk to you.  Everyone believes in God and Jesus Christ and that they re important because they have been taught that for forever, but they don´t most of them know why or how.   We currently have one investigator that is doing super well.  Her name is Christina.  She is 14 and lives with her aunt who is super catholic.  We had taught her once before like three weeks ago and then went back to teach her brother and he wasn´t there but she invited us in and we started teaching her.  We first taught the plan of salvation because both of her parents died of illnesses.  We taught the restoration the second lesson which went great and she told us she wasnts to serve a mission.  She is getting baptized the 2nd of November.  She was the only investigator at church snday which is a problem, but with the help of the members this will get better.  Every time we show up at her door she walks up normal, and when she sees it is us, her face lights up and it is incredible.  On days we don´t teach much it turns the day around when we teach her because she actually cares a ton about what we say.  She is going to be the only member in her family which is usually a bad idea because people go inactive, but we make an exception expecially with the young women because that is the strongest part of our branch.  I am also excited for when she can do temple work for her parents.  We didn´t thing that we could get permission for her to be baptized, but we prayed for a miricle and I fasted and we got it! Mostly I just want to work.  We are trying to work harder every day, especially me.  Most other elders and sisters look foreward to p-day, and I enjoy p-day, and it is great to write and hear from you all, but I also love missionary work. I still haven´t heard much of conference.  hopefully this week thoough.  The bit I have heard is great.  I am finding more potions of things to use in our house and with food.  When missionaries are compacent it seems like we have way less then we actually have access too. I also did some deep cleaning today that I don´t think many missionaries know how to or like to do which is a problem if stuff hasent been done for months super well.  I am also using my resources to work out, like pushing a huge matress back and forth accross the floor in our appartment.  Haha. So funny story of the week.  Our appartment has a door to get to the staircase and a door to get into our room, and I acidently locked the keys in our room so that we were stuck in the stairs between the two locked doors.  Whoops.  We finally got to the outside and then we can just easily climb to our balcony to get in which is unlocked, but it is bad to show people it is easy to get in because someone might steal our stuff, so we had to get a ladder and climb up and in to get the keys.  Twas fun.  Hence the pictuer of elder Jensen on a ladder outside our balcony. Everyone who reads this is challenged to talk to the missionaries or Ward mission leader and find out what they can do to help! Love, Elder Sampson 2 attachments DSCN0324.JPG 3182K

Questions & Answers

How long were you without water last week?  About a week.

 

Do you have big storage tanks (or little ones) in your apartment?  We have a tank on top of our house which is bigger than most, and then bottles full in our kitchen when that runs out.  We also have a tank to use inside to flush the toilet every so often and possibly shower.  The water went out on like thursday, we still had a bit of water coming out of the taps until monday, and then no water at all until friday except what we had in bottles and stuff in our house. It was okay though.  It makes you appeiciate water more when you have that. That will continue to happen pretty frequently throughtout my mission.

 

Where do you have zone conferences?  In the church?  Zone Conference was in the chapel of the bigger of the two chapels in Sao Filipe.  We had lunch there in one of the classrooms and stuff.

 

How often does President Olivera visit?  Not that often.  He is usually at zone conference, but the last two times he wasnt there so we were lucky to see him this last zone conference.

 

Where do you email?  How long can you spend on the computer?  We have an hour at an internet cafe which is pretty much just a cement box with computers and a printer.

 

Can you use Facebook?  Probably next summer.  We are also supposed to get ipads.

 

Are you able to eat a super large lunch?  No, lunch is usually smaller than a typical dinner at home.  We don´t have a ton and then maybe eat a snack when we get home. I eat probably less than half of what I ate at home.  Its good though.  I´m not starving.  I don´t have an all you can eat feast at all, but I have enough.

 

What about carrying around snacks to eat around dinner time? No. I have no where to put them and that would require carying around water too which is heavy.  And, snacks are not that cheap and don´t fit super well into our monthly budget.

 

  Are you eating mostly rice and fish?  We eat a lot of spagetti and stuff.  Rice too.  We have super low quality canned tuna and that is pretty much the only meat we have.  We bought a chichen the other day and broiled it but it had super little meat and wasn´t that good and we just ate it plain because we didn´t have time to make something else.  We eat really simple meals because we can´t get a ton, and also aren´t super skilled at making food!

 

  Do you think you might get transferred? 

 

I don´t know. Probably not. but maybe it could really go either way.  Prices of moving missionaries aren´t really taken into account when transfers come. Like any other mission, missionaries go where they need to go as directed by the Lord through the mission president.  I could stay here, move to a different area on Fogo, or go to another island.  If I had to guess though it would be one of the first two.

Life is Good

Dear Familiy and Friends,

 

Just to clear up the worries it sounds like you all are having,

 

Everything is good here.  We have very little compared to what you are used to having but we have plenty. The mission and the Lord won´t allow us not to be able to survive and thrive so that we can´t do the missionary work.  We have enough of everything here to be able to do the work that we are here to do. We have food, water, shelter, etc... enough to have energy to work hard and to be safe and everything else we need.  I learn a lot more from not having stuff then from having stuff.  There is an annalogy that goes that we lived with our father before this life, and then we were born in to the mission.  I was born to Elder Jensen, I am his first born son, and then we are here on the mission to be tested etc... and after we will recieve all our father hath (things in america) when we go home to the celestial kingdoom.  This is actually a very regularly used thing.  It is normal to talk about where a missionary was born, and his father, who his sons are and the phrase He Died In Chao Bom or other such things are very normal.  My Grandfather is Elder Curtis, the father of my Dad.  If I have a different companion for the second half of my traning (two transfers) he will be my step-dad.  i have a godfather, and everything.

 

This week was good.  We are dropping most of our investigators and trying to work better with the members to find people who actually want to do stuff to help themselves instead of people who run from us.  I are also working on getting lots of less actives back to prepare this area and zone to eventually get a stake.  

 

I still haven´t heard conference in english.  We watched two sessions in church this last weekend.  We were supposed to watch today but the person who has keys to the church computers we will use to watch on left.

 

I am not sending pictures again because the computer I am on is really old and requires me to unplug the mouse to get to the place I can plug in the card because my converter is really big.  I will try to get on a better computer next week.

 

My good friend Joaozinho left for Praia today to go to school there.  I am going to miss him.  He is the only one here that speaks good english.  A lot of people know a tiny bit but barely any.  He is a super sweet guy.  He just turned 21 and will hopefully be going on a mission after he finishes school.  I am going to miss him.  

 

I think I am going to hand write pictures and then take a picture of them and send them home and people can type them up and put them on the blog and stuff because I am out of time again.  Actually, Looks like I have a tiny bit more time than I though but barely.

 

So, a typical day here:

 

Get up at 6:30.  Excercise hopefully, find something for breakfast, and so forth and get ready.  If the Branch President´s wife comes by in the morning we can buy bread which is like biscuits.  There are like ten she puts in the bag and the bag is 100 escudos which is like a dollar 25 or so.  We get like 18000 escudos a month which is like 220 dollars or so.

8 is personal study

9 is companionship

10 is my first 12 weeks in the field training stuff

11 is language study

12 we go out for an hour.  Usually just try and contact people for other appointments because most people don´t like to talk to us at that hour.

1-3 Lunch.  We chill, make some food, usually like pasta.  They have tomato sauce and mayo and Catchup (forgot how to spell that.  probably with a K) that we bought while we were in sao filipe and so we maybe make a sauce, maybe something different.  Rice and beans.  Tuna sometimes.  Occasionally we have chicken but not much.  Never beef which is sad because you can´t really get that here and what you can find usually isn´t safe.  We don´t have the magical costco canned beef.  That stuff is amazing.  The last 30 mins we are supposed to read the book of mormon together as companions but that doesn´t always happen because of other things we are doing during lunch.  We need to have more drive during lunch to get things done.

3-9 or 9:30 depending on if we are in a lesson, we go out and teach and contact and stuff.  Our area is decently easy to walk around on.  We have a lot less up and down hill than the other companionship here.  I went on splitts all day this week with Elder Peries who is a native adn doesn´t speak english which was great because I learned a lot.  Their area is like hiking the Y multiple times a day.  It is super steep and destroys shoes.

9-10:30 maybe make a snack, etc... Get ready for bed.  

 

It´s an adventure every day.  The days go by pretty fast.  Especially if we teach a lot and aren`t hiking all over and really tired.

Things are good here.  ´MEIRCA.

 

Everyone Realize The Many things you have, aren´t nearly how important as you think they are most of them.

Love,

Elder Sampson

2 Month Mark

Sorry about no email yesterday.  The power went out part way through and then we had to get back to Cova Figueira.  I am finishing this really quick now.

Today is my two month mark. That´s nice.  It seems like I haven´t been out that long.  The transfer is half over today as well.  We will see what happens to me in three weeks.

This last week was a blast.  We got water back on Friday afternoon which makes life so much easier.  Be grateful that when you need a drink or need to shower you can turn on a tap or a shower that is clean, and has controlable temperature, and is always there because we dont always have that here.  That is one thing that makes living here so much more fun.  It is more of an adventure when that happens.

So major things of this last week.

We had Zone Conference on thursday in Sao Filipe.  There are 13 pairs of missionaries in our zone and so I got to meet all of them.  It was a good day except I didnt understand much of what was happening because the room is super echoy (most are here) and so all the portuguese I would normally understand which is enough to know what is going on, I didnt understand because it was really quiet and echoy.  Thats okay though.  The spirit was still strong and we learned a ton.  President Oliveria is fantastic.  We stayed in sao filipe that night and I went on splits with one of the elders who is in Congresso which is the top half of sao filipe.  We did some shopping for stuff we cant get in cova figueira the next morning and then came back and taught the rest of the night.

My body still isnt perfectly adjusted to african food and the fact that I only eat breakfast, and then lunch and dont eat again for hours but I am getting more close to adjusting completely.

Sunday was normal church.  The internet is really slow and so they download conference and we will watch one session next week for church. The rest we have to get and watch on our own.  We are trying to get us some english video to watch but I dont know if that will work.  We got the english and portuguese audio yesterday so we will try to watch during lunch and stuff over the next two weeks or so.  

 

We didnt have any investigators at church on sunday. :(  That is bad and we are working to try to help people.  Our goal is 11 people baptized and 11 people non active rescued by the end of the year.  It is going to take a lot to get that to happen.  

 

There is so much to learn and so much to work on it is good I have 2 years because I have forever to go.  

 

Yesterday the internet was off here so we had to go to sao filipe again to email.

Blast-ish

I am almost out of time, so sorry for this short letter.

I Love You All.

 

Send me a letter or email if you are my friend.

 

Love

Elder Sampson

Needing

I´m not going to send pictures this week.  Sorry.

Here are some things I would like as able.

1. Recipies.  You can just email them and I can pay to print them.  We have somewhat limited resources but pretty much anything basic we can do.  just send lots.  breads, dinners.  snacks. pretty much anything. Pancakes, etc...  Healthy isn´t that important.  We only need ways to make food because we have not that much as of right now and the same stuff gets old.  Also the tomato sauce here is like tomato paste.  Can dad send me a way to make that taste more like american tomato sauce, like the kind he makes?

2. work out plan from bro chun that I never got, and if he can, small descriptions of what things are.  I am trying to get back into shape but have limited resources.  I need to know things I can do with almost nothing.  (chairs, bed, plastic bags full of stuff, etc...)

3. Things that would be great to send:

Pears

Hymn Books

Small thing of garlic salt, or how to make garlic salt.  We have garlic (the whole thing) and we have salt.  I would love garlic salt.

Costco canned beef.  Beef Beef Beef.  We only really have chicken here.  Nothing is even beef flavored.  Raman is all chicken, etc...

Just the Cheese from Mac and Cheese.  We have pasta, but no cheese here at all.  That would be great.

A pocket knife with tons of stuff on it.

Muffin Mix (blueberry)
Brownie Mix

Other Mixes. 

     We have water and stuff.  All the basic stuff you have to add to things to make any standard mix. 

I didn´t get the mail.  There was pretty much none.  If the Zone leaders forget to bring stuff from Praia, it probably won´t show up. The next time I can probably get stuff is at transfers 3 weeks from today. 

Glad to hear about the stuff you are doing but don´t have time to respond.

Love

Elder Sampson
Also 2 jump drives.  Sorry this was more of a needy email and not a nice conversation one :(

Fun Experiences

So this week has been good.  We found out a few hours before zone conference that it is postponed until this coming friday because President Oliveria had to do something else.  

We had a baptism with Tony planned for Saturday, but there was a lot of rain and the person who was supposed to baptize him couldn't make it back from Sao Filipe so it got postponed until Sunday morning.  He was okay with it but all our investigators that showed up Sat. Night didn't come Sunday morning and didn't come to church.  The only non members there were one that won't get baptized that I actually haven't met.  Her husband won't get married or something, and the other was a catholic girl that has some big position in the catholic church here, kind of like a missionary.  I don't know why she was there but she sat in on part of a lesson with someone else the other day, and we made an appointment with her.  

Our chapel is an actual chapel.  All of them are as far as I know.  They are pretty decent.  Not like chapels in America though.  I will try to send pictures eventually.  There is an electric piano in the chapel that no one knows how to use pretty much.  Church has no accompanist because no one can play and the branch pres doesn't know I play yet.  I played a tad for a member the other day though while we were stuck there because of rain.  When it rains, it rains really hard for a short time and then is gone.  The chapel itself can fit 200 people easy.  I hope that happens some time.

CONGRATS TO KAITLYN BEARD!!!  Someone that knows her tell her congrats for me.  That is so awesome.  One of my good friends from the MTC, Sister Rhodes, who got re-assigned to St George, is from Vancouver Washington.  It is sweet that my friends that are girls are getting to go on missions.  Kaitlyn will get home like a month before me which is strange.  I can't wait until there are sisters here that are younger than me because a lot of them look it even though they aren't.

We do all of our own cooking pretty much.  We usually buy bread in the morning which is pretty good.  Elder Pires who is a Cape Verde Native who is serving with our zone leader, Elder Halblieb (from highland) makes lunch usually.  Something usually vegetable based and completely different every day, but also pretty the same because there aren't a lot of options for food here.

I don't know how conference is going to work.  I will talk about that later after it happens.

All of our speaking and teaching is in Portuguese.  We never study Portuguese.  Pretty much everyone understands it.  Creole is pretty much taking slang and simplified and shortened words for everything.  You don't really conjugate in creole.  You speak more like in English where I walk, you walk, they walk, we walk, etc... uses the same word, "walk" instead of conjugating walk differently depending on what you are talking about.

So, I am missing some stuff, but some fun experiences so far.

1. So the picture I sent home first of Tony at our baptism, right before we took the picture this massive spider significantly bigger than my fist shot down from the ceiling and hid behind the picture of Christ we are next too.  I tried to get a picture but that didn't happen.

2. So I sat on a goat in a car for a while the other day.  We were coming back from Sao Filipe with the food and stuff we can't buy here, and some people got in and brought their goat and shoved the goat into a 2x2x4 foot hole under my seat where it barely fit.  That is normal.  I would forget about it and then every so often it would make a noise and I would remember it was there.

We taught a bunch of people and it was good I guess this week.  No.  For sure was good.  We are teaching this guy named Carlos who is 17 and is more well off than most of the other people here.  we had a 2 hour lesson with him yesterday where the spirit was super strong the whole time trying to help him get a testimony of his own.

Have to go.

Love,

Elder Sampson

Picture attempt 3

Subject: Picture Attempt 3

This is pretty normal around here.  I took this in Sao Filipe outside the Zone Leaders house when we went there for p-day to buy stuff because we can't get much here.

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