Hello Family and Friends,

       The new family that we met is amazing. Luciano went to church with us this past Sunday and he loved it. After Priesthood, he looked at me and said ´´Great lesson, huh?`` He has already read a big chunk of the Book of Mormon and we met him last week. He knows it´s true. The hard part is that his wife is a faithful member of another church and she doesn´t want to change. Two days ago when we arrived we met Luciano outside and he started to plot with us, talking about how he is pushing them to pray and how he wants them to have the same answer feelings that he is having. He reminds me Lehi, after he ate the fruit and wanted everyone else in his family to have it. We always ask them how they are feeling about the baptism on the 30th of may and he always responds great and his wife begins to look strangely at him, then he says
              ``I´m the head of this house and what is good for me will be good for the rest of my family´´

I like it a lot when he says that.

    He also responds to questions saying ´´nevermore`` as much as possible. for example. Luciano, do you believe that something dirty can live in the presence of God?´´

                  Luciano:(In a deep and wise voice) ´´Nevermore`` (Jamais in portuguese)

He is a miracle that God so mercifully gave to us and he will be a great leader in the church. He has three kids, Vitoria, Levanha, and Artor.


    The mission is filled with ups and downs and many moments of discouragement where you are left to choose to think that the Lord has left you alone or that he has left you to grow. A plant isn´t pulled up by the sun, it strives to grow to receive the most light possible. I often look at myself and my mission and try to evaluate how I am doing. It´s tough, because the mission is incomparable to any other part of life thus far. I only have my feelings to go off of. If I´m feeling excited, happy, energetic, and ready to give my all, I know things are going good. If I feel down, incapable, and crummy, I know that I am not doing so good. The hardest part is when your feeling great but someone else isn´t, you try to let it not affect you but it does. When you are with them all day and all night 24  hours, their attitude will be your attitude. I was left to think originally that if I continued my way and trying me hardest to always be excited and willing to submit to the will of the Lord that all would get better. Well, it didn´t. We had a multi-Zone conference where our Mission President talked about how the mission will reflect your future marriage and that the way you treat your companion will be the way you treat your spouse and so on and so forth. Well, I just realized that it isn´t enough to just decide that you are going to be better, or that you are going to be happier, or that you are going to do this and all will be well because you are doing your part. Nope. You have to strive to make the other happy, their joy must be your joy and there sadness your sadness, if the two differ, many problems will arise, problems that can be easily healed, or that can slowly get bigger and bigger until there is nothing left to fix, just a big hole. You have to be distressed when they aren´t happy and feel for them like Christ did when we suffered what they are going through. He wasn´t in the Gethsemane thinking
                        ´´Wow, this person brought this one on himself.``
 or
                        ´´Obviously that was a bad idea``

 He was the Master of righteousness who lived a perfect life and he knew how to overcome every temptation and sin, yet he didn´t look at us as a lost cause, he saw potential, he saw his brothers suffering and he did what the Father asked and drank the bitter cup of our simple mistakes, faults, pains, sins, cries, screams, yells, our darkest hour entered his soul billions of time that night in Gethsemane.
        If we are going to have any type of a successful relationship, we have to strive to ease the suffering and burden of the other. In time, we will understand them, just as the Savior understands us.
    Take up the cross of your spouse, neighbor, friend, and walk a few miles with it. You will begin to notice many differences in the way you treat and react to them.
   Or, let your pride continue to rule you and look for their weaknesses and faults, you will find many, and you will never be happy.

Love,
   Elder Nothum

Hello,

   I experienced a miracle this week, as I do all weeks in the mission thanks to the mercy of Heavenly Father, but I would like to re account this miracle because it is just that good.
  In our mission we have standards of excellence. One of them is 140 contacts each week, each companionship, or 70 for each missionary.The standards of excellence are basically rules, especially contacts. When I arrived in the field, I had a lot of trouble with contacts. I barely spoke Portuguese, people would give street names that were way long and ridiculous, I barely understood them, my companion never did his 70 contacts, and it was just really hard for me. I developed a habit for not doing contacts. Each week I would 20 or 30 if I was lucky. This continued until a the week where we had planned to baptize the family of João Paulo, Bianca, Biatriz, Sonia, e Paulo. My district leader told me in an interview that if we had 140 contacts that the baptisms would not fall through and everything would go well. So we did them. And everything went well.
    This was a little over a month ago and I have continued to do contacts since. Well, now, I am always looking for people to talk to. Last week I spoke with a teenage boy who seemed interested. He gave me the name of his street but he didn´t know the address. So I wrote the street name in my planner and ended the contact. Well two days later, all of our visits fell through. So me and my companion went to that street, which we never go to. We started asking everyone if they knew where Ítalu lived. Nobody knew. One women we asked accepted a visit from us. We only talked to her because we were searching for this kid. We were only searching for this kid because of contacts.
   We returned to teach the family of the women and it was an amazing lesson and the Spirit put words and things in my mouth that I usually never say. After the lesson when we invited them go to church with us the Father said ´´I have to, I need to know more``
    He then continued saying ´´You explained everything tonight so clearly, I have been so wrong, God has always called a prophet and why would he stop. You have made everything so clear to me, thank you, thank you``
  I know you think I am exaggerating, but I that is what he said. I could believe it. It was like the script you read in the MTC or something. It was truly a miracle that only happened because of this commandment of contacts that God gave us here. God is always preparing miracles for us, great blessings that we trample under our feet when we refuse to obedient to His commandments. Give value to His commands and he will give you your just reward, or ignor his council and receive the dues that Satan is always willing to give, that will perish when the Son of God returns. If you have a commandment that you ignore, obey it perfectly and you will see miralces that you never could have imagined, or continue to ignore it and you will never understand the mercy and power of the Creator.

    Com Amor,
                 Elder Nothum

Dear Everyone,

   If you want to have a one on one conversation with THE Elder Nothum you have opened the right email. The Brad Nothum Family will be calling me from their humble abode in New Haven, Missouri at 5:00 Missouri time to talk with me. Anyone who reads this is invited to share some words with me. If you can´t make out there, try to do some kind of a conference call. Keep in mind, I will have a total of 40 minutes to talk to you all, so if needs be organize your thoughts in order to utilize your ´´me time`` in the best way possible.

   The VIP´s automatically have 5 minutes allotted, alone:
                                                        - Brad Nothum
                                                        - Wendy Nothum
                                                        - Natalie Hope Nothum
Everyone else will just have to wait and see. If you would like to bumped up to the VIP list, just send me a package  filled with socks, sour candy, toblerone, and mac and cheese. If John Varone is reading this I am hoping that his face is red and that he is laughing, if I did not accomplish that then this email has been in vain.
  Well I bet you are all dying to know how my week was and all of the crazy things that happened and what not. Well, then I guess you better be at 2438 Hwy c New Haven, Missouri on Sunday to hear about it.

    Com Amor,
             Elder Nothum