Hey hey hey!


Well family and friends, the mission is the life and it is good. I love my companion and we are having such a good time together. A secret to missionary work that I have been missing out on is love. When I got here I had the attitude of ``I´m not here to make friends, I´m here it work!``
That has probably capped my success a lot of transfers because I am finding out how powerful the Spirit can be when you truly love your companion and the people you are teaching. Elder Rowley is like my best friend and the work doesn´t even seem hard, whenever something goes wrong we just laugh. We are not near perfection, but we work hard, laugh hard, and we love the people here in our area.
We are working in two wards: Ponte and Progresso. So we have a fairly large area and tons of great people to teach.
This last Friday I was on exchanges with an Elder named Elder Aragão. He is a good Elder and a hard worker. We went to teach a family that I had contacted and when we got there it looked like a deserted house. There were only walls built and there were about 10 dogs chained up in very places on the property. We clapped (as you do in Brazil do call the people). We stood and waited on a garage like building and below us was the maze of walls filled with barking dogs. Nobody came. We clapped again. Nobody came. The dogs kept barking and Elder Aragão started to give me the ´´I don´t think that they are home`` look. I felt that we needed to stay and wait. So we did. Five and then ten minutes passed. Nobody. I clapped one more time, then I saw coming from the back of the walls the woman I had spoke with the day before. Her name is Divazette, but everyone calls her Diva. We taught her family and they all accepted to be baptized. We pass by everyday there and they are always so excited. Her daughter Evelin has read the first four chapters of 1st Nephi yesterday. The only rough part is that their father has an extreme coffee addiction. We are working hard with them, but we want them to all be baptized together, instead of leaving the dad out. Heavenly Father is blessing us with so many great people.
The fist picture here is an elderly couple who was baptized this passed Sunday. Esmarina e José. They both have health problems, so Elder Rowley and the Bishop had to go into the water with them to help them go under the water and come back up. They were so excited to be baptized and we already preparing them to go to the temple ans to be sealed.
The other picture is us and our ward mission leader named Iran. Him and his family made lunch for us on Sunday. They love the missionaries and have a giant cardboard paper that every missionary that passes through their house signs, I am now apart of that paper.
This Sunday we were asked by the Bishop from the Ponte Ward to go and bring the sacrament to an Elderly woman who is sick. As our Sunday night came to a close we made our way to her house. When we arrived she came to here front gate and let us in. As we entered I saw the biggest mirror of my life on the wall. As I looked into the mirror, without even noticing, I put my hands on my hips and did the ´´Peter Pan Pose.`` The elderly sister looked at me and said ``Every missionary that comes in here, the first they do is look at that mirror and do the ´´Peter Pan Pose.``
We sat and talked for a while. She told us about her life. Her name is Péty. She has always loved music and when she was ten years old she fell in love with the beatles. She told us of how she would go see concerts and how the last show she saw was Guns and Roses. It was really neat meeting a grandma aged lady who loved to rock out with the Beatles, The Who, Areosmith, and Led Zepplin. Then she told us of how she found the gospel and how it had changed her life. A really wonderful lady.
She has a liver disease and she needs a transplant soon. She loves to active and free to roam, but her illness stops from enjoying that side of life. We sang ´´O God the Eternal Father`` (´´Ó Deus o Pai Eterno``) with her and then we blessed the sacrament and gave it to her. As she received the bread in her hand she began to cry. It was a great experience helping this woman to renew her covenants and we had fun getting to know her.
I told her that I would like a picture of her, Paul, George, John, Ringo, and me. She accepted. It felt to good to lighten up her night. At the end we gave her a priesthood blessing and it was one more spiritual experience for Elder Rowley and I. I am having more of those this transfer than in any other before. I am happy and I am seeing so many miracles and learning so much.
My mission has been the best experience of my life until now and I know it is just going to get better.
I LOVE NATALIE HOPE NOTHUM!!!!!!!!!!!!! SHE IS THE WORLDS MOST AMAZING LITTLE SISTER!!!!!!!!

Happy thanksgiving. Yesterday, Elder Rowley and I celebrated thanksgiving with a McDonald's feast. It was delicious.

Love you all,
Elder Nothum

Hey guys,

I love my new area and my companion is awesome. In the little time of a week w have managed to develop a pretty strong friendship. He is a hard worker and he is a farm boy from Washington state. He played rugby at BYU and he is just a funny guy.
Our area is going great here. The ward has Taekwondo every Tuesday and Thursday and there is always a bunch of nonmembers there to talk to and teach. We are being blessed with a great number of people to teach and they all are accepting very well.
We are teaching a family right now that is great. Zilma the mom and Jefferson, Marcos, and Barbara are the kids. Jefferson is 19 and he was baptized this passed week. Barbara loved the church and she said that she felt an amazing feeling of peace as she participated with young womens. They are a great family and Elder Rowley and I love to pass by there.
Also, I learned how to make my new favorite desert. It is called sweet rice. We are making it quite a bit and I am getting pretty good at it. It is normal rice, cooked, then you put milk, sugar, and this type of condensed milk that they only have in Brazil. It is good. They always eat it rice and beans with every meal here, so I thought that sweet rice with jelly beans would be a good desert, but jelly beans don´t exist here.
Today we are going to play football, Elder Long is here in Campinas from his area that is far away because he did a division with the assistants. I am pumped to play football with my good friends that I have made out here.
Well, we got to go catch our bus. I promise that next will be a big letter with lots of details and cool stuff. ASK ME QUESTIONS AND I WILL RESPOND!

Love,
ELDER Nothum

Hey!!!

Just want to let my family know that I have no personal money and no way of getting it, so it would be good to figure out the debit card situation.
Things are good. We had a miracle this week. We had nobody planned to baptize and then on tuesday night we got a text message from a woman in our ward saying ´´my fried wants to be baptized get over here.´´
So we went and met William. He wanted a change of life and this Sister had let him live in her house and she taught him the gospel and then he asked to baptized. We taught him everything this week and he was baptized on Sunday. The baptism was a very happy and spiritual experience.
We had a bbq today in the home of a recent convert. It was great. We played uno and this game with marbles where you flick them into holes on the ground. Elder Long won.
Well we are going to play soccer right now so gotta go!!!!

love you all.

- Elder Nothum