3.28.11 Mom's letter

Setubal is super cool area...it is a huge ward that really has the fire of missionary work! We are still looking for an apartment...its hard to find one with furniture and everything! White washing means that 4 elders were here but we came and took them all out and its just us 2 now. Whitewashed is when everyone is new in the area...they are normally rare. My comp and i are getting there, it won´t be a big problem. We are in the process of finding new investigators and its coming along really nicely!! The ward is over feeding us.

That is super crazy that all of them are leaving! I feel super old! I am super excited for Tyler!! He has to remember that the mission all depends on your attitude and thoughts...just like golf....think positive about EVERYTHING and EVERYTHING will be positive! Waiting is the worst part...that was over a year ago that I was waiting for them...wow that is crazy! I am coming up really quick on my 1 year mark and from there it is super fast!! When I got here Elder Rich my buddy was at 1 year and now he is almost going home...he is almost dead. He always tells me how fast it goes! SO you can make it mommy!! :) I am glad to hear that everything is going super well for the family!! :)

I love you all!!

Elder Bushnell

p.s. as far as an address...umm we are still hoping to move so i am scared to give you this one in case we move but it is

Rua Dr. Luís Teixeira Macedo e Castro

Nº 6 R/C Dto

Setúbal 2910-586

Portugal

p.s. i am super excited for conference!! :)

3.28.11 Dad's Letter

Hey!!

okay so filling you in...we are still in the black hole of an apartment...it is a ton of small things all added together that make it so bad...mainly it has ants and bedbugs and the lights suck...the bathroom smells like pee mold. It is just super gross and super old..i have a video i will try to send next week cause i forgot the stuff to transfer it. My comp is Elder LeVitre who was in the MTC with me...we are just kinda different people with different styles of teaching and finding. We will get going here pretty quick. We are getting along fine. We have one lady who should have been baptized this week but we are going to really push for next week. She is from Caracas Venezuela and we are helping her learn English and also teaching her about the church. She came to church the past 2 weeks... the relief society activity...the baptism of the sisters in our ward...and also gave a ride to one sister to church this week. she just needs to accept baptism.

Let me know what happens with Tiger in the Masters! Also just a side note...about 30 minutes ago i saw a Wood Duck...it made me sad. It was chilling on the side of a lake in the park!

I did get the video of carter and he is super big...he seemed super confused when you said my name...like he thinks you guys are crazy and that i don´t exist.

We will have conference in our building which is like 3 minutes from our house!! I am stoked! I love conference and i am stoked to hear what else is new that is going to happen. They probably will announce cool temples and stuff again! oh and still no news on the temple here but i think President Torgan knows where it will be now.

I am glad to hear from you guys and i like these emails with lots of questions for me!! We are going to try to take as many investigators to conference as possible! We will go to it either way though. Here we teach about 20 lessons a week...which isn´t great but not bad. We want around 24-30 so just a few more.

Love you!!

Elder Bushnell

3.21.11

Hey!

This week has seemed super long but it has been pretty well! transfer travel went fine and we are doing well. We are white washing this area so they took the 4 elders out and put in 2 elders and 2 sisters. Its pretty weird serving close to sisters...they are weird! The area is pretty small we have half of Setúbal and all of Palmela. It is interesting. Climber is also known as suck up to president, tries to push himself above other elders in the mission. There are some pretty good investigators here. It is super weird cause we are just getting settled in. I actually am now in one of the biggest WARDS in Portugal...which is super cool. They are pushing like 150 every Sunday! So luckily we wont ever have to speak or anything and we have already been fed a lot!

We are in charge of finding a new house for this area cause the one we are in is also the worst in the mission....it is AWFUL!! I won´t say to much about it cause we are super short on time and I don´t want to scare mom!!

I hope all is going well! Love you!!


Elder Bushnell

3.14.11

Hey!!

This week was full of exciting things...and sad...and stupid....and a whole new adventure just waiting around the bend! First we were talking a lot with Maria de Luz...who we tried to mark for baptism...she is like 75 and we discovered she had 80,000 euros of debt which is about 105,000 dollars. It has run up and now she is going to be paying it off for the next 7 years living on like 30 bucks a month for food. She gets a retirement fund thing that is like 1,750 but 1,720 automatically goes to the bank and different people for her debts. It is ridiculous. She wanted to be baptized so bad. She cried like 3 times in our lesson when we were trying to convince her that she can pay tithing. We brought the district leader on Saturday to interview her and see if really she can´t pay tithing or what was the deal. We did a division and Elder Roundy went with the DL to talk to her while I went to the church.

This is where the story gets AMAZING!! I was at the church with Paulo who is a less active member that we helped come back and he just received the priesthood. Well I ended up teaching a lesson to him and his friend Alex. We were talking about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And when we got to the part about baptism I told him about how Friday Roundy and I were praying and we felt that he needed to be baptized on the 20th. It was scary cause it was just me and a less active member who was in prison for 4 years cause he shot someone and I was inviting this man to baptism...wow it was super cool! I told him that one thing I love is that we have a loving Heavenly Father who already told Roundy and I one thing. So if he wants to know we can pray and he could feel the same thing. So we did and we each offered a prayer, first Paulo, then me then Alex. Once Alex ended he said a phrase that I won´t ever forget. "I feel very very hot inside...what is it?" I proceeded to explain that was the spirit and that God was giving him an answer to his prayers! It was awesome! Elder Roundy returned from his lesson right after that and we proceeded to explain that he has to come to church twice and that he has to start living the commandments. It was awesome! Really with God´s help we can do anything!

Unfortunately today is transfers and I am getting transferred so I won´t get to see the fruit of my labors and see his baptism but Roundy will get his FIRST baptism of his mission! I am stoked for him! I am going to be serving in Palmela which is sorta up by Lisbon. I don´t know much about the area but I know that its big city and its out of the Algarve. I also will be serving with another elder from the MTC, Elder Levitre who is kind of a strange cookie. It will be an adventure. I will be traveling up their tomorrow. So for the first time I will be serving outside of the Algarve!

I am glad to hear Parker is doing well!! Also glad to hear the family is doing great and that the Bushnell Bed and Breakfast is still in business! As far as my birthday, I am running low on white shirts. I wiped out 3 here in Portimao the other day. But I can buy them here really easy so i don´t need you to send them. I don´t know what I want but I will let you know next Monday. I will think about it on my bus ride!

I love you guys!!

Elder Bushnell

3.7.11

This week seemed super long but it was still fairly good! we tried to do a million things at the same time and ended up with nothing...it was rough!

But we find little miracles everyday we are out here. We found one lady this week that when she came to the door she said oh I love the story of joseph smith. She is super old and has bad asthma but she said she will let us know when she is up for coming to church and we can get her a ride. We are teaching another lady that had a dream where she was walking down a narrow road and everything was white. She was dressed in white and the buildings were white. She said it was night but she saw a cloud in the sky that seemed to glow. When the cloud parted she saw a man sitting on a thrown...she tried to look closer but the clouds shut and she woke up. She has been searching for an answer to that dream for a long time. We didn´t have lots of time so we left her the chapter that talks about the staight and narrow path that will lead you to eternal life with God. It will be fun to see how it all plays out in the end! We are planning on explaining a little bit about why the color white next time and baptism clothes!

That is a super cool story about Cody...also a super scary one! Him and Shane have both had miracles in their lives...Shane had his foot that he broke and everything.

I am stoked for Tyler to turn in his papers! He is going spanish speaking and my guess would be to Spain....its closest to me. He is going to have a blast! It is work though..but its fun work!

Carnival is tomorrow here and basically its like the biggest holiday in Brazil and Portugal. It will be interesting, I am sorta nervous. We were told that it gets really crazy...with lots of eggs and flour thrown off roofs.

Umm i really don´t know what I want for my birthday...umm I haven´t even been thinking about it....it´s next transfer though...wow that is weird its going so fast! You guys still owe me a golf club from my last birthday though :) Umm...can I get the truck when I get home... for my birthdays during my mission? Mom's and Dad's response--keep dreaming!

Thanks for all the love and support.
Elder Bushnell

3.1.11 Dad's Letter

Hey!

I had interviews with the President on Monday which is why I am writing today. I told mom the cool story about what he said. I had to take a bus to Faro which is like an hour and a half. That was a whole different story I will share in a second. But transfers are going to be on the 14th and 15th. I think I will stay one more transfer here...but anything could happen. This week was only like 4 new people. But we have a goal of 14 this week! The new ones we have are slow starting out but this week we have a goal to teach each one at least one lesson.

Those things she sent me were super cool! I am using the book mark its way cool! I have only not felt safe a couple of times...here in the Algarve it is really safe cause its all touristy but like 10 days ago we had some elders that got mugged...the people didn't touch them just took their money. That was the first story I had heard of anything since I have been here...and they were breaking rules and were out after hours and out of their area. We have one area here that is kinda scary...but not really...its just dark and everyone tells us its a sketchy area. There is one place in Lisbon that the elders aren't allowed to be in after dark at all. Its called Anjos which is kinda ironic cause that means Angels.

Thanks for doing those things for me!! I am excited to do fun stuff like that when i come home. Yes all is doing swell in our area...one thing President Torgan said was that he was impressed with how well Roundy and I get along.

So the bus ride story...man it was weird. We were on the bus coming back from Faro..we were with the 3 Elders from Lagos. We stopped to pick up more people and a group of students came on the bus...they had been on the same but when we went to faro but we didn't talk to them. Anyways as they come on there is one girl that automatically we could tell was going to be interesting and we had to watch out just cause she seemed super flirty. Well she ended up sitting behind me and across the isle from another elder. we had been going for like 20 minutes and she turns to the elder across the isle and asks "is it true that hello kitty is from the devil?" Elder "D" (De Hoyos) was confused...he is mexican and speaks portuguese super well...but anyways she explained that some JW´s had told her that. he proceeded to explain we aren´t JW´s...then all her friends there were like 4 others all started talking and asking questions...so i turned around to help him out...which was a good things cause they started asking all sorts of questions about us and about where we are from and we talked about EVERYTHING. It was super cool though cause it was him and i in the midst of like the whole back area of the bus and they were all listening to us. We ended up explaining a little about our church and it was a good thing we had just asked for more Restoration pamphlets cause i ended up opening the new pack and handing them out to like everyone with our phone numbers on them. The first girl seemed most interested so she gave us her contact info and stuff but man it was awkward...tons of here questions where like if we could have girlfriends and stuff like that...the whole time we were thinking she was like 16ish...well Elder D asked her and she was like i am 13...we were all so shocked...she was super confident in herself and was talking about religion and everything...she talked about some science stuff that i know NOTHING about. It was super weird but she said she would try to come to church next week and if not she will call us to mark an appointment or we could call her and she will meet us at the church or whatever. It was a cool experience to teach a whole bus full of people with another elder that i didn´t know anything about!

That was my exciting bus story...Well have a great week!! Love you!

Elder Bushnell

3.1.11 Mom's Letter

Dear Mommy-

This week has been pretty crazy!! I don´t even remember all the crazy things that happened! We just keep trucking along and sometimes its so easy to forget what happens on some of the days! One thing that happened that stuck out to me was we were walking down the street and some JW´s tried to contact us and talk about what they believe...they started with the classic JW comment...if we know and use the name of God. We said we do know it and i automatically said "the name of our Father in Heaven is not Jehovah." They proceeded to read some scriptures that say that it is...but we shattered their world when we read isaiah 21:2 that says Jehovah is our salvation...and also when we talked about how "God" really is a title...and how Jesus Christ has that title so the "God" in the Old Testament really is Jesus Christ.

They were pretty stunned and didn´t really know how to argue back with us stubborn americans so they moved on and tried to say that we do missionary work wrong. They were saying that we baptize right after the person learns all about our gospel...they believe the person has to wait a period of time to be baptised...so we talked about john the baptist and Jesus when they were going around preaching and baptising...it says NOTHING about waiting to baptise...it says all those who believe in Christ´s name shall be baptized. When they were talking basically all i heard was "you guys do missionary work wrong...you need to slow down we can´t keep up". One of the ladies tried to rub into our face their church had 7 million members...she said it like 5 times...so Roundy finally had had enough and was like "our church has 14 million" which he said kinda pointy and they were quiet...for a few seconds...

They then started trying to give us one of their books for studying the bible..which i said "i will take your book but only if we can make a trade" so I pulled out the book of mormon...they didn´t like that one bit! They acted like it was a gun and they were scared of it...they kinda freaked out and were like "uhh nevermind we gotta go to a meeting" and they tried to escape...but they stopped us so we continued to talk to them and proceeded to bear our testimonies about the book and asked what they knew about it...of course they gave completely wrong answers about where the book came from and everything about it but they walked away...it was super cool experience though! To see basically the fear that the Book of Mormon puts into the hearts of those that are trying to get gain from their church. It was interesting! It was a good moral booster to be able to defend our beliefs in another language with out any problems!

The meeting with Pres. Torgan was very interesting. He said some interesting things about me. Basically to make it short i went into the interview...he asked me to pray. He asked what i thought about what had been taught in the conference so far. Then he said "Elder Bushnell I am going to need leaders in this mission when they come together. You are one of those leaders, but you haven´t baptized in a little while...you need to "wake up" and become one of those leaders for me because i need you..and i can only call elders that are doing/making great things happen, i have a lot of confidence in you but for whatever reason your area has been stopped for a while...i need you to "wake" it up...."your time is now" (we had talked about how we can´t wait for anything cause our time in now...if we wait we will lose so many blessings and won´t carry the voice of the Lord) It was a super cool interview and then he prayed and when he prays it is so strong...you can easily tell he is talking to someone he has come to know very well throughout his life.

That basically was my week! I did get the pants and they are the size i have...i haven´t tried them on...i forgot about them already...cause we have had to wear our suits for a few days because of church and interviews. Thanks for sending those candy bars...they came in good use the first day i got the package! Love You!!!

Elder Bushnell

p.s. do you know if its possible to get the gospel picture books shrunk down? it is super expensive to do it here....i was going to do it but in color it is .50 a side. Is it cheaper there? I want a small one to carry around with me.