Best & Worst Week (very, very sad)

Well this week i would have to say was one of the best weeks of my mission up to sunday night. monday gets here and it became the worst week of probably my whole mission for the next two years. i will start with the good news. the young man we have been teaching, anderson, we continued to teach and he stopped smoking! it was an answer to prayers. he started when he was 11 and he is 26 now and he smoked lots for a while but the last few years he had been minamizing how much he smoked and when we started to teach him he continued trying, well he went to the church last sunday and said he wanted baptized so during the week we taught him more so he could and he comitted to stop smoking and we helped him and he stopped and this sunday he was baptized!!! it was awesome! a member in the ward baptized him, which is good because now he has a friend in the ward that wont get transfered. but it was great still becasue we taught him and helped him to be baptized so it was great to see success and have a baptism cause it had been a while without one. the same night the other elders in our area had 2 baptisms, Enrique and Solang, Enrique asked the other elders how many baptisms they had and the told him, it was a high number casue ther older in the mission, then he turned to me and was like how about you, i said one but i will have more with time casue im still new. and he was like ok i want you to baptize me. haha. i didnt even really know the kid haha. i had only seen him like once or twice before and heard aobut him in our house haha. so i ended up baptising him and his sister. haha. it was way excited sundya to have our investigator baptized and then to be able to baptize two others!!! great day and week. Monday gets here and were teaching and we recieve a phone call. remember my first baptism Waldarina, wel her daughter Valdarane, the one who has had all the health problems and been in the hospital for 4 months on and off, well finally all is better for her and she gets home. the phone call we found out there was a bad accident. her husband is a police oficer and her son was playing with a gun of his and accidently shot is sister. in the picture the you can see the son and daughter. there is only one son and the daughter is the youngest. he is 10 and she was 6. it was so sad. i love that family and they were one of the first families i met in the mission. she was shot in the back of the head and died. we went to the hospital to comfort them and help. it was so sad. tuesday was the viewing, it really is hard. i love that family. i pray for them soo much now. the son is so confused and scared, it was an accident. the mom is just overloaded with every problem in the world now. her health and then this. but its sad. but i guess look at the bright side. the Plan of Salvation! I know that this helps that family a ton becasue the dad of the girl is not a member and the funeral was in his church and...well...wow...it was OUT OF CONTROLL. Valdarene was calm and stuff but ppl who werent even family were going crazy, ppl were screaming over the little girls body and ready scriptures way loud and singing songs loud and just out of control. Valdarane is a VERY strong women to be able to stay strong during all of this with her health problems to. ive never met someone like her. she is always just smiling and making the best out of what she has. it just doesnt seem real. a day or two before this we were at her house and glauber the son and the little girl victoria were painting a little wood box for there toys. she was painting it pink on the inside. this is what i remember every time i think about her now. its soo sad. she looked so pretty. she had a little white casket. ill miss her
i know its still not the same for you all because you didnt know them. but they are family to me and it is real. we always think this coundln't happen to my family. but STOP thinking that. make sure EVERY gun in our house and everyones house is locked up GOOD. and just a piece of advice dont buy toy guns for kids. what a gross toy, a gun, seriously. what is the point.

The BEST Family

I studied 1 nephi 17 this week! I love it when Nephi chastises his brothers saying you know this and that vs 25-29. I marked when he said 'you know'. His brothers knew ALOT but still wouldn't believe. It reminds me of the General Conference talk "You know enough". We really do know enough. Sometimes we get doubts and our testimony is tested... but we just need to think back and see all the Lord has done for us. It's easy for me cause i ahve a ton of blessings. An absolutely amazing family.
the other day the Elders were talking about the richest elder in the mission... the elder with the most baptisms... the elder with the best this... or that... And guess what? The Elder with the best family? They all said it was ME! It is soooooooo true! Love you all

A note from mom: Have you written your brother lately?

Visit from Elder Cook

Elder Cook is coming to Cuiaba! He will talk to the members on the 28th of January and to the Elders on the 29th. Everyone is sooooooo excited to hear and meet an Apostle. I didn't realize how much I took advantage of that at home. They asked if I'd ever heard or seen an Apostle and I told them I'd been to conference before. It wasn't way wired to me but when they heard this, they nearly died!
They took a bus trip from Cuiaba to the temple. The colset temple is in Sao Paulo and it is a 24 hour bus ride. Some people spend a year building up and saving for this. They sell all they have to go. Literally all they have. When they get back, they start over and in a year they will do the same. They are so humble and excited to make this annual trip to the temple.
Interesting Note from Mom: We rode in the same plane as Elder Cook. We were on our way to vacation and he was headed to Brazil. There were lots of new missionaries just leaving to their mission on the same plane and they were taking pictures with Elder Cook, so we did not want to bother him. We later found out that was where he was going and wished we had talked to him and had him give Elder Stanger a hug from his mom!

New Year

Happy new Year! New goals, new life. New everything for me this year! I will be a missionary for the entire year of 2009. How lucky am I? This will be one of the best years of my entire life. This whole year, every second this year, I am the Lord's Servant. This will be the only year in my life to be the Lords servent for every second. It's exciting!
Thanks for the letters. I love getting letters!
The spirit is so strong. I finished the Book of Mormon a few weeks ago. It was fabulous. I've recently started over. I love Nephi and the faith he has. First they travel and leave everything they have to live in tents. Then they have to travedl back to the most powerful man and almost get killed a few times. Then travel back to tents. Then travel to tell another family to leave all they have to marry them and live in tents AND go to a land that no one knows exists. That's the faith I want!!!! I love readin the book of Mormon. It is so amazing to me.

Busy Week!

We had a time change this week. its 11:15 here now. This week: the bishop did us a huge favor and drove us around for almost 4 hours to show us our area because we weren't having success where we were working. Come to find out our area is HUGE. There is like 150,000 ppl that live just in our prosyliting area. He showed us areas that have never been worked by missionaries yet. and of course they are WAY far away, but its a sacrifice were doing for success. Speaking of success we're having lots more. He showed us the area friday, saturday we walked there and knocked doors to find investigators. Sunday we had a group of ppl show up to church and one of them, Anderson, said he wanted baptized, out of the blue, so that is WAY exciting. Were having lots more success now so its worth the LONG walks. Anderson has a couple problems with the word of wisdom were trying to help him with, lots of praying and fasting. We're hoping that we can baptize him this Sunday. He is 26 yrs old. We have others to we're teaching and stuff also but he is the only one for this sunday. We will invite a couple more for this Sunday to to see if they except. Also the last week of this month is the largest holiday in Brasil called Carnival, lots of drinking and partying. so were not excited for this. Its hard on investigators to tell them they can't do all of that but with faith they will stay stong. Also this week we found out who our new president will be in july. Pres. Oliveira. he is from Recife Brasil and he has been a stake pres already. He is a bishop now and he has had other callings. so that is exciting. We got rain all this week. I love it. It's less hot when it rains but also we're soaked all day from walking in it. haha. There are good things and bad things about everything.
Spider in water!
I was givin a cup of water at a house with spider webs and a dead spider in it. I politly asked for a different one. haha. There is always stuff floating in the water but a spider was a little much for me. Another weird thing i haven't mentioned yet that is hard for me... everyone uses the same cup haha. its weird.

Hot!

So the most exciting thing that happened this week was when we were proselyting! As we were walking my shirt burst into flames from the extreme heat! Crazy huh? I took a picture with the thermometer at 120 degrees and then another one where it was so hot, the thermometer just said 'error'.
I am growing to love the people here. People here are all nice. Everyone is nice, even the non-members.
Weather is hot, but it is way pretty. So much green. Fruit Trees everywhere.
Your support is very much appreciated. My wieght... well I think it is ok. The scales are not in pounds, so not sure how much I weigh. I know I gained 10 lbs in the CTM... shhhh don't tell anyone!

Elder Stanger's Zone

This is Hyrum's Zone. The Lady in blue/ the man next to her is an area seventy, Elder Tobias and his wife. Next to him is Prez and Sister Milder and standing next to Elder Hyrum is his comp, Elder De ângelo from Sao Paulo(red tie). He will get a new mission Prez in July. (They are in the back row towards the left)

funny story this week.

well lets see. yesterday we were walking down the side of the road and there is a sharp corner in the road right. well imagin those REALLY OLD trucks you see in the movies filmed in mexico and stuff. like REALLY OLD trucks haha. well this truck was taking this corner WAY fast and the passenger door swung open and the passenger like almost fell out. he like grabbed on to the door and was like doing a superman on the corner. it was way scary but way funny. he almost hit me. haha. if he let go i would have been there to catch him. but it was way crazy. it reminded me of a movie haha. also we got a bus for one of the lunches at a members this week that lives far away and this buss was like a theme park ride. haha. off road in the dirt. way bumpy like driving through the rain forest haha. it was a crazy "ride" haha. fun though.

A typical day

typical day. 6:30-7:00 pray exercise.
7:00-7:30 shower get ready (4 ppl 1 bathroom)
7:30-8:00 breakfast 8:00-9:00 personal study (BOM first, then Preach my Gospel, then other church stuff we want to study. i study D&C and mathew)
9:00-10:00 comp study(practice and prepare for lessons that day)
10:00-11:00 language study.
11:00_12:00 work
12:00-1:00 lunch at a members
1:00-9:30 work (walk, teach, walk, teach) we get an hour of dinner before 6:00.
9:30-10:00 plan for the next day.
10:00-10:30 write in jounal, shower, pray.
10:30 lights out

Are you Homesick?

im not homesick. i just think about home. but its not homesick. its just normal. haha. its hard to explain. but dont worry about me. im great. and the 3 kids that were supposed to be baptized..., well no. they back out the sunday of there baptism because ppl told them weird stuff about our chruch that wasnt true and we explained and answered there ?s but it was to late. they were like nope. so it was sad cause we were way excited for them to be baptized that day. but we got a couple new ones now. we knocked doors (clapped hands) on the houses around ours and found a family that we think will be really good. never been taught and her house is in front of ours. weird. but we only taught once and it was short. we didnt have much time. but she talked lots and seemed really interested. so we marked for friday. but its all going good. monday we walked to the bishops house. he lives WAY far away. like an hour to walk there (and we walk WAY fast) and we got there and no one was home so we had to walk back. it was GREAT. haha. its weird. thats the bishop. but the church is much newer here. haha. LOTS is different. still TRUE. just different. i LOVE the stuff im learning. haha. i always thought our church was so confound and dificult to learn. but wow, really its simple. the basics really are all we need. and ive learned the basics here alot more. i still have ltos to learn but when elder cook talked to the cuiaba stake everyone one here was soo excited to hear an apostle thinking of all he would do and guess what he talked about. strengthen families. family home evening, pray, scripture study. thats all he talked about. its true. the basics we need to strengthen more.