2/28/11 doesn't want to get our hopes up

Elder Bergquist's brother, Derek, served his mission in Brasil also, so they write back and forth each week in Portuguese... here is what Elder Bergquist wrote to Derek...

Voce tinha uma semana boa na casa? Ouviu assim...e achou que o all-star jogo foi bom tambem. estou uma poca pena porque nao vi, mas talvez possa ver quando volto...espero sim (i hope so...? rara nao sei como se diz...) tambem nao sei como fazer os assentos? (sp?) nao gosto o dunk contest ainda...fica mais chato cada ano. como foi o jogo? acho que e a mesmo jogo que eu vi am ano atras na epoca de natal. e a mesma coisa aconteceu, lakers mataram os hawks rara. mas ainda foi muito divertido, apena(?) estar la e ver um jogo. hoje jogamos raquetball rara foi legal. mas ainda tenho que escrever a familia entao tenho que terminar. falou! te amo. feliz aniversario!

And, here is his email to me...

oi gente! alright so this is going to be hard without any questions haha, but i'll try. it might be short. i only have like 20 more minutes or so. first of all, i did find that recording of kaitlin and janae haha. and speaking of kaitlin, tell her to write me back...ha now that i think about it i'm not sure if i wrote her back yet hahah i think i did...idk...anyway...so sounds like everything at home is good. sounds like derek had a pretty good birthday, getting to go to a game and all...i'm pretty sure thats the same game i got to see in person a few years ago, the lakers and hawks, and the lakers killed them haha. it was supposed to snow at home dad?? its really that cold?? wow, its been up to like 35 the last couple days here ha i never thought i'd be this happy to see temperatures in the 30's, its weird. especially when i was expecting to go to brasil haha, but its all good, hopefully i'll get there soon. as for now, wyoming is treating me just fine haha. I like meu companheiro. he's really sarcastic too, so we get to fight with each other all day and just like mess around with each other.
lets see....this week...well, it started off really slow it seemed, well average i guess...idk but then we had zone conference on thursday and after that it picked up. but we were down in cody like all day thursday, it was pretty good. one thing i really liked that was said was that "all plans are already made in heaven." and so i guess we have plans made for us and plans made for our investigators to be brought to Christ, its our job to be in tune with the spirit so we can figure out what those plans are and help carry them out. That was a pretty cool though. and we talked about this talk called the inconvenient messiah by elder holland. it was really good, you should all look it up! and then uhh...lets see...well we got a new investigator this week, his name is lee, he's 26. pretty cool guy. he had a lot of questions for us, he was referred to us by a guy in our ward, and he had talked to him about it a bit and he already had a bom but hadnt read from it or anything...so we aanswered his questions (which were really interesting) we talked about the bible and how it has been interpreted so many different ways, and he asked how do we know if we're interpreting the bom right, so we talked about prayer and personal revelation and the footnotes too...i dunno just a lot of interesting questions like that or how do we know the prophet isnt being swayed by any outside sources, that was kinda hard to answer but we kinda answered it the same with personal revelation and prayer and comparing it to whats in the scriptures. but we committed him to come to church but then he called sunday morning at like 8:30 and said he was just going to read and kinda get a judgement from that and then he'll decide if he wants to come, so at least he's going to read. but we were devastated all morning, it was sad, we were praying so much and so hard for him, then i realized, thinking how bad we wanted him to come and see how great the gospel was, how much more the Lord wants him to...and everything is in his hands. so Its strengthening my faith that we have to trust in the Lord and in the power and spirit of th Book of Mormon. I know everything will work out if lee puts in his effort which i think he will. i think he just doesnt want to get our hopes up he even told us that, he said "i'm just researching it, i dont know if i'm gonna get baptized or anything yet" oh he also asked why the book of mormon stopped at 600 ad and doesnt go til present times haha it was kinda cool the questions he asked. ok wow this is already really long, but also, we had an investigator at church finally! Norma. it was so exciting haha. but kinda stressful...sacrament meeting went okay...gospel principles was really good! and then the member that we had bring her tripped in relief society and scraped her knee and they had to leave early i guess haha it was kinda ridiculous, but then Kaiden, this member's son, who we have been teaching to prepare him for baptism because they have been inactive for a while, anyway, his baptism was yesterday, and Norma came to that too! she said she really enjoyed it all and wants to come again and she kept saying stuff to Kaiden like, "so when i get baptized like you did......" haha it was cool, but her family is really anti so its kinda hard. and other than that, we had a less active (Jake- i think i told you about him) come to church, we made a deal with him that if he did we would play racketball with him today so we did haha it was pretty fun. and we had a referral for a family too but we showed up for our appointment and got shut down by a note on the door haha but it did say to come back! so thats good! so we'll keep trying them. and i'm lovin it here! I love the people here, especially the members, they do really good missionary work. so you should all work on that too! haha because it helps a lot, i know you do pretty well with fhe and institute and stuff so keep up the good work. amo todos voces! hope you like this book i wrote haha. have a good week and keep strengthening your testimonies! ate logo!
abracao!
Elder Bergquist
oh and i was going to send this to okazaki and irmao brough too, but i dont have their emails with me, so mom, i'm sure you can get them :) thank you! tchau!