Hey! First, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA oh my gosh! Madelyn!!! I am sorry for laughing but that is horrible! What is happening as you drive! You have the "greg curse" HAHA its ok! You need a car like sylvia!!! No matter what you could never tell if you ran into anything! And second......PLEASE dont get in my car! HAHA bawal ina para sa imo!

Second.......HAHAHA oh abby, hanging out with Aunt D and Grandma! I bet that was legit!!! I would probably have lost my mind as well! But that is good that you went! You are building a relationship with them!

Well this week was alright! We had a lot of good but sometimes with the good comes the bad!

We started out this week going out and getting all ready. We have just been doing a lot of follow up trying to prepare our investigators for baptism! We have some lined up but it wont start until June! But funny story, 

So there is this little girl, she is a member and has been for 2 years, she is active, but she asked about her record number.........ya she doesnt have one! She was baptized and they forgot to confirm her!! For 2 years, so she is now one of our smartest investigators and she will be baptized in June, everytime I ask her a question she goes (in a whiny little 10 year old voice) "Aye sister, member gid ko ya!" Meaning like she is a member! But she is cute! I am happy to be here when she becomes a member!

Well, we took a chocolate bread thing to celebrate one of our Recent converts birthdays! Well she is the cousin of the boy we told you about last week who was doing so good not smoking and drinking, well we walk up to the house and all 3 boys see us coming and take off running around to hide the stuff they were drinking and smoking. So we made a joke saying that we werent the police then they joked and said "YA you are worse than the police, you serve God" So I laughed but then we shared and I was way serious. It broke my heart a little bit so we are now back to waiting to see if they have desire to keep their commitments! But we wont let it get us down! We are fine! We are still trying to just keep finding!!

But this week I have been focusing on my patience! I need it and I know that is something that will follow me forever! So I better make sure I can master it here! I love you all! I cant wait to see you and we will all just chill and have a great time! I know that what I am doing is the work of God!! Keep studying!!!!!! LOVE YOU!!!

Love Sis. Polatis!

      Hi family!!! Wow!! Haha what an exciting week. No we were missing church so it was a punishment for both of us. That is so great to hear that Abby is getting back into the groove of things. Congrats Sam with Seminary Graduation!! 

Sheesh and I bet that it is starting

to get nice and warm over there. It has been a little bit chilly here and it has 
been raining non stop. Ha everyone is always in shock when they see me because I 
still just wear my short sleeve white shirt while my companion is in his sweater 
and everyone else has their coats on. Ha I am really enjoying the weather 
though. 50 degrees is a lot better than -30 ha.
      Well so I´ll start with some bad news. We did not get to have a conference 
with Elder Anderson on Wednesday:( That was the day that people started rioting 
and everything so it wasnt safe to travel to the center of Sao Paulo. I guess it 
wasnt safe to travel at all because everyone in the mission had to stay in the 
apartment until 6 that night. I guess that the people had started a few buses on 
fire and had blocked off a bunch of roads. Everyone here is really really angry 
about the world cup and how the government is using their money to build 
stadiums. Ha I think Brazil used to like soccer until now. So that really stunk 
missing out on that, because now we are not going to reschedule it. No worries 
though, where I am at it is pretty calm so it hardly effects us.
      So we had this lesson with this young couple that has twin babies and we 
already taught the mom once but this time we had them together. They are only 
like 17 years old so very very young, ha but every time I spoke the guy started 
smiling and cracking up a little bit. Haha so then I would start cracking up 
too. I asked him why he was laughing at me, and he just thinks my accent is 
really funny, but that he could understand everything that I was saying. Ha I´ll 
take that!! As long as I can get the message across and fulfil my purpose than 
I´m good. The key is to not get offended because once you get offended you will 
be scared to talk. So I just laugh about it. And when it came to the baptismal 
invite he accepted and did laugh that time so that was good. The problem is that 
they are not married. That is a huge problem here and makes it very hard to get 
them progressing, because usually they have a lot of excuses of why they cant 
get married. We lost one investigator because she does not like her husband at 
all and would never marry him but cant move out because she has no where to go, 
so she said that she will just continue to read and see if she can make it to 
church.
       Margarida was finally confirmed yesterday!!! Sheesh that was a close one. 
We also had a couple ladies there. One lady was a miracle because we just 
contacted her and gave her a brief lesson of the restoration and invited her to 
church, but this was the sunday before because she is only available on sundays. 
But then we called her on Saturday night and she actually said that she was 
planning on coming!!:) Ha so in the morning we went and walked with her to 
church and I think that she really enjoyed it. Other than that we are trying our 
best to find people and talk to everyone on the streets. The members are a 
little stagnant right now but we will focus on helping them do missionary work. 
But yea everything is going great and I am definitely getting more and more 
comfortable with the language and with  the work here. Thanks for everything and 
have another great week:) Love you all!!
Love Elder Polatis

This is Abby (Sora Polatis) now adding to the blog now that I am home! I just want to thank all of those that supported me during my mission. It was an amazing experience! I loved all my companions I was able to serve with in Romania and Moldova. I will be forever be changed by my mission. I know that this church is true. I am so thankful for it to be in the center of my life. I know that Heavenly Father cares about all of us so much. I know that with His help I was able to complete my mission. The Atonement is the greatest gift that we have been given in this life to overcome our weaknesses and trials. The Book of Mormon is true! I loved being able to have time to really study it every day. It is such a blessing in our lives. I loved my mission so much! I am really thankful to be back home with my family! I am blessed with the greatest family in the world! 

Dad & Mom!! I love these two:) 

My Fan Club!

Grandpa Polatis

I had to wear the fur hat!

Grandma Rounds 

Family Photo

Mom!

Best Family in the world) 

WELCOME HOME ABBY!!!!! 

 I LOVE LOVE LOVED seeing you all on skype! It was good to see everyone and hear how are you all! I hope you had a great mothers day!!

BUT, man what a rough week! HAHA seriously. For the past couple Sundays we were in missionary heaven with our investigators attending sacrament and progressing the way that they were, then we go on Saturday to review the Baptism interview question with our 3 candidates and they arent home. They were living with their grandma but I guess their mom came and took them and now they live far away!!! Heart crusher! I was so excited! Bummer deal. We will try to find them and refer them to the missionaries closer to them! But a lot of our investigators are moving to Manila for work! So we are back to square 1 but we will find more!

So, when I first got here, There is this kid we are teaching.He is 17 and when I got here, he was so excited to listen to us, But then he would never read, pray or come to church. So we kind of backed off of him for a little while. He had a problem with smoking and occassional drinking. But he never would stop. Well a couple weeks ago he came to church, and has been attending ever since. He has come 4 weeks in a row, and always tells us he wants to be baptized. WELL, I am so excited because he has finally gone without smoking and he will be baptized in June!! He used to just come to sacrament but now he comes to all 3!! It has taken him a little while but he is doing it! He is one that I feel like that is the reason I am in Cauayan! He he such a funny kid and his home life is rough! He just needs a little help, someone that can guide him!! This is what he needs!

Nagtalak kami sang sabado liwat, (I think in english it is we climed on saturday again) It is hard to me to form a dang sentence anymore, But we visited Sister Lacno and he family. ALL of them came to church! They all were wearing their white shirts!! It is so fun to see them continue. I really think that they see the blessings that come from the gospel and even though they dont have a lot physically they know they need to support eachother and that Heavenly Father has a plan for them! I just have in my mind of them all serving missions and even though life is rough right now, it can get better! 

Yesterday, Elder Doane wanted to do a musical number in sacrament. So He asked me while i was playing the prelude music if I would accompany him. HAHA but, I didnt have any music. It was "Come thou Fount" I played it Saturday at the baptism  but i guess playing by ear comes in handy sometimes. Everyone said it sounded good so I guess it was a success!

Well I love you all! We are still just here in Cauayan! I have eaten more local food in the past 6 weeks than I have my whole mission. People here can live off like 50 bucks a month just going to the mercado! Sister Montemayor is teaching me how to cook so that I can cook for you! We gotta go to the market later and buy some fish! They all thing it is weird that most of our fish is frozen but we cant help it! We dont have a dagat!  HAHA anyways. All is well! I really cant believe that abby is home! It still shocks me! Keep on going strong! I love you all! Be good huh! Abby, send me some pictures!!! LOVE YOU!!

Love Sis Polatis

In the forest

baptism of Mary Joy

FHE at Isco Group

Lacno Family--it is SOOOOO Hot!

Went on splits with Sister Kiting--rained on!  felt good

    Wow!! I still can´t believe that Abby is home. Crazy stuff. I am really glad to hear that she is making the adjustment easily and loving life back at home. It was so good to see all of you too last week for Mothers day, you all looked really great!!!:) Mom I hope you had a fantastic day and know how much I love you and how grateful I am to have a Mom as great as you!! Thank you for everything!!:)

     Sheesh so Abby already had to give a talk eh? Man that sounds like some good pressure ha, but you gain so much knowledge on the mission about the gospel that you can just share it with everyone and share all the cool things that the Holy Ghost taught you and is still teaching you. This week has been a pretty decent week. We seriously cycle through investigators like crazy and they all have these crazy names so its really hard for me to keep them in order. It is such a relief though to be understanding the majority of what people are saying though:) Ha there are times when people respond and I just have to look at Elder Silva to save me and respond to whatever they just said haha. There are some Brazilians from the north that speak a million miles per hour and it is very difficult. My companion told me that he doesnt even understand what they are saying. We had a lesson with these young men who we met at a wedding, and this was like our 3rd lesson with them, and every lesson they bring one more friend so its great. The only problem is that with more friends comes a lot more questions so we are still on the restoration with them. I think the main problem is them seeing the importance of the Book of Mormon and reading it. So we are focusing on that with them because of course when you read the Book of Mormon you feel a different Spirit and a sense of Peace. It seems like with every one of our other investigators only one member of the marriage is interested and the other will not listen no matter what. so there has been a lot of trouble with get the whole family involved.

      Margarida, the lady that was baptized 2 weeks ago, still has not been confirmed!! She missed this Sunday to go on a trip with her daughter because her daughter is moving to St George today and I guess they wanted to spend some time together. She better for sure be there on Sunday or we might have to re-baptize her. Oh OH!! I got a call a couple days ago from Elder Witham in the zone of Ribirao Pires. And he told me that he was eating lunch in a members house and he saw this thing with a bunch of names of missionaries on it and he saw Elder Polatis, Idaho 2003-2005. Hahaha finally there is a trace of Greg here. I thought that was really cool. I hope I get to serve in an area where greg served. I think that I will only be with Elder Silva for one transfer because President told Elder Silva that I just need to learn the language and then I dont know from there. Our mission is really young so who knows. 

       I´m excited to get to hear from Elder Anderson this Wednesday:) It´ll be really cool to hear him speak portuguese and be able to understand him. I think it takes like an hour and a half to get there by public transportation so I dont know when we will get home for the night. Oh yea and I started taking the omeprazole again and it helps alot actually. I still think that there is something wrong with the thing that opens and closes from my throat to my stomach but it doesnt really bug, I just have to burp quite a bit, and so without the omeprazole acid was coming up and I think making my throat swell up. So now I feel great:)

       Well I´m so glad to here that all is well there and Abby made it home safe and sound:) This week is going to be a great one with new investigators and having people make it to church. I hope it is warming up there and that you all have a great week!! Love you all so much

Love Elder Polatis

SMILE  Jesus loves you!

Eldorado

Hola Tudddoooo Bem!!!?

     Well that was some rough news! I´m really going to miss Grandpa! He was funny funny man. But I totally agree that he will be so much happier now because even when I left he was kind of down and out so I can´t imagine what he was like a year later. The pictures all looked very great. That is awesome that the majority of the family was able to make it to the funeral and everything and it sounds like the service was fantastic. I can still picture Grandpa right now in my head riding the fourwheeler behind me mitch sam and maddy after we got in trouble for playing on the haystacks. Ha just cruising on the fourwheeler with his whip:)

       So my new companion is Elder L Silva! Brazileiro!!!!!! Haha he already has almost a year on his mission and is already engaged to this girl from back at home. He is from Campinas which is like 1 hour and a half away from here. Haha he is a funny guy though. He knows a little bit of English but not enough to have any sort of conversation. It was a little lonely at first and a huge change for me, because with Elder Searle we would just laugh all day long and joke about everything, ha but now it is a little quiet with Elder Silva. Ha I am greatful though because I am learning how to speak the language so much better because I am starting to have to think in Portuguese.

      We had a baptism yesterday after church. ha I think that it is a little strange that they do the service after church and then wait a whole week before the baptism by fire but tudo bem. Her name was Margarida, and they had already been working with her before I got here. I think that she had been going to church for like 6 months but couldn´t get baptized because she was not married and living with this guy. So the saturday before, they got married and then the next day she was baptized. Ha in the states its a little different, I think that she would have to wait two weeks before she could get baptized after her wedding. She looked really happy though and it was a great baptismal service.

       This week was a little bit slower. A lot of appointments fell through so we have been doing a lot of street contacting and setting up appointments for this week. So far our week this week is pretty full of people to go and see so I´m excited. Oh so we were walking down this one road after going to see someone, and we see a couple dogs and don´t think anything of it. But then as I am walking I feel this little sting in the back of my leg and I hurry and jerk my leg away and I look back and the dog just got done biting me. It was the weirdest thing. I hurried and checked my leg and nothing was there or anything so I´m really glad that I was quick enough, but the dog ripped a whole in my pants so I´m going to have to get that stitched up.

    So for Mothers day.. Abby wants me to wait until the Sunday after Mothers day so that I can talk to her too, so I´m going to call president and see if I can change it to the next sunday. I´m pretty sure that President will let me but if not I´ll call you before and tell you what time that i am going to be skyping.

     The language is starting to come though. Slowly but surely ha. We are trying to baptize this one lady who has been taught everything and is coming to church but her husband isnt too sure about it and he doesnt want to because of all the commandments and restrictions. Mainly on Sunday, because he said that is when he gets everything taken care of. So I asked him what is the purpose of commandments and he didnt really know, so then I just rebuked him in portuguese:) Haha no jk, but I thought the language came to me pretty well right there because he had never though of it like that. So we are hoping that he will have a change of heart and we can get them on date to be baptized.

      Well I hope everyone is doing okay with the loss of Grandpa. Without the gospel I know that this would be devasting, but with the knowledge that we have all is well:) I love you all a bunch and I´m grateful for all the prayers and everything that you guys do for me. Love you!!!

Love Elder Polatis

Spuddy-buddy, Elder Searle and myself!!  Lovin the threesome!