SÃO ELEITOS!

* A big mural at the end of our area. It's a painting of the main street in Santa Maria in 1950. I'm about to do a contact with that guy!

Hello family! Things are going awesome. Or as that one song from the Extremely goofy movie goes, "things are going great, and they´re only gettin´ better". I hope the Thanksgiving break is going good.

This week has been good.

Friday- Last p-day, a week ago, we travelled to São Martinho again, a small little city up north of Santa Maria, to visit a recent convert that was baptized before I got here. That was cool.

Saturday - We taught the Plan of Salvation to Laura and her mom, Isabel, and challenged them to be baptized on the 3rd of December, and they accepted!! They are SO GOOD! It was a really good spiritual lesson, super awesome. They know that this is the true church, they are reading the Book of Mormon a ton.

Sunday - Good day at church, all the important investigators came, then before lunch, Elder Albrechtsen left to do a Division with Elder Tafoya and Elder Jones, and Zone Leaders in Livramento (thats the Elder Tafoya that I lived with in Cruz Alta and the Elder Jones that was my roomate in the MTC), so I stayed the afternoon and night in trio with Elder Carlos and Elder Anderson, the other two guys that work in our ward. Also super exiting, Antonio (the guy from Peru) decided he wanted to get baptized!!! ( so his baptism is tomorrow) Also another fun suprise on Sunday, president told me I was getting a new companion! Elder Menk! so it was planned that Elder Albrechtsen would go to Elder Menk´s area to finish off his last week and a half there.

Monday - I did all the stuff in the office, and then I spent the night with Elder Black and Elder Matoso in their area (which is just north of mine).

Tuesday - I spent with Elder Black and Elder Matoso again. until 6pm, when Elder Albrechtsen got back from Livramento, then we went home, and had to sit and wait for him to make his bags.

Wednesday- In the morning we switched companions. Elder Menk came, and Elder Albrechtsen went to the area Santa Marta where Elder Menk was. Elder Menk is a sweet guy. He is from São Paulo (finally i´ll have a Brazilian comp that I´ll stick with for more than a week, haha) but he is actually not so Brazilian. He lived from 6yrs to 16yrs in Florida. So yea. He is also quite American. Haha.

Wednesday night we taught Alexandre and Luciana.

They want to get baptized, but they have to get married. Here's the deal, in most cities in Brazil, marriage takes like 20 to 30 days to go through, so it can be quite a barrier for people to get baptized. So to get married, obviously, you have to get people's birth certificates, but you have to get updated ones here, from the city where the person was born. Luciana was born in a city called Restinga Seca, its like an hour away. So on the 17th of December, there will be a big Stake baptism, and they want to be baptized on this day. So Wednesday night we went and told them that they would have to start the marriage papers this week to get baptized on this day. Alexandre then said, "Alright, we´re going to Restinga Seca tomorrow then!"

Thursday - yesterday was an awesome day. After Alexandre and Luciana got back, we spent the whole afternoon running around with them getting all their marriage papers in, it took a while cuz we had to go to various government offices, but we got it done! They are getting married on the 15th of December, and getting baptized on the 17th!! Wooohooooo! They are so awesome and so good.

Then last night we went and taught Laura and Isabel. They are so good, we taught them with the Stake President and his wife, it was really good. There is no other way to explain it, they are the elect of the Lord. Kept from the truth only because they knew not where to find it. We taught them the commandments, and they accepted to live them. They talked about how good they feel reading the book of Mormon and going to church, and that they know that it is the true church. They were also talking about how Luciana was telling them at church that they always are super excited for our visits, and their lives have changed so much. Then Isabel said basically, "It's as if you guys didn´t exist! There aren´t other people like you guys in the world, you just bring such a strong spirit into our home..." yea they are so good. I´m really excited for them. We just have to get the dad now. They are quite a well to do family. Isabel was a University professor of Physics, and her husband is too. And Laura is in Law school. But they are elect.

Anyways, so yea, stuff is going pretty good.