CARNAVAL

This week was a pretty tough week, but in the end had good results.
At the begining of the week I did a division with Elder Matos from
Manaus (The Amazon). It was good. He is way cool.
I have been studying a bit about Paul lately in the book of Acts.

There are a lot of cool stories. It makes me like our last name even more.
Friday was a tiring day. I was just really tired, mentally and
physically. It has almost been a year since I have been in the leadership
position of Zone leader or assistant. It is a lot of weight.
Then that night Alexandre , Luciana, and Milton (who Alexandre
baptized after I left the area) called me from Elder Menk's phone. They
are doing way good. It made me really happy. Alexandre is secretary in
the Elders Quorum now and they both went up to the Young Men's/Young
Women's camp to help out there and supervise stuff, sweet huh?! Milton
is also doing really well. He said that the church had giving him a
new life.

Sunday was good. We had 6 investigators at sacrament meeting. Four of the
six were men (that is really good).
Two of these men have great potential to be baptized next month.

One of these men is Ricardo. We just did a street contact with him and
he said that he had seen the movie "The Other side of Heaven", and had
like it a lot. We gave him a pamphlet, and invited him to church, and
got his phone number to schedule a visit. We saw him again on
Saturday, and he waved and said, "See you guys tomorrow at 8:30!" And
he came to church. He loved church, and then afterward when I marked
with him to teach him he said he had read the pamphlet, and wanted us
to tell him much more about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. He
said that he felt it was right. We marked for Wednesday. Today he
called and asked if we could mark sooner, for today or Tuesday. So we
did. Then he asked if he could meet us somewhere to get more materials
to study from us. I said we did, and he asked where we were and such,
we met up, and gave him the other pamphlets, and the Book of Mormon. He
commented that he had been studying about the apostasy using the
scriptures from the bible that are in the pamphlet and stuff. Wow. I
believe we will be able to baptize him quickly. He seems very elect.

The other man that came that can be baptized soon is Aldair. He and
his wife are the owners of a restaurant that is on the campus of the
URI, the university here in the city. His wife didn't come because a
visit showed up at their house, but he came anyway, and said that next
week he wants to bring the whole family.

So I'm pretty excited about these people. This week will be excellent!


Até mais!

*Mother's note: This week he entitled his email 'Carnaval' and then preceded to say absolutely nothing about it - so I thought I would do the same!*

Super-electness (is that a word???)

This week I did a division with Elder Janssen. He is the District leader in São Borja, a city way down on the border with Argentina. He was trained by Elder Black, that was my companion in the MTC. He is from Maranhão, up North. It was pretty cool. He lives on an island.

We are teaching a woman named Maristella, and here son Felipe. They are both really good, and the other son that is 15 listened to us last time, and she said that her husband said that once she has decided that this is really what she wants, he will listen and stuff too. We are really excited about them. They have read the Book of Mormon, and feel that it is true. They are searching for the truth. They went to church, and loved it. They were very well recieved by the Branch and a guy in the Branch Presidency even asked when we would teach them so that he and his wife could go with us.

I talked to Elder Menk, he said that in Santa Maria, Laura gave a talk on Sunday and that it was really good. Also Victor went to a Young Single Adult camp thing, like there was over at the Fresno temple like 2 years ago.
The other day I had a really good study about the gift of discernment. It was really aweosme. something to apply for sure.

Coming into the week, I was really excited about our teaching group, we had some really good families, that we were sure all were going to come to church, then by the middle of the week, a good part of our group seems to have probably fallen through. But then another family that I didnt even expect to progress much (Maristella´s family) is actually showing signs of Super-electness. They read, feel it is true, even said that they wake up happy when they know we are coming that day. And when they came to church, they were very well recieve by the members. So we are excited about that. Other than that, we have a lot of people that are going to progress or get cut this week. We are going to be looking for a lot of new investigators this week.
I hope you all have an awesome week!

I'll try to remember....

The little blue building is where we live

This was our lunch we made today, its called Carreteiro. Its a tradition and unique Gaucho meal, i´ll make it for you all some time and tell you its history

Carlos´s baptism, last week

This week I forgot my journal, so I don't know what to write about. I'll try to remember...

On Tuesday, Elder Claudio Costa came to our mission (he used to be in the Presidency of the seventy but now is the Brazil Area President). It was amazingly good -wow. He truly taught as someone having authority and not as the pharisees. After he had a meeting with us Zone leaders. It was really good.

Our work here in Santo Angelo is doing quite well. After a few weeks of work I am now finally happy with our teaching group. We have a good amount of people. We are teaching some really good familes. I am really excited about baptizing them in the coming month.

Everyday I am amazed with how much I learn and have learned on the mission. It really is absolutely amazing. On thing I have been realizing is that the hard part about missionary work is the mental part, the physical is easy. But to really do a good job, and have your "eyes fixed upon the glory of God" it takes a great deal of mental exertion to focus on what you are doing and not anything else.

Have a good week everyone!

I look forward to hearing more from you next week.

"Come on in!"

-The grapevine in back of our house - yum- When we made tacos last week
- and the huge cathedral in the Centro

So Monday night after p-day, we went and visited Carlos. He has been going to church for over a year and is not baptized, due to a few complications. Elder Marx was teaching him when he was here. We had found out that Friday was his 46th birthday, so we went to his house, and we talked to him about how things were going to be able to get worked out so that he could be baptized, and we marked his baptism for his birthday! It was awesome!

This week I went to a city a bit north of here called Santa Rosa, and did a division with Elder Rodrigues, that was my companion for a week. It was a real good division. Santo Rosa was a cool city. We worked hard this week. We found a lot of good new investigators. And the Branch attendence finally increased to 90. It had been down at 65 for like a month, but now we are moving forward again. The normal attendance here is like 100 I think (which is reasonably good in my mission).

Yesterday we found a really good family. We were literally at the very end of the city, in a new neighborhood that's being built, with only like 2 finished houses per block, ya know?

And at the very end, there was a big blue house on a corner (with just hills and fields after, literally the end). We knocked at their open garage (its like this big garage/kitchen/living room combo, kinda cool, like a really big open room) and we heard a voice say, "Come on in!" Boy is that something we love to hear! We taught them and they were very interested. We left a Book of Mormon with them and stuff, I'm excited to teach them this week.