Cidade do Sol: Week 11

Dear Mom,

I really love you and I miss you a lot. I wish I could give you a hug. I missed being at home this conference weekend. I was happy to read in your update from home that every one of the kids is doing well and is happy! I was really surprised too when Alyssa wrote me and told me that she is going to start on her mission papers. I am also really impressed with Grant and that he scored well on the ACT.

Yes, I do remember that promise in my setting apart blessing and I think about it quite often. But thanks for reminding me about it. I need to have more faith and work harder so that I can fulfill that promise. One of the hard parts is that I live with two Americans who are content with speaking english all the time. I can´t complain though because I love them and we have lots of fun, but I need to make sure I´m working hard on my goal.

Here´s a little update on my week and some answers to your questions:

Easter is a pretty major holiday here. The whole weekend is their holiday. They sell lots of chocolate eggs in the stores. They also had a live play in our neighborhood about the life of christ. My companion and I actually went to see part of it from a distance. They also have a tradition to eat fish instead of meat during the week. Before I found out I was wondering why everyone was buying fish in the market. I really enjoyed conference last weekend. To me, General Conferences are even better on the mission and I look forward to them more. I am anxious to read some of the talks again because it wasn´t possible to take everything in at once. 

I really liked Elder Bednar´s talk and I am always impressed by the way he organizes and delivers his messages. I´ve also noticed that he usually mentions that he prays the spirit can be with him while he talks, and it really works.  I also really liked Elder Ringwood´s talk.

We had an american room again to watch general conference. We had lots of fun being around each other. There are 9 americans in our zone. Conference is broadcast at the stake centers and I think some members watch it at home too.  Yes, Elder Soares is my president´s cousin. I wish I could have heard his talk in portuguese, but I was in the english room so I just heard the translation.

Most missionaries do keep good records in the area book. Ever since my 2nd transfer I´ve always strived to update ours as much as I can. I was happy to find out that some missionaries in one of my last areas have been using our records. But my current area doesn´t have a whole lot of records.

We do our best to never let arguments happen because we know that they never go anywhere. Most of the people we talk to are friendly though. Lost of times, when we do talk to a religious person though (usually from the Assembly of God, the biggest church here), they like talking lots about what they believe, and sometimes basically preach us a sermon, but they don´t let us talk much or show much interest in anything we have to say.

No, the number of missionaries has stayed about the same, and next transfer I heard it will decrease a little bit. We don´t have any senior couples.

The work has been going a little bit slowly here lately and I´ll admit that our companionship should be working harder. My companion has lots of time in this area and he seems to be a little tired of being here. If it were up to me, we would be working differently, but I have learned that the most important thing I need to do is be unified with him. But I do enjoy being his companion and we have a lot of fun together.

The weather seems to have heated back up here, so it´s back to the good old sunny days, haha. But everything´s going well out here.

Talk to you next week!

Elder Church