Panatis: Week 10

Glad you all had a great thanksgiving! I remembered you all this week. This week we had 2 birthdays in our house. Elder W. Silva on Thursday and Elder de Jesus today. So what did we do to celebrate? We made pancakes for Elder W. Silva, and today, Sister Soares, the president´s wife, took us out on a "cultural p-day!" It´s a once in a mission experience that she started doing with a few missionaries at a time starting a few months ago. It´s because Natal is a beautiful city, but most of the parts we see every day aren´t all that beautiful. So anyway, I´ll include some pictures.

AND, we also enjoyed a nice present this weekend. The couple that we had been working with was baptized. Really we can´t take credit for much because the members have integrated so well with them- especially the Bishop´s family who are great friends with them. They are great and they love talking about the church to everyone they know. They had gone about 4 or 5 times before their baptism and had felt really well in the church. It was a neat experience to teach them. Janaína had gotten really interested in learning about the church and started reading through her daughter´s book of mormon/D&C. We were surprised in the family night last week when we were singing a hymn from the hymnbook and she made the comment "wasn´t it Emma Smith who compiled the hymnbook?" What kind of investigator knows that kind of stuff?! haha. But their baptism was a really great experience. Elder W Silva, a member and I also sang a special hymn. It is fun to see the members get excited about helping with missionary work.

Well those were a few highlights of the week here! Sounds like it was a great one there too. Save some mashed potatoes in the freezer for me ;)

Love you,

Elder Church

Elder W. Silva´s birthday pancakes

Celestino and Janaína´s baptism. In the picture are two of their kids and the bishop´s family. The bishop and his son baptized them

We made a little stop in the Sahara

This is a dromedário, a close relative of the camel.

 Climbing up to get a coconut ;) just kidding

What if I were called to the mars south mission?

6 months left!

The world´s biggest cashew tree.

Did you know that the cashew nut is actually part of a fruit? This cashew we picked from the biggest cashew tree in the world today.