9-12-11

Here are some pictures from this week,

Sweet hot dog (no hot dog just bun i was a little disappointed), and frisbe with my companion in a brazilian soccer field. oh and my companion with marriage rice He is a little love struck haha.

We have this big indoor drying rack that works pretty well when it is sunny but the problem is we have weeks of rain and then things are just wet. We have clothes pins so that is good thank you though. I appreciate you watching money in my account.

crazy how fast time moves. I have already been out 3 months! Weeks just seem to move by. time is really strange. So is this. Some days I think I want to go home right now and other days I think I want to do this forever. It is really a strange feeling being out here. But I absolutely love it. It is hard but the best moments are after the hardest things.

It is a lot like wrestling. You look back at a day and see moments when you could have gone harder but you still won. I am seeing moments where I could have had a better desire in my heart or where I could have had a better thought about someone. I was thinking about this and I think this is a lot like the atonement. We look back and think I could have gone harder here and here and here but Christ says it is ok. And we forgive ourselves and given the opportunity again we act differently. But sometimes we make the same mistakes the same thoughts over and over and over again and we need to be patient with ourselves. I was not being patient with myself my first 3 weeks. Now I am a lot more relaxed. I understand that mortality is really important but part of that importance is our ability to change. Our ability to change ourselves. We know that we had thoughts and personalities before this life and that we will have them after this life (alma 34 34) and so this life is a unique opportunity to change those personalities. An opportunity that we have only during mortality. How important is it. And then I think about the role of the gospel in this change and commandments and I could go on forever haha but i wont.

Ok I love cooking:) But we don~t have an oven... so do you have any easy recipes I can make with limited dairy products and no oven? Here we have milk and cream but everything is really different. haha I just need some ideas.

Dad I~ve relaxed so much this week. I really stopped worrying about rules and started to worry about people and the spirit. And guess what? I felt the spirit more this week than ever before. I realized that i am here to serve people not follow rules. And when my primary focus was following rules I lost the spirit. It is amazing to have the spirit with you.

I progressed so much this week in portuguese. It is amazing. When I have a thought now I can speak it to people because I understand what is going on. I say the thought and then the spirit leaves and I stop talking because I have no more words. Crazy how much I am growing. It is so relaxing when you have the spirit Dad. Since I started my mission I have been falling asleep thinking about a scripture or a scripture story or a thought I had during the week. I find that a lot of revelation comes at that time. And I find myself getting out of bed two or three times to go write something down.

I was thinking about how much of this experience is focused on Faith. Everything we do is focused on Faith. I was thinking about when that experience ends. And I think that probably we will walk by faith until we meet God again.

Also I was thinking about the plan of salvation and how interesting it is to be here. Eternity is now. We are experienceing eternity. This experience is part of Eternity. And God chose special people to help others. those people were prophets. Those people are people in the scriptures. Those people are missionaries. Those people are me. It is my job to find people because I made covenants before this life to help find people and teach them.

Ok my families, Danielle and Ghardell, he is a drug addict and they are really poor one room house. Wonderful people but religion isn~t really important right now. We are praying to have the spirit to show them how much this can help them.

Silvia, older lady with a smoking problem. Wants to be baptized but hasn~t come to church yet. We are working with her to help her quit smoking and join the church.

Andrei and Eliane, 22 and 20 year old couple with 2 kids. Work all the time to keep above the water. They feel differnt when we come into their home and my companion is great at talking with them giving them a friendly impression of the church.

Gustavo and Fernanda, baptized last week. Wonderful people, investigated the church for 3 or 4 years before joining. Now they are baptized and will be super strong. THey have a hard time with the prophet and his purpose but they know the church is true so we are really excited for their future.

This week was great. Our numbers were horrible but i grew so much. For Andrei and Eliane we were out working and couldn~t find anyone to teach because it was raining and no one would open the door and no one on the street would talk to us. We were cold and wet and my companion said lets go to the church and plan a lesson for them I thought this was a little Fubeca (lazy) but followed. I told him my idea for a simple lesson on Jesus Cristo that ended in a convite to read o livro de mormon.

We went in, i gave the lesson and he invited them to read the book of mormon. It was a great lesson. In a Zone conference the day following my companion bore his testimony that this was the best lesson he had ever participated in on his mission. And I was upset about planning it.