Quick Shout Outs - First Baptism

Quick shout outs before i start talking about the past week. Thank you Elder Spencer, Triple A, Jason, Sister Martins, Grandma Jeanie, and Katrine for your letters! It was awesome getting to hear from you. I am sending letters to Triple A, Jason, Elder Spencer tomorrow. Sorry Katrine, not sure if you have gotten the other letter or two that I sent, so I am going to wait for those replies so we dont get a weird conversation split up over three letters. Awesome to hear London was great though! And happy belated birthday.Speaking of birthdays, happy birthday papa jim! That is going to be in a couple days now..so I hope it is great! Hope you and Grandmother received the letter that I sent. Love you guys!

So on to the week. Really, not much has happened that has been huge. Elder Martins and I keep teaching our eleito, and things are going wonderful there. He is going to be baptized this saturday! How amazing! My first baptism on the mission! Gerônimo is pretty awesome, so strong. I have a feeling he will be a good leader in the church someday. The craziest thing about the baptism is that he specifically asked for me to do the confirmation! How cool. Of course, I have a lot of portuguese study, prayer, and fasting to do, but it is going to be amazing.

I WILL NOT forget my camera cord next week for those awesome pictures.Lets see, it has been raining like no other the past week. I swear, I come home every night with a drenched shirt and wet socks haha. Its pretty fun though. The storms come out of nowhere so Elder Martins and I usually hide out under some little overhangs for a little while. Usually is pretty dry there, and 90% of the time the storms are only like 10 15 minutes long.Oh, here is the interesting stuff. Friday was zone conference. You can ask Elder Anderson what goes on there, but yeah, was pretty exciting. We got some excellent lessons from our mission president, from the APs, and from some other missionaries out here in our neck of the woods. The best lesson was by the assistants, talking to us about not only following Christs example in our life, but also in the way we teach. Was excellent.

Also, monday i made another exchange. I went to Sorocaba so that our district leader could come out and interview Geronimo. I stayed with our zone leader elder clifford (have you sent his letter yet kelsey??). But yeah, was pretty cool. It was an amazing area. Had a lot of fun seeing a different city, talking to different people, and working with Elder Clifford. He is a pretty cool kid, returns home in July. It was pretty funny. When I first arrived he was telling me how excited he was to speak english in the streets with someone, but he kept on slipping into portuguese randomly. Gosh, he is going to have fun when he gets home haha....i cant wait until i am so into the language that that just randomly happens.BUt things are going great here. We are finding awesome new people to teach, and really making progress helping the branch here grow. It is awesome here...I hope i dont leave too soon. But, in two weeks is transfers again, already, somehow.

Gosh, how is time flying by this fast! yesterday i swear I was talking to you guys on the phone, and now it is already february! Not too sure what is going on...but I am loving it while it lasts.Again, I love the mission. I dont think i can say that enough. There have been amazing things that I have learned here on the mission that I dont know I would have been able to learn anywhere else. Not just cool things about the scriptures (believe me, there is some cool stuff that you realize when you study them hardcore) but also just the simple and plain truths of life. Jesus Christ is our Savior, God is our Heavenly Father. They are always ready to helps us overcome our trials, to always move forward and reach our full potential. Someone once told me that when you are able to see the Lord´s hand in the hard things in life, that you are really able to get the strength to overcome them, and to be grateful for them. I really am grateful for the mission, for the miracles that happen everyday, for the amount I have grown. I know this church is completely 100% true, and that we always have a source of strength with prayer, with the scriptures, with the prophets, with our friends and family. Oh it is wonderful, wonderful to me.