Transferred to....

TRANSFER Week...

First off...Shout out to Kati - got your email, I will write a letter soon. Thank you for the letters of recommendation from Dr. Kendrick & Melissa Jacot, and thanks Dale for getting info to my Mom for the internship application.

onnnn to the past ten days....

So things were going pretty normally, Elder Perry and I were talking to a lot of people, having some good success, getting really excited to baptize an excellent family, 30 year old man, and 19 year old girl. These people all have strong testimonies already of the church and are excited to become a part of it. They are just now putting some things in order to be able to enter the waters of baptism. But yeah, things were going super well. Monday, I had a division with Elder Avamolifua from San Jose, I love Samoans. They are GREAT. Such an awesome attitude.

Anyway, it was a great division, until about 7 at night, when I got a call from the assistants saying I was transferred! Man, I really wasn't expecting it! I thought that I was going to stay in Juaragua until June with Elder Perry! Oh well, I'll go where you want me to go.

So, the next day was filled with packing and saying goodbye to people that I had grown to love. What made it even more difficult though was that Elder Perry got sick and I wasn't able to go visit everyone I wanted to. Life happens sometimes. I'm really going to miss that place.

Anyway, on Wednesday we started our journey with the super heavy bag. Luckily, I was able to get a ride to the bus stop in Lapa...saving us from the horrible morning train ride! There would not have been any way that I was going to get the suitcase on that train. It all went well and I made the transfers safe and sound without much hassle.

My new companion is Elder Brent Parsons, from Orem, Utah. We are both now the Assistants to the President of the Mission. He will go home just 6 weeks before I do. I am actually super excited because he, like Elder Perry, has always been one of my better friends here on the mission! So, we live here at the mission office, which is just a three minute walk from the Sao Paulo temple. Even better news, I get letters and packages as soon as they come to Brazil now! No more waiting until meetings and such for a delivery which sometimes took weeks and weeks.

So this week we changed our pday (personal day or preparation day) from Wednesday to Saturday this week because of all the stuff that we had to do. So much to learn, moving, etc. I now don't really have an area of my own, instead, Elder Parsons and I travel around the mission doing divisions with the Zone Leaders, seeing how things are going. Just this week for example, we did two divisions, one close to the temple, the other out in a neighborhood called Jacana, It went pretty well. Lots of just talking to people, some knocking doors, all that good mission stuff. We really had some fun lessons with people too prideful to even want to pray to ask God, saying they didn't need to pray to know everything about Him. Oh well, better luck next time. Right?

It is a lot of fun living in the office. Right now we are here with four secretaries, two Americans and two Brazilians. One of the Americans is even from Oregon. So we have fun talking about the Good ol' Pacific Northwest. They are going to have an awesome baptism tonight of a family of four! It's all so cool. One of the best baptisms I've seen on the mission.

More next week....