May 18 letter

So this week was really awesome. We have just been prepping for the wedding so that next week we can have tons of people and a great experience for everyone. I will say however, that we have been able to find some really awesome new families among all of the work for this next wedding. We are really being blessed with so many spiritual promptings to contact houses and people that are all turning out to be great new families.

Elder Keck and I are also having a great time and a lot of fun. We are able to work insanely hard and, at the same time, joke around and have a ton of fun. We are having tons of success and really this transfer is flying by. It just feels like yesterday that Elder Wood left and Elder Keck came into this area. We figured out this week that President Amorim will be going to Portugal instead which is a really crazy change and that we'll be getting president Koch, also from Brazil. It should be a really interesting change and I'm super interested to see what happens with that. I love president Kretly but am excited to see what the new mission president does to change things. 

May 11 letter to Colin

Yeah, Elder Keck just became and Zone leader. I'm not a zone leader though. The zone leaders are sometimes split and sometimes combined. I would say that more often then not they are split though. President Kretly likes training other missionaries under the zone leaders. 

I don't know if I told you on Saturday but that same day we had another baptism which was really nice. It was super rushed though. So in that big wedding a few weeks ago, one of the husbands wasn't quite ready for baptism so we waited. This was the first saturday that he didn't have to work so with short notice we prepped a tiny baptism with us, his wife and the 2nd counselor in the bishopric. It was really nice. I baptized him and Elder Keck talked, was a witness and said a prayer. It was pretty funny but spiritual all the same. 

May 4 letters

I got the package and it was wonderful thank you. The ties are also super awesome. That black paisley is just beautiful. Also, the candy is still treating me wonderfully. 

So today was transfers and the whole mission just spun around. I got a new comp in my current area named Elder Keck, I've only heard good things about him so I'm excited. Also, all the elders in my house are leaving to go down south so I'm about the inherit a ton of food and other supplies so that should be super nice. Other than that, there is no real information with the transfers. This week was fairly uneventful though. 

One cool story that I heard this week but also really scary was about one of the strongest members in our area. His nephew died and only a few people from the church came to support him so he got kindof offended. We talked to him and tried to help him get over it and he seemed fine but apparently he told his wife that they weren't going to go to church anymore or at least that sunday. Saturday night, he had a dream, of which I'm not positive on the details, and woke up super really and told everyone that they needed to get ready to go to church immediately. It's pretty miraculous how the lords watches over his kingdom because he is a really necessary member in our branch. 

To Colin:

This past week my comp was sick one of the days so I was able to watch all of general conference in English which was really nice. My favorite talks were the same and I actually watched Elder Renlends talk 3 times because it was so good. I also enjoyed President Eyring's talk in the priesthood session and a few others. I also watched conference in portuguese but it's just not the same, especially because it is such a headache to understand. first of all, it's brazillian portuguese which is just a little bit harder to understand for me, big words that no mozambiquan wound ever use and they speak at lightning speed to keep up with the english. Some are harder to understand than others. My favorite talk was the one of the guy who actually spoke portuguese which I actually understood without having to really try. 

April 27 letters

Well, to answer your first question I am just an expert of the baixa (city). All of the internet cafes are in the downtown area and since I worked there I have several of my secret places that don't lose internet in a situation like that so I was able to do email anyways. 

For this house we don't have any food rotation because there are only 4 elders in our house.  Every Sunday however, I instituted a house meal plan so that we could have really good Sunday night dinners. The plan is that one companionship cooks the meal and the other does the dessert. Yesterday, I made a triple batch of lemon bars and the other Elders that are here from an outside area for zone conference ate it. They were super impressed with the meal though which was nice. 

I see Elder Ence actually quite a bit because all of us play Gatorball together every p-day (a game that is a mixture between football and soccer). I actually just saw him a few minutes ago. He does live in the furthest area in beira from me though and he isn't in the same zone.

I got my package a few weeks ago apparently but someone put it in some back room in the church (probably the senior couple) so I never actually ended up getting it. Today I'm going to the church though to finally pick it up. It should be super nice to have though, I'm really excited. 

So, this past week was really good, we had zone conference, which was super nice and really spiritual. One talk that you should read/watch if you can find it is about Grace by Brad Wilcox. I don't know the name of the talk exactly but it's really good. We learned a lot and I really gained a lot of ideas and paradigms that I will be able to apply in my life as a missionary and after as well. We also got to watch a new church film after called "Meet the Mormons" which was really good. Today, I visited a bunch of families from my old area in the baixa which was really rewarding and heartwarming. Several actually called me during the week asking me to come by and visit which really made me grateful for the chance that the lord gave me to touch the lives of these families. 

This next week, the mission will lose 12 missionaries and gain 0 so many areas will be closing which is pretty sad, hopefully, a bunch of missionaries are going into the MTC though so that we can have a growth next transfer.