Sunshine From Brazil

Heeellllooo!

Ta bom, Eu acho que é engracado por que eu sempre quer falar contigo em Portuguese. Bet you don’t understand that, do ya?  Sooo Thanksgiving eh? Wanna hear about my Thanksgiving? You will like what sparked it all. Ha, so the day of Thanksgiving I went on a split with E. Burnham. He is hilarious and another junior here, so we work pretty well together. Well anyways it was good because the other Elders were in a different city and it just so happened that that day was money so we had plenty to spend, ha. So we ate at a little fancier restaurant, ordered a little juice and had plenty of snacks from the street (everyone has a snack shop here in Brazil, just about every street has someone selling something, but usually I’m too cheap to buy anything) But it dawned on us half way through the day that I forgot the keys in the house. So the second half of the day we spent trying to find a cell phone to use to call the leaders to call the owner of the house, but that didn’t work so we ended up joining our companions in another part of the city. So we had 6 Elders in one house, so it kinda turned into a party. We ordered some huge burgers (Which I think Brazilians have accepted the fact that they can’t make a burger anything like an American burger so they just throw just about everything in there, hotdogs, corn and peas, bacon, ham, burger, eggs, etc...) and an Elder had some pumpkin pie prepared. We also had a dance party to some John Schmidt Paradise/African song. I then slept in a hammock in a crowded room. So it was an adventurous day. But I was thankful for my adventure, ha.

Sunday we had Branch Conference and it was focused on missionary service. It is crazy here how missionary service here is a big deal. Truly, here in a branch, missionaries are the heart of it all. Everyone here is a recent convert and all the immigrant members want to bring the fullness of a Stake here. We had some people (all which I have worked with) come and bear testimonies. One was a 17 year old who is preparing and as he bore his testimony I could see his parents out in the congregation crying... made me think of you guys =') got to me, you know. Then to follow up the Branch President spoke about how quick a mission goes by and remembering finishing it all and it seemed like a dream that he just wants to return to. That got everyone crying and we followed it up with "Whenever I Hear the Song of a Bird" which I played... it was funny how emotional everyone was though, but it was good =)

But yeah... Stuff is good here! We are working hard, and it’s hard because we aren’t seeing many fruits..... yet! But it is all good!

Love you all, and there is my splurb for the week =)

Thank you Dad for the email. I appreciate hearing your details with everything. I never worry much about home because I always get such good news from you all.

One thing, for the last few weeks I have really been focusing on Hope. It is funny, as I explored into it, I found that I am already quite the hopeful person. This includes being enthusiastic, optimistic, confident, and with patient perserverence. We need hope to stay happy in all times, even the hard ones. I found a lot of lessons that you taught me start to pop up like the importance of having long-term goals and “what you see is what you get.” It is knowing that everything will work out for your own good, putting your dreams out there, and being able to dance in the rain. Good stuff. Love ya, ciao!