Alright Mamãe!

So this week was a little rough in the area. We had many people who are very flaky, who need more courage, who aren’t searching, who aren’t willing to get off their seats, who are drunk, etc... anyways the list never stops. So progress was slow this week, but I am thinking we are going to have to develop the habit of "searching for pearls". If someone isn’t ready, we will have to leave them to develop. I have never been a fan, but it’s probably what we are going to need to do.

Something cool this week, I felt like I was able to help one of our districts. We have an Elder who has 5 weeks here in Brazil and he is already training because of the giant wave of Newbies that are coming. In their ward they are struggling with baptisms with some good investigators that are already going to church. This week in District Meeting we did some practices with them and they told us about Brenon and how he knows everything but just needs help committing to baptism. So this week they were having trouble finding him, but Saturday night, I found him playing soccer at the church. I called him to a room and started talking to him and it then turned into the Baptismal Interview and he accepted baptism and passed. Ha, so when these two new Elders arrived home Saturday, they surprisingly discovered that they had a baptism the next day! Ha awesome!
Good stuff, but that’s a bit about the week.
I love you guys!

-Elder Zac Cetraro

So 2014!!! Wooooo! This year I come home right?! It was super weird this week when we pulled out a new calendar and started to look at dates for baptisms.... and then.... there it was..... the end!!! AAAHHH!!! We saw the rest of the year and wow, it’s scary.  But yeah, New Year’s Eve we just worked really, passed by a member’s house who had her birthday that night. The funny/cool thing was how we started off 2014. We did 3 companion exchanges in a row.. WoOow! Crazy. The first day I was with my old friend, Elder Smith. It was a good day and it was cool because we started talking with some guys drinking in the road and we just chatted a bit about 2013 and 2014 and they confessed that they know they are sinning and it opened up really well to talk about the gospel and repentance. I ended up giving one of them a Book of Mormon and he is loving it and is reading a ton and he feels it too! Cool huh? Then Thursday I was with Elder Tamanho, who is the other trainer in our house. He was trained by my old friend, Elder Queiroz. I think he felt much more confident with me this day because we invited everyone to be baptized that day in our 6 lessons and before he wasn’t doing it. Then... OooOoo.. I did an exchange with one of the Assistants of the President, Elder Bohmen. WOW! It was good. Ha, it is the first time I had one of my leaders do an exchange with me since Hump Day! Wow. So it was cool to talk with and share ideas of how we can help the mission. I liked it a lot, it was quite mixed up this last week but the mission is like this now. Ha, now you can see a bit why it is hard to find time to write, huh? So yeah, also I want to work better with members and church leaders. I don’t know if you guys have heard anything cool about members working with missionaries... I think our mission is lacking a bit with these ideas. But yeah, it’s going good. We had 2 families go to church this week, but no one will be baptized next week. So keep praying, we need help working with couples and families like we are doing.

So yeah. I am booked but it’s good. I am safe. and I’m very happy!
So there’s the news folks, 
Love ya!
-Élder Zac Cetraro