August 5, 2009


Hey there family!

Okay, I’ll answer the questions first to the best to my ability. The people we are teaching - - We are teaching tons of people. We find new people to teach everyday. It’s very common to talk to people on the streets and have them let us into their home to teach. We get baptism commitments pretty often. In fact this last Saturday I baptized two little boys, one age 12 (Rafiel) and one age 10 (Clayton). They are so cool. They live in a very poor street but they’re both so happy and love the gospel. They’re so mature for there ages too. They don’t mess around and they work hard in their neighborhoods. On Sunday we confirmed them. And when we went to pick them up Clayton’s dad said “sorry he cant go to church today because we’re going to help some friends and then have a party afterwards”. We told him how important it was that he went to church to receive the Holy Ghost, and he said “ok we’ll let Clayton decide” so he asked Clayton “do you wanna go to church or go to a party?” and he chose church. He is so cool. This week we’re baptizing a 16 year old boy. He is really firm. He goes to church on his own every week. (And you have to realize going to church isn’t a 5 min car ride, it’s a 40 min to an hour walk in hot weather!)

My companion is Elder Palmer. He is a really bold, good missionary and the people love him. We’re not the only missionaries in Ilheus, but we are the only ones in our area. We are over one ward and there are about 100 people in it. The members are good people. I'm not sure what our district or zone is called, but our whole zone is American haha. It’s just us and another pair of missionaries, but we still have all our meetings in Portuguese dang it. We did exchanges once this week because a missionary was sick and couldn’t work so we took turns going out with his companion.

I'm not sure what my address is but I can look it up for next week. It would be cool to get letters at my apartment, but I think its best to just send them to the mission home until I get settled a little bit because I may only be here for 6 weeks and then some letters would get sent here and I may not get them. Once I get a little more settled in the mission then they try and keep you in an area for like 6 to 8 months. But it is allowed to receive letters at our apartment.

I don’t know what the beach is called but it has a gold mermaid on it so maybe if you search on that something will come up ha. I get an hour to e mail. There’s no Walmart or anything by me. I think the voice recorder would be sweet but I think you’d have to send one. The blog sounds cool, thanks for doing it. I haven’t received any letters yet. The’re probably in the mission office. There’s no way of me getting them really until transfers unless someone has to go there.

I wish I could see Monty running around. I can kind of picture it, haha. I miss the munster. I’m sure he is keeping you on your toes. Stay in there ha. I’m writing in my journal every night. I’m taking pictures and I’ll try and send some next week. Justin I totally remembered your b-day! I even had it written on my hand so I wouldn’t forget to e-mail you about it today! Sounds like your gonna have a killer party. Make fun of your friends for me ha. I love you and miss you. the big 15 - crazy stuff. Dad said you’ve been driving a little bit. Good for you. Maybe it won’t be as bad as we all thought. But I’m still glad I’m in a different country while you learn to drive haha. Just kidding, it’s not like the drivers here are any better. They’re terrible. But I love you all and pray for you all every night. Peace out family.