March 24, 2010

Hey Family,

So I know that I never have a bunch of time and I always forget what’s been going on in the week when I get in the house so I sent a little voice recording about my week. (It is transcribed at the bottom of this email.) But this week was really good. I got the video of Monty also. Thanks so much. He looks good and looks like he is a lot of fun... and trouble.

Zone Conference is this week. It’s tomorrow actually. I’m pretty excited. All the guys in our zone are sleeping in our house tonight because we live right by the chapel. So I’ll get to see Morris again. I can’t believe this transfer’s almost over. Time is going fast cause were working like crazy. I’m excited to call you guys up too on Mother’s Day. Hey, I have a favor to ask about that. So Pres said that if we have a girl friend or someone else like that we can call them too... just that we only get an hour total. Like it could be 50 minutes with you guys and 10 with Brenna or something. If you guys would be willing to give her 5 or 10 min I’m sure she’d like that but it’s your guys’ time so just tell me if you want it all and it’s yours.

Oh man Caleb is home... that’s nuts. How is he doing? I love that guy. Yeah Dad, I can feel Grandma all the time. I know she is helping me a lot. Sometimes I just really have down days but I know she’s always there. (Tim’s Grandma passed away just a few months before he went on his mission, and he commented once early in his mission that he felt she was close by and helping him sometimes. So we asked him if he still felt her helping him.) And don’t worry Mom. I’m not like skating all the time and I’m not doing stupid things. (Konni worries about him getting hurt, especially after Elder Nalder broke his ankle playing soccer on P-day.) The last thing I wanna do is go home right now. Tell the Larsens I’m praying for them. How long has he been bishop? It’s been a while now hasn’t it? Anyways, I love you all. Take care until next week.


Transcribed from voice recording: (Note: As you read this, try to imagine him speaking with an accent like he was born south of the border and English is his second language. That's exactly how he sounds!)

Hey Family,

So today is P-day, and we are going to go to the internet here in a little bit. We normally don’t remember everything that happened in the week to write you guys and when we are on the internet we are always running out of time. ...So this week we had some pretty cool things happen. We have some pretty cool investigators right now. This one guy named Gabriel stopped us the other day. Well, a long time ago, he stopped the other missionaries and he was like “hey, I used to live in Itabuna and I was taking the lessons there”. And then some stuff happened. He actually went to live with his dad in Italy for a while – like a year and a half. And then he came back and things just didn’t work out. He almost got baptized in Itabuna, but he didn’t. So he’s here now - living here, and he stopped the other missionaries, told us (them) where he lived, but he lives in this big apartment complex. And Morris and me tried so hard to find him so many times. We’d go to his house and wait. We didn’t know what apartment number it was. There’s tons of apartments so we just literally sat there one day just hoping he would come home for lunch or something, but he didn’t. So shoot, we just left it and then me and Elder Sanderson the other day were in the supermarket and he like ran up and stopped us, and he was like “Hey you guys never went to my house”. And I was like, “Dude we went to your house a bunch but we couldn’t find it.” So then he told us what apartment number, gave us his cell phone number and told us when he’d be at home. So we went to his house this week. This guy’s amazing. He’s 19 years old. He’s read the whole Book of Mormon - the entire Book of Mormon. He has all the pamphlets and he has read them all. He has a testimony of the Book of Mormon and he is way excited. He went to church on Sunday. He wants to hear all the lessons again. Then he wants to get baptized. He’s just really cool. He’s studying Doctrine and Covenants. He knows pretty much everything. He has all these questions that are like way deep doctrine questions. But he’s really cool. He’s got a strong testimony. He’s really excited about serving a mission and stuff. So we’ve been way excited with him.

We also knocked some doors and ran into this woman who works with a member in our branch. She let us in and she’s just turned out to be an angel. She’s this old woman. She lives by herself, and she’s cooked ... every time we go to her house, she’s cooked at least, at least one cake. She makes these biscuit cookie things. The other day she made pizza, lasagna...she always makes us juice. She’s crazy. We keep telling her like... “Hey we’re not coming just to eat.” And she’s like “I know, I know but I really like cooking.” And she’s really a good cook. Yesterday she made us a pizza at her house. She made the crust, she made the sauce... everything. She made two pizzas yesterday...one we ate yesterday with her and then she gave us one to cook today for P-day. She also said she knows the church is true. She went Sunday. She loved all the people. The people were really nice to her, and she really liked it. There’s this one girl in our ward (branch)... I think she’s twenty years old. This twenty year old really liked this lady, Gina, and so she asked if she could come teach Gina with us, and she went and bore testimony. They have pretty similar conversion stories, so it was really cool that this girl went to teach Gina with us.

This week’s been going really good. We’ve been teaching English classes. It’s kind of a joke. I’m learning... I don’t even know how to spell in English. They make fun of me cause I always spell stuff wrong. But I’m learning to spell in English and teach English. But it’s good. We’ve got 4 or 5 men coming to this class regularly and because of this we’ve got 3 new men investigators that are real good guys. We’re excited to work with them this week. We’re going to go to their houses also. It’s been really good. Me and Elder Almeida (sp?) have been running our tushies off here in Porto just teaching everybody and doing everything. It’s been fun though.

The transfer is almost over. It’s crazy how fast it goes. And I almost have 10 months ... on the 27th ... Holy Smokes! Ten Months! It’s been crazy. I hope you guys are all doing good. That’s how our week’s been going. We cleaned the house today. We cleaned it all up good because we’re going to have Zone Conference ... tomorrow actually. Our house is right here by the church where we are having Zone Conference. We’re staying here in Porto this time for Zone Conference... just our zone. So who knows if President will swing by. But we’re prepared with a clean house now. And,,, I hope you guys are all doing good. We’re doing good here. So I’ll go and send this and I hope you guys know I love you and I pray for you all the time. I hope things are going good...