Elder Henry's letter 1/21/13

Dear Dad,

I'm sitting here cracking up about the whole Bishopric rule XD. What apostasy is happening in the North Stake, the Bishop is merely a leader not a saint or an apostle. Oh my goodness, I would have just walked out at that moment... Anyways pretty ridiculous.

When I tell people here about church schedule there they are absolutely horrified. Here you only have 2 wards per building, its pretty rare to have 3, and normally you just have one. Also when you have 2 wards, one starts at 8:30 with the class block first, and the other starts at 9:00 with sacrament meeting. Then our ward, Gravataí ends sacrament at 10:10, with Parque dos Anjos (8:30 ward) starting sacrament at 10:20. Everyone is done with church before noon. I try to tell people here that this is completely backwards but they think that having church during the hour of Lunch is absolutely absurd. Still I prefer 11:00 schedule ;).

Hehe, sounds like Spencer was a little bit nervous (his first time tracting with our missionaries) huh. I can remember being that way as well all those years back, its funny because teaching the missionary lessons is 2nd hand nature for me now that I don't even really think about it. I just show up at the lesson and teach. Poor Spencer first time with the missionaries. But sounds like it was pretty good. Also your missionaries should not be knocking doors, but should be receiving references from members. Tell Spencer the next time he goes out with the missionaries to take them to his friend's houses like Ryan, or Tanner's or someone with some potential instead of knocking doors.

I'm super excited for this Disneyland trip, sounds really awesome. I can't wait to get home! Wait a minute, February, you're already planning for 2014 right? Just the four of us, why would you exclude Spencer or Tori from going? Dad you are so silly, there will be 5 of us in 2014, are you already forgetting that I exist!?

Really it sounds like a lot of fun that the 4 of you will have. I bet they'll be super excited to hear the good news. I just wish I could go too! :P
Anyways I need to get going,

Love you Dad.

Love,

Elder Henry

Dear Mom,

They buy the plane tickets usually 3 transfers before we go home, and then I'll receive an official date. So probably in March-ish I'll be getting a release date, but I'll probably be home July 18th or 25th, depending if we have another 5 week transfer or not. (I just called the secretaries and they told me that July 10th is my plane-date, but its not set in stone yet, it could still get moved around. Also that would mean I get home on the 11th). (Mom: my friends all know when their missionaries are coming home already and I need to get a couple days off, since they just re-organized my department at work.)

2. (Spencer started taking Economics and LOVES it) HAHA, I love it, me and my brother can open up a consulting firm together!

4. Well, about Sherry that's how things go I suppose, hope she is ok. I'm still really excited to tell everyone that my sister is going on a mission ^^. Oh and I'm totally rooting for Brasil I hope you know. I want all my siblings to serve missions in Brasil >:). (I told him we are hoping for Italy, for her opera singing,which didn't fly with him apparently haha)

6. Spence is awesome :D (In response to telling him Spencer went out with the missionaries for the first time)

My heart broke a little bit when I heard that Chip left the Ducks... Oh well that's how things go.

Also those pictures were pretty funny :P.

We had another pretty normal week this week. N is doing really great. I'm really happy with her progress and went to church this Sunday as well. Hopefully this week we'll be able to resolve her doubts and help her to understand and develop a desire to be baptised.

We had a couple more investigators at church for the first time this week. The first one is named A. He and his brother went to church for the first time and really enjoyed themselves :). Its a little bit difficult to meet with him because he works swing shift, basically all the hours that we work XD. So we have to visit him in the morning hours, but we'll see more of what he thought of church on Thursday.

Finally we had a less active member come to church with her son who's not a member. His name is A, and he's a young man, 15 years old. He's actually really cool, and when we taught him this week he really payed attention to what we were saying and liked what we had to say :). It also looked like he made friends really quickly with the other Young Men. Only problem is he's really hard to find at home as well.

Hopefully this week we'll be able to find a few other new investigators and help them to progress as well as mark dates with these investigators. Feburary should be another good month of baptisms as these 4 all have good potential to be baptised :). I feel like I'm finally getting the hang of missionary work after all this time.

Love you all, thanks for writing me.

Love,

Elder Henry