Gravatai 12/31/12

Dear Mom,

Wow! Sherry's commercial turned out super cool! I liked it a lot, pretty creative for a car commercial, and Sherry looked fantastic! Super natural, just like a movie star! Talk about talent.

I liked the pictures you sent me, but Tina looks especially fat nowadays XD. Bah this keyboard is horrible-.-, don't be too mad if this e-mail is short, it’s taking forever just to write a sentence.

I sure had a lot of fun talking with you guys too. It really surprised me how hard it is to speak English after not really talking with anyone for 6 months in English. You start to forget how it’s supposed to feel in your mouth and you get all tripped up with the small words that just don't translate all that great XD. I'm starting to practice a little bit more in English to make sure I don't completely forget here in Brasil. Actually yesterday we went to a friend of a member to teach him and João, the new investigator, just got home from Ireland a month ago. So I got a good hour of English in while I was teaching him. It really was strange switching back to teaching in English because I'm so used to my teaching groove in Portuguese that I had to reverse translate on the spot.

Last week was probably one of the hardest weeks of the mission. We ended up knocking a lot of doors and walking around everywhere trying to contact the few references we had and didn't really end up with anything in the end. The funny thing is, this week was really hard for Brasil, but if I compared it to the United States, I would be telling you guys all about the best week I ever had. There really is no comparison between the two missions. Let’s just say that I'm glad I'm here and not there :P.

J finally gave up yesterday. She is very stuck on a couple doctrines that she just doesn’t want to believe in and gave up on reading the Book of Mormon. Oh well, people have their free agency right?

Good news is V brought her daughter to church yesterday and absolutely loved it. V also gave up drinking coffee; it was actually quite an interesting experience. We hadn't explained about the Word of Wisdom yet and during Sunday school they were talking about how Alcohol, Tobacco and Coffee are bad for you. She asked the professor, "Why do you keep talking about coffee?"

I began to think to myself, oh no, this is not going anywhere good.  Bro. T, our Gospel Principles teacher began to explain that coffee is bad for us, has a ton of toxins and is addictive, and so we don't use coffee in the church. I was waiting for the normal backlashes of, "Soda has caffeine too! It’s bad for you, why do you drink soda and not coffee!" But instead afterwards V told me, "Wow what an incredible class. Last night I was looking at my blood pressure and noticed it was really high, so I asked Heavenly Father to show me how to improve my health, and then in the middle of a lesson on Charity, he responded! I have to give up coffee." I was absolutely blown away. Sometimes I forget that every person is a little bit different and reacts in a different way. Needless to say I was very grateful that Heavenly Father answers our prayers.

R was also at church today and has started to read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover. It’s a little bit hard for him, because he's only 13 years old, but he's working hard to try and read and understand what the Book of Mormon is trying to say to him. It's really awesome to see Youth working so hard in the church, something that I feel like I never really participated in as an adolescent.

Anyways I better wrap this up. Happy New Year!

Love,

Elder Henry

Dear Dad,

I don't think a day passes by that someone doesn't ask me about snow. All the Brasilians are mystified by snow, and everyone wants to play in it. I'm a little bit jealous because I sure do enjoy the cold weather instead of the hot weather. They said that Christmas day was the hottest its been in 12 years, and the summer has just started. It hit 42 degrees Celsius or 107.6 degrees Fahrenheit, but the sensation with the humidity was 50 degrees Celsius or 122 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't really understand too well what they try to mean about sensational temperature and real temperature. To me it sounds like one of the things that people make up to make it sound like they have it the worst. To me if the temperature gauge says 42 its 42, not 50, but anyways it was HOT! It's actually kinda funny because Wednesday until Friday it rained and rained and rained. So it went from 42 degrees on Tuesday to 18 degrees on Wednesday. If the weather kills me here you'll know why.

I'm glad you guys had a great Christmas without me. I hope you all have a great New Years Eve tonight! Drink some Apple Cider for me ;).

Love,

Elder Henry