Letter home from Elder Henry 4/29/13

Dear Mom,
I've been a district leader for about 6 months now...(we just got a letter this week from his mission president telling us he'd been called, I thought Brazil regular mail was bad, but apparently email is even slower! haha).

Did you guys have a broadcast Stake Conference this weekend? We had one which was pretty awesome, we heard from Elder Scott, Elder Ellis from the 70, Gary E Stevenson Presiding Bishop and Sister Stephens from the Relief Society Presidency. There were some awesome talks in the stake conference, and was a super uplifting experience in all.

Yup our American recruits have dried up for a little bit. We were supposed to have 26 new missionaries come in this transfer, and only 7 got here (2 of which were American). Sounds like everyone is stuck state-side once again.

What I'm going to need clothes wise when I get home. Uhhhhhh, like a couple t-shirts, some jeans, what do normal people wear in the States these days? Probably some winter clothes, a couple hoodies/jackets. I honestly don't even know how to wear normal clothes anymore. I probably won't need very many new white shirts, and my suits are still pretty intact, as they don't get all that much use. Although, I -may- buy a new suit here because there is a place close to my area that makes suits tailored to you in the range of 25-100$ for the suit coat and pants. If I'm not mistaken, that is a much better price than any new suit you're gonna buy in the states.

This week was actually pretty fruitful. We had our first English Class last week which went pretty well. We had 4 non members show up and 12 people in the class in all. We are hoping to be able to keep this class rolling and baptising because of the class.

We had a pretty cool experience last week. Two weeks ago we were contacting some people on the street, and Elder Chidester was talking with a lady that speaks English.  We taught them last Friday, and the first lesson went really well. We asked her how she knows English and it turns out she works for the United Kingdom Embassy here in Porto Alegre. Anyways we invited her to baptism last Friday and she and her husband accepted. We'll see how everything goes.

We actually had a really good finding week last week, as we ended up the week with 20 new investigators. I wish all my weeks were like that. Unfortunately hardly anyone went to church, so now we have to get back to work with these investigators.

I hope everything goes well with Bailey's first missionary lesson tonight! How exciting it is to have missionaries in your home.

Love,
Elder Henry

Dear Dad,

Well Sherry's off to Mexico today huh? How exciting is that! I loved my two week stay with Gran-Gran in Mexico. Of course, I think I would understand the people there a lot better today than I did then lol. Dad that's a crazy temple story. I could just see a great title to this story like, "The Pants that went WRONG!" Of course that kind of sounds like a Dr. Who episode more than missing a pair of pants at the temple :P. You know the funny thing here in Brasil is that if you rent temple clothing you don't get charged, even normal members, because usually people go to the temple on a Bus from far away, and they don't always have temple clothing or money for temple clothing. The temple here is super small too, about the same size or smaller than the Newport Beach temple in California.

I love you Dad, thanks for keeping me updated on life back home!

Love,

Elder Henry