Strong to the finish.

I can't remember if this has been on the blog already--reliving his childhood by playing in the ball pit with children in Mathias Velho.

 

 

Dear Dad,
     I wanted to let you know, because of our conversation a couple weeks ago of how we had baptised yet another mom (without the father) into the church, that miracles still happen. Heavenly Father was able to help their marriage, and here we have the last member of the family being baptised into the church. L, the father.
     Ah man, how I am dying for some fresh home baked chocolate chip cookies!!!
Love you dad,
Love,
Elder Henry

 

Dear Mom,
Sherry is completely right. Absolutely ridiculous 35$ for a piece of paper that says "I've never done nothing wrong here in Clark County". (Sherry had to pay for her police letter and her Apostille this week and was none to happy with the fee system).
     Yup we watched the missionary broadcast on Sunday, it passed here at 7 o'clock, so I'm pretty sure they taped it and showed to us afterwards.  How crazy is that! Missionaries will be able to use facebook and blogs now to proselyte! Of course it will probably take a while to hit here in Brasil, where we still don't have cars, or cell phones that can text :P. Fortunately for Sherry she'll probably be able to use Facebook on her mission (lucky!).
    This week we finally finished off I's family. Her husband was baptised into the church. I really hope things continue to go well for this family and that they will stay strong in the church. I've done my part, now its up to the ward and them to make the right choices. They are going to have a rough road ahead of them, but I believe that they can make it to the temple one day. Oh man, I hope that here in a year I see a picture of them sealed in the temple :).     

     Speaking of temple, we are going to the temple today with President Wright. My last time going through the temple here in Brasil for probably a long time.
     I forgot to tell you, we are 100% safe down here, I don't know if there's been anything on the news about it in the states, but there are a ton of Protests going on here. Nothing super serious, and there is some violence but much less than the TV shows. Also everything is happening in like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. There are protests happening here in Porto Alegre and there was one yesterday in Canoas, but we are so far from the center of the city that I didn't hear or see anything.
     Love you Mom, can't wait to see you in a couple more weeks.
Love,
Elder Henry

Going strong to the end.

Dear Dad,

That's awesome that the truck is up and running once again!
The travel plans aren't too bad for me. I don't really mind a road trip, but I will be released for the trip right? Because I do -not- want to spend 14 hours in a car without music or movies to watch. Heck, I'll be able to use that time to catch up on Dr. Who with the whole gang ;). Also after visiting Sherry in the MTC I was planning on heading up to the Provo Temple, and meet up with some of my friends for a little while to chat and say Hi. Nothing that will take the whole afternoon, but something like 30 minutes to see everyone before heading back to Washington.

Well I better go e-mail Mom before I run out of time. Love you Dad!

Love,
Elder Henry

 

Dear Mom,

Well life is pretty normal here in Mathias Velho. We didn't really get a whole lot accomplished last week. It was one of those weeks where you pass by your investigators and they aren't home all week long. Like it was a conspiracy against the missionaries. A.L. was confirmed yesterday which was good. L went to church, and has a baptismal date for next Sunday, and most of our recent converts were at church as well. So yeah everything yesterday was pretty pleasant.

Its a misty gray Washington kinda day, which is pretty awesome, and we are gonna spend most of our P-day today with Vitor and Ederson. Mmm, I do miss your pork chops and applesauce.

Yeah pretty lame e-mail. but hey that's life right?

Love you Mom,

Love,

Elder Henry

 

Another great week topped off with a baptism!

Sister Ferinho's birthday party with the zone
 

Ana Lúcia's Baptism

Dear Mom,
Nope, I'll probably order the suits next week. I talked a little bit more about prices, and turns out its not -as- awesome as a deal as I thought it was. Its gonna be about 100$ per suit, depending on the fabric I choose there the finished suit will fall between $75 and $125 and comes with the pants, which is still a great deal I think, but its not quite as good as I thought it would be. I'm thinking that we'll only have money for one suit, and I'll probably get another black with pin-stripes because the one I took on the mission is pretty battered up from 2 years...
     Yeah I'm pretty sure there's no way I can afford Alpine Village... Waaaay too expensive for me. I was looking at the BYU website right now and trying to remember a little bit about Southridge, and I'm pretty sure I had a friend the lived there, Dave. What I remember about the apartment is that it was kind of dirty, and had a really small living area. Of course the dirtiness was probably the tenants fault and not the apartment, but I'll ask Sherry a little bit about it.
     Awww, Strawberry Shortcake sounds soooo good right now.... Heh, my companion just got done writing his family in Spanish, and now he's trying to talk to me in Spanish without even realising it :P. Fortunately I'm starting to pick up on his Spanish, but he usually has to repeat 2 or 3 times before I understand. I totally know what he's going through, because whenever I wrote you guys right when I got here, I had a terrible time trying to write Portuguese, because you are thinking in English instead of Portuguese.
     Weather today is grey with a chance of rain. Good old Washington weather. What I don't understand is there appears to be -more- Mosquitoes now than in the Summer! They should all be dead already! Don't they know that when winter comes they need to DIE!? It's not nearly as cold as last year in Rio Pardo. I think it stays a little bit warmer here closer to Porto Alegre.
     Elder Mendoza is speaking really well, because Spanish is really close to Portuguese. Its really quite interesting, because about half the words in Spanish are the same as Portuguese, and the other half are completely different.
     We had another baptism yesterday, an 8 year old who goes to church with her grandma, who is going to church for like 25 years, but never was baptised because of some problems in her documents. Anyways it was a nice service, we'll see if we can't string up another baptism this week, we are on a 4 week roll here! I don't want to stop it now. What's cool is Elder Mendoza can say that he's baptised every single week of his mission until this point LOL. I'm really glad that we are able to have baptisms together, because I remember my first transfer in the mission without baptisms, and I kind of felt like, man this baptism thing is -never- gonna happen.
     Anyways I should go write the rest of the family. Love you Mom.
Love,
Elder Henry


Dear Dad,

It's still quite strange to me that we are in different seasons. You are getting the pool set up, Mom's making Strawberry Shortcakes, and we are starting up our soup season, the wood stoves are coming out, and everyone is settling down for winter. You know there is nothing more awesome than a wood stove. Food just tastes a hundred times better when it's cooked on a wood stove, and of course you keep the whole house warm. Every time I see one here, it reminds me of Great Grandma's wood stove in her house in Eugene.

Love You Dad,

Love,
Elder Henry

Let's learn Spanish again too!

Elder Mendoza, E.'s dad, E., and Elder Henry!

Dear Mom,

Do you have any contact with Elder Black's Mom? Because he pretty much didn't know anything about anything, he didn't know if his Apartment fits 4 or 6. Anyways I can't talk with him anymore about the situation because he went way out into the middle of nowhere and I can't e-mail him while I'm on the mission.

That's super cool that you guys went down to Eugene for a baptism!

Only 6 more weeks before Sherry leaves LOL. I bet she's anxious to leave. (Actually it's a little over  5 now!)

We had E's baptism this Sunday, the other man in the Picture (other than my companion) is his Dad. He felt super good at the baptism and we are going to start teaching him today as well. I'm pretty excited, it would be awesome for both of them to go to church together :).

Anyways the LAN house is closing I'm gonna have to get going. Lots of Love.

Love,
Elder Henry

PS Forgot to tell you, My new companion is Elder Mendoza, from Paraguay! He doesn't speak English, and is learning Portuguese! Maybe I'll pick up his Spanish and speak 3 languages when I get home!