December 7th - BAPTISMO

Sounds like Ben had a really exciting week! Here's the latest:

Dear Family and Friends,

Don´t have any housekeeping this week! Woohoo!

In response to your emails, yes, Nate emailed me! It´s pretty great. Wrestling sucks, but I guess everyone already knew that, so that shouldn´t be that big of a surprise. Sad to hear that Jacob got pinned and wrestled in the wrong weight class, but these kind of horrible stories are the only reason anyone does wrestling. So it´ll be good in the end. Just try to dodge the herpes and the ringworm. Gabe tells me that the chickens have really cool decorations. So where´s my picture of that? Also, I´m sending a picture of myself.

This week was really, really good. To begin, Elder Gomes/Miranda said his goodbyes to his member friends to finish out our PDay, and we had pizza and a family home evening at the Domingos home. It was good. Then, on Tuesday, we I rode the bus for 12 hours, and picked up my new companion. More about him in a bit. This week on Sunday, we sang "Glorious" by David Archuleta at an old folks home as part of a choir of English students from our branch president´s English school. We also ate a lot of pizza and had açai. I had a good time being senior of the area this week, showing my new companion around the town. His name is Elder Cruz, and he´s awesome! He´s a law student, and he studied at one of the best schools in Brazil. He also does Taekwondo He knows the Bible really really well, and he´s an amazing trainer. I´m super excited to work with him for this next while. We´ve got a whole new level of spirituality, and this brings me to my next point . . . BAPTISM!

This week was my first baptism of the mission! I´ve been working with Irmã Tereza since literally my second day here, and this week she finally felt ready for baptism! She really is a person chosen by the Lord. She was orphaned early on in her life, she basically raised herself from the age of 15, and now she has a big loving family, a good job, and a good home. We marked the date on Friday, interviewed her on on Saturday, and baptized her on Sunday! It was a really fantastic experience, and I´m really glad to help bring another soul unto Christ! I sent the picture out in front of our chapel here in Itajubá. We´ve been teaching her children too, and hopefully a few of them will be baptized this week. We´ll just have to wait and see. 

As for the spiritual thought, the scripture that I have chosen to "ponderize" this week can be found in Alma 26:32.  35 Now have we not reason to rejoice? Yea, I say unto you, there never were men that had so great reason to rejoice as we, since the world began; yea, and my joy is carried away, even unto boasting in my God; for he has all power, all wisdom, and all understanding; he comprehendeth all things, and he is a merciful Being, even unto salvation, to those who will repent and believe on his name.  We, as missionaries especially, have a lot of reasons to be happy. We´ve been given a lot of blessings by a loving God who wants to help us be happy here. My life is great! I love all you guys, and I hope you all take care. I´m going to make these next 6 weeks awesome! I will succeed!