Jan 18th- Anti-Mormon Dogs and New Companionships

Oi Queridos Amigos e Família,

This week was pretty awesome and I can´t wait to tell you about it. 

The amount of dogs on the road here have really made me miss Blaze. He was a bro, and he never tried to bite me. One day my companion and I got attacked by all the dogs in the road, and after about 5 of them, we started to sneak past the dogs or use other roads to get home. I still don´t know why they were after us. Guess they´re anti-Mormon. In other news, we got two new missionaries in our house this week! They´re named Elder Piedade (piety/godliness in English) from Rio Grande do Sul here in Brasil, and Elder Fossum from Georgia. They´re good guys and it keeps the house a lot more lively! I´m really enjoying it! My companion is still Elder Cruz. He´s still awesome.

This week rained basically constantly until late Saturday. That´s pretty good though, because there´s an old missionary legend that says that every hour you spend in the rain, your future wife spends an hour in the gym. I´m going to go buy some combat boots today that work with the missionary pattern so that I can stop having shoes full of water. The Dr. Martins still work, but they´re getting pretty thrashed, and the right one has a hole in the bottom that lets water in. We taught a ton of lessons though, this week was by far my most productive week on the mission. I´ve learned a lot of little tips that are making my life better and better. I´ve got some good hope that we´ll get a baptism this week. The hardest part here is getting people to wake up for 9 o´clock church. It was a really good week though. The most fun I´ve had yet. Today we´re gonna hit up the new restaurant that has lunch for 2 reals, or the equivalent of 50 cents. I´m hype.

As for a spiritual thought, I´ve been reading through Matthew this week, bit by bit during my personal study time. It´s pretty sweet. The teachings of our Savior are really powerful, and it feels super easy to apply them to my life. I´d encourage all of you to go read Matthew 5, because I can promise each one of you that you will find something that you can apply directly to your life. It´s a great source of inspiration for me. I love you all, and I´ll keep praying for you. I will succeed!

Élder Ben Murray