January 25th - The Elect

Dear Family and Friends,

I´ve already gotten most of the housekeeping out of the way, but I´d just like to thank you for the package you sent me. I´m really grateful to have so much support from you guys back home. There are some missionaries out here that basically don´t even have contact with their families, and it really makes you grateful for what you have. Thank you.

This week was really pretty fantastic. We worked hard and got results. We had a transmission this week on teaching the doctrine of repentance that was a training for missionaries worldwide. It was pretty good, with talks by a lot of the apostles. Then we had a Zone Conference last Friday that was fun. We got popcorn, I got a super-late birthday treat, and we talked a lot about making contacts on the road and working with ward/branch members to do missionary work together. It´s always fun to see other missionaries and President Hill. Then, on Sunday, we baptized a fantastic woman, Marlene. But more about that later. First some funny moments. Here in Itajubá it´s all about the weird names. Between the two groups here we have found Joandarco, Jezzer Papi, Ronilson, and Idelfonso. There are some other missionaries in our zone teaching a less-active member named Johnny Quest. Itajubá also has a problem with people that have eyes looking in opposite directions. To date we have met 15 people here with crazy eyes. It´s pretty epic. I´ve been learning all the sweet Brazilian slang too. It´s pretty dank. They have a buttload of memes here. T-shirts with "Keep Calm and Speak English" are the biggest offenders. And Minecraft is gigantic among the children. Some 8 year-olds from the branch tried to get me to help them download mods this week. I said no. I´ve officially mastered the poorly-fried egg sandwich. It´s nice that this new 50 cent restaurant opened up, because the food is actually pretty good, and you eat for basically free. My life´s really good right now.

This week we baptized a woman named Marlene. When a person is a really good investigator, that accepts commitments and really wants to make a change in their life, we call them elects. Marlene is the definition of an elect. She heard the first missionary message, along with the miraculous testimony of a member here, and she immediately accepted to go to church. She loved the church meetings, loved the missionary lessons, and took everything to heart immediately. She read the Book of Mormon when we asked, and when we told her she would have to stop drinking coffee, she stopped that moment. Then, this last Thursday when we visited her, she was feeling really sick, so we offered to give her a blessing to help cure her. This type of blessing works based on the faith of the person being blessed. Marlene was coughing every 20 seconds, was feeling a lot of pain, and was generally in bad shape. We gave her a blessing and she stopped coughing immediately, and said that the pain was gone. I know, that through the power of Jesus Christ and our faith, we can be cured of any sickness, pain, or worldly problems. She was baptized 3 days later. I know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ really helps people, and I plan to spread to as many people as I can. I will succeed.