Sunday, May 4, 2008

"... eats and wipes her mouth and says..."

Letter from 4-30-08
didn't get to post on time!

(see proverbs 30:17-20 to find out what she says) at least i think that is the reference for the scripture... hmm... either way, it is TOTALLY weird.

wowzers- time sure seems to fly with you guys. it seems like just yesterday that i thought- whoa, my little sis is a SENIOR!! and now she it getting ready to graduate and bomb tests and speak at graduation! yipee...you guys are all getting old. speaking of which- feliz aneversário, mamãe! i guess your present will be talking with you guys next week. (may 11) i don’t know where i will be yet, or how we are going to do it but i will fill you guys in next p-day.

so this week went by fast. we did a few divisions and another training. we also are teaching a few people that will be baptized this week. the first one is a guy named bernardo. he is 22 years old and super-awesome!! we have been training anyone and everyone in the zone about the importance of finding new investigators and how to find them. one of the ways that PMG teaches is 'use the area book' and ''former investigators'. (i am not sure that i am using the right 'missionary term-age' in english, but I’ll do my best.) the area book, as i am sure that you guys probably DON’T know is this binder that stays in the area and all the missionaries use it to record information about investigators and stuff. when they stop going to an investigator’s house they put on the teaching record form the reason that they stopped going there. usually, there are some cool people that are in there that were taught a LONG time ago and just weren’t ready at the time the missionaries went there the first time. SO WE, were teaching this to other missionaries and decided that we could do it better ourselves. one day we grabbed the area book and knelt down and prayed for help to find some people in there that we could visit that would be ready to hear the message of the restored gospel. we found a few names and decided to visit those people that week. ONE of those was bernardo. when we got to his house to knock on the door to see if he was still interested in hearing a message his mom came to the door and got all excited. she was like, "hey bernardo, the missionaries are here." and then she told us that her son wants to be baptized in the church. turns out that she was an inactive member that wanted to come back and she had told her son and he said that he would like to go with her. that was 2 weeks ago today. he will be baptized this sunday. the other person is Irene. and her story is SOOOOOOOO COOOOOOL. but it is pretty long too. maybe i will tell you guys next week in the email. she will be baptized Saturday the 11 of may.

mom- yep, you can probably get rid of the mission ties now. i don’t even remember how to use it and i never find time to go to the post office. i have written whole grip of people, BUT i sometimes wonder if i will ever mail this stuff. it is all addressed and in envelopes, i just get so busy that i forget all about them. (i have got some there for a few months, just waiting for me to get up the gump to go the post office and by the stamps. i will probably send them soon, because there are a lot of belated thank you cards in there... oops) anyway, i love how you always put names in parentheses or descriptions of people, just in case i forgot. i used to think, man, she must think that i had amnesia or something, then i remember that i really HAS been a long time since i saw those names. it just FEELS like i have only been gone a month. oh yeah, i will buy batteries today to take a few pictures of me and elder RHODES. (like rhode island) he is from oshkosh wisconsin. see if you can find out the names of the people that know him. i will email a pic next week. :)

dad- suns disappoint but the diamondbacks seem to be working well. pois é. ( pois é is a portuguese phrase that EVERYONE USES that means more or less-'' figures'') i am excited to read this gooney speech that you guys wrote.

alyce- you my little lady are really ridiculously cool!! speaking at grad and being an awesome student. too bad i don’t get to see you as a senior, freaking out because school and life as you know it is about to end. yep, i am excited to read this dr. seuss speech of yours, sound like a clever idea. i would write some of the 'clever ideas' that we come up with out here in the missionary work, BUT they probably wouldn’t sound too clever to you guys because,... well, you really don’t know what "normal missionary work" is like. good luck i am praying for you.

now i am off to eat a few salgados for lunch. i am thinking maybe a kibe or a joelho. but i will probably end up getting a coxinha again. doesn’t really matter what you eat, as long as the juice is good.

love elder helland

ps this week we found this place that sells coconut water really cheap, and so we have been eating a TON of coconut. the man cuts open the coconut after you drink the juice and lets you eat the meat.

pps the meat is slimey and not at all sweet. i pretend that i am eating raw fish.

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