We're gonna rock this town!

letter from Thurs. 2-26-09

TRES RIOS

We´re gonna rock this town, turn it inside out...

SO, I got transferred. Bummer, huh. I was pretty pumped for all the baptisms that we had set up for this week, but ‘i'll go were you want me to go’, I guess. This is my sad face about transfers:

In our house in Vila Nova there was one of those dumb missionary things, you know the kind of the thing that all of the missionaries write there names on? Well, there was this chalkboard on the wall that was like this. I am, as a rule, against the graffiti of any missionary anything, but my comp really wanted us to put our names on there. So I decided to DRAW us on the board. Here it is:

To tell the truth, I was surprised how well it turned out... I still don’t think that I will make a habit of writing on things in my houses, BUT, this one was cool.

So, the transfer news is interesting.
I am now in Tres Rios, a tiny town in the middle of no-where. I am not really sure what is going on yet, b/c president sent a whole bunch of missionaries to this town, creating a new zone. and sent me as zone leader here. When I got the phone call saying that I was being transferred and they said I was going to be a zone leader again in a zone that didn’t exist, I thought it was a joke. But here I am, lost again in a city. From what I can tell, there are two or three ward/branches here, and all of them are struggling. My new proselyting area is TINY. Probably kind of like our ward at home. My new comp is elder Christenson. He is from my group in the MTC, so I already know him pretty well. He is from utah, which means that he is probably a mormon. J

I am also living with another set of missionaries here. Our house is tiny, and we still have to buy some mattresses… It is a real adventure. Kind of like camping!

President just sent me an email telling me a little bit about the mission that he wants us to do. It is all about getting the wards here to start growing, and bring up the sacrament meeting attendance to 100 in all of the wards in the next few weeks. WAHOO!! It is time to go to work!

I am totally excited to go to work with the Lord and get these areas baptizing and growing.

MOM- yep, carnival stunk. The office called and said i got two packages. Sounds like one from you and one from gma jones, but I don’t know yet, b/c I will only get them here in a week or two. Good luck with the prom and trek stuff.

DAD- man, I always LOVED field day. I loved the lunchable that we got almost as much too. March madness is coming up, right? Send a bracket. There is another American in our house named elder smith, (we are going to play basketball together on pday, YESSSS!), so we talk about sports. He is pretty new on the mission, but I was up to date thanks to your sports update emails. You are the bomb. I didn’t feel like a loser. (My comp on the other hand doesn’t really like sports, but that is okay, b/c I was never a sports fanatic anyway.)

ALYCE- mom told me not to freak out, and I am doing my best. Man, boy talk makes me really nervous sometimes. :-) just take it easy, ok? And keep me updated…

Sorry, today isn’t pday, so I got a ton to do today- i'll write more and send more pictures next week.

Love elder helland
PS : the name if my ward is Vila Isabel