Good morning Mom and Dad:

It is February 25^th, Monday.  I literally just woke up, its 6:31 am.   This week was a really, really crazy week.  And, I will go into some details about why.  First of all, I had some really humbling experiences this week; In regards to seeing things that make me feel more grateful for everything that I have., that we have.   Brazil is not the worst place on earth, but its also not the best place.  This week I had two experiences that were pretty humbling. 

The first experience is that, we were walking down the street, and there was this old guy.  He had to have been in his early 70’s.  He stopped us and said, “I need your help.  I need your help.”  He brought us to his house.  His house was one room.  A one-room shack.  His son lived there, in another house, but, it was another shack.  There was one bathroom for both of them that was in between the houses.  They had nothing.  He was telling us as he was crying.   His wife had just died 40 days ago.   The old man was, like, 70 years old.  He said, “We were married for 30 years.  I can’t stop missing her.”  He kept going on and on and on about how much he missed her and how horrible it was.   And, as he went on and on, his son started crying too.   So, that was pretty sad.  It was really sad.  So, we taught them a little bit about the plan of salvation and everything.  I think it helped.  We are going to go back this week, so that should be good. 

After that, we were in one of our usual neighborhoods at night,  and we saw this girl, a little ten-year-old girl that was in the street just crying.  We didn’t know why.  It was already 9:00 at night, and really dark and everything.  So we talked to try and figure out what was wrong.  And, she was like,  “My dad just left, and I don’t know where he went. “  We asked her, “Where’s your mom?”   She said, “My mom’s in the hospital.”  We asked her, “Is your mom sick?”  She said, “Yeah my mom just had a miscarriage. “  So, it ends up her mom had just had a miscarriage in the hospital,  and her Dad had just gotten stressed out and left the house.   And, she was just sitting outside in front of her house crying because she didn’t know where any one was.  It was really dark.  So after a couple of minutes, the Dad came back.  And, we started talking to him.  And, he was freaking out  Because, he had been a drug trafficker a Bunch of years of his life, but he had stopped.    And, as soon as he stopped, really big difficulties started coming up with him and his family.  And so, he was going around begging everyone for money so he can buy his wife some fruit.   Cause the doctor said,  “you should buy your wife some fruit.”  Right after the surgery she had.  But, he couldn’t even afford it.  So, he asked us for money and all that .  We gave him a little bit of money, I only had like two Ha-I ‘s. Because he had gone around to all his old friends and asked them for money, and they were all like, “I don’t know!” They had all flaked out on him.  So, it was a really sad story.  And he told us, “I am really close to going back to my old ways to find money.  If I wanted to, I could find some drugs, and make some really quick money.”  So, that was pretty sad, but we helped him out.  Then, the next day, we went to the grocery store and bought a bunch of stuff.  Then, we brought it to the hospital for his wife.  They wouldn’t even let us in, but we just asked them to, “deliver the bag of food to this number room.”    So that was a cool experience.

I don’t know why but the last two weeks we have just had a lot of service opportunities come up on the mission.   Its actually been really neat, really cool. 

What else, Oh yeah!  One of my mission dreams has started being fulfilled this week.  Ever since I got my mission call, and I talked to the guy who had already served here,  before him, I had heard there were a lot of places in our mission who had never heard the missionaries.  And so, one of my dreams is to open an area where there were never missionaries before.  So, there’s this guy who moved to our ward.  And, he was a Bishop in Sao Paulo, and he lives in a city called MarumBe.  Its about 40 minutes out of Apucarana.   Apucarana is already a small city, so 40 minutes out of an already small city.  Its got, like, 9,000 people this city.  But, he served a mission, he was a Bishop, he was really excited.  The first week he came to church he already brought people to visit the church.  So, we planned to go out there, and we went out there on Friday, and on Sunday.  But, we went out there on Friday, and we were literally the first missionaries in this dispensation, like ever, to go out there, to go into that city.  It was nuts.  No one knows anything about our church.  Everyone is Catholic, and there is one Catholic church that everyone goes to at 7:00.  So, we showed up there, and now we are starting to open up the area.  And, there’s already some people who went to church with him on Sunday.  He’s really excited, and we did a Family Home Evening with him on Sunday night.  And, so Literally, we were able to open up a brand new area where there’s never been missionaries before.  So, its going to be really cool.  Its just really a fulfilling experience because we are going to start baptizing people, and we’re going to open up a group, and then open up a branch.  We are basically going to open up a branch here.  And, so its going to be really good.  I am really excited.

Things are going really well here.  I bought some really intense Sun Screen.  So, now I’m protecting myself from all the sun.  Yeah, things are going fine.  There’s a transfer in two weeks.  There’s a good chance that I might leave because my companion only has one more transfer.  So, either I leave, or I stay another 6 months in another area.  I would stay six months here if President wanted me to. 

But, I just wanted to leave you all this, and I love you, and I will talk to you next week. 

Bye!