Hello family!

Well this week i will not be able to have a voice recording, but this week is an exception, so its all good. Anyways, that means that i am going to chug it out on this email thing!

Mom, thank you for getting all my byu stuff cleared up for this next semester! the next hurdle is where i am going to live, eeesh. my dream, per se, is to live in nauvoo house, which is a good apartment where alot of missionaries from my mission slash friends from before the mission will be living. it is not the most expensive apartment, nor the cheapest, so just see if it will be feasible, im not even sure if its time for that yet! i remember that in the beginning of my mission it was hard to feel the spirit while teaching, because i was concentrating on speaking the language so much. it happens, i guess, just the more you do it the more apt you´ll be, until it comes. i was happy to hear that jenny is getting into volleyball! just tell her to keep fueling these good interests. also, thats great that you and dad got to go on a date! even skiing, haha. i remember your story of one of your first dates, with you guys skiing and mom not having the best time...

dad, so far so good on that whole sister situation, the bonus is that im not her district leader anymore (my 2nd transfer in maringá (2nd of 4), i was a zone leader as well as the district leader for that district, oh yeah), and they live in another city. ill lay it out so you can understand. in my zone there are 16 missionaries, 12 in apucarana the city, and then theres one other branch in a city half an hour away called arapongas. the sisters opened up arapongas, so theyre not even in the same city. also, beyond everything else, im just going along doing my work, and so thats whats keeping it all under wraps. the lord certainly has given you some calls to fulfill with home teaching and the young mens president. are you a stake auditor? here in brazil they have stake auditors. also, im glad to hear that home teaching is happening somewhere in the world! one of the hardest things to get a ward slash branch to do here is home teaching. the devils are tearing it up! david clarkson is as well. are there any players on the devils who are new and doing well? or anything like that?


so onto the other stuff, my new companion is named Elder Leete. He is from Portland, Oregon, and this is his second to last transfer on the mission, which means that 95 percent most likely i will leave this area next transfer. on a quick side note, this transfer is only five weeks long, so this is the start of the 2nd of 5 weeks only. anyways, he is really good, we are working alot and finding new people, so so far so good! we have a couple of "married" couples that are progressing to get married slash baptized. here in brazil, the biggest barrier per se of baptism is that no one is married legally. woo!

anyways, so i am going to londrina this week for the next leader´s council. i love the leaders councils, and it should be a good one as always. i will be traveling today, and coming back on wednesday.

so! i have been reading the book of mormon for the first time in english in a while, and it is turning out to be a wonderful experience. i really love chapters 2-5 of mosiah, they are some of my favorites without a doubt. this morning i read how the people were changed because of the spirit that testified to them what he said was true, and how they had to have faith and open their harts to recieve that witness, and that is something we can easily apply. whenever someone speaks, especially general authorities, we need to have the faith that what they are saying is the will of the Lord, and then opening our hearts like that lets the spirit testify of it, and before you know it we have had just a little more of that change of heart. good stuff!

here has been pretty cold for me the last week, something very bittersweet. the entire week it was really cold (60´s) and rained, which was a nice break from the brazil heat and everything, also its the middle of summer here so this cold is basically a miracle! but! it rained a ton on sunday morning, and this was the bad thing, because people were lazier to come out to church. this is another brazil/south american specific note. when people say they will go to church, you have to wake up early and pass by everyones house to wake them up, or they simply wont! about 90 percent of the time, no kidding. every sunday on my mission has been leaving the house at seven, and waking everyone up. so when it rains, people get alot lazier, and its harder to get them to come! so that was sort of a downer and all...

so things overall are going really well, i am seeing more of the "constand companionship" in the phrase "constant companionship of the holy ghost" than i ever have before in my entire life, and that is really just leaving me with good feelings. i cant help but miss you guys, miss my beloved county, but in 6 months i will be back, and that has to suffice. its funny that the higher you raise the bar on your standard of living the commandments, the higher the bar lucifer goes with the temptations. for example. someone who is completely addicted to drugs, and is ok with it, may not necessarily recognize or even feel much of the tempation beyond the proper dependancy. but someone who is trying to get out of that, satan goes after. its because when youre trying to become better, he is losing any grip on you, and does whatever he can to get that grip and bring you back to where he is!

no matter how pure you manage to be, or how exactly you follow the rules and commandments on the mission, satan will always TRY (keyword, try) to use the fact of you being far away from your family as something to get you down. but, when we just put something in eternal perspective, its easier to feel better. we´re sealed for eternity! so even though we´ll still have lots and lots of years after the mission to be around eachother, we will also have that for eternity, so 2 years is just so small that its worth it to work in the lords vineyard.

one thing that really i find true, is that the main goal of satan is to make us forget who we are. when we forget our divine heratige, or how were part of the plan, thats when we are suseptible to sin. imagine, if someone who is having problems with, lets use any example, pornography, imagine if each time he has the temptation, he just sits and thinks and remembers who he is? he remembers that he is a child of god, and that he is here on this earth to earn all the father has, and how he chooses the right here can do all of that, ect, ect. if he just remembers who he is, he will lose that tempation! and then he´d change a little, each time he  came out on top, until he doesnt have the desire to do it anymore. if we didnt like it, it wouldnt be temptation! and so if our hearts are changed to the will of the lord, we wont even have the temptation, we´ll look on sin with abhorrence, and we will be perfected in christ. just my train of thought! when i dont have anything else to say about the week, what better than just talk about gospel topics, haha.

well, i hope you guys have a great week! i love you all, and i cant wait to hear more next week about how youre all doing. your emails really mean a ton to me, and im very grateful for them. you are the only connection that i have outside of the mission! so i get literally everything that is going on outside of brazil londrina mission from you. until next time!

Elder Hoskin