Hey mom and Dad:

This is your son Zach, woot! Elder Hoskin.  This is the sound clip from last week.  Tell you what happened last week.  ‘Cause there was a virus on my voice recorder, because of the Lan Houses here.  They had to delet everything to clean out the virus, so I am doing another sound clip.  So, it should all be good now. 

Things are going pretty well here in Prudench Prudench.  Theres a city called Presidente Epitachio, its about three hours away from our city.  We have a group there.  You know, Ward, branch, group.  We have a group of about 25 people.  And, its really, really cool.  It’s a city right on the border of the state of Sao Paulo, and the state of Mattau Grosso, which is another mission.  And, its right on the shore of the Parana River.   That is a really big river that divides the two states.  We went up there last week.  And, President gave us permission to sleep at a members house, which is also kind of weird.   That was weird that happened.   We slept there, and we did some visits.  And, its really cool, it’s a really nice place.  Its about 40,000 people.  There is one building, that’s a relatively tall building.  All the other buildings are one or two stories.  Its really neat, its right next to the river.   And, theres a lot of really great people there.  So, we’ve gone to that area to start helping people but it’s kind of far away and it uses a lot of traveling money.  I’ve never taken the bus so much in my life/mission than I have here in this city.   We take the inner city but every day just to get to our area.  And then, on top of that, we have to take the bus to go to lots of other areas that are like three hours away.  But, its all worth it because there are some really good people up there.

Last week we had leader’s council, which was really good, because I got to see my good friend Elder Hutchings again.  But the coolest part about last week was that city we were opening up.  I’m really excited to start working there.

Things are going really well.  I started reading some of the Lectures on Faith.  I’m not sure if mom or dad has heard of them or read them before.   Someone gave me the Lectures on Faith along with an institute curriculum so with every lecture I have bunch of talks and stuff to read so its actually really neat.

So things here are going really well and we are working hard.  The branch President here looks exactly like dad.  I’m serious.  He’s got the hair, or lack thereof, he kind of has a similar face, and he works in a jail.  I know dad used to work in a juvenile center.  Also, the branch president hates garlic and dad hates onions.  So its coming together that the branch president is a Brazilian version of dad.  It’s pretty cool.  I’ll take a picture of him and I’ll send it to you.  I told him I would do the same thing with a picture of dad.

I’m starting to get worried/nervous/excited for the whole after mission thing but I try not to think about it too much.  When I think about coming home, I kind of get sad because 1) the mission will be over and 2) I won’t be coming home how I thought I would be coming home.

I got the package.  Thank you very much mom and dad for the Easter package.  The water bottle works great.  I use it every day.  I also really enjoy the little Preach My Gospel you sent me.  Also, the shirts are always nice.  I have a lot of white V neck shirts and that’s how I like it.  Also, thank you for the candy.  Candy is always way good.

I’m sorry I’m kind of tired in this sound clip.  We just got back from a four hour bus ride and so I’m kind of spaced out but I’m going to make the other sound clip now for this week.  Actually, I have more to say.  In my zone there are 2 main cities, President’s Prudente and Tupa.  We went to Tupa on Thursday.  We left about 6:30 in the morning and got there about 10:30 and then, on Wednesday (?) we took the bus back to President’s Prudente and then, that afternoon we took another three hour bus ride to President’s Epitachio so we have been traveling alot.

I met a really cool elder named Elder Bateman.  His family owns a giant dairy farm in Utah called Bateman Farms.  I saw a bunch of pictures and its huge.  I don’t know if Grandpa and Grandma know them?  It’s right on the edge of lake Utah.  But he’s really cool.  I was very interested that Grandma and Grandpa have a cabin in Island Park. 

So things are going really well.  I’m really tired.  I’m learning a lot in regards to the gospel and growing my testimony.  Yesterday was the 27^th of March which was exactly 20 months which I have been on my mission which is a lot of time. 

But, I love you guys.  I want you to know that you guys are always in my prayers.  I’m grateful for everything you guys do for me and I’m doing as much as I can for the last 6 months of my mission.  I’m doing well.  The closer to the end I get, the more feeling of satisfaction I get.  I know there is always more I can do everyday but it I keep trying to do more and more, I know I will be really satisfied with my mission. 

I love you guys and I’ll talk to you later.