Good Morning Mom and Dad, and Joseph and Alayna and Desmond, Abby, Jenny, and everybody…. Grandma and Grandpa.   

I have some announcements that I think are going to save us a little bit of money.   The First Presidency, sent my mission president a letter, I think all the mission presidents a letter saying that, now, missionaries can email whomever they want!  And, so now I can email whomever I want, that’s outside of my mission.  I can’t email anyone inside of my mission.  So, long story short, you can totally stop paying for mission ties.   And, Grandma and Grandpa, you can tell them , you can start sending my emails again, because the prophet said so.  That will be really good, cause I will be able to get their email and stuff.  So, you can just cancel missionties.  Tell them that, and I think they will be happy.   Grandma will be happy.   And, I will be excited to hear from then again.  Also, that means if there is anyone you know, that would like to shoot me an email, you can tell them too! 

Another announcement….. oh yeah, I talked to my mission president this week.   And, I asked him about you guys coming to pick me up.  I triple confirmed it, I was like, “Hey!  My family want me to confirm one more time that they can still come out and pick me up.”  He said, ‘yes they can!  Of course!’  So, I confirmed it, then he was like, ‘So, you should probably tell the new mission president as soon as he gets here.’ Then, as he said that, President Tavares was like, ‘You know what? I’ll tell him.  I am going to call him tonight, and I already talked to him about a couple of things.  So, when I call him tonight, I will tell him that there is you, and maybe a few other missionaries that are planning of parents to come pick them up, and I’ll tell him how he supposed to do it.’  So, its 100% Go time!  In regards to that being confirmed by my mission president.  So that’s some pretty nice, cool, interesting news right?   It will save us a little bit of money with the mission ties thing.  Also, we are good to go on the coming to pick me up thing.

This week was a pretty cool week.  We went to Londrina and had the leaders council.  That was really, really inspiring.  President, he always has this one clip that he uses, that’s a mix of a Joseph B. Wirthlin talk, about leadership, and about union.  Joseph B Wirthlin makes reference to Band of Brothers, so in the clip, it shows the Band of Brothers.  So, that was a pretty cool thing.  But, I learned a lot, in leaders council.  I am learning a lot about faith recently, and everything that it entails.

I read this talk this week, holy crap!  I think all of us should really read this talk, because, mom teaches seminary, Dad’s the YM president, and its called, Learning By Faith.  I don’t know if you call it a devotional or what, but it’s a talk that Elder Bednar gave at the Jordan Institute of Religion.  And, he gave it about learning by faith.  He talks about how there are two essential parts of teaching.  There’s teaching by the spirit, which we all kind of know, and there’s learning by faith.  Which is, the person who is learning has to have the faith that they’re going to learn.  So, he talks about how its also our responsibility as teachers, to try to inspire people to want to learn.  That’s going to have a really big effect on learning.  Its an amazing talk.  I would recommend it to you guys, like today.  So good!

So I went to the leaders council, and that was really cool.  I always get to see my good old friends in the mission.  My companion, elder Leech, my last companion, he is going home today, he ended his mission, so that was kind of sad.  But, a theme we started using in our mission, because we were watching band of brothers, is that we say, “I’m not a hero, but I’m in a band of heros.”  So, basically, our mission is just like Band of Brothers. 

Anyway, so after the leaders council, I basically just traveled.  It was kind of different.  We did a week long division with the assistants , me and my companion.  And, I just traveled around with one of the assistants for the whole week.  His name was elder Petersen.  We are going to room together at Nauvoo House at BYUI because he is the man!  We are totally tight.  It was really good.  We were able to have really good work together.  We didn’t have very many plans, cause we were just travelling around.  But, we had some cool experiences where I knew we were guided by the spirit.  And, that was really pretty cool.  So, yeah, I am really excited for that.  He basically inspired me to have one of the greatest ideas I have ever had.  And, you guys are going to be like, Wow, this idea is really really stupid.  But, his goal, or dream, is to get married at BYUI, then, after 2 years of BYUI, transfer with his wife to BYU Hawaii.  I thought that was hilarious.  And, I’m probably gonna think about it. 

But, let me see what else happened this week.  So theres a missionary in my house who got really really sick on Sunday.  And, he had to go to the hospital.  So I was in the hospital with him all day on Sunday.  I think it was about from 2:30 pm to 11:00 pm.  We were there from 2:30 to 6 or 6:30,  then we went out,  and had dinner a our ward mission leaders house.  Then, when we were about to go home, around 9:00, he had to go back to the hospital, and we stayed there till 11:00.  So, I stayed at the hospital with him, I sent his companion home.   I figured the zone leader should be the one to stay up and everything, so I stayed up with him.  I sent his companion home with my companion to go sleep.  And, it was cool, I was making some contacts in the hospital, giving out some pamphlets.  And, that was actually pretty nifty. 

Oh, yeah, so my ward mission leader, he totally made us a birthday dinner yesterday.  There’s a missionary here who’s birthday is this Wednesday,  April 26, I think.  And, there’s my birthday, May 21,  and there’s another missionary, who’s birthday is May 5.  And, he didn’t know who would be going, because its transfers today,  so he made us all a birthday cake.  I will send a picture.  But, it was really cool, and really nice of his family.  They are the best family ever.  And, they are really excited to meet you guys.  They are REALLY EXCITED to meet you guys.  And, so , they are probably one of the best families I have ever met on my mission.  So, we are definitely going to come out to Presidente Prudenche . 

The clip is now out of space, but I want to tell you that I love you.  And, I hope you have a great week, and I will talk to you next week.

Bye