Hello! Family, everybody!   

Today is the 20^th of May, 2013, and this is my voice recording for this week.  This week was really awesome!  There were some things that happened this week, that were sort of my dream for the entire mission, one of my dreams for the whole mission was completed this week.  I guess I’ll go over that a little bit.   So in our group that we have, here in Presidenche Epitasao, that other city, that’s kindof on the border of our mission, on the border of that giant river, Parana River, we had a double wedding marked for this last Saturday.  What we did, is, we asked President Tavarez if he could do the wedding.  Anyone could have done the wedding, our Branch president, our district president, but, we asked president, and he’s like, ‘yeah!  I’ll do it!”   So, the plan was for the four people to get married, and then get baptized, president was also going to baptize them with us.  But, what ended up happening, is that two of the four didn’t pass the interview because of some commandments that they still needed to follow.  So, two got baptized on Saturday, and two are going to get baptized on Tuesday.  It was a really, really nice wedding on Saturday, it was really well put together.  And, it was really cool to see the message that President Tavarez gave; it was like a wedding with a mormon swing on it.  I thought that was kind of interesting.  And, I baptized in a river!  Which is probably one of the coolest things I have ever done in the mission…. Up until this point.  They took a lot of photos, I gave my camera to this girl that was there watching the baptism.  I was like, ‘hey can you take photos?’  She was there watching the baptism.  I was like, ‘take a hundred!’.  Just go for it!  I will send some to you guys, its really cool.  I baptized in the Parana river.  It’s a really, really big river.  You will see in the picture.  Its not a small brook or anything like that.  But, it was really nice, a really nice experience.  And, it’s a dream I have had since the MTC.  Just because we talked about it in the MTC, and I always wanted to do it.  Also, its been a while since I have been in a river, or any body of water.  That’s also kind of cool. 

So, I am still in a Trio.  This is the last week of transfers that’s starting right now.  So, we will see what happens.  I could see me and my companion staying together a third transfer, like in Maringa.  He only has one transfer left, and I have two left, so I can see him finishing here with me, and me finishing here as well.  I feel like that’s going to be the case, because whenever President Tavarez was with us on Saturday, he asked the third elder, Elder Harf (?), he asked him, “What has Elder Hoskin and Elder Mendez taught you since you have been in the trio?”  He said, “oh, they have really good union and stuff, unity when they are teaching and stuff like that.”  So, he might just keep us together.   Another cool part about Saturday, is that we got to spend the entire day with President Tavarez.   He came and picked us up at our house at 7:00 in the morning.  I go through the whole day with you guys.  At 7:00 in the morning, he came to our house and picked us up.   Then, we drove with him in his car to Epitasao, which is 2 ½ hours in a bus, but in his car it was 50 minutes.  So I really think its going to be a lot easier for us to travel around when we have the car with you guys, anyways… So, we got there around 8:00.  So the wedding in the paper, the wedding in the….. I don’t know how to say it, the wedding that wasn’t with the church, but with the law, that was at 9:00.  And then, 9:30 for the two couples.  So we went there.  And, that was nice, that was normal.  And then right afterwards we went to the, we went to…   There are two people, there’s Christina and Faheta, and they are a couple in that city.  And, they helped us out the most, and they have a lake-side cabin right outside the city.  So right after the wedding, the marriage in the law, we all went out to that cabin.  And, he has a pool, and they were going to get baptized in the pool, but they wanted to get baptized in the river.  And I kind of wanted to baptize in the river.  So there’s a place to walk out, and it ended up being perfect.  So, 11:00 in the morning was when the baptism happened, then after that, we ate lunch with president, and president was there for the baptism as well.  Then, we spent the entire afternoon teaching people in the city with President.  We took some references, we asked some of the members who were there to tell us people to go pass by.  And, we just went, and taught with President Tavarez the entire day.  That was really cool.  We have a lot to learn from him.  So, at 7:00 was when the wedding started.  And, there was a lot of people at the wedding, which is really good as well.  Its always kind of sad when you plan for 80 people and 20 show up, but we planned for 80 people and 80 people showed up, so that was really good.  So President gave the message at the wedding.  And then, we kind of just ate a little bit.  Then, we left in president’s car, and by that time it was  already 9:30.  So, we got in President’s car and we came back to Prudenche.  So, we got home at 10:30.  So, we just went upstairs and went to bed, and just woke up already at 6:00, and went and go investigators (yawn).  We went and got investigators.  So it was probably one of the bast days, one of the highlights of the mission, just because I got to baptize in the river, and be with president.  And, other than that, the week was pretty normal, to tell you the truth.  We just worked and everything. 

But, I am really excited for t his next week, it should be really good.  Our zone is doing really well.  I won’t say how many people, just because its stupid to say how many people, but, this last week, our zone baptized a third of the baptisms that the mission had.  So we are actually doing really well.  And, everyone is real excited.  We we are going to keep going with this.  I love you guys,  I hope you have a great week.  I hope this thing works, and I can put it in the email, and I will talk to you guys later. Bye!