Summertime

Yes, I did receive my package at the last Zone Conference. Thanks a lot for the CD player, and that CD. Kolob´s my favorite hymn, so thanks for finding a version of it.

Zone Conference was an interesting experience. I´m used to Zone Conference being kinda huge with a couple of zones, but as there is no Zone out here in Ponta Porã or the neighboring cities, it was just with about 18 missionaries. I actually liked it better because we all got to participate and talk to Pres. Leal, which is kinda rare when you have a huge Zone Conference. Also, I got assigned as interpreter for one of the new Americans. Pres. Leal wanted to make sure that he understood what was going on, which is a change from when I was in my first transfer. I would just sit a smile and nod like I knew what was going on.

Thanks to Mat6t for his very informative letter about sweat glands. I learned much. I´ve finally had the chance to sleep with my sweatpants that I brought with me. Our house is built at just the right angle and has just the right amount of roof over the porch that the sunlight never ever touches any part of our windows or doors. Consequently, it´s always freezing inside our house at night and in the morning, so I get a chance to finally use all the warm clothes that I brought that I thought I´d never use. I like this time of the year.

So Russia closed for missionaries from other countries, huh? Wow, that´s different. I guess Rob gets to be one of the last special for a little bit. BTW, I´d like to send a letter to him. Anybody able to send me his mailing address? I´ve managed to get in contact with Alex Morrise, Dave Ridge and Jake Green (roomie at Heritage) by letter so far, so I wanna see if I can get one to Comrade Magleby.

This past week was a pretty low one number wise. Elder De... was kinda discouraged with it, as I guess it was his worst week since he got here. On Monday, all of our appointments managed to fall, and everybody that we tried to visit was either traveling or visiting their sick mother(two likely excuses…). To cap it off, our best investigators, a family of six, four of which have baptismal dates, didn´t show up to church because apparently there was a party next door and nobody got any sleep Saturday night. It was kinda depressing.

On the up side, we´ve been having success with holding some family nights in members houses. And by success, I mean we´ve held one so far and got an investigator to come. Lessons with members are always good.

Oh yeah, that reminds me of something. We watched a part of the Curitiba Temple dedication celebration at a members house this past week as part of the family night, and I remembered something funny that Pres. Monson did when I was watching it in Bauru. After the opening song-thingy, he went up to the podium with his interpreter. He started off with a joke. “When the singing was going on, I thought that I saw a dove descending from the sky. But then I looked again, and saw that it was just a pigeon.” All the Americans in the room laughed. But when the interpreter repeated the joke in Portuguese, nobody laughed, because unfortunately dove and pigeon are the same word in Portuguese (pomba). So all he said was “I thought I saw a dove, but when I looked again, I saw that it was just a dove.” I thought it was even funnier that the joke didn´t translate. All the Brazilains were wondering what we were laughing at.

Also this week, I taught a lady who wasn´t really responsive the message of the restoration and Joseph Smith, and didn´t want a return visit. but above that she seemed to think that she had heard it before from missionaries from another church. When I asked what church, she responded “It was the JW´s. They teach the same story.” We actually failed to convince her that they don´t teach that but she was convinced and wouldn´t hear any of it, so we just kinda left it. I guess it´s just our job to clear up doctrinal questions about our church, not the others.

Well, ´till next week.

Excelcior!

-Luuuuuuuuuuuke