A Hug (Um abraço)

Good to here BYU is still at it.

Thanks for the package, I got it in between conference sessions on Sat. Normally we wouldn´t have gotten mail that day, but some guy from our stake had to make a trip to Londrina and brought mail back with him, for which everyone was very grateful. I love the new “The Quest” shirt.

Conference weekend was refreshing. Yes, we got to watch all the sessions, including Priesthood that ended at 10pm. And we had investigators in two of the sessions, which was a good blessing. I watched those two sessions in Portuguese as to lend support to the investigators. An interesting experience and I have to confess that I still like it better in English. Sometimes they didn’t do a very good job of turning the English audio all the way down, and we could still hear whoever was talking under the translator pretty well. Still, it was impressive to me to hear some of the speakers do their own translations. (Richard G. Scott's was cool.)

Yeah, there were quite a few Brazilian speakers. The ward seemed happy about that, ha. One of the speakers, Jay E. Jensen, mentioned that “A hug” (Um abraço) was a common thing to say. Almost all Brazilains say it at the end of phone conversations, the guys usually say a hug, and girls will usually say a kiss. (Example: Me: Thanks Elder Silva, bye.Elder Silva: Bye, a hug!)Usually the American Elders adopt the pattern of saying “a kiss” when their talking with any Brazilain Elders, just to be funny.

To tell the truth, I always thought that conference went a lot slower when I was at home, but now it seems that it passes really quickly. Maybe because I´m better at sitting thru a lot a meetings now, or maybe because I´m actually better at recognizing conference for the blessing that it is. It was really good to be able to listen to the Prophet and the apostles give council to us.

One of the talks that I was really grateful for was the one by Elder Hales on marriage. One of our investigators has a boyfriend who is a real meathead (keeps her from going to church sometimes and doesn´t want her to get baptized) and she said she received some good insight on why we teach and put so much emphasis on eternal marriage. She said that she doesn´t want to be a “shoplifter”, so she´s gonna think on it.

Welp, that´s all I got time for.

Until next time.

Luke