Week 54

Monday, December 24, 2019

This week was crazy and busy as ever but it’s always like this around Christmas. But we were able to baptize two youth; one on Friday and the other on Saturday. The First girl baptized was Ana Livia who has 13 years and has been going to church for 3 years. But her family is a little difficult and missionaries have been waiting forever for her to leave her catholic grandparents and be baptized. The only thing we did was help her see the importance of first following our heavenly family and then earthly family. Luckily for me, my parents want the same things for me as my heavenly parents... But the branch as very excited and put together a big reception. I don’t have very many photos because they had a really nice camera there taking photos and he said he would send them to me... But overall it was a super great experience. She was traveling to the capital but we told her we would even buy another ticket for her. I also played the piano and wrote a special arrangement of I like to look for rainbows. (I don’t remember if that’s what it’s called in English...) But it was fun. 

The other baptism was a youth of 14 years named Lucas. He is the brother of Sara who I baptized last Saturday and you already saw the pics. He is really excited and has really shown interest in serving a mission. In English he always says, No I’m a Jesus boy. His Brazilian accent is too much. But we made cookies and cake and had a bunch of the young men come and support him which was really cool to see. 

 We also had another Zone conference which was a special Christmas edition with a face to face question and answer session with our president and his wife. Sister Mazzagardi is by far one of the greatest examples of faith and obedience that I’ve ever seen. She developed cancer while pregnant with twins. Both died after being born and they said she would also die. But she fought and continued. They cut out a part of her lounge and said she’d never eat normal or talk again. She lost her hair and suffered a lot. But here she is today leading a mission that was dying. 

Yesterday we had a pday with the sisters in another city and stayed in the 103 degree weather for hours. This is the first time in my mission that I got sun-burned and it still hurts... But it was worth it to play. Lots of excitement and stress but now things are calming down and we are getting back to work. I love you all tons and hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas! Next week I will send pictures if internet allows it... Love you all!!!!!!

We got to talk to Josh on Christmas day.  It was sooooo awesome!!!

Shane was on a conference call and they kept talking to each other in Portuguese!