Wednesday, October 19, 2011

I am very excited for you, a great mission leader and a bishop it makes all of the difference. If you can always have investigators with members, which is essential for lasting conversion which the Beacon Hill ward does wonderfully. I guess you can talk about me, but really talk about the joy and the blessing to help people really change their lives and follow Christ by serving a mission.

I am in São Manuel which is pretty small only us two in a city of 50,000 more or less. São Manuel only has a small branch of about 40 active, but things here aren't the greatest, a branch that hasn't grown in 20 year, we have 300 people baptized here in this city but all have left the church for one reason or another, but they didn't really have a firm testimony and the members weren’t in the conversion process. The members really make all of the difference when a ward or branch is unified and willing to work the lord blesses the ward, but when there is no unity people leave. Yes I gave a talk a few weeks ago which went well everyone understood and the spirit was there.

Here in Brazil there was no winter only hot. Some times during the “winter” it got chilly during the night but not too bad. Here is the state of São Paulo it is dry the same thing in Spokane, but this past week it only rained for 7 day it only rained and got pretty humid.

My Companion is wonderful I am learning everything I need to really know to be a good missionary and senior companion, I have learned more things from Elder Coelho than my trainer, he is hard and lets me know when I do things wrong but I learn every time and do better.

We marked two wedding these past two weeks, and what a miracle it has been, we will see 4 people enter the water of baptism in just a short few weeks and I will let you know how it went.

I will find out about Skype and telephone, I heard we can use Skype but everything is closed on Christmas and it is on Sunday and we can't buy the internet time like usual, I will tell you when I find out.

Also I sent a DVD of all of my pictures on Monday and it should arrive in a week or so, let me know when you get it, it has 200 pictures with some video, I hope you will like it.

Tchau Tchau

Elder Sands