Brazil is a country of change. In every city you pass you will find things completely different than the other, the accent in the way the people talk, the way people work, the personalities, the layout of the city. When I´m transfered from one area to another I feel like a started a new life. I drop everyone I knew, my companion, the way I worked aside, and start again. Recently I was transfered from the city of Erechim to the city São Leopoldo. It was a little hard to leave the city of Erechim. They had just start to put up decorations for christmas. They were building little santa houses and putting up lights on the light poles, and had a ginormous, fat santa statue at the entrance to the city that´s designed for people to sit on and take pictures if they want. When I learned that I would be leaving I called the couple that we had recently baptized 1 week before. They insisted on giving me a ride to the bus station. Normally we walk about 25 minutes to get to the station. At the station they gave me a present a note. I´m excited to be able to see them sealed in the temple one year from now. But here in São Leopoldo it´s pretty nice. It´s a little poorer than Erechim and richer than my first area Canoas. People here in São Leopoldo are suprised that I passed in Canoas, because they say it´s really dangerous there. O well, good thing I made it out alive. I have a new companion whose name is Elder J. Sanchez. He´s from Peru. He´s been on a mission for one year. He says he´ll be going to BYU in Provo, Utah after the mission! That´s means we´ll see each other quite a bit after the mission! It makes us a little home sick talking about BYU. It´ll be great.
During the past few weeks the time went by really fast and many miracles have happened. We are teaching a lot. We´re teaching about 40 lessons every week. The first week we worked here, we received 37 new investigators. It´s great to preach the gospel where lots of people are wanting to here it. On one of the first days I arrived here we went to visit a lady who´s a member of the church, but has a husband who hasn´t been baptized yet. This lady also has lots of cousins that aren´t baptized yet, so we visited these cousins together with the lady who´s a member. One of these cousins is a lady about 22 years old and she used to be very addicted to drugs, i think pot, i don´t know, it´s all porcaria. She told us that she had just a few days ago stopped using drugs and has no more desire to use them. But since she stopped she hasn´t been able to sleep well and has many evil thoughts continuously passing in her mind. She had heard about us the missionaries and knew that we would be able to give her a blessing. So after we had left a message with them she asked that we could give her a blessing. My companion asked that I could give the blessing. It was a wonderful experience. I know that the priesthood is real. The powers of God and greater than anything in the world. The room where we gave the blessing was filled with the spirit, and this lady who´s been suffering heard what she needed to hear, and was cured. We visited her the next day. She had slept perfectly the night before and no longer had any bad thoughts passing in her mind. We taught her about the church of jesus christ and she wants to baptized with the authority of the priesthood. We then started teaching her sisters and learned that her parents are members but less active. All of her 3 sisters want to be baptized. This lady and 1 of her sisters are preparing to be baptized this Sunday.
I am grateful to be here in São Leopold, Brazil. It´s over 90 degrees in the middle of dezember, there´s tons of crazy people here, the city is ugly, portuguese is hard, it´s rainy and sunny on the same day, the dogs here are annoying, all of the food here is different, but in the end it is doesn´t matter because I´m doing the lord´s work. Love is the motivation. I love helping people to change their lives for the better following Jesus Christ. God put me to work here so I´ll go. I´ll do what it takes. I´ll work until I drop.
