A great companion!

The best part of the week was when our recent convert baptized his little girl.

 June 5, 2014

     Transfer week!  It was a super crazy one for me.  There were 2/3 of the mission at the transfer meeting and in my zone half of the missionaries left.  The influx of missionaries to my zone brought a definite international mix.  We now have 8 North Americans, 7 Argentinians, 4 Brazilians, and 1 Peruvian. It is going to be exciting to see how it will work out with all those Argentinians here during the world cup.  They are perceived as the arch rivals of Brazil and there are some pretty strong negative feelings that work both ways!  But I am convinced that our zone is going to be awesome this transfer.  Elder Gair and Elder Bramwell (our zone leaders) are chalk-full of great ideas for our zone.  One of their ideas is that everyone in the zone is going to pray specifically for one companionship for the entire week.  This week our prayers are to be focused on Elder Lemos and Elder Colvin…ughh okay.  So the zone will be praying specifically for miracles to happen for me and my companion. That will be cool to see how that turns out.   

     Today we had a really unusually spiritual lesson with K, who is a woman about our age.  She told us that she enjoyed our visit and then she prayed for the first time in 6 years.  In her prayer she said that she was sorry for the things that she has been doing that are wrong and thanked God for the things that she didn’t feel hat she deserved.  After her prayer she told us that she felt the love that God has for her and she said that she wants to go to church.

     Ev. continues to progress since his baptism.  He is reading The Book of Mormon and really savoring the details of the scriptures.  Think, seminary teacher details and that is how he is reading.  It's kind of funny because he told us that before he started reading that he was skeptical because he has always been taught that there is only the Bible which is the word of God.  But he started reading the Book of Mormon and two days later he bore his testimony that he knew that it was the word of God.  He is an awesome person!

     I didn't write between the two.... I've been trying to find more time to write, but it's really hard :( Journals are a pain in the butt. i don't know how you had each of us keep one until we were about 10. I actually really like writing in my journal, it's even fun, but finding the time to write is the hardest part! 

June 8, 2014

Elder Lemos

     This was a super good day.  I am really liking my new companion.  We teach well together and think basically the same thing during the lessons.  Seriously, sometimes I fell like I should say something and he goes ahead and testifies or teaches about the exact same thing that I was thinking.  He likes to run, so I will finally have a companion who helps me stay in shape.  He likes to play soccer (a lot), videogames, and manga (it’s pretty popular down here.) He is a hard worker and we have no problems meeting our goals. One thing that is different about Elder Lemos is that he likes to get up earlier than we are supposed to (very unusual from my experience).  I actually like getting up early too, but today I was like – NO WAY!  But since he was up, I ended up getting up at 6:20.  I don’t need an alarm to get me up anymore, I just wake up automatically. We left the house early to go and see if we could encourage investigators to go to church. Not a single person went!  Luckily the members were able to bring 3 investigators to church so it wasn’t too bad.

     The best part of the day was that Ev. was able to baptize his daughter and it was the coolest thing.  The pictures are adorable  Afterwards, we taught them about family prayer and how it can help us. It was a really good lesson.  Pretty soon Ev. mom will be going to church as well.  She was closed off at first, but since she has seen the change in her son, she is more open to our messages and she is reading the Book of Mormon.   

     With the change in the zone/district, I don’t have to look after 8 sisters anymore.  I now have only 4 sisters and 2 of them are new to the field this week.  I need to spend some time talking with the new sisters and learning more about them so that I can help them.

     I have been sick with a hacking cough for over a week now. I am lucky because it doesn’t stop me from working, but it is quite pronounced.  I think that I will ask for a blessing tomorrow.  I am looking forward to the work next week…it’ll be another good one!

    (Note from the transcriptionist: the following sentences were included unedited to demonstrate the deterioration of Elder Colvin's  English skills.)  But hey, the sisters of my old district (I don't have 8 anymore, only 4) told me how I can wear watches with metal on the back!!! Use moleskin!!!! It's genius!!! Until now it's working like a charm, and I don't get blisters anyways so I have a tone of moleskin that I won't be using on my feet. Cool, huh?