Year One, Letter Five

PICTURES: I am going to have Elder Titus show me what I need to do to make these ancient computers upload pictures.

LETTER STRIKE: Still haven´t got word to know if the strike is over but I am so glad to know my letters finally got through after only 20 days.

VACCINATIONS: I will be getting my 2nd Hep A shot on October 8th. That is the next available date. It was 35 dollars. But yeah that might be kidna sorta important to have...ya know?

GOLF WORLD: Tiger rocks. The end. He told me that he was going to send me half of that 10 mil by the way...in case you didn´t know. He said my support was paramount in his victory. do you want me to forward you that email?

HOME: You guys sound like you have been SO busy!! How long did it take you to get your projects done? is the basement still staying halfway clean now that i am not there to clean it all up?! how are the living situations with lauren and blake? have they attempted to kill one another yet?

QUESTION ON EVERY MISSIONARY´S MIND: Did America invade Iran with 40,000 troops because we found out they had nuclear warheads? Just curious.

ATTEMPTED PORTUGUESE TO BLAKE:

Como vai, mano?! Eu vou tentar te escrever esta carta em Português sem ajuda das professoras. Então, se esta carta está errada ou se eu uso palavras estranhas, eu acho que você tem para desferir. Hoje foi muito legal. Meu distríto fomos ao templo de São Paulo e ele é brilhante. (Oh and Blake, Moroni Barbosa wanted me to give you a huge hug. He is from Passo Fundo (spelling?) and said that you served in his area and that you were one of his favorite and one of the craziest missioanries he knew.)

As you can see, my ´´letter´´ to Blake wasn´t very long. It was definitely a busy week. I translated his letter perfectly, because i can read Portuguese without a problem. However, speaking and writing is apparently harder. Who knew, right? Since it is harder, i never had time to write a full letter.

Tuesday night we had a devotional about the Atonement. It was amazing. Elder Brinton was the speaker and he was great. He asked us to pray and ask for blessings to understand the Atonement more fully and try to understand the love it must have taken to make that sacrifice.

On Wednesday, we had Milestones so Elder Yuma and I gave Lesson 1 about the Restoration in Portuguese to our teacher and also a Brazilian missionary. Then we had Teaching Experience with one of the teachers where we also taught the Restoration. that was interesting. he gave us a lot of help and pointers and it was great.

Friday we had some interesting situations. Specific elders in our district have been having a difficult time and our district has had some trouble with obedience and reverence as you know. (that was why elder yuma and I were assigned to give a lesson on reverence and obedience a couple sundays ago). Anyway so the AP Elder Johnston, his comp Elder Steadman, their DL Elder Jeffrey, and his comp Elder Christiensen had a little ´´sit down´´ with our district. during MDT and comp study time, they had a meeting with our district. put bluntly, they told us that if we desired to do things our way, and not to follow the rules, then go home. That is not to say the spirit wasn´t there. It was quite possibly one of the most spiritual experiences so far hearing them all bear their testimonies to us about what our purpose is here and what it is that we should be desiring to accomplish. We were given goals as companionships to sit down and see what we could improve on. That was hard because Elder Yuma and I are close friends and so we had to be rather blunt to each other on our faults. but basically it was completely fine. we didn´t have a lot that we really needed to change. However, they were still considering breaking up companionships and ours was a definite possibility because they were afraid we were too good of friends and that we weren´t pushing each other to work hard enough. On Monday, we were all told which companionships were getting changed and ours stayed together. But that was making us pretty nervous and i didn´t like the added stress. That night, though, Elder Yuma and I were just talkign after having our companionship ´´intervention´´ and we were discussing our purposes here and basically had our own little testimony meeting to each other. it was so awesome. it was a really spiritual experience for me at least.

Saturday was awesome. We had TRC (Teaching Resource Center) which means that we got to go and teach actual people, not missionaries. Elder Yuma and I taught three 16-year-old kids. It was crazy. I never thought that i would be able to do that in portuguese. good thing they were members though...i think if their opinion on the church depended on the lesson that elder yuma and i gave...they would probably think american missionaries should stay in America. but i still think it went pretty well. especially after only 4 and a half or 5 weeks here...i kinda lost track of time. I honestly don´t know how long I have been here. But we get to go proselyting this Friday!! It is going to be nuts. We are going to be practicing street contacting and all that this week. I can´t wait. it is going to be so crazy. We also had an awesome devotional on Saturday night! It was given by an Elder Van Orman. It was about how we can find people to teach and how we can know they are ready. it was really good.

Sunday was amazing. Fast and testimony meeting was crazy. Elder Yuma and I along with 7 other guys in our district bore our testimonies. 9 out of 12 for our district! It was amazing to hear the testimonies of so many missionaries. no one in the world would ever imagine how spiritually mature a 19-year-old missionary can be until hearing them. Not that i am mature or anything like that...but i will let you guys think that if you want. but it was so amazing. when elder yuma and i bore our testimonies one after the other, i think that was one of the main factors that our AP and DL took into consideration when deciding if we should remain together.

Overall everything is going great. I love it here. despite the constant rain and the feeling of walking around in water. i am learning to love the cold even more. Londrina can apparently get to about - 2 degrees celsius. My roommates are awesome. The one from Mozambique is so cool and speaks english well enough. The one from Londrina has been telling us as much about it as he knows. When the borders were changed, our mission was moved to incldue Iguacua (spelling?) Falls. I think i might devote a P-day to going there. However, it is a mission rule that we can´t play soccer. We went to the São Paulo temple today. It was so amazing. We had to get up at 5:15 but it was so worth it. I got a set of Portuguese scriptures for 36.50 reais...i don't know what that is exactly in dollars. but i am going to get a scripture case for them. i paid with a credit card mom. i hope that isn´t a bad thing.

Elder yuma and i are great, as always. i will work on getting some pictures sent home! i will send you the address to the Londrina mission home next week! because after this week you will probably have to start sending stuff there...

I love you guys! My time is running out! I think I got all the updates i needed. Ummmm i will let you know when i get the package. how is everything going selling the computer/printer/ipod? the printer had a brand new cartridge of ink by the way. just in case you were wondering. did you get all the passwords you needed? anything you need from me?

let me know! i miss you all and i love you all so much. butttttttttt even though i miss everyone i know this is where i am supposed to be. well i think i am going to get an avocado smoothie now. so splendid.

love you all

Elder Ghormley