Year One, Letter Nine

Hey everyone!!

I am glad I still have the ability and the touch to create an enjoyable letter. It is tough to get that emotion into it via email...ya know?

That is great that Troy won. 900K for one tournament? Yeah i would say that is pretty spectacular.

I didn´t see Connor today, meaning I won´t get to see him. That´s rough. I really wanted to see him before i took off. but he gets to enjoy a lot more cereal and real ice cream in provo. so i guess he can enjoy that while he gets the chance. Jackson must be pretty psyched...learning Estonian? are you kidding me? i couldn´t handle the CTM for more than 9 weeks, but he is there so much longer! Good Luck to him. I will have to send a few emails his way when i can get his address.

Yeahhhhh about the pictures. I didn´t really realize that I had that option for red eyes. I will have to set that up. I can´t believe that it got there that fast though. that is awesome. and i didn´t mark delievery confirmation. they just did that themselves. and the color swirls were semi on purpose. i just put my camera on a really high exposure rate and set the lens to stay open for 5 seconds. just night mode. so those were supposed to be there lol. and i guess i will have to actually look at the pictures i send home rather than just send every single one of them home haha. i am gunna get more pictures with my whole district tonight. and one with elder ruiz. oh and there is an irmão severo here who has a pic of blake and elder ameida or almeida? one of blake´s comps. anyway. he flipped when he saw me...i guess GHORMLEY isn´t a very common brazilian name....who woulda known?

Elder Scott´s fireside was great. Just talking about how we can make our missions the best we can and what it is that we need to do to make sure we give ourselves that chance. I did in fact shake his hand. I was a lot taller than him though. That was odd. I pictured all of the apostles looking like President Monson. But he had such a strong testimony. It was amazing to hear him speak. But yeah, his testimony was so strong and it just testified that to me. It was awesome.

That stake conference for you guys actually tied in with a talk i gave on Sunday. I spoke about how we can draw closer to God through the 9 attirbutes of christ and one that i added. it was pretty dang good surprisingly. You see, i prepared a talk every week and never had to give it. I just bore my testimony a couple times on fast sunday. so i was like ok i am not gunna prepare a talk this week because it is just pointless. and go figure, i get called. along with half of my district. so everyone talks about an attribute of Christ and i just went with the idea of the spirit guiding me. so i got up and talked about something that elder eyring said and went off of that. it went very well. but i know that as we follow those attributes, we will be able to forgive others and rid ourselves of the hate that is in our hearts. as we do this, we will hear the spirit so much stronger. President Monson said two things in conference that come to mind now. He said that the Spirit has never, and will never dwell in an environment of contention and hate. And he also said that anger doesn´t solve anything, it builds nothing, but it destroys everything. When i was thinking about that i realized how true it is. whenever i was really mad or annoyed at someone or something, it always coinicides with a time i didn´t have the spirit with me. and that led to rash and stupid decisions. so i know that as we do our best to follow those attributes and follow Christ´s example, we will be so much happier and successful in all we do.

I know that life won´t always be easy, especially here. I just heard that Londrina is one of the harder baptizing missions in Brazil because it is a lot more affluent and people don´t think they need humility so much. But I know that as i follow those attributes and have patience and love, everything works out. I heard a pretty cool quote this week. It said: "The Lord doesn´t require anything you don´t have - He just requires everything you´ve got. Give Him everything you have, and He will give you what you lack." So I know that even as I struggle, if I give Him my all, He will help me to overcome all. So if I get upset or if something bad happens during my mission, I can overcome it.

Thank you so much for all your love and support. I can´t wait to take off and get to Londrina. We leave at 4 AM on Friday morning. We will have a flight from 6:25 till 7:30. We will have all of our meetings and then lunch and then we might be meeting our trainers and teaching later that night. I am so psyched. Terrified. Absolutely scared out of my mind. But SO stoked.

I love you all so much! Next time you hear from me, I will be in Londrina. Pretty tight, huh?

Love you!
Elder Ghormley