Week 3 in Volta Redonda

Hey Family!


How is it May already? Things here are still going really great; I have some good stories that I want to tell you.

I´ll start from the most recent which was yesterday. It was our Bishop´s birthday so we went over there after church and had another Churrasco, which was heavenly! Oh man! It was really good to talk with the members there more. The Bishop and his wife are the coolest! I love going over there and visiting them. Also, Marcio and his wife Andrea and Rogério and Viviani are really awesome as well. All of my favorite members of our ward were there yesterday, so that was sweet. We had some really awesome lessons with new investigators as well last night. Elder Nelson was here in Rio this last weekend; He was talking to our President and the Church here about building a Temple in Rio :) :) So cool, I hope I am still here when they announce it. Our bishop went to the meeting with him and said that it was really awesome, I was really jealous. Last night was really good for us though, and really funny too. We met some really awesome members this last week. One of them was baptized by Elder Rezende and she was showing us pictures from her baptism when we were at her house. She was really sad when he got transferred and hasn´t been to church since, but we told her that Elder Rezende would be sad to hear that she stopped going to church, and on Sunday she was there again! It was awesome! It was really cool to see her come back to church again.

I´m trying to think of what else happened. I always forget what to type when I get here, I forget everything. Oh yeah, we were in the sister´s area on Saturday because we had to give a blessing to a guy in the hospital there; that was really cool. He was really grateful for us and it was a really awesome experience. We also stayed in their area and tried to firm up some people to go to church on Sunday, and we met some interesting people. It was really funny, because we met this one guy who we asked to say the prayer for us, and he ended up just saying the prayer in his head, so we just sat there with our eyes closed, a little confused about what was going on. Haha it was funny. Then, we went to this ice cream place later, and they gave me the tiniest spoon to try and eat this big cup of ice cream. Like one of those little sample spoons you know? I´m like, is this a joke? What is this? I get about half way done with it, and the dang handle on the little spoon snaps. So then I´m left with just the spoon, scoop part trying to eat this. And Elder Glade looks at me and starts laughing and then he asks the guy, "Can we get a REAL spoon over here." It was classic. Good times. We had a Zone Conference this week in Barra Mansa as well. That was really good. On the way back, we took the wrong bus so it took us a little while to find our way back to our area, but we made it. Good old mission.

We are still working hard, trying to get a baptism for this week. The work here is getting more organized with working with the members and stuff. We had an activity this last week that turned out pretty hilarious and I think that everyone had fun. Everyone was just laughing hysterically so that´s a good sign, right? We did a missionary race where we had everyone eat something, do exercises, sweep up the floor, tie a tie, and make a contact with someone. It was pretty great but pretty wild as you can imagine. I think that the members really enjoyed it though. Good stuff. Well, don´t know what else I need to tell you. Just keep money in my account and that should be good. I'll let you know if I need stuff. Also, when you send packages, put a couple of pictures of Jesus on it, because then people don´t steal stuff from them. Things are still going really great here and I hope they are still going good for all of you too. Have a good week and I will talk to you next week.

Love, Elder McDonald