Week 11 in Volta Redonda

Hey Everybody!!

Happy Father´s Day Dad and Grandpa!!!!!!! Hope that you all are having a great day and great week!!! I almost forgot about Father´s day, because Father´s day here isn´t until September. Sounds like you guys are all going to have fun this week in Disneyland! What is this? Couldn´t wait up for me? Haha. It´s all good, as long as we go when we get back too.

This week was pretty awesome as well; didn´t have any midnight baptisms again, but it was still really good. That family is so elect and so awesome, I love going over there and talking to them. Luciane was telling us about her feelings from the baptism and it was awesome! The water was really cold and she was shivering, but she told us that as she went down and came out of the water, she had a warm feeling take over her body, and then she got cold again. But it was so awesome to hear that, man!!! We told her that it was the Spirit that she felt; that´s something that you really only hear from the stories for sure, it was so awesome! Also, one of her sons, Mateus, had a fear of drowning, but after he was baptized, he didn´t have a fear anymore! It was so cool to hear about these awesome experiences and to actually be living them now! I never would have thought that these kinds of miracles would actually happen to me, but now I have a strong testimony that The Lord is a Lord of Miracles, and that they haven´t ceased in our days.

We also had another awesome thing happen this week. We were at a Ward activity on Wednesday and all of the sudden we got a phone call from the Zone Leaders and Elder Souza told us to go into a quiet room and put it on speaker phone so that we could both hear it. At first, I thought we were going to be in trouble or something, then he said that he was going to say this part in English for us, and neither of us had an idea what was going on. So all of the sudden he just says, in his Português-English accent, our...mission.....is.....the....number.....1....in......Brasil.... haha Elder Glade and I were just freaking out, it was so sweet!! Everything just kept getting better and better!!! The Lord is blessing us so much!!! Elder Rasband was here the week before I got in the field and after he left, he sent back a letter and said that he wishes that he could clone our mission and put it in all the other missions in the world; that was a huge compliment!! Everyday that I am out here, I just think of how immensly blessed I am to be a part of this awesome mission with so many miracles and amazing opportunities that we are having!!

I can´t believe that it is almost the end of this transfer already!! We already have zone conference again this Thursday!! HOW?! It´s ridiculous! Time just keeps getting faster and faster! We are going to have an area authority at our zone conference so I am really excited about that!! We had a stake conference broadcast a couple weeks ago with Elder Christofferson, and I had no idea that he spoke Português, so that was really sweet. He said in his talk that he would be visiting our mission later this year; they have had a lot of General Authorities here lately. Elder Scott, Elder Nelson, Elder Rasband, it´s been really awesome! I didn´t get to hear any of them though!! What is this?! Still got time though.

I´m getting nervous that I´m going to be transferred, I am not ready to leave yet. I don´t want to leave my ward and all of these new recent converts that we have met and baptized. I am going to miss them all so much when I have to leave. Just another thing that has to happen on the mission, but it´s tough. I´ve made so many awesome friends with the members and the people here. It will be sad when I have to leave.

Well, everything is still going great though. Having the time of my life here. We were in the grocery store the other day and they were playing a bunch of Supertramp, it was sweet. I also found out that Irmão Felipe in the bishopric has the same birthday as me! That was way sweet! He´s one of the coolest people I´ve met here; him and his wife are awesome! He just got back from his mission not too long ago, just a few years is all. Well, I hope that you all have a fun time at Disneyland, send me some pictures and stuff alright? Love you all!

Love,

Elder McDonald