Week 13 in Volta Redonda

Hey Everybody, how´s everything going?


Thanks for all of the emails, they were really great! Sounds like you all had a great Fourth of July yesterday; I forgot that it was the Fourth until today haha. I don´t remember the American holidays very well anymore. Sorry this email is a little later than the others; the place where we usually go to email was having problems with the internet....same with the other one.....but we finally found one! haha today was good; we had to go and clean the stake center; the garden area and all of the grass and stuff. I can´t seem to get away from doing landscaping, even on the mission. What is this? Tell Jeff that I´m still practicing here on the mission and preparing to come back to work haha.

Well, I got a new companion, you were right, good guess. I´m still here in Usina though, very happy about that. I have my first Brasilian companion finally haha he is Awesome!! He has an American name though haha Elder Young; his real name is Elder Oliveira but someone already had his name when he got here, so they had to use his middle name, which is Young from  Brigham Young haha. He´s hilarious! I finally have a companion who looks like he has a beard 24/7 like me; we both look like 30 year old missionaries walking around the streets haha. He freaked out when he saw our house for the first time, I just laughed. I love when we introduce the new missionaries to our house, it´s always great. We have so many awesome missionaries in our Zone. Elder Taffarel, Elder Mendonça; they are hilarious!! I always know when they get to Zone meeting because I always hear, ``MAC!!!`` haha it´s awesome! My new nickname is Elder Mac Feliz!! It´s pretty awesome, it´s the slogan for McDonald´s here, fits pretty well for me, huh? I think I´m going to make a t-shirt or something that says Elder Mac Feliz with the McDonald´s sign on it, or you could make it for me? We were playing some soccer again today, that was really fun. I´m pretty terrible, it´s been a long time since I´ve run or done anything like that haha.

This last week was pretty crazy; there were two Brasil games and during the games, the city just goes nuts!! We are inside studying, and when they make a goal, you just hear the whole city start screaming, horns blowing, and fireworks going off everywhere!! It´s insane, but way sweet! All of those illegal fireworks that are banned from Utah are all here haha sounds like a bunch of bombs going off!  It was a really awesome experience to be here during the World Cup though, the streets are decorated with all kinds of awesome paintings on the walls and banners everywhere, it´s so sweet! I can´t take pictures though, unfortunately. I don´t dare return to Rio for the next World Cup that will be here; it is going to be insane!!!!! I´ll just play it safe and watch it on TV haha. I value my life too much.

Nothing much really new here, the Ward still keeps getting better and we are getting a lot of help from the members now; a lot more references and a lot more people who want to leave on divisions with us and have family nights with us and investigators! One member, Ozair, is so awesome! I love that guy! He helps us out so much and we go over to his house a lot. We are trying to have a family night with him and I´m really excited! We also found a member who wants to help us as well, Vanessa, and she brought us to her neighbors house and we taught with her there. The Spirit was really powerful when she bore her testimony about the Book of Mormon and told us about her conversion story, so cool. Everything is getting better here, I love it!!!! We have another activity this week as well so that should be awesome!! Endrigo is going to the Campinas Temple this weekend and I told him to bring me back a new Bible because my old one got messed up a little bit. Elder Young also found a snaky old woman who likes him and I always laugh when we go over there; he hasn´t even been here for a week yet and already he has a snake, what is this? I feel like I am growing a lot more though for sure, I feel like the Senior companion because I have to show Elder Young where everything is and introduce him to all of the members, it is really good. I get the responsibility without getting burned by the Zone leaders haha. I am learning so much everyday and growing so much as well. I can tell that I´m already a completely different person and I still have a ways to go on the mission, so this will be cool to see how much I change for the better.

Well, I hope that you guys have an awesome week this week! Sounds like you had a lot of fun watching those movies, they were pretty awesome! I don´t remember them completely, but I remember a little bit of them. I heard Toy Story 3 was really, really good. Viviane said that she cried during it as well haha. Um dia eu vou assistir! I will talk to you all next week. Love you all!

Love, Elder McDonald