13 April 2011

Hey Everyone,

Thanks for the emails, they were great. Mom, that email was pretty funny; sounds like you had a lot of fun on Friday, huh? That´s awesome. I got to watch all of the sessions except the first session on Sunday because we were out trying to get all of our investigators to church and we were all in Elder Fernandes area first rounding up everyone and then they went to my area to get our baptism, but she wasn´t home so they went to her aunt´s house where she was sleeping and her aunt refused to wake her up, so that was pretty lame. Apparently she went to a party or something on Saturday, so that was pretty frustrating for us, but what can you do right? Who all spoke in the Sunday morning session? I really loved the Saturday Afternoon session, I thought that session was one of the better ones, if I´m allowed to say that haha. Elder Packer, Elder Nelson, Elder Oaks all gave really awesome talks! Really powerful messages, I really liked that session. Priesthood session was good as well! I saw JJ and Jeremy and about died, that was way funny! I was telling everyone that those were my really good friends and they thought that was cool that I knew someone in the choir there, it was funny. I didn´t like watching the sessions in Português though; you see their mouths moving, but the words are all different and you don´t get to hear their tone of voice or their emotions, it´s kind of annoying, but oh well. General Conference goes by so much faster on the mission though, I can´t even believe it! I can´t believe I only have one more left on the mission too, really crazy!

Nothing really interesting happened this week though, just a lot of running around, trying to get people to come to conference and get baptized. We had to go to the Stake Center that is in the center of the city so we went there for the first session, left, went to try and get some investigators, came straight back, and then left again that night. We watched the Priesthood session Sunday morning, because it was too late that night to watch it. General Conference is always the craziest weekend on the mission though, because you have four chances to bring people to church and come watch it, so you are constantly running around the whole day, instead of just once on Sunday. I miss the good old days when I could just relax and watch it on TV at home, I took that for granted for sure.

I´m trying to think of what else happened this week. Nothing really happened honestly. We cleaned our house like crazy today, you guys would be proud. I´ve never seen a missionary’s house as clean as ours. It´s almost as nice as our house. We are going to eat lunch over at Marinna´s house to day, she is the girl that we were going to baptize yesterday but now we will have to wait. She is cool. She´s sixteen and lives with her grandparents and her uncle. They invited us to come and eat lunch over there today, so that should be really good. We have had a lot of people who can be baptized this transfer, but a few of them have fallen through. It goes to show that Satan really is doing everything to try and stop this work from progressing, but it is comforting to know that the Lord has much more power than him. I´m grateful for the prophets in our day and for the Gospel, it´s really awesome. I´m grateful for the Lord and that He sacrificed everything for me. I know He lives and that His Atonement is real and brings peace and comfort when we use it. I´m grateful for my President and Sister Bezerra, they are hilarious. I called them this week again and President was trying out his English with me, it was funny. I called and Sister answered and said that he would call me back because he was driving, but then he´s like no, just give me the phone and started talking to me. ``ELDER MAC.....DONALDGEES!!`` haha he´s hilarious. I am really going to miss them when they leave. They only have 2 more transfers left. It´s going to be really sad when they go home. I`ll only have a few months with the new President. It will be interesting to see what happens with the mission, but for the most part, I hope that it stays the same and that we can keep continuing with this great miracle that is happening here in our mission.

Well, I love you all and hope that you are all doing great. Tell everyone hi for me! Talk to you again next week.

Love, Elder McDonald