Hey Guys,

This week was pretty crazy as well. General Conference was amazing, except for the fact that I missed a bunch of talks, including the first hour of the first session, so I didn´t see what happened with President Monson coming in in the middle of it. I was really worried about Elder Hales. Do you guys know what happened with him? I hardly recognized him. I really loved the talks that were given though, a lot of inspiring talks. The guy who talked about teaching by The Spirit and being a REAL missionary did a really good job. I need to be better and show more love for the people that I am teaching, like the Japanese Elder said, I don´t remember his name.  The Elders from the Seventy gave really good talks, and I really liked the talk from President Packer and President Monson about prayer. Really cool stuff. I still can´t believe this was my last conference on the mission; how sad is that. And I was so bummed out that they didn´t announce a temple here.......dang it!! When we were at the Mission Council yesterday with President, he said that we are really close to having a temple here, so maybe this next conference. I just wanted to still be on the mission when it was announced.

Wow, President´s house/apartment is amazing!! He lives in the millionaire’s neighborhood, just to give you an idea; one of the nicest parts of Rio where only the people with the big wads of money who don´t know what to do with it live. If you look to the right on his huge balcony, the Christ Statue is like the distance from our house to the Walmart next door; super close and you can see the details of the Christ statue, it´s awesome. Pão de açucar is also right in front of his house, it´s great. You´ll have to do there sometime. Yesterday was really cool, being there for the first time with all the other Zone leaders in the mission. We learned a lot about the new focus of the mission, which is to not only baptize a ton of people, but to focus on baptizing families. And how do we baptize families? Working with the members. It was a really good meeting yesterday, I learned a lot and the Spirit was really strong. I forgot to bring my camera cord with me today to send pictures, but I will send some next week, alright?

Well, our Zone is incredible, if I hadn´t told you enough already. We baptized more in the month of September than this Zone has EVER baptized before, it was really cool. The Elders and Sisters in my zone
are amazing examples for me; they work really hard and have a lot of love for the people that they teach. We have baptized more families this last transfer and the Stake President has been sending emails to President Lima telling him that the missionaries in his stake are amazing and to not move anyone, so he didn´t. :) The bishops are also a lot more happy and excited to help us out and the members of this ward are amazing! I`m thinking that I will end my mission in this area, but we will see what happens.

I hope that you are all still doing great and that everyone is healthy. Mom, be careful, don´t get sick again like that please, ok? Take it easy. I love you guys. Thanks for everything.

Love, Elder McDonald