8 September 2014 - Viçosa, Brazil

For those who may not be aware, my younger brother Christian (the youngest sibling in the family) will be receiving his own mission call in the near future. Also, Grandma Harrison (our last surviving grandparent) had a minor accident recently while at home that seems to have addled her mind somewhat. If you feel so inclined, please include her in your prayers.

Im soooo excited to see where Christian goes on the mission!!!!!! What if he goes portuguese speaking!? We could speak Portuguese together! That would be so cool. Somebodies gota learn Portuguese to speak with me. Haha, Ill be sure to pray for Grandma. I gota hang on to my last grandparent! I dont wana be that old guy who doesnt have grandparents. 

So this week was epic! Weve really been seeing the blessings of working hard in our own personal worthiness, the only down side is that people have their own free agency. João has been awesome! we visited him several times last week and hes really doing well. We visited him Friday night and he told us hes been having a problem with depression. He takes pills and stuff. We hopped on that and decided to talk about how we can be truely happy. We taught about the comandments and how obeying them blesses our lives. He promissed to obey and has been really doing well. He´s still praying and has started reading the scriptures. We have his baptisim marked for the 13th and its lookin like he´s goin to make it just fine.

Juliana was suppose to be baptised on Saturday and she was all ready to go. The only problem was that the church didnt have water on saturday to fill the faunt. NOOOO! we´ve been trying to baptise this women for the past 3 months and it just never happens. She didnt go to church too because she was scared that her cat would die because shes sick. We marked her baptisim again for this Saturday or Tuesday. We´ll try to talk to her today ortomorrow. Shes really good though. She reads the BoM every day. 

That family we found from the reference from the girl from the store is lookin good and bad at the same time. We´ve started focusing on two of the women in the family. A sister; age 28, and a sister age;14. Theyve both revieved answeres to their prayers and both expressed a lot of desire to be baptised. THe older one said that she wanted to leave her old life behind and told us that she wanted to get baptised imidiately. We taught them the comandments and told them about the seriousness of baptism. They promissed to go to church and were getting ready to go and everything, but never showed up. Later yesterday we passed by to see what happened and we found them at a birthday party at their house, both drunk. We were a little frustrated to say the least, but we´ll return to visit them today to burn them. My comp likes doin that so ill leave him to it.

Larisa is goin to be baptised on the 27th. shes that little girl who always goes to church but her parents didnt want her to be baptised. She decided she wants the baptisims and her parents finally let her, but her Dad always tells her how bad her decision is and everything. Hes really annoying and really ignorant. He got in a showting match with my comp yesterday. 

AnaCleide, who use to have a problem with drinking, has stopped drinking and only needs to stop smoking now. Shes helping her family and taking in sisters in trouble so she couldnt go to church on Sunday, but shes goin to be married the fist week of October and shes really progressing well. She cant read so she has her kids (who are members) read to her.

Friday we had a mission tour with the second councelhor of the Brazil area Presidency. He burned us to DEATH about our planning. He told us we had to have a planning on Friday for the next week, every week, and he said that it needed to be at least 3 hours long. I felt like that was a LOT but we tried it out. It was so hard to stay focused. But he was really cool and we felt the spirit a lot.

My comp is being tough. Hes a little desturbed and the Pres told me to try to help him. He gave me this comp on purpose to try to help him, and ive been trying to but the dudes crazy. He always gets mad about the littlest things that i do and then i have to go appologize even though i did nothing and he thinks that he should be senior and thinks im dominating him. Sooooo annoying but hes teaching me pacience. Good skills i can use with my future wife!

Any way thats about it! Love you all! have a good week!

Elder Ian