1 January 2013

HAPPY NEW YEARS! 2013 Wheeeee 2012 was a great year wasn't it? :)

Wow where do I begin!
AH I'm gunna be an uncle again! Wohoo! I'm so excited for you Jon and Jenna and I wish you the best.
Tell Sarah that I want to be the first to know where she get called! (I kind a hope she comes to Brazil haha)
Well sounds like ya´ll had a great Christmas! I hope that you all are safe and sound driving in the snow back and forth from Utah and Washington, crazy dangerous memories haha...

This week honestly has been a little bit harder than others, not because i miss my family like crazy that's normal, but a lot of our appointments and people that we have been working with have fallen through. A lot of people have left, traveling somewhere who knows, visiting family or friends for Christmas and new years. One family that we were super excited for won't be back until February.... Bummer. Another hard thing to handle was Christmas in general. Christmas morning was normal, not too many people in the streets, but Christmas night was sketchy, everything was shut down except for the bars. So unfortunately many of our investigators drank and drank and drank.... One of the hardest parts of this week was when we were talking with one of my baptisms and he told us that he got home 4 o'clock in the morning completely drunk.... he acted as if we would be proud of him or would praise him in some way.. How do you handle that?! That was honestly THE hardest thing... Do we teach him again?? Honestly I don't know what to do... He didn't go to church on Sunday..
But this week had its Up and Downs, one of the UPs was Luiz Rocha, I'm not sure if I told you about him but he's an inactive member, he has two daughters and a wife. One of his daughters an 8 years old, cute little thing, talked to us in the street and brought us home to meet mommy, turned out I had already visited the family with the 2nd counselor of the bishopric back in November but I didn't recognize the girl. It turned out being a great visit, we talked and got to know the family. Turns out the wife and the daughter want to be baptized, the wife, Marcia needs to be married with her husband first but the daughter Victoria can be baptized this week. The coolest part which is really two parts is that the father Luiz who in an inactive member read the Book of Mormon to his wife like we asked, and his wife doesn't know how to read, they ALL went to church on Sunday, AND! He didn't drink a drop of beer during Christmas!!! Which isn't normal, we're hoping that the baptism of his daughter and his wife will help him get back onto the straight and narrow.

This week we've had a lot of wasted time, because of appointments falling through, meetings or things that my companion needs to do. And one thing that I've learned for sure on my mission is when you have extra time and your just sit or wait the mind drifts off to wonderland, and since I recently talked to ya´ll the mind drifted off to you, family friends, nephews, nieces. And the thing that has saved me this week from becoming homesick is reading the Book of Mormon, in Portuguese. I'm cruzing! haha I don't know what happened but the first time I tried to read the Book of Mormon in Portuguese it was so hard! I couldn't understand hardly anything, but now it's like BAM! and I can read it straight through and I feel like I'm learning from my reading.. like I'm not focusing on what each word means I'm finally able to find principles, and apply them in my teaching! And boy do I have a scripture or two to share with my baptism that went drinking the other night mmmhmm :)

Oh Woah totally forgot! As missionaries we always walk a bunch! Our chapel is a whopping 40 minutes away from our house, uphill both ways! Seriously... but we make the sacrifice, teaching is even sweeter when you walk a long distance to teach someone... So we've been working this week with a family, William, Williane, and their mom Patricia that live super far from us! We have to climb 10 steps to visit them... Yup they live above us haha and they're awesome we love visiting them, not only because they're super close haha in fact Patricia made us lunch today! :) Just friendly people, William has accepted baptism and we haven't had the opportunity yet to invite the others, but were making a plan wahahaha! We had lunch at their house and saw some word of wisdom issues so it should be interesting.... but we're darn close if they need any help not smoking or drinking, haha, we´ll take that beer in a heartbeat haha.

And! I taught Sunday School again on the spirit world and it was AWESOME! I went over time! haha Ah it runs in the family (MOM) love ya

I am So happy to be on my mission. To be learning and growing spiritually, that's one of the things that I wanted to happen during my mission, I'm so grateful for this. I'm so thankful for my family, how they raised me and how they give me the support that I need. I love you guys SO much and miss you like Crazy!

Always Trying My Best

ELDER RALPH