Conferences and Christ

 Bom dia!  This email will be for the last two weeks to be able to catch up on everything. 

So last week was a week that we did very little normal missionary work, because it was the first week of the transfer.  So you know what that means!  It means that we got the honor of announcing the transfers on Sunday.  I am staying here with my current comp Elder Oliveira.  We will be staying together until he goes home at the end of July.  So we will helping him finish of strong.  Then Monday morning began all the ends and beginnings of missions.  So Monday was spent at Presidents house having the final lunch of 9 missionaries.  One of them was Elder Johnson, who was my comp before Elder Oliveira.  It was so much fun to be with them and spend most of the day hearing their stories and experiences of the mission.  

Then Tuesday, we were at the airport, but not to send off people off, but welcome another 8 missionaries to the mission field!  how exciting!  So me and two new elders got to take an uber to the house of President.  It was such a cool experience because the Uber driver was the boyfriend of an inactive member, and he had actually been to the temple open house a couple months ago.  So he recognized us immediatley when we entered, and I got to participate in the first real lesson with those new missionaries.  We spent about 30 minutes talking about the plan of God, where we go after this life, and the Book of Mormon.  They were already pros, so they'll do just fine.  Then Tuesday was the official transfer day and sending off Elder Johnson.  

And Wednesday, we were back, yet again to the house of President for our leadership council.  It was a good time as always, and yet again, I left with a large list of things to improve in the area and the mission.  So, a lot of new things.  

Thursday and Friday were focused on working on the things that we weren't able to do in the first place.  

We have been having some issues, where we need to find new people to teach.  Just, the people that we have, have not been improving really.  So we left to the streets without really a plan, just hoping and working. I knew that by us working we would be able to find someone, and praying that God would send us some blessing of someone to teach.  And it worked!  We have found a fair amount of people who are interessed in our message, and so we marked for this upcoming week.  It was a lot of fun, because we found a secret favela in our area, and we've been going there a fair amount to teach people.  And everyone knows eachother so we get all these referrals.  

Then the other highlight of this week was being able to go to the far zones of Cabo Frio and Macaé to do my first zone conference.  On Thursday I stayed with our zone leaders in Cabo Frio to do an exchange for a day, where I got to be with my old comp, Elder Hicken.  We did a family home evening and talked a lot about the plan of salvation.  They recently had a son pass away about 2 weeks, so it was a very prevelant topic.  I spent a lot of time thinking about the atonement in relation to the plan of salvation.  It means that we may think we don't have people who know what we are going through.  I mean, I felt very out of place because I don't have a son who recently passed away.  But there is always the Savior of Jesus Christ, who knows exactly what you are thinking and feeling.  Yes, in his earthly life, he did not have children, or he did not have to go to college, or he did not have to deal with a divorce.  But he did feel and suffer for all of those feelings.  So, he knows, and so he knows exactly what you need, in every moment.  We just need to turn to him.  

I love you all.  Jesus Christ loves you all!  Thank you for all your words and inspiration.