April 26, 2011 - Letter Home

A Real Nice Week

My desktop wallpaper after the mish – it’s my mission in a photo

Hey Famly!

We had an awesome week! It's so nice to read your e-mails and be able to talk with you just this little bit today! Ahh, I love it.

Today I'm writing from Porto Alegre because we're gonna go to the temple here in a couple hours. I'm so psyched! Sorry Brendon, it's got to be hard not having a temple. For me it's hard to wait 3 months before going again. We're also going to get together with a bunch of other zones here and go to a huge shopping mall here and eat Burger King and pretend we're in America. :)

So anyway, this week we've continued to just be beasts and try to talk with everybody we meet about the gospel and invite everyone to baptism. It's going very well and we managed to contact more new people than the rest of the people in our zone! One of the greatest things I've learned how to do in my mission is just be friendly and make conversation with random people and then lead it into the gospel. I love it so much. It's so cool to meet new people and hear about their lives and then see them hear the gospel for the first time. I think I might even like finding more than just the pure teaching.

Horse Thieves

Horse Tails

Elder Persigner is a champ and we're already best friends and we want to stay 2 transfers here. He's really awesome, another Halo junkie, and again, we know the same movies. That's important. He's learning a lot really quickly too. One weird side note: we were talking about our mission calls and I said that I had mine on youtube, and Persinger remembers seein it! Woah! So weird.

I forgot last e-mail to say that Elder Christofferson is visiting our mission this Friday! The entire mission will get together. We're flippin out! I'm so excited. Usually missionaries only see 1 apostle in their mission, but it looks like I've got luck!

We couldn't take pictures, but we were WAY far from our area ready to go to another far visit when it started raining, HARD! We got caught in a thunderstorm without our umbrellas! Knowing that we just had to get to that visit, we buckled down a ran straight through it, about 30 minutes in pouring rain! When we got to our visit, they let us in by the fire, and we had an awesome lesson with this cool new family, Sonia, Jejilson and Daniel. Jejilson, the dad, said the last prayer and thanked God that we had come running in the rain and that he believed our message was true just because that's the ONLY reason we would want to risk running in the middle of such a huge thunderstorm. That was cool.

I didn't end up getting sick. But Elder Persinger did, poor guy. We stayed in a day while I listed to Persinger throwing up. I think it was something he ate. And the power went out. That's the worst thing: having to spend a day in the dark, throwin your guts up. Poor guy. Man I'm lucky I never got super sick like that.

Lunch Appointment - Not my proudest moment

We went to a member wedding this week which was really cool. We passed out pamphelets about the importance of the family and the Plan of Salvation. I ended up talking to this Catholic Priest for 2 hours and learned a bunch of cool stuff about what they do. It was a cool night but it was weird to finally see the actual wedding part: the guy getting married is like 6 months home from his mission... Made me think that might be something coming up for me. Who knows!

daweddin

We made a sweet bonfire in our front yard last night and I got convinced we should have a party at our house and invite the whole neighborhood to sit around an awesome fire and eat smores and watch a movie about the Restoration after. That was fun.

Firebugs

We got invited to a Jehova's Witness's meeting and we went the other night. It was pretty cool. But I prefer feeling the Holy Ghost in our church.

Oh yeah, Easter was AWESOME! We were all down in church and feeling bad cause nobody gave us any candy, but then we went to lunch with Gerson and Adriana, recent converts, who had a HUGE Easter churrasco and gave us personalized Easter baskets filled with candy! The family who had put on the wedding also gave us all the desert and cake left over and so we got more sweets than we could manage after all that!

Gleeeee!

Gerson and Adriana

We helped with a move last week of Jonni and Brenda, members who I had known and loved in Esteio! They followed me here! I'm super excited because Jonni helped alot with the work in Esteio and he's gonna be a great addition to the ward. They're followin me!

Anyway, it was just a real nice week. :)
The work is going well and I'm happy. Time just keeps flyin...

Meet my little friend - the BookaMormon!
(toy gun)

I love you guys! Have an awesome rest of the week! I think of you all more than I should, I confess! Can't wait to see you! Okay, no more trunkiness,

Your son, brotha, friend,

Elder Connor