Email 11/3/08

Email received November 3, 2008
2nd Area: Cidade Verde
2nd Companion: Elder Firmo

another week gone by...

i very much enjoyed the pictures sent haha i miss halloween. send some of the rest of the kids in their costumes. but any time you have to send pics send them to my hotmail. here in brazil things are good and tropical fruits are in full bloom. you can walk down the street and pick a fresh mango off the tree and eat it. pineapple here is amazing. tt is not sour- it is super super sweet. and coconut trees are everywhere, members have them outside their houses so after we eat lunch there we go outside and cut one off the tree and drink it. everything is made with coconut and it is even the brazilian remedy for every sickness, like yesterday when i spent the entire day throwing up it wasnt too fun. i am still not feeling too great.

but the good news is we are teaching a lot of people and we were busy as heck this week, always on the run 24-7 even when we had to go help the other elders in our district move houses on emergency notice. but among some of our investigators progressing the most are first: a woman named Aparecida, who was baptized many many years ago but fell away, so she is not an investigator but her son, Alvoro and her daughter, Camilla are. i don't remember if i talked about them last week but we have been teaching them and i love this family, they are awesome and doing great and coming to church. we are gonna try and commit them to baptism tonight or tomorrow night. we are also gonna try and work with the dad and another friend of theirs who came to church but they won't be as easy. also we have a man who is amazing, i have never wanted to baptize anyone so much. his name is Paulo, we taught him the first lesson and he had more doubts and questions than anyone before, the lesson was very powerful and lasted like 2 and a half hours. he is really really seeking the truth. i have been praying we can help him recognize that he found it. i have been studying all his questions and his doubts a lot to help him out. the bad news is i think i will get transferred in 2 weeks so if he gets baptized i probably won't be here for it. but we have other some other people too and we had a lot of people come to church yesterday so it was awesome.

i was very very pleased to discover another elder in my mission who loves the office and arrested development as much as me, and like me he bought all the seasons on dvd and knows them all very well so we quote them and laugh a ton every time we are together. speaking of humor, i had a good laugh to myself this week during scripture study. i came across the scripture Alma 10:4 and started laughing and wrote "ron burgundy" in the column next to it. all you anchorman fans out there will get it, the rest probably won't haha.

until next week

elder sherwood

Alma 10:4 And behold, I am also a man of no small reputation among all those who know me; yea, and behold, I have many kindreds and friends, and I have also acquired much riches by the hand of my industry.