Email received 1/5/09

Email received January 5, 2009
3rd area: Mossoro- Costa E Silva
5th companion: Elder Kittler

This is the river that runs behind our house

Eric's Baptism

hello everyone,

sounds like everyone at home is well and for that i am very glad. things right now are harder than they have been my entire mission but i am trying to make the best out of things in every way possible.

about that picture, it was a boy named eric that we baptized yesterday. he is 9 years old and that makes it ours so we took care of everything and the baptism was yesterday. by the way i didn't know the picture was being taken when it was. we should have success in this area cuz it is very poor and more humble which is good. although its far from the city so it gives a really isolated feeling. here its not a ward, its a branch. so us missionaries are a lot more involved and have to help with a lot of stuff and talk in church a lot and stuff. but we don't have a chapel. instead, we meet in a really small house on sunday. its a very different and strange feeling having sacrament meeting and stuff there. you can see in the picture, the baptismal font is out back of the house we meet in. a lot of people in this area feed us duck, i don't know why. but its actually pretty good.

the 2 main investigators we are working with now are cléber, who is a 12 year old boy who lived in another city that doesn't have the church yet. but he came here to live with his cousins in the branch. so we were having lunch at their house and talked with him a lot about the church and getting him involved and he came to church sunday and liked it. so we will continue to teach him this week and hopefully baptize him sunday. the other one is a 16 year old girl named cíntia, she was working with the missionaries a long time ago but her dad made her stop, but lately her dad has been better about it so we are teaching her now. its also possible that we baptize her sunday but less likely. she has a lot of things she doesn't understand about the scriptures and stuff so we are gonna try to help her out a lot.

as far as the companion goes i have him to thank for this being the hardest of times for me. i could sit here and list hundreds of things he does that you wouldn't believe. pretty much its impossible to work and especially to feel the spirit around him. he sits there and says stuff to members, right in front of me, about how much he hates me and all americans and stuff like that. he doesn't help with any work or teaching whatsoever. he will never get out of bed, and the other day after trying everything i pounded on the wall really hard and he got super ticked and threw his shoe at me really hard. it almost hit my head but i moved and it hit the door and left a big mark. everything he does is just gross. he is the most disgusting person, especially to live with. speaking of disgusting, i finally deep cleaned and organized the house so its a lot better but still really small. but thank goodness we have a fan. hopefully we can baptize this week.

until next time,

elder sherwood