Email 2/9/2009

Email received February 9, 2009

4th area: Mossoro- Urick Graff

6th companion: Elder Osborne

Samara, Me & Fabio making cake

Baptism- Osborne, Guerros, Thiago, Rusemberg, Me

Our house is filled with these guys!



dearest loved ones...



happy birthday to scott today and happy valentines day to all this week. i expect all of my sweethearts back home to send me some love. its been a good week but i am freaking annoyed! the thing that we have been planning for most, our wedding for fábio and samara, had to be delayed one more week so it will be this friday the wedding, saturday baptism and sunday confirmation. the good thing is they are still faithful, and still preparing, fábio used to drink a little bit and they both drank coffee every day but we have helped them through it and now they dont even have the desire. samara has been teaching me how to make some good stuff (picture). i love these guys so much. we are best friends and this will be a great week for them. it was just annoying cuz i went into the city last week like 10 times to get everything ready and sign all the forms and prepare the documents and stuff then at the last minute fábio had to work the day of the wedding. but this week it will all turn out.



training is pretty good, i have a good companion and he is learning very quick to be able to help more with stuff. our only baptism that worked out was yesterday. tiago is a 16 year old guy that has a lot of friends in the church, and it was a great experience for everyone cuz everybody´s been waiting for like a year for him to be baptized. there have been 4 or 5 sets of missionaries that have been trying to baptize him forever but these last couple weeks we have done some really strong commitments with him and he was baptized saturday. he is amazingly talented in a lot of things and will be an awesome missionary. rusemberg is a 28 year old single dad with a little girl and i think he has started showing a lot of interest in a returned sister missionary in our ward. i am gonna hook them up.... perfect for valentines week! but the baptism was super awesome (picture).



we moved into a different house closer to our area so now us 4 are still here and will be for a while. its a better house and we actually have a chapel, which is good cuz being without water forever we have had to walk to the chapel every day and night to fill up buckets of water there to carry back home, its not very fun and you dont realize how much you rely on running water for showers, brushing teeth, using the bathroom, washing clothes, washing dishes, etc. we even made the hike to the chapel at 3 am on wednesday when we had to wake up for the conference, which wasnt that great by the way but oh well. we have been working super hard and thankfully the members help out a little here. so we should thankfully have a lot of success and find the people prepared for the gospel.



speaking of prepared people i have met the most prepared people i have ever known and they are a FAMILY. their names are daniel and andréa and they have 2 little boys, and they are the most elect, wonderful, prepared-for-the-gospel people i have ever met. we found them 2 saturday nights ago, and gave one of the most spiritually powerful 1st lessons i have ever done. by their interest and questions i could tell they were elect right from the beggining. daniel is very intelligent and andréa is all about families. they have investigated tons and tons of different churches but haven´t felt completely certain with any, and when we were discussing it, andréa said these very words to me: ´´we are looking for the right church to raise a family´´. yes, i wanted to kidnap them and take them to the baptismal font right then. those words are music to a missionary´s ears! even better was the next sunday when they came walking into church, smiling with their little boys with them. they are the absolute GOLDEN FAMILY! so we have been teaching them all week and they came to church again yesterday, so it would all appear perfect except for they are not married legally, which would normally only take about 2 weeks to take care of, but andréa was married before and not officially divorced yet so that will take a few months to do, and they are moving next month. so i am pretty much heartbroken, cuz it looks like i am not gonna be able to be the one that baptizes them. they have been the center of all my prayers and fasting lately so i am really hoping for a miracle or at least that it all works out for them. i will work on it this week.





have a good one!



elder sherwood