Email 12/7/09

Email Received December 7, 2009
7th Area: Mossoró- Belo Horizonte
12th Companion: Elder Natividade


happy december, and congrats to shalae and russ on the wedding, also congrats to FLAMENGO who won the brazilian championship for the first time in 17 years. it was a night full of fireworks and parties in the streets around here.

so a lot has changed since the last time i wrote. exactly one week ago, last monday night as i was getting ready for bed, i got a call saying i was being transferred. to mossoró. the zone leader in mossoró was "emergency transferred" (that's not a good thing) and i had to leave immediately the next morning to take his place. i was completely shocked, and had no choice so i just packed all my bags to be able to leave the next morning. yes, that was one of the saddest nights of my whole mission-- i couldn't say goodbye to a single member, investigator, or person i taught or baptized. i now won't be there for either of the weddings i have been planning, and me and my comp already had everything planned out for christmas what we would do and stuff. i just had to leave it all at once and caught the bus early the next morning.

so now that i have been here for a full week, i am with my new companion elder natividade, who is going home in one month so i am his last companion. my new area is called Belo Horizonte and i am not very close to either of the 2 areas that i already worked in here in mossoró (costa e silva and urick graff). they are really far from here but i am gonna take advantage of it and organize some divisions over there for this week and next to visit some people i know. this is probably the biggest area i have ever had, and we take care of 2 wards here so we get 6 hours of church and all that good stuff. it's probably also the hottest area i´ve had-- remember that mossoró is the hottest place in the mission and this is the hottest time of year. the wierdest part is, since i already know i will stay for next transfer, i will most likely end my mission here.

also this past week we already had the council with the president for december, and a lot of items were discussed and planned including our big christmas mission conference which will be next week. since we are the farthest from the mission office in joão pessoa, we had to leave first, at 11 pm thursday night, travel until about 8 am the next morning and pick up the others, and after the council that morning and lunch, we headed back that afternoon and got home at about 4 am saturday morning. and the driver was almost falling asleep at the wheel the whole time and i was scared for my life! so i am still in kind of in a weird sleepy daze that hopefully a good p-day will take away.

so i was really frustrated with this whole random transfer thing messing everything up and i spent my first couple days here upset about it but i am keeping a good attitude and not gonna let it distract me from the work or lose my concentration. there is a lot of work to be done here in mossoró and i am gonna take full advantage of my time here and GET THINGS DONE! we took a girl to church yesterday and we´re preparing a man for baptism this week to complete a family so it should be good.

phone call in just a couple weeks.
love elder sherwood