Email 1/11/10

Email Received January 11, 2010
7th Area: Mossoró- Belo Horizonte
13th Companion: Elder Küster

dearest loved ones,

so the council was supposed to be today, and actually it is, but there were a ton of complications with getting the guy to take us to joão pessoa, so after staying up til like 3 am last night waiting for him, we are still here today and will leave here tonight at midnight and only get the 2nd day of it.

happy birthday to riggs this week, which is weird cuz i could have sworn he was born last week, but i hope all is well and also with my new nephew thats still no larger than a golf ball, best wishes to all of you.

the work has been so good. and i mean soooooo good. good enough that i feel that i deserve to eat at TEXAS ROADHOUSE when i get home, so that will be the first place i will eat. Elder Küster is a good missionary and i am happy to finally have someone animated so we can both be excited about the work and literally run around town teaching everyone we meet. this week we have gotten so many new investigators that it would be impossible to talk about everyone, but there is one in particular that i am super pumped about.

---his name is Raniele (hon-ee-ell-ee) and he is a 25 year old guy that is one of those really smart people- he is in college studying medicine. we met him talking to a member at a park on friday night, and he kinda acted like he didn't want anything to do with us at first, but after sitting and talking to him for a few minutes about things, i started explaining our basic beliefs and he got really interested. he has been a firm member of his church for over 10 years but we actually got him to come to church sunday, and during the meetings he participated and asked a lot of questions and stuff (that doesn't seem like a big deal but when an investigator does that it means a lot to us, and we can see his level of interest and understanding).

--- but we marked with him to teach him in his house for 8 o´clock last night and when we got there, he had his notebooks out and was writing a bunch of stuff down, so we assumed he was obviously studying his college stuff cuz he said that takes up all his time, but NOPE- he had written down all the questions he had and stuff he found interesting about church that day, including several doctrines that he had never heard of in other churches (thad God has a physical body, stuff like that) and i couldn't believe it when i saw it. he talked about how much he liked church and we spent the rest of the night teaching him about the restoration and explaining a lot of other curiosities he had, and ended up marking his baptism for this sunday.

so yes, we have a golden investigator, and it is great. especially since this last week lined up a ton of people but everyone ended up going to the beach like always. but finding the ELECT is what makes me truly happy in the mission, and this week we´ll see if we can find even more.

only about 2 and a half more months until i watch the new batman movie, all the seasons of smallville i missed, and see you all again... i am excited and i´ll be sure to enjoy the rest of my mission until then.

with much love,
ELDER BRAD SHERWOOD
mossoró, RN