Dear family,

Im really excited to hear from Elder Holland in the next week. He is going to burn us like crazy, because we are the least successful mission in Brazil. Thats just what people say. Statistics say it too, but We have at least been finding a bit of sucess he past while. The meeting is only going to be about two hours, but it is going to be powerful, that much I do know.
At Zone conference President old us about that Elder who finally got his VISA. His name is Elder Rodgers and he was INCREDIBLY lucky to have gotten his VISA because they are usually denied when they take so long to go through. He will be coming in here shortly, and Im sure it will be a strange experience for him after having served for so long in the states.
Zone conference this last week was awesome. We studyed the book of Revelation with the help of D+C Section 77, President Ribeiro, and several other Books in the Old and New testament and Book of Mormon. We focused on what John the Revelator says foretells of the second coming, and the restauration. Realy cool stuff. The lunch was really good and I was able to talk to Elder Pole´o, my companion from the MTC and I met and talked with a ton of other people. Sister Ribeiro gave us a little lecture on what we need to do to clean our houses and made us all candy the week before and brought it to us. I also got to talk to Sister Taylor a bit. Its strange to have someone from back home on the mission.
the weather lately has started to become more temperate and will cool down like crazy in the next few days. Im pretty excited about that, but I will need a heater in our house before it gets too cold. (There is no central heating in any of the houses here)
As for teaching we didnt find too many new people to teach, but we have had alot of sucess with the people that we had already been teaching. We marked the baptismal date of Melissa, Eliane´s daugther, for the 12th of May. Eliane is getting really involved in the ward and her testimony is really being strengthened as she reads the book of Mormon and prays to know if it, and the church are true. We are wrking with the parents of a young man in the ward who want to get baptized but cant at the moment because Christiane, the mom, smokes. We are going to help her quit so that they can be baptized.
We went to that ´´Assembléia´´ Church on Monday to appease our invesigators, therefore creating an interesting experience. There was a lot of yelling and there were countless members repeating the same prayers (vain repitition) among other things. There is no way that the spirit can be present in a place with that much noise and that is such an apparent mess as that place. Just as the spirit of the Lord cannot dwell in unholy temples, the spirit was nowhere near that church. The experience there just strengthened my testimony of how true our church is, and that so many people are ´´cut away from the truth because they know not where to find it´´.
But working with Elder Moroni has been really great and this past week was good. I hope that you are all having a great time there in Washington! I love you!
-Elder Eskildsen

MARCH 26, 2012

Dear internet blog,
So like two weeks or so ago we got a call from one of the scretaries saying that we hadnt paid the electric bill for 6 months in our apartment, because the last elders to pay the bill hadnt told anyone that came next how to pay it. Therefore the next elders to come came up with some false notion that the bills were paid directly from the mission office, which falacy was perpetuated until recently. So we were blissfully unaware of our lack of payment until our beloved secretary related it to us. So we graciously sent 6 months worth of unpaid billage to the mission office. As time went on we thought about how truly lucky we were that they hadnt yet cut our power. This week however, our light was cut, thus ending our energy laden euphoria for 2 days. Turns out that the secretaries had received the bills but had not paid it. The energy company decided then that 6 months was too long for us to be stealing power and belatedly cut our power. We spent then two days doing everthing by candlelight and living like pioneers. In the end we got everything sorted out, and nothing that was in our powerless fridge has killed us yet.
     Baptisms. We had two baptisms on Saturday, which was truly amazing. I baptized Igor, who is 14 and was the one that I talked about last week who quit smoking, and my companion baptised Pedro who is 10. It was awesome to see how happy they were to take on that covenant. This work really is amazing.
Hope you are all doing well, and I hope you hear from each of you someday.
-Elder Eskildsen