Zone Conference in Cruz Alta April 2012
Dear family,
This last week sounds like it may have been pretty rushed for all of you, but it sounds like it was a good one. Im glad that Dillon will be able to recover relatively quickly, and that nothing worse happened to him. I hope that his recovery goes very well. Tell Rachel to send me a letter about how prom was, ect. And Bergen stll hasnt written for a while as well. Thats crazy about coleman! hope that he is alright, because being in a strange country with a strange language in a ghetto hosptal sounds like a scary concept. There have been a few people in this mission that have had appendicitis as well. I will be sure I pray for him.
Yea I got a letter from Kortney, and she said that she was working on getting a job there, and it appears that she did. I just responded to the letter, but will wait to get her new address before I send it, or I can send it to you guys to send to her.
Those packages got here pretty well. The first one you sent got here a few weeks ago and was torn into, but I got most everything except for the nutella. And / really appreciated the ties in the last package, and so does my companion (I gave him one).
I really enjoyed the stuff in the package and I have gotten tons of compliments because of the awesome green tie that you sent. The second package got here last week and perfectly intact. Also, dont worryabout me being well fed, I have been eating more than my fair share of food here on the misson. In the Santa Maria mission you would be hard pressed to find a missionary who hasnt gained a few pounds.
This last week was really awesome. First and foremost we had a baptism. We baptised Valentina, who is the grand daughter of a less acitve that we have been visting. It has been at least 30 years since she went to church and yesterday she went to the special Stake conference that we had with Elder Mazzagardi of the second quorom of the seventy speak at. Another huge highlight of the week was when Elder Holland of the Quorom of the 12 came to speak to us. I was expecting our mission to get grilled by that fiery apostle, but to my surprise he was very nice with us and only spoke very highly of our mission. He spoke a lot on being what we say that we are and not beng a hypocrite, because that was the only thing that really got the Savior righteously indignant when he was on the earth. He also told us that our mission president and wife are by far the best misson presdent and wife in Brazil and possibly the world. Its fact because and apostle said it, and he cant lie. I was also privileged to be able to participate in a choir of 8 Elders and 8 Sisters that sang a special musical number for the conference, along with Elder Ahsbar playing Violin and Elder Freitas on the piano. We sand hymn 166 ´´abide with me!´´ which has an amazing tenor part, and we sounded amazing, even though we had only practiced together for the first time together a half hour earlier and for 20 minutes. To be prideful I would like to say that Elder Holland said taht it was the best missionary choir he has probably ever heard. We awaited elder Holland we were all seated in the cultural hall to take a pic with him and as he came in he patted me on the back (Im never wasing that shoulder again) and then after the picture we all got to shake his hand and meet him. When I passed through he said ´´You´re lookin´ a little pink there elder, been getting a lot of sun?´´ I guess I should use more sunscreen haha. It was cool to be able to have him here in our mission and just his presensce is powerful. I am very thankful to be here in the santa maria mission, Especially here in Cruz alta. The work went very well this week and we are well on track to have a lot of sucess in the month of may! Its also starting to get pretty cold here. I hope that you are all having an amazing week and I love you!
-Elder Eskildsen
Dane with a pic of the Cuia
