May 2012
  Yea the weather here has stayed pretty hot, which has been annoying me, because we are supposed to have winter weather here pretty soon. As for the subject of the car.. What cars are existent at our house now? Did the Camry ever end up getting fixed? Sounds like everything is going well.

    There is a Stake conference in Cruz Alta next week and my new ward is part of that stake, and if everything goes as planned there are some members in Cruz Alta that want to make me a birthday lunch and stuff. I really hope the zone leaders clear me to go back to Ijuí a little bit later after the conference. My new companion is really great. He is from Provo Utah, a city that I am pretty well familiar with and has been out one less transfer than I have. He went to BYU before and is 24. He is a pretty smart guy and doing pretty well with the language. As for families in the area we had nothing when I got here. To be honest there weren’t any investigators here.  We spent a lot of this week looking for new investigators and using the area book to find people who had been taught in the past. We should be able to have success with some of the people that we have found and started to teach this week. The city is a bit like Cruz Alta, but a little bit nicer. We live in more of a downtown area, which is nice because it is closer to everything, but it is kind of far from our area. There is also a little bit more in terms of souvenirs than cruz alta because cruz alta had nothing. The ward has like 80-90 people per week and the Bishop is really focusing on getting more people there so that they can construct a new chapel. He has been augmenting the number of people attending and sends 110 or so as the number of people that go per week to try to give some incentive to get a new chapel. Our area is pretty far away from the chapel too, so that makes it a bit difficult, but Im likeing it pretty well.

        It was a really sad goodbye there in Cruz Alta, but Im getting used to the new area. We are gonna have to work super hard again these next few weeks. But thats pretty much it for this week, nothing else has changged too much.

I hope that you are all doing well and I love you!!

May 27   Thanks for the happy birthday shout out! We got to go eat after the stake conference with Rogerio and Christiane Klein and thier family in my old area. She is really awesome and I love that family. She said that you had been talking to her and that you were really nice, so it seems as though she understood at least part of what you had said.

Yea that whole ´´saved´´ thing is a bit ridiculous, and the same sentiment abounds here in Brazil. They think that all religions that beleive in Christ offer salvation to its followers and neglect any sort of error that may be found therein. It makes it hard to try to teach most of the people here because they think that way. To be completely honest I got into a mild argument with a man who attends the ´´assembleia de Deus´´, which religion ignores more than half of the teachings of Jesus Christ. He said our religion was false because the pamphlet said that our religion claimed right to the title ´´only true chruch´´ and that that could not be true because all christian religions save. Despite the inherent irony in that I read a few verses in the sermon on the mount that castigate a few practices in that church. Not my best moment ever. I did not treat that situation in a loving manner and I really regret that. Getting annoyed at ignorance or hard heartedness never gets anyone anywhere. He doesnt like me, but he says he has no hard feelings against the chruch.

During the conference this week with President Ribeiro we talked a bit about the morning of the first resurrection which was really cool, and then talked about tithing. He touched on the fact that Brazil is really suffering when it comes to full tithe payers. Basically we as missionaries need to find the people who are willing to make at least a little bit of a sacrifice to pay thier tithing. We need to focus more on teaching what the blessings of tithing are instead of just saying what tithing is. As he said, we need members who are self sufficient and willing to quickly become full tithe payers and leaders in this church.

 Dang sounds like stuff is going pretty well there with a few hard times. But that is always bound to happen. As for the Electric blanket, yea it fried as well even with the adaptor. I think that the current fluctuates a lot here so it just kind of exploded. Its all good though, it is still a warm thick blanket.  As for the weather it has stayed pretty hot the past while but is supposed to ´´rain´´ in the next few days and get cold, but the forecast always claims that. Yea the birthday package is not here yet, but im sure itll get here soon. As for my shoes, when I clean them they still look pretty new, so they will at least last me until the year mark without having to get them resoled. Those are jsut the walking ones, the nicer looking ones I use only for meetings, and so they look like the shoes of the elders that just got on the mission. Also tell Kortney she needs to get married quick before its too late, but not to allow any gold diggers near her.
  We spent a lot of the time this week again finding new investigators because almost all of the appointments that we had ´´fell through´´ meaning the people werent in the house, or in certain cases they hid from us. But this guy yelled at us on the street the otehr day and said ´´why are you american?´´ I could tell that he was joking so I said ´´ because I was born there´´. He thought that was pretty funny and we quickly got into a conversation about the gospel. I asked for his address but he refused, but then after saying something, (I still cant remember what I said) I asked for the address again and asked if I could pass by. He gave it to us and said ´´you cant pass by, you have to show up´´. But we went there on Saturday and he is really cool. He has a ton of antiques and pretty much knows the bible like the back of his hand, and beleives a lot of things that are specifically our doctrine. Im excited to work a little bit more with him. As for the rest we just found a few families and a house full of students taht go to the local college here. All of which seem to have a good chance of progressing.

      At the conference there in Cruz alta we saw Vanisa and Pedro Luiz and Valentina, who are going to get baptized in a week. Im so sad that I wont be able to be at the baptism but so excited that they are happy in the gospel. Vanisa has outwardly changed and looks much happier and excited, and Pedro Luiz is definitely going to be a Bishop someday. I havent been much happier on this mission than seeing them there at the conference and progressing as a family in order to make covenants. That is what this work is all about. This area here in Ijuí is difficult, but I am really enjoying it here despite the challenges. And it appears that Elder Welch got here and is in Santo Angelo with my old companion Elder Matthieu and someone else in a threesome. Thats pretty much it for the week. I hope that you are having an amazing time there in the states and I hope work doesnt get too stressful. I love you!     -Elder Eskildsen