Baptism for Alana and another one coming up!

Well, this week was terrific. We had Alana's Baptism and on Sunday we had a sort of family night with our investigator couple and a member couple. We´re going to integrate them with some other families this week and this weekend we´ll have their baptism in between conference sessions. It´ll be GREAT.
Elder Strout Baptized Alana on Saturday. We took pictures but I think I´ll send them with pictures of the baptism this coming week and some family nights. Time is a bit limited today...
Ohh, my Companion and I got very sick this week. He threw up a bunch and I... spent a lot of time in the bathroom. Now we´re okay! We ate something that really didn´t agree. They also treated the water this week and a few people (possibly us) got sick shortly after the treatment.
Good to hear about things around home. I´m learning to be even more of a go-getter and I´m learning to make some compromises with my companion. We´re working together to get results.
Love, Elder H.

Short but a baptism coming up!

 So now I´ll write you for this week. The mission is going great. We have a baptism this Saturday! A thirteen year old girl named Alana. She´s terrific. We´re also working with Lucas and his family. They know the Church is true, are going to the Church and accept to live/have a testimony of all the commandments. The one thing that´s holding Lucas back from the Baptism is that he smokes but he´s very open about it and is trying to quit. We´re working hard to get references and work with part member families. Today my time is limited but I love all you guys.

Another HOT week

Well this week was extremely tough, but a lot of fun. There was an activity and all sorts of fun stuff. We invited a lot of people to the activity. Unfortunately, only the normal active members went. What´s really good is that we had investigators in sacrament meeting! This week we contacted a reference we received from a member and now we´re going to baptize this person in a few weeks. Her name is Alana and she´s thirteen. She´s not old enough for seminary yet but she´s going to go with her friend this week to see how it is there.

We´re working with some young men and young women and we´re also trying to reactivate a whole bunch of people. Lucas and his family will be baptized at the end of this month. Everything is on track. 

It´s just getting hotter and hotter and should finally cool off in another month and a half (They keep telling me this but it doesn´t make me feel that much better now). There´s a lot of problems that we missionaries are helping the ward with. My slacks are getting a bit more bleached by the sun but my goodness, my companion's slacks have about had it. They have big reddish-brown spots all over because of the sun. I´m pretty sure I suffered enough in the sun last week to gain 50 wife-points. 

We had an activity this week which was a dessert night. They had my companion and some youth sit at a table and rate some of the dishes before everybody else started eating. My companion -instead of scoring them one through ten as he was supposed to, just rated all of them by saying "é bom (it´s good)". Of course this didn´t make the people doing the activity too happy.

The language is coming along more and more. Right now I´m just trying to really get things down. I still need to keep practicing every day but I already speak a ton in Portuguese and sometimes I´m even correcting the grammar of natives. It´s funny because as they say here, "No one speaks perfect Portuguese".

Cool Story: One of the Sisters here in the ward talked about her wedding and how special it was. She went to the São Paulo Temple and because she´s a lot older than her husband and I guess for other reasons too, she was scheduled to enter with her husband at eleven A.M. but had to wait on a call from President Hinckley and she wound up entering at four in the afternoon. Everyone in the Temple stopped and waited on the verdict. When the Prophet called and approved everything, all the temple workers were there at her wedding and she said that it was like the Angels of the lord were there. =) 

We're busting our backs trying to make this ward grow and we're trying to do everything in our power. I´ll try and take pictures this week. I love you all.         

Mom: My companion is from Eagle River which is close to Anchorage and he knows pretty much all of those people that you mentioned and has fond memories of them. He says that half of his high school are Church Members. 

Short note but teaching is going well

So because of the meeting yesterday, our p-day was moved to today. The one family that I talked about last week is going strong and we have another lesson with them tomorrow. Their baptism is marked for the end of the month. We´re getting some references recently and things should work out well. I´m coming to really love the ward. 

My companion -Elder Strout- is from Alaska. He has six months in the field and because of visa issues he WAS serving in Provo and now has almost four months serving in Brazil. Good guy. I´m still Senior like I have been for a while. He definately speaks better Portuguese than I did when I only had about three or four months in Brazil. 

I don´t have too much to say today and I still am owing pictures to everybody back home.