Email - 5/4/10

Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2010 9:13 AM

It´s funny here, with respects to temperature. The other day it was 84 outside and there was a slight breeze and I thought the temperature was just fine. The next day it got up to 93 and, well, yeah, it hurt. It hardly ever rains these days. Which is good and bad. Bad because the dryness is really irritating, but good because the mud wreaks havoc with our clothes.

The good part about not having a girlfriend is this, that you don´t have to worry about any of the after or during the mission drama. I´d be rich if I had a dollar for every time I heard some scandal of one missionary getting home and he and his girlfriend ending the relationship, or of Dear Johns, or any of another million things. The downside is that, many a day you say, "I don´t have anyone waiting for me back home," and some of the girls say, "I´m your next ticket out of town," or "You should totally wait for me to come back and marry you." and the many horror stories of Elders dating, getting engaged, or committing to girls while on their missions.

For this reason the plot continues as the following: At any given moment, any girl whose photo I have is liable to be called my girlfriend. The badluck falls on Sharelle, as Jess sent a lot of photos of her once, I think it was Easter 2009, and now the shots of her outnumber Kelsey, Jess, and the few Sisters I know. I know, I know, it´s lying, but hey, Abraham said Sarah was his sister to protect himself, right?

Hey, our ward has newsletters? Wow, it´s been a while since last I saw one of those. There´s a lot of work to do as a missionary in Brazil, in organizing the members and teaching them what to do, and in saving non-members and turning them into happy, healthy, active members. A wonderful example of how we´re going to have to improve in our ward. Our Relief Society is always doing activities, I believe Saturday will be the 3rd since I was transferred, and the 7th since I arrived in Anapolis. But the problem is that few sisters show up. Friday they had a cake activity, and, well, as you can guess, where there´s food, there´s elders, and yet, I think a fourth of the RS even came.

We had a blessing of a child here, too! Rafael and Juliana (Prof. of Gospel Principles, as ALWAYS, on my mission, ALWAYS, the Gospel Principles teacher is a young woman who is at some phase in the baby-having processes. ) and little Benjamim (yes, that´s how you spell Benjamin in português). It was funny to watch the whole process, as Rafael, who is one of our ward´s RMs, asked for my manual (which contains, among other things, a how-to on baby blessings) not because he didn´t know how, but because everyone thought he didn´t, and he therefore wanted to make sure. After the blessing, Irmão João our Ward Mission Leader, went talking loudly (he´s kinda deaf) about how Rafael had cried during the blessing.

Yeesh, my time ran out, and we´re in the midst of cleaning up our zone and being 100% in the rules, so I have to split. I´ll talk with you on Sunday, and I hope to have a lot of Good News. Please wait for my letters, too, and read them to the whole family.

Love,

Bryan