Day 259

We're working a lot with the youth here. This is the first area that has such a strong presence of younger members. Almost of our investigators have a friend from the Church of Jesus Christ, and the youth members here also bring friends to church regularly. We were able to bring 5 investigators to church this Sunday, and 4 of them were between 9-18 years oldIt's been a few months since I've been able to mark a baptismal date, but we have one on the 10th of November with an 11-year-old named Davi. His brother Tiago actually takes him to another ward in the city, but because he lives in our area, we'll be teaching, managing the paperwork and participating in the baptismal meeting. His brother is deaf and mute, and they only have interpreters close by in another ward, Urlandia. He doesn't read lips, so we use the notes app on his phone to communicate.

The members here think it's interesting that the missionaries in the US have daily dinners with the members. Here, the largest meal is lunch. In Tancredo Neves, a good part of our lunches aren't actually in the members' houses, but instead they give us the money to buy lunch at a restaurant or at the grocery store.

Here's one day's lunch: eggs, calabresa sausage, mozzarella cheese, and toast

Breakfast and dinners are all up to us. Here's an example of xis:

Daily workspace:

The nicest house I've already lived in on the mission is the apartment in Ijui, but this place isn't bad at all:

(my bed on the left side)

gigantic pile of mattresses, missionary material, and stuff left behind by missionaries who must have been going home (really old white shirts, even older pants, t-shirts, etc.)

Our last zone conference, we were reminded to remember every day that "a vida é boa", life is good. Next week is November, and closing 9 months away from home. Time passes most quickly when working well. I guarantee that the Gospel can move a person to self-improvement faster and more profoundly than any other way of life on earth. Not because it offers convenient rules or explanations for every aspect of life, but because it's true. And that's why I'll be here for one more year (and a bit more).

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I just remembered to write this, but maybe you've already heard: Brasil has a new president, Jairo Bolsonaro. People are saying that PT (Worker's Party) is basically dead in the water for the time being, because this is another big political blow. One of their former presidents is in jail (Lula) and another one was impeached (Dilma). Dunno, maybe at home people aren't even talking about the Brasilian election, I never even thought about brasilian politics in general before getting here. But election day was surprisingly peaceful, at least here in Santa Maria, there wasn't even a big election celebration like there was in Rio.

Gotta go, until next week,

Elder Hopkinson