Day 266

                                                    Lunch (Delivery)

It's just us two in this house, but about 10 minutes away is another house with 6 more elders. 

Santa Maria City has 30 missionaries total.

Everyone in Tancredo Neves left over the three-day weekend, so we were only able to bring 2 investigators to church this Sunday. Brasil has a long series of monthly holidays, most of them only celebrated by Brasil. This weekend was Finados, Brazil's day of the dead. 

But it's not really a celebration, in theory it's a day to visit family graves and such things. As one sister from the ward put it (jokingly), "in Brasil it's a day to suffer, cry, and think about how you'll never see your relatives again after they die". And I guess that's sort of the attitude of the day. Maybe that's why the majority of the people here in "T. Neves" (as everyone abbreviates it when speaking) just use it as one more day to vacation.

Anyway, that's why the morning of, all of the missionaries in our mission were invited to go to the nearest cemetery and introduce people to the Plan of Salvation and how families can be together forever. Unfortunately, we had already set up apointments for the morning and T. Neves doesn't even have a cemetery, so we didn't have the chance.

Santa Maria, the city, sits inside a giant wall formed by green mountains. And T. Neves sits on the rim, so you can look into the city from a high enough point. Still need to get a picture. Anyway, it's about 30 minutes by bus and 10 minutes by car. This week we're participating directly in the marriage process of Angela and Juberto. They have to bring all of their documents to the marriage office and 4 witnesses, 2 of which will be us, the elders in T. Neves. If everything works out we're thinking maybe even the President and Sister Louza could be the other two, since we're already going to be in downtown Santa Maria this thursday for Zone Conference.

After stopping by the office the process takes about another month, and then the marriage ceremony can be performed here at our chapel. It'll be the first ceremony I've participated in on the mission. 

All in all, the work is going well and life is good. This zone conference we were asked to prepare to be randomly selected to give a 5 minute talk on Excercise of Faith, Repentance, Good Works, Prayer, or Enduring to the End (Alma 26:22). A 5 minute talk, put simply, is a scripture, a story with an insight (whether from the scriptures or from your life), and a testimony. That formula has served well for a *long* time! Still works.

Until next week,

Elder Hopkinson