Transferred

Opa!!!! estão beleza e tudo mais? Conquista... well, its certainly a bit different than Itapetinga here both with comp. and area. Elder M. is from São Paulo and the others here in our district are also from Brazil, I’ve really been blessed on that end. (as a side note perhaps just to sat e my pride Elder M.thought I was from Brasil woohooo) I def. learn much better in the speaking of Portuguese than learning by the book. And being around only Brazilians (or at least most) thus far in the mission has been a great blessing for me in vocab, grammar, pronunciation and so on with the language.
The area here seems a bit more difficult then Itapetinga, it also kind of strange the way things are set up, take for example the fact that our house isn’t in our area. The area is set up by bairro" meaning neighborhood more or less, and so our area is a bit irregular or at least for me coming from where our area was the whole city. Elder M and his former comp have been working in one of the only poor areas here in the area, but its about 45min-hour walk (I think) and we have to leave before 6 to get out safely, add to that the fact that lunch is about where we live and it becomes unrealistic to head up there before lunch. thus we have very little time to find new investigators there, not to mention they’ve been working a lot with recent converts from upwards of 2 months ago, leaving even less time. Something’s gotta change, or this area is just going to die out. Fortunately it looks like we’re going to head to another area here closer to home, in which we can really start to work, but, Elder M. has a knee problem as well for which we are going to the doctors for tomorrow to see what is to be done. All in all a difficult situation, but on the upside it seems there is a good strong member to leave the recent converts with (though I fear it's a bit of a heavy load 2-3 houses with one man...) and also we have a little girl of 8 years that Elder M. and Elder R. were working with who will be baptized this Saturday, she has several friends who are members and her mom has given her authorization to be baptized. All in all I think that scripture you sent in this weeks email is perfect for the moment, where is that scripture found? Hoping to get to work here sometime soon, we’ve been here two days as of yet and I feel like we don’t do anything, more to come in the letter on this (btw, I can receive letters at the house here, apparently semi reliably, I will send the next letter with the address.)

Toe continues on the mend.

The new house is pretty big for only 2 elders, decent kitchen, big study room, two bedrooms, tiny bathroom, another room we don’t use, and a little area in the back with the washing machine and clothesline. all n all remarkably clean for a mission house, apparently the sisters used to live here... probably has something to do with it.

The area directly around our house is pretty nice, the streets here are mostly asphalt thankfully, much easier on the feet, don’t know how to describe the houses... I’ll see if I can finagle something with a photo in the next email or letter, but as of yet I really don’t know the area so it's hard to say anything other than that.

We have a nice chapel here, pretty big to boot though again I understand there are only 50 or so active members at the moment. though there are two wards that meet in the building.

The trip went well, fortunately I’d come here before so I knew what I was looking for, no surprises there, including when nobody showed up for 30 min or so... it’s kind of a joke here on the mission, always happens.

Teaching, well, like I said I feel like we aren’t doing anything, we’ve been in 4 or 5 houses since I've been here, two of which were members... yeah, not to satisfied either, hoping to figure out some way to get it so we will start to work.

I know this is the Lord's work, that this is His glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life or man and that when he gives commands, He provides a way for them to be accomplished. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amém.

Jacob