On the Metro in Sao Paulo

On the Metro

Dearest Family!

It's good to hear that Youth Conference was a success for you guys and that you all are staying busy with the regular routine.  I LOVED the picture with Elder Nate and Elder Lima (Elder from Andrew's former ward in Brazil)!  That's so crazy that they saw each other! That makes me happy. This past week for us was really good.  Don't worry Mom and Dad, nothing too bad happened here during Carnaval.  I'm still worthy to be serving a mission. I just had to have a nice interview with President. jk :).  But really nothing happened here. It was a little bit harder for us (to do missionary work) because everyone went to the beach so a lot of our appointments fell through but nothing really out of the ordinary happened. 

So this week for us was really really good. We are continuing to work with Marcelo and Keila.  We went to their house almost everyday this past week to strengthen them spiritually and teach them about the importance of marriage.  They both know all that they need to do to get baptized and get into the temple and everything.  They just have to actually do it.  We are trying to do everything to prepare them to get married, but the problem is that they have been arguing more lately, and Keila has been thinking about separation because of a lack of compromise in the relationship.  There are a lot of complicated little things, but we are trying to help them both change their attitudes and change some habits, so they will both be able to enter into the waters of baptism. Unfortunately, we only talked to Patricia this week and we weren't able to talk to the husband.  She lives deep in our favela, so it is hard to bring a member there or to catch them both at a good time to sit down and talk with them.  It is somewhat hard, but we're going to keep working with them. 

This past week I got to do two divisions, one with Elder Camarena, who lives with in our house and just got here this past transfer, and another with Elder Batalla, who is an argentino that works in the mission office.  I took Elder Camerena to work with me (on Carnival) in our area. Unfortunately a lot of our appointments fell through, but I was still able to help him work on the things that he feels he needs to improve at.  He's a really good missionary, and he speaks really well for the little time that he has here in Brazil.  I got to spend Saturday, however, with Elder Batalla in his area. The office Elders have a bit of a rough time because they hardly get any time to proselyte, but they do take advantage of the time that they have.  We had a few really good lessons and I got to meet some of their investigators that are going to be baptized here soon.  Elder Batalla taught me a lot and he explains things so well in the lessons that I was blown away because he seems to be kind of a quiet guy.  I was really happy with the divisions this week and how our zone is really progressing.

Also this week we had Zone Conference again and I feel that this one was the best one yet.  President and Sister Tanner and the Assistants gave awesome trainings.  Sister Tanner gave a training about how we need to be like the people of Ammon and bury our "swords of relbellion" so she gave us all little pieces of paper that we used to write something bad or rebellious that we were doing that we wanted to give up and we put them in a box to "bury" them forever.  Then she told us that we needed to replace what we gave up with a Christlike attribute so we could fill ourselves with more good things as we take out the bad.  Then we did a training based on what Elder Evans told us a few weeks ago. We had a type of council, where all the leaders who were present at the meeting with Elder Evans got to share about what we learned and share it with the rest of the missionaries. It was kind of like what we did in our Zone training but with a few other zones present. Then, President gave a training on marriage and helping to prepare our investigators for marriage, which was exactly what we needed.  I can honestly say that I learned a lot at that Zone Conference.

Well, my time is almost out. Thanks so much for all the love and support that you guys give me. I know that this Church is true and that this work is His work.  I love you all!

Love,

Elder Schwartz