Going Senior

The package i sent was just copies of all my pictures so don't worry, and those pictures i emailed last week were just the only ones that i took that wont be on the memory card that i sent and i felt bad for not sending pictures in a while.

The Easterner is going good, but today is my last day with him because transfers are tomorrow.

That leads me to some announcements. . . .

BATISMO ESSA SEMANA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
we were walking around in a new neighborhood that we were trying out after praying all week for a baptism because we haven't baptized anyone this transfer.  An inactive member that we never met stopped us on the street and invited us to her house saying that she has been thinking about returning to church. we taught her family and discovered that one of her kids wasn´t baptized yet! We invited her to return to activity in the church and invited her daughter to read and pray about the Book of Mormon to see if she wanted to be baptized this week!! She accepted and we baptized her Yesterday! her name is J

Also, on Sunday i got a call from the assistants to the president and they told me that I will train this new transfer! i will pick up my Greenie on Tuesday morning! i´m really excited. it will be my first time as a senior companion too, i´m a little nervous but i know that the Lord will help my complete this new assignment. i wont know until tomorrow who will be my new comp, but it could be a Brazilian, an American, or a Chilean.(yes, we are getting missionaries from Chile this transfer!)

That's about it for me, i forgot to figure out what my address is here, but ill try to get it to you guys soon. Just send packages to my house address that i will get, letters go to the mission office like normal.

Good luck to everyone in the new semester at school!  I love you all and keep you ALL in my prayers.

Tchau!
-Elder Leete

Batismo!!!!!!!!

Reaction to Life at Home

Wow what crazy stuff! everybody getting married. when i get back everybody will be all scattered around in their own little world. weird, but thats the way life is, and im not saying that im not excited to take part too, but thats talk for a year and 4 months from now.

Parabéns Jessica! keep on showing me up! im proud of you!

and Rachel: if you want to fill up your mia maid class, just give all your friend´s addresses to the missionaries!!! it will be the best present you could ever give!! to the missionaries and your friends!

never heard of this seminary broadcast, send me a transcript

there has been a change in the mission rules: if you send a package you should send it to my address where i´m living, not the mission office. if you already sent stuff dont worry it will be taken care of like normal but next week ill send you guys my address (i will have to try and find it out first)

life is going all normal here. . . its just been a while since we´ve had a baptism, none of our investigators want to progress. . . gotta go crazy and find a miracle to baptize this week since its the last week of the transfer.

love you all!
-Elder leete

Elder P's baseball cap
(he's from New York and a big yankee fan)

Sweating in the City

life in the big city is good! its basically the same just we waste a bunch of time of our p-day when we want to go downtown to buy stuff

Congrats Jessica! that's way awesome! i knew you would do really well at BYU, its really a great experience and if you apply yourself you will definitely reap the rewards. you should try to get a job working in the math lab or something, BYU pays well and its a pretty simple job. i spent a lot of my free time there. . .

i miss the cold. i miss the snow. i miss going a whole day without sweating.

but im getting used to it here. i´ve already been in brazil for 8 whole months. thats 1/3 of the mission. the time is going by really fast. i´ve learned a ton, and going to learn a lot more, but now the hard work is to apply all the principles that i'm learning every day to actually improve my teaching.

i loved the package the shirt and shorts were well received by me and elder p as well as the American candy and peanut butter. now i just have to find a decent jam to go with  it. right now im just eating it with syrup on bread. bom de mais! (good of more!)

i got 3 letters from Rebecca yesterday that were sent January 3rd! that's only two weeks! i really love being here near the mission office! now i just got to take advantage of it and write you guys letters. . .if i don't nap through p day again (which isn´t very likely)

its funny to see the couch rotation always happening, but as of yet the green couches in the front room are still there. those were a good investment.
we´ve got a couch in our apartment, but its really terrible so its only good use is for holding heaps of dirty clothes.

that's it for this week, if you were wondering we had interviews with the president yesterday so our p day was switched for today

Love you all!


o i also sent the sd card of all my pictures so it should arrive in a couple of weeks.

A Little about Londrina

Answers to mom’s questions about Londrina:

I hope you are adjusting to life in your new area.  So tell us about Londrina-

What is the city like?  Do they have apartment buildings?

It’s a bigger city like M where my first area was, there is a good amount of apartment buildings and other big buildings downtown, but I’m serving in the edge of the city so there aren´t too many. I’m living in an apartment that is in a closed apartment complex, a little bit like Wyview at BYU. it’s weird here, I’m used to cities like Portland that have like an urban sprawl for like forever, but the cities here have a definite end. In one direction there is neighborhoods and in the other nothing.

Any big department stores? 

Yes, they have department stores, but only downtown. But here we have a "Super Mufato" that’s just like a Safeway.

Parks?

There are a good amount of parks and stuff, and all of the parks have like exercise equipment made out of the same like metal as play structures so that old people can exercise for free.

Where do you do your tracting?

We tract only when our references we get from members run out in which we knock on doors, but we can’t in apartment buildings because they are always surrounded by wall and gate

How hot is it?

It's 30 degrees Celsius every day, all day. Except if it rains really hard, then it will drop down to like 20. Then the rain will stop and it will turn into a muggy 30 degrees again

Any dogs roaming the street?  (I remember that the dogs in Japan looked like ewoks and they even barked in Japanese: Wanwan!)

There are always a TON of dogs roaming the streets, I’ve gotten almost used to it, but the mission  has made me hate dogs. They are really ridiculously annoying. I don’t think a single dog in this whole country has been trained well. I really don’t understand why anybody likes dogs. If you send me another package it should have one of those ultrasonic dog trainer things so I can make them shut up.

But I’m out of time again, I’ve been trying to organize all the pictures and stuff that I’ve been taking but it’s really annoying when you only have one hour a week to use a computer.

love you all! Until next week!
-Elder Leete

The Importance of Prophets

good to hear everybody is happy and had a good new years, mine here was kind of lame, everybody was drinking and having a barbeque so we couldnt really do anything. also we had to be in house by 8:30. but it was annoying because we couldnt sleep until like after midnight because of all the fireworks that everyone was lighting off (Brazilians love fireworks).

this area is a little tougher, the church has been here for forever and ever so all the members already told all their friends, so its harder to get references from them so its back  to trying to contact everyone in the area book and knocking on doors. we end up spending a lot of time walking around for little result. but these last few days we found some really great people that accept everything, but just haven't gone to church yet. that's the big test.

this last few weeks I've been thinking about prophets, and the great importance of them. they are chosen men of God who are simply his authorized representatives here on the earth. and being authorized they can then:
-teach the correct doctrine
-realize ordinances of the priesthood that we need for our salvation
and to do this they need something: an organization to keep these things in order and to make sure we are doing it in THE (not just any) way of God

That's really the basis behind everything. how God always worked on the earth anciently (Old Testament), how His Son did it when He was here on the earth (New Testament), the consequence of the people not wanting it this way (apostasy: why there is no more new testament), and today (the Restoration)

I know that this is the way it is, and that God sent Thomass S Monson today to be His prophet. i know because the Holy Spirit of God testifies it to me every time i look a Brazilian in the eyes and tell them, but more importantly, because one day i decided to find out for myself, and i read the Book of Mormon and asked God if it was true.

And He said Yes

i Love you all, vos desejo muito felicidade este ano novo

-Elder Leete