Hello friends!! Greetings from Elder Gee! It sounds like
everybody had a really busy week finishing up with finals and
everything. But luckily its SUMMER already for you guys! Oh and happy
birthday to everybody who had a birthday recently! I feel
bad for not writing anything in my earlier emails, but I promise I
didn't forget about you on the actual birth dates, just when I write my
emails.
So I'm guessing you all want to hear about my new area... So I got transferred to a little city called Lagoa Vermelha close to Passo Fundo. Well actually its not that close because its a 2 hour bus ride, but that's the Zone. I'm pretty sure that Lagoa is the city farthest away to the mission headquarters in Porto Alegre. To give you a clue, we didn't get to our area until about 4:00 on Wednesday afternoon and the transfers happen on Tuesday morning. We slept at the LZ´s house in Passo Fundo on Tuesday to save time and money because they next morning was district meeting there. Also I was called to be a district leader so it was my first meeting, but I hadn't even arrived at our house or unpacked or anything so it was kind of a fast planned training. But it turned out fine and was a lot easier and calmer than I expected. So I'm definitely gonna have to get used to long bus rides for this area. This week we have a conference in Porto Alegre and then also leadership training, so if I understand correctly, we are going to leave Wednesday morning to Passo Fundo and then go as a zone to Porto Alegre and have the conference Thursday morning. We will return to Passo Fundo and then on Friday have the leadership training and probably get home late that night. Crazy huh?
Oh ya, but about the area. Like I said, its a really small city (I think even smaller than Vera Cruz) with a small branch. My companion is Elder Simpson, from Washington. He is a cool and a funny guy and has a little more than 6 months on the mission. He was one of the missionaries that reopened this area so its really new and is needing a lot of work from the missionaries. The area was shut for about 6 months from the missionaries, and during that time the number of frequenting members went from 80 down to about 20. I still don't have a real feel for our branch because this last Sunday was Stake Conference in Passo Fundo. There were a ton of members there and we had the awesome privilege to hear from General Authorities Stanley Ellis and Elder Richard G Scott from a transmission in Salt Lake. I remembered Stanley Ellis because I really liked in his talked in General Conference, and he gave another awesome talk about obedience. I had a little trouble understanding Elder Scott but even a lot of the Brazilians did because he spoke really soft with an interesting accent. But it was way good.
But the work has been speeding up here and there have been quite a few baptisms recently, including one that we had on Saturday with a man named Dilseu. He has a cool story, because his teenage kids are members but he never was too interested in the church and had a drinking problem. He had to go to the hospital because of all of the alcohol he consumed but while there he decided he wanted to change his life. The missionaries went there because his kids asked for them to give him a blessing, and they found that he had read more than half of the Book of Mormon and wanted to be baptized. In less than 2 weeks we taught him everything and was baptized. We also have a lot of other good investigators that look promising. The only problem is that both last week and then this next week, we are losing a lot of time with these long trips. Almost all of them work during the day so we have a really small window to teach them all. It will be interesting but we will do our best to make time for all of them.
So I'm guessing you all want to hear about my new area... So I got transferred to a little city called Lagoa Vermelha close to Passo Fundo. Well actually its not that close because its a 2 hour bus ride, but that's the Zone. I'm pretty sure that Lagoa is the city farthest away to the mission headquarters in Porto Alegre. To give you a clue, we didn't get to our area until about 4:00 on Wednesday afternoon and the transfers happen on Tuesday morning. We slept at the LZ´s house in Passo Fundo on Tuesday to save time and money because they next morning was district meeting there. Also I was called to be a district leader so it was my first meeting, but I hadn't even arrived at our house or unpacked or anything so it was kind of a fast planned training. But it turned out fine and was a lot easier and calmer than I expected. So I'm definitely gonna have to get used to long bus rides for this area. This week we have a conference in Porto Alegre and then also leadership training, so if I understand correctly, we are going to leave Wednesday morning to Passo Fundo and then go as a zone to Porto Alegre and have the conference Thursday morning. We will return to Passo Fundo and then on Friday have the leadership training and probably get home late that night. Crazy huh?
Oh ya, but about the area. Like I said, its a really small city (I think even smaller than Vera Cruz) with a small branch. My companion is Elder Simpson, from Washington. He is a cool and a funny guy and has a little more than 6 months on the mission. He was one of the missionaries that reopened this area so its really new and is needing a lot of work from the missionaries. The area was shut for about 6 months from the missionaries, and during that time the number of frequenting members went from 80 down to about 20. I still don't have a real feel for our branch because this last Sunday was Stake Conference in Passo Fundo. There were a ton of members there and we had the awesome privilege to hear from General Authorities Stanley Ellis and Elder Richard G Scott from a transmission in Salt Lake. I remembered Stanley Ellis because I really liked in his talked in General Conference, and he gave another awesome talk about obedience. I had a little trouble understanding Elder Scott but even a lot of the Brazilians did because he spoke really soft with an interesting accent. But it was way good.
But the work has been speeding up here and there have been quite a few baptisms recently, including one that we had on Saturday with a man named Dilseu. He has a cool story, because his teenage kids are members but he never was too interested in the church and had a drinking problem. He had to go to the hospital because of all of the alcohol he consumed but while there he decided he wanted to change his life. The missionaries went there because his kids asked for them to give him a blessing, and they found that he had read more than half of the Book of Mormon and wanted to be baptized. In less than 2 weeks we taught him everything and was baptized. We also have a lot of other good investigators that look promising. The only problem is that both last week and then this next week, we are losing a lot of time with these long trips. Almost all of them work during the day so we have a really small window to teach them all. It will be interesting but we will do our best to make time for all of them.
But I doing well here and super excited for my new
assignment. I love you all and thank you for all of the support. Have
an awesome week!
Elder Gee
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