Hey guys! I can´t believe summer is just about over. Things are flying over here in Brazil. This last week has been a really good one for both Elder B. and me. We´ve been figuring out how we can work better together, and Heavenly Father really blessed us this week. It´s a start of a new transfer, and I think things will go real well for us both.

We got two new Greenies in my district, Elder G. and Sister G. The Elder is from Capo Verde in Africa, and he speaks both Portuguese and Creole - crazy!! Sister G. is from Columbia. Both are superstars already. I love working with new missionaries. They have that new fire that it´s impossible not to see. We had a great District Meeting on Tuesday getting to know everyone and talking about how we want this transfer to go. Now that everyone that was progressing is baptized, we´re going back to ground zero to pick up some new and quality investigators. 

Wednesday we taught Alan and Luciana. Luciana´s the less-active mom and Alan is the 8 year old that goes to church with his grandparents every week. This week we taught about the Word of Wisdom. When you walk into their house, there´s a little stand with wine and whiskey bottles. We brought it up about why her and her husband have them there. You know what she said? She doesn´t drink, and her husband´s stopped for at least 7 months. We´ll let´s throw them out! I said. The only reason they have them there is for decoration. I didn´t say this to them, but I will tonight during our lesson: in all the things I see in their house, there isn´t one picture of their family together. I made them the promise that if they throw their bottles out, I´ll buy them a 3.3L bottle of Coke (they have that here believe it or not) and make them a big batch of Mom´s homemade cookies. I think it was the cookies that sealed the deal haha. And we´re gonna follow-up tonight to see if they did it or not.

Another cool little miracle happened on Saturday. There´s a Sister in our ward that´s been a widow for about 4 years. Ever since her husband´s passing, she´s given money to the missionaries for lunch instead of having them over at their house. She gave us money this week, and we got the idea to set up a lesson to share a message with her. We came over on Saturday to get to know her and help her out anyway we can. Turns out that in all the time she´s given money to missionaries, not one missionary has shared a message with her - 4 years!!! Her two neighbors were over as well, two little girls that have always come to Church with her too. Turns out neither of them have been baptized yet. We taught them all the Restoration, and got permission from one of the girl´s parents to baptize her! We´re also gonna start teaching the other girl´s aunt that lives with her. It´s been a goldmine that missionaries have passed by for years!! Again, it´s working with the members that´s one of the greatest things. The Sister and one of the girls asked for a priesthood blessing too. The nonmember aunt was there during the blessings, and the Spirit was definitely there. The only thing that wasn´t perfect was that they all weren´t able to get to Church yesterday. If we have time tonight we´re gonna stop by to follow-up.

Something that´s been going on here in Brazil is that it´s Election Time! It´s pretty different here; there´s posters of tons of different people for different positions (like State and Federal Deputy), with cars going around all day with speakers talking about the candidates and their pledges. I don´t know when the actual election is, but I´ve heard that it´s all done electronic, that people punch in the number of the candidate for the position. With that I´ve also heard there´s a lot of fraud because it´s all electronic. It happens every four years. I´ll have to ask some more members about how it all works.

Thanks for the emails today! Your new school schedules look great. I can´t believe they´ve got another Seminary teacher at Glencoe! That´s awesome!! Congratulations Joe on making JV2, you´ll love it! Rip it up this last week of summer. Love you all. Thank you so much for your prayers.

Love Elder Nissinen