What an awesome week we had! A lot of errands with getting Elder B and Elder W all settled in and zone conference, but Elder B and I hit the pavement hard this week. 

Elder B is a great guy. He´s spent 8 months in the Las Vegas West mission waiting for the visa. He´s 19 from Iowa, close to Des Moines. We´ve gotten along great this week. Portuguese is a little hard for him to understand, and the first week is always the hardest, like mentally draining. He even fell asleep a couple times during lessons! haha The crazy thing is, is that on the first impression people think he´s Brazilian!!! I guess if you´re dark-haired with a tan you can pass off. I have no chance haha. This last week I´ve really noticed how far my Portuguese has gone since 5 months ago. 

Wednesday we had our Multi-Zone Conference with President Del Guerso. It was pretty much an all-day event, and by the time we got home with traffic, it was like 7:30pm. The mission´s getting really pumped up for all the good stuff that´s been happening. In August our mission reached our goal with 104 baptisms - in a month! I remember the most baptisms we had in California was 33 in a month. We also had a little inter-zone competition of basketball shots. The AP´s put a point system depending on where you shot (1 for layup, 3 for free-throw, etc) Each zone chose 3 people to shoot, and whoever had the most points would eat breakfast at President´s house. We were the last group to go, and all the zones didn´t get more than 3. All the zones chose the Americans in their group to shoot (because most Brasilians can´t shoot for squat haha). I was first, went up for a free throw. The shot looked beautiful, and it must´ve bounced around the rim 5 times before bouncing out. Man I was ticked. But Elder B and another Elder goy us with 4.  I think the Mission posted some pictures of it you can check it out.

The rest of the week we´ve been runnning around teaching, teaching, and teaching our awesome investigators. Luis and his family have been doing great with the Word of Wisdom, and they´re progressively decreasing their cigarettes and coffee. The members have been doing great in supporting. We´ve also got a fun activity planned at the end of the month called the CTM&M (Missionary and Member). If it goes well, I´m thinking about trying to do the same thing with all us RM´s when we come home. The ward´s getting pretty pumped with us 4.

Nothin but good things are happening. Thank heavens I haven´t gotten burnt yet, even when I spend the whole day with sunscreen. It´s pretty expensive here, so in the next package if you could put in a bottle or two that´d be great for when summer comes.

Love you all a ton! Thanks for the great emails. Congratulations Captain Crimson and the rest of the family! You´re all super awesome. I´m having a blast and we´re tearin it up here in JMAC. Be prepared next week for some ASL Ice Bucket Challenge pics for our pday activity today with Yule :) 

Have a great week,              Elder Nissinen

The famous chocolate pizza!!!