Hi guys! You´ll all get this after you get off the ship, so I hope it was a great start to the vacation. 

We had a really good week ourselves. I´m pretty sure it was all because of our planning. Mission life is so much easier and more successful when you take just a few minutes to sit down, think about what you want to happen, talk about it, and then do it. Rather than run around the whole day doing street contacts. Missionary work is so much more than the numbers we report. 

Thursday we had a Mission Leadership Council. This time it was totally different. The President had 3 different sessions and divided the mission into the 3 divisions. We went into the Stake President´s council room and for 3 hours we talked about how each zone was doing, problems, concerns, ideas, and we discussed it all like a council. The small group council was a lot better than in the past. I don´t know why, but for some wacky reason I like meetings haha. In the council we changed some things that weren´t working out real well for us, like Exchanges that we were doing weekly.

Friday we got to have our first meeting with our new Ward Missionaries. They´re so pumped!! We gave a little training about our purpose as disciples of Christ, and by the end we had our calenders filled for next week with splits. One ward missionary gave us a ride home afterward, and he was handing out passalong cards to people on the street through his window! 

Oh, before I forget, since the end of the 6 week Transfer is the same week as Christmas, President moved the Transfer a week early. So, which means that this Sunday night we´ll find out who´s going and staying. Elder O's convinced that he´ll be leaving (he´s got more than 4 months in Perdizes), so he called the Assistants, begging them so he won´t be transferred. 

I don´t know what happened this weekend, but someone threw some spiritual gasoline and lit our area up - it´s a good thing! We had one lady come up to us and asked us to visit her nieces. We taught the whole family, and they´ve all committed to come to church this upcoming weekend. They look solid. Another guy came up to us and asked us where our church is, etc. We called him Saturday night to see if he was still going, and he said yes! We marked a meeting spot to show him the chapel, loved it all, and he´s hooked to know more. Do you remember Ramiro and Natalya? They´re the couple we met at Stake Conference that wanted to be baptized and married. We taught the Law of Chastity to them this weekend, and we marked Saturday morning to go to the Government place (forgot the name in english) to get their marriage all organized. AND we scheduled to take them on a tour of the Temple for this Thursday. OH, and one more miracle. We´ve been teaching this lady named Marcia. She wants to be baptized so much, but her husband´s in jail and they´re not married, so she´s been waiting until he gets released. ]Her two kids were invited by the Primary to go on a little Temple Trip of the garden and stuff. We had no idea this was happening. We visited them that same afternoon, and they said they LOVED the temple!!! Her 9 year old daughter said that she felt so good inside like she never wanted to leave. And the 7 year old son said that the fountain looked cool, the water was cold, and that the toy in his Happy Meal at McDonalds afterward was cool too haha. 

Time is going by crazy!! We´ve really seen a difference in this area. Before I got here, the members weren´t even giving the missionaries water if they passed by. Now we´ve got some great friendships with the members and they´re willing to help! 

The Church is True!

Have a supercalifragilisticexpialadocious week!

Love Elder Nissinen