I declare WAR!!!



All right. So we got into our apartment last night at 9:30. Turned on the lights and....about 5 or 7 or so COCKROACHES went scrambling for shelter. We´ve been having a little bug problem in our apartment as of late. No idea why. Our apartment is clean and we don´t have any food out. But the adrenaline went pumping and immediately the Hush Puppies shoes went to work smashing sending all those critters to the farest corners of Outer Darkness. Then when the smoke cleared I grabbed our RAID anti-bug spray can and went to work. This means WAR! I´m also making a special trip to the grocery store to load up on all the artillery I can get. This apartment ain´t big enough for more than us two.

 Maybe I´ve been studying too much of Captain Moroni?

 Down to the more nitty-gritty. Elder T. and I set a goal to baptize every week in February. Over the last couple weeks we´ve been doing more street contacts, and because of that we´ve seen a lot of success from it. More of our own investigators have been progressing towards getting baptized or getting dropped, and we had 6 investigators at church - just from our own companionship! A bunch of old investigators we had taught in December but were traveling have come back. So right now the real deal in Perdizes is February.

 It started off Wednesday. There´s a recent-convert family in the ward that has been going through some financial problems. There´s no men in the house, just the grandmother, her daughter, and 7 grandchildren. Not all have been baptized yet, but the ward has really focused on that family. On New Year´s Day, the daughter had another baby. And because of the financial situation, the Bishop and other members have been bringing the whole Johnson&Johnson aisle to help out. Another detail: the mom and one of the daughters aren´t baptized. Juliana and Isabelly are their names. Juliana´s been BEGGING us to come teach her and baptize her. Sooooooo, we went over Wednesday and marked them for baptism on the 7th! Great way to start our solid weekly-baptizing goal. We had two members come by with their cars and loaded up the whole family to come to church. They looked so happy! The whole ward´s been doing great with them.

 Speaking of Church, we had a great 3 hours yesterday. I wasn´t sure how it´d go when the bishop called us at 8:30 asking me to give a 10 minute talk (you know I´m not a big fan of on-the-spot), so I basically let the Spirit take care of this one. All the classes were taught by Returned Missionaries, and man you could see the Spirit goin to work on our investigators. Btw, the Lord needs more RMs!!!! The Bishop had also asked a Sister missionary in our ward to give a talk too. She went up first with a prepared talk and started talking about missionary work, how the members needed to help more, responsibility, etc. I didn´t see a lot of people paying attention. When it was my turn I felt impressed to talk about the sacrament and sacrifices. Basically I was just bearing my testimony. I felt really good about it, and basically thanked the members for being in the right place. I got a lot of compliments afterward. The Sister missionary looked a little ticked haha

 We got some good things comin. Interviews with President were chill. Because of some logistics in the zone, there´s a good chance I´ll be staying for one more transfer here. I´m hoping so, so I can stick around for our February streak.

 Well I hope it´s been a good week for you all. Great emails today from everyone. Too bad the Ducks are out. Last night I passed by a member´s house and he was watching the Seahawks game in portuguese. Turns out some people are really into it. You guys are awesome. Keep up the hard work, and I´ll keep praying for you all. Heavenly Father always hears our prayers and it always willing and wanting to forgive us. We all need it.

> Love Elder Nissinen