Great news!!!

So there´s a perk to being in the Office around Transfer-time: you´re the first one to know what´s gonna happen. The Executive Secretary is the one who takes a look at the Transfer Board, checks up with President if there´s any hiccups, and makes the phonecalls Sunday night to each companionship that had a change. President called me just before lunch telling me that he was ready for me to look at it. To be honest, I was nervous as heck about where´d I would go. All this week President was passing by the office for meetings and stuff, with a question every now-and-then about possible leaders and companionships. Well I just got back from lunch, took a look at the board, and the verdict is....

I`M STAYING!!!! I didn´t say anything to President about what I would prefer, but I´m super happy that I´ll be ending my mission in the São Paulo 5th ward. I don´t know what secretary I´ll be (except Executive), but President will let me know later. The ward has been booming, we´ve been getting along great between us five secretaries, and between the office work and the field, it´s been a lot of fun. I´m really glad things won´t change a whole lot.

Here´s a good way to start off a letter: Last week I spent three days in the hospital. It started Sunday during Elders Quorum. Remember that Elder who had facial paralysis, and Carlo the neurosurgeon? They met up and got to talking about Elder C´s condition, and how Carlo wasn´t sure if he had something called Bell´s palsy (facial paralysis). One thing lead to another, and I ended up going with them both to one of the best hospitals in Brazil. Over the next couple days, they had Elder Corrêa go through some blood exans, CAT scans, shock exams, spine fluid extracts, and everything else to find out what was causing the unknown pain that he shouldn´t have had. We had swaps with the other elders at night to make sure the Elder staying with Elder C didn´t get stir-crazy being in a hospital with nothing to do. After all that, they found out that he has something called Ramsay Hunt syndrome of the 7th and 8th nerve. (fyi I had no idea what they were saying, so I had to look up all those words up in the dictionary. You know it´s not the kind of vocab you find in Preach My Gospel). In the end, Tuesday night we were liberated from the hospital just in time for my English class.

And it´s growing!! This last Tuesday was our first time with the two separate classes - and I think in total we had close to 30 in attendance - WOW! Because of the hospital, I didn´t have time to drop another cookie-bomb on the ward, but they´re all committed to bring more friends. I taught the basics class about how to introduce themselves. Remember the movie "Here Comes the Boom" when he´s teaching that citizenship class? Haha We had a ton of fun with it all.

Wednesday we had our Greenie Training Meeting where we got all the new missionaries to see how their training is going and if they´re all good to "leave their trainer´s nest " Elder L and I decided to do our part a little different than the normal training. We played Jeopardy! They don´t have it in Brazil, but we took the idea and did role-plays, scripture chases, a lot like Brother Maurer in Seminary. This group was super-competitive but no blood was shed and they learned a lot. 

Today we have a BAPTISM!!! Almir is a 28 year old young man who we´ve been teaching for about a month now, found through contacting him while in the elevador. We thought that after a while we were gonna have to drop him because he hadn´t gone to church, but it was Mother´s Day when we saw him in the back row in a suit and tie. And once he started reading the Book of Mormon, já era. We gotta start filling the font in a little bit. Man it doesn´t get better having a pday and a baptism on the same day. 

Love you all! Have a great week!!

Love Elder Nissinen