Cascavel May 21, 2012

May 21, 2012

Hello! How are ya´ll?
Thank you very greatly for your letter! That is some exciting news that we got a new stake presidency Presidente Maw huh? Legal. I think maybe I know Pres. Gagan but I´m not sure. Thank you for the letters from Ryan and Nils. Its way fun to hear about what happening with them. I can believe that Joe got in a motorcycle wreck. Here in Brazil there are approximately 1.789 billion motorcycle wrecks per hour. For example just yesterday we were walking in the road and a motorist speed past us. The road curved ahead and apparently he didn’t notice the large and brightly colored building in front of him. Fortunately he wasn´t hurt, but the wall has a nice helmet mark now. Crazy, crazy people. I´m glad Sharon will graduate as well. I will be praying for her a lot and I will try to help her out. Mission accepted. That is also very neat about the Provo temple. Elder Holland is a little crazy and also very awesome. It will be fun to go there when it is done.

So this week has been exciting. This week we started a little game between Foz and Cascavel and things are pretty excited. Everybody is working hard to teach more and bring people to church. One of the things that counts the most is lessons with the members and so this week we combined with the Bishop, ward mission leader and 4 young men who are almost leaving on missions and we managed to teach 30 lesson with member! This was great seeing as how the mission average is 6. We are excited to do it again. We are teaching some really great people and working very hard. We had the blessing of having a baptism Saturday. Larissa is a girl the sisters were teaching a little while ago and decided to be baptized. The baptismal service proved to me that the church is true because of the following story. Because it was a young woman being baptized the girls in the ward prepared a special musical number. Summing things up it was VERY special, if you know what I mean. Then Bishop passed this reeeaaaaalllllly old church movie were the actor for Jesus was cross eyed and looked crazy. I thought it was a disaster, but the whole family felt the spirit really strongly and the whole family of 6 went to church yesterday (* see below for other funny story) and are preparing to be baptized soon! Bishop is getting really excited and called a bunch of ward missionaries. Bishop is really funny. He kept joking with us about how he wants to take seriously Pres. Hinckley talk about Raise the Bar, or ´´Raise the bar´´ and have to call Obama to send in an airstrike to destroy the bar that sits in front of the church.

*Funny story: So, when the whole family went to church actually at first it was just 4 of them. The little sister got embarrassed and the 18 year old named Wagner (who has an awesome Mohawk) didn’t get out of bed. So we drove over to their house and their aunt let us in to almost literally drag Wagner out of bed. He was a little grumpy at the moment, but then he just made friends with all the young men in the ward and 8 of them went over to his house after church to play video games. Integration: Check!

We are working hard to baptize a lot of people from incomplete families and help the ward grow. Also since we had to switch houses with the sisters I got a nice surprise this morning when I was cleaning the bathroom and got to find all the girl hair in the shower drain. BAHHH HUMBUG! But other than that, things are just good! Today I´m gunna buy some stuff, eat said stuff and then have a great P-day!

In fine, I love you very much mother. Thanks for being such a great mom and always giving me such a good example. I really owe a lot to you and Dad. Good luck with graduation and stuff! I know that Jesus is the Christ. His plan makes it possilble for all to be saved. I know God loves us and watches over us. I know the Book of Mormon has great power. I know our family is forever.

´Till later!

-Elder Iron Markham