lots of important stuffs...

14-1-2013

Freak, I'm sorry Coley for forgetting to say happy birthday, but you know
that I love you! I know that I missed other birthdays or that some birthdays
are coming up, but I forgot to look at my calendar directly. From what I
remember, Happy Birthday Dan and JBaum....I think.

Well, this week has been filled with a bunch of crazy things, but they were
important and made me feel good, so that's good I guess. The first was, I
went to a training activity for the stake (which is actually a very big
stake for Brazil, 9 healthy wards) and Me and Elder Cancino did a training
session for all the Ward mission leaders and ward missionaries. It went over
actually really well, everyone was excited to get to work afterwards.

Then this Thursday, we went to B.H. to have our Zone Leader Counsel with the
President. We went there and had breakfast with his family and all the other
Zone Leaders. Then we had a list of changes that would be happening in the
mission and things that we needed to improve on the mission, and then we had
lunch which was freeeeeeaking awesome! Sister Fortunato had a lunch line set
up to make Nachos, but since regular corn chips with just salt don't exist
here, she used Nacho Cheese Doritos for the chips.... need I say more? First
time in a long time I've had nachos, but the only problem is that here in
Brazil there is no nacho cheese so she had to improvise, but it was still
good. Then afterwards, we went back to learning a bunch of things on how we
can be better missionaries and on how we can better our zones. After a long
8 hours, we went back to our areas.

Friday, Elder Cancino and I held our own Zone Meeting and had a lot of
success in getting the other Elders fired up about the work. Last month our
zone baptized 9 people in the whole month with 18 missionaries.  This month
we reached 9 baptisms yesterday already and have a lot more coming. Things
are looking good for this zone in the future.

I finally got the envelope with the Christmas Tree and Ornaments, but I
still loved to read all of them. I got Tawni and Scott's Christmas Card and
Joey and Esther's card too and I love to see the pics and read the letters.
Thank  you so very much! Also, thank you Uncle Tom for the Ornament with
Portuguese on it. I'm glad to see that you haven't lost it yet!

Well, I love you all so very much!

God Speed

*Elder Smidt X*