Olá família e amigos!
Oh, it is hard to believe that my parents are only one flight away from me (last night a plane left here to go to Paris). But lets be honest, you were always one lifeboat and a couple of months of floating in the Atlantic around South America, or through the Panama Canal away!
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| Elder Jarvis, Elder Acord and I at zone conference |
So, this week was kind of interesting because I had experiences where I made kind of greenie mistakes. The major two were that I left my camera's memory card at the photo printing place and our phone at a members house! Luckily, the former was really easy to retrieve at Church the next day (it actually worked out because we had a way to call his parents, who are our investigators, to invite them to come to Chruch the next day, and they did!) The other, I successfully managed to get back today by waiting at the place for the chinese owner to come and telling me that it wasn't there and then me pointing it out. So thanks to those miracles, you get pictures today and I get to hear about how people are out of money for the month (Elder Godfrey's problem).
So, this last week we had a baptism! His name is Z and he is 16. He is another person who came to know that the Church was true through his friends. A, that member that was born on the same day as me and also our ward mission leader, brought him to Church a couple of weeks ago and then we started talking to him. He really liked church and he started going off to seminary in the evenings and just spending a lot of time with the youth. He had some major commandment problems (which we actually didn't know about until he told us) but before we had taught him the commandments, he said that A had already taught some the commandments, so he had already overcome those problems. He is a nice guy and a really good hip hop dancer. I need to take a video of him one of these days dancing because it is pretty cool.
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| Z's Baptism |
So, this last week was my 1 year mark (and for the record, my release date is a year from today. It will pass quickly, but, of course, I don't want it to.) For celebration, Elder Ernst and I had made plans to go and celebrate it together at the all-you-can-eat buffet at Mirage. Apparently, other people liked the idea because outside of the 8 people total that we invited, almost every missionary in Praia ended up coming. It was a lot of fun and like always the food was good. I took a picture of my lunch as proof that I bit into him before he could take a bite out of me :) We spent the time enjoying MTC memories and talking about life plans (as in if they had changed from when we were in the MTC). It looks like for some people, they have decided to pursue different majors/relationships and everything. I feel like not too much has changed with me. Still pursuing Chemical Engineering and if anything, I am more set on doing it. It will be interesting if anything does change during this next year. I have noticed that one thing that has decreased is the amount of emails...
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| The one that didn't get away :) |
Oh, and one more great thing was Zone Conference! It was the last that we are going to have with President and Sister Oliveira. It was a really good conference with good trainings by everyone but I liked the last one, by President Oliveira, the best. He gave a training on the missionary purpose and it seemed like everyone was self-evaluating themselves to see if they were becoming what they want to become and what God wants us to become. It was powerful, and then he and Sister Oliveira bore their final testimonies. It was a sad ending, also because 3 other missionaries, Elder Otterstrom (who was my Zone Leader in Fogo when I started the mission), Elder Acord (who was my Zone Leader in Achada Grande and São Filipe) and Elder Folgeburg (who was never my Zone Leader but is pretty cool) all bore their testimonies too. Most of the leaders that were in when I got here are leaving. The mission is getting ready for the mission president change and there is no doubt that the mission is ready to continue to work for President and Sister Mathews.
Well, it was a busy week and being the last week of the transfer and the week before the major "soon-to-be-stake" Conference in Fogo, a lot of the mission leadership will be heading there.
Love you all, and I will talk to you all soon! Hope to hear from you!
Tchão,
Elder Brent Dorff
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