Greetings

Oh the Easter season. How great it is. Especially being in a country where the word for "eggs" is the popular slang term referring to male-genitals (as to "balls" in the USA). Works for completely inappropriate humor all the day long.

But of course the Easter Eggs are not really what the season is about. For us missionaries almost everyday besides P-day is just about the same so I didn't feel much of a difference on Easter, but I hope everyone else did and had a chance to remind themselves of the Savior and his eternal-sacrifice for us. I know that he and his Atonement are the only way that we can inherit true happiness.

This week Elder Affonso and I found out that our Chapel will return to our area on the 26th of April! WOOT! The chapel we are using right now is like a 50 minute bus ride away...yeah not too easy to get people there every week. But now the chapel is in our area and is only about a 10 min walk for most of my area. I sent a picture of it. It used to be a really old beat up chapel but now it is way sweet and even has an elevator! I am excited to be able to start using it this month.

However with the new chapel will also come with a lot of work because there will be an "Open House" that will have to be done and unfortunately a lot of the planning and labor falls on the missionaries. There are 4 zones of missionaries here in Sorocaba and I am hoping we can get all of them to come to deliver invites and talk to everyone in the area to invite them to the Open House that will happen during the 23rd to the 25th. It will be a lot of work for my companion and I and the other 2 Elders that will share the chapel with us...but hopefully it will pay off.

Elder Affonso and I have been working TONS with less-active members in our area this week because there are seriously so many. It's a little bit ridiculous. Our ward has something like 450 members with only 80-90 that are going to church. We haven't stopped our search for new investigators and baptisms but we definitely have shifted our focus on the work to reactive the once extremely strong members of the church. It's crazy though because while working with the less-active members tons of them have tons of doubts about the church that need to be cleared up before they come back...which is where we come in. They ask SO many questions that are often extremely difficult so Elder Affonso and I are studying like crazy and trusting in the spirit in order to help them come back. After some of our appointments with these less-actives I feel completely mentally-drained it's crazy. But awesome. This week we helped 2 families come back with promises of 2 more this week. It's really satisfying work.

Our baptism that was planned for Saturday unfortunately fell through...due to 1 cigarette!!! That dang Fransisco just couldn't fight off the temptation with all his friends smoking at work and he smoked 1 this week. So we had to move his baptism to the 25th but he says he will never smoke again and felt really bad about it. We had to burn him with the good news a little bit to understand, but he was glad we did.

Wow, what a little perfect missionary-letter I just wrote for y'all. Excellent. But that's what my life is so...there ya go. Farewell! I am off to make a movie with my DL, his comp, and Elder Pratt (American I live with) that is going to be sick-tight! Elder Pratt has a sweet camera that he can edit and stuff on so the movie should be sweet. Loves and stuff.

-Elder Brent Parsons