Come On - write me an e-mail

Let's just say all the "cyber praise" that I asked for and was anxiously waiting for this week made for a super "cyber let down" today. I thank those in my immediate and extended family...and Jake Ferrin...for the congrats on the year of work I have given harvesting souls to greater build the Kingdom of God here on the earth. But you know...it's not that important anyway I guess. :). I know there are a bunch of free riders out there reading this well kept blog chalk full of great comedic and spiritual insights that don't send me anything. I say "send me a freakin letter or get the heck off my blog!"**

Well we had the baptism of our little Afonso friend this week. He is 9 years old and his family decided to come back to church after being away for about 4 years. We taught him (and his family...because they pretty much forgot everything) all the lessons the we dunked him nigh unto Oreo in milk on Saturday. Actually our Bishop was the one who "dunked" him. Did I tell you guys that our Bishop is American? It's a long story but he served here in this mission and even passed through this area. He is now married to a lady who is from here but he never met her while he was on his mission.

Anyway, his Portuguese is nigh unto amazing...I mean I can understand everything he says but to duplicate his speaking ability will take another few years for me. I take Portuguese very seriously and I don't think I speak too bad at all, but there are some things that just take time. You can't learn everything from a book. But anyway, our bishop is way cool and helps us tons in the work.

So we had 3 baptisms in the last two weeks which is really good considering the mission goal is 2 baptisms per month...however we are kind of out of investigators right now. Monday literally was one of the worst days of work that I have ever had on my mission too. We had only 3 appointments in the whole day, very few, and all 3 of them fell one after the other leaving us with absolutely nothing to do at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. We had to resort to "hitting" doors for 6 hours straight and with one of the worst streaks of luck I have ever seen we did not enter 1 house the whole day. It was incredible.

But luckily we had a really good day yesterday and found 5 new investigators and marked 2 more baptismal dates. It's funny how your emotions change on the mission. On Monday I was nearly calling President to ask to be emergency transferred out of the area and then yesterday I didn't want the day to end haha.

I also had to go do an interview in the Sister's area yesterday. My city here is out in the middle of nowhere but their area is another 24 km even farther out into the middle of nowhere. A little city called Pilar do Sul. And seeing as we can't do divisions with the sisters to do the interview both my companion and I had to go out there. It was cool though and was fun to work with them for half the day. One of them, Sister Lotulelei is Tongan and she went to Timpanogos. It's crazy that we are both so far away from home walking in a little town out in the middle of nowhere in Brazil but we are both from the same place. The world is tiny in the church.

Welp, that's about it I guess. I'll talk to you guys next week. Farewell.

-Elder Brent Parsons

**Not to be taken seriously